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I put some truck bed liner, Monstaliner, on the fender flare area and rocker pannel/lower door area. Everything below the blue line:
Then I buffed it with Meguire's Ultimate Compound. The different was pretty big. I could have used the Ultimate Polish next for a mirror shine but I just wanted to get the haze out of the paint.
Looking good!
The truck bent paint will fade and lose it's gloss in only a few weeks, but I think it will look better once it does because there's not much contrast between the glossy dark green paint and glossy block paint.
Of course a bird already shat a GIANT poo puddle right in the middle of the hood.....
I flushed the cooling system for hopefully the last time today
Three days ago pure tap water and one bottle of Blue Devil radiator flush. This is what came just now:
So as you can see there was plenty of rust/crud that the flush additive was able to get out after the oxalic acid. It also removed most of the yellow coating:
Not perfect but looking more and more like bare metal
The thermostat before and after the blue devil flush:
And here's the inside of the aluminum thermostat housing, I think the oxalic acid noticeably etched it:
After I put it all back together I hoped in my pickup to get some distilled water and antifreeze but the fuel hose was dry rotted and I spilled half my gas tank in the Oreilly's parking lot. A day working on my trucks is still better than a day in the office though!
Only thing I did different than the way most people do it is I opened the hood and then took and vent and held it up to the UNDERSIDE of the hood so that I could get it in the perfect location that doesn't interfere with the bracing. Then marked the location of one of the holes in the vent and drilled a 1/8" hole through it. Made sure both sides where identical and symmetrical. This allowed me to lay the hood back down, place the vent on top of the hood where it belongs, line up the hole in the vent with the hole in the hood and that was how I found it's location.
The rest is self explanatory I think. I positioned them in the front of the hood rather than the back where most people put them for the reasons I gave on the last page of this thread.
They look good and more importantly I think they will function well!
COLORADO HERE I COME!!! Leaving for Colorado bright and early tomorrow morning to finally go four wheeling!!
Last edited by mannydantyla; Jun 30, 2017 at 01:12 PM.
Before uploading all the pics (I have over 300 DSLR pics to sort through) I wanted to say something about the jeep's performance
It did great.
It was our chariot of fire, because it took us to heaven and back. And because it runs on fire. It was rare to see the temp gauge needle left of the 210 mark. A few times I had to pull over to let it cool down, especially up highway mountain passes. When driving in the flat plains, I figured out that I could keep the temps stable just above 210 by keeping the speed under 65. The temp gauge did spike up one time, into the red zone, but it didn't boil over somehow.
So I wouldn't say I have the overheating problem totally figured out but it is definitely improved. I'm sure more flushing and rust removal is what it needs. And good electric cooling fans.
But it crawled up the mountains like a champ! Engine was not hot at all in 4 Low. The engine is just happier at the speed!
While I'm sure that the hood vents helped the underhood temps dramatically, I wonder if the money could have been better spend on electric cooling fans. My co driver's opinion of belt-driven fans is that they HURT the cooling at high speeds because they don't spin fast enough to keep up with the air flowing past the vehicle and thereof they actually HURT instead of help. It makes a little sense I guess
