[XJSuperman]

Damn, sorry to hear about the engine. GLad you are moving right along on the axle though.

 

[quicksilver]

Pushing forward with the rear regear, I'll get to ripping apart the engine after I get that done, need the space that parts for the regear are currently occupying.

Oh no he didn't! OH, yes I did. Thats a T&D pinion depth checker. Got tired of the multiple setups, so this will minimize it. I know that I'll be doing another set of axles for myself, plus I know of a few other people that will be bringing theirs to me as well. And those that will bring em to me will end up throwing me some cash to do it, so this thing will end up paying for itself. Itll do it for me alone. Time is money. At least the pinion from USA standard has the checking distance on the head for the c8.25. Didnt have it on the D30 set. Now hoping that there is no ring gear runout. Ill be checking for that first thing after installing the carrier back in the housing.

 

[quicksilver]

Alright, got the ring gear installed on the carrier and had minimal runout, so I'm good to go! I'll be making some setup bearings for the pinion and checking everything out. I have a great starting point, so well see how it goes.

 

[quicksilver]

First setup is really close, pinion needs to move in deeper slightly. I literally did use the factory shim, .029". Thats what I calculated with the tool anyway, the checking distance marked ob the head of the pinion is for the backside of the pinion, so its a little harder to go off that, cause then I'm measuring the pinions head with calipers, dont know any better way. But a little deeper is what I need, think I'll go with .003" first and see what I get

 

[quicksilver]

Here's the pattern I got with third attempt, the second attempt, I literally added .005" shim and it pushed the pinion deep into the toe of the ring gear. This setup had .030" behind the pinion.

And below off to the left of the pic is the coast side. The drive pattern pictured to the right in the photo below is the first attempt.

After installing the service bearings on the pinion, it pushed the drive pattern slightly into the toe, which is good, was planning for that to happen. Pinion gear is buttoned up all the way, preload is right at 16in/lbs, didnt go crazy high this time since I now have a diff spec sheet from yukon.

Tonight I plan on grinding down some ring gear teeth to get the cross shaft in its bore, little bits at a time. After thats done, its time to do some cut and weld in the jeep to get some new springs underneath it.

 

[quicksilver]

Had a change of plans, the forecast for the week played a factor in it, but since this afternoon/evening was so nice, I decided to tackle the leaf spring problem.

The passenger side spring was definitely shot, more so than the driver side, had to get a little happy with the torch, eneded up cutting the spring out the way to make some room.

Opened up the nut housing like a tin can.

Driver side done

Passenger side done

So its ugly as hell, but it'll hold until I dont need it to anymore.

I noticed that since everything just wants to rot out on my jeep, I need to add a support across the frame to the rocker panel to hold the front hanger. Its bad, everything's loose, and I suppose it's time to make my own rock sliders to strengthen up that area as well.

 

[Gluckmysock]

Been there did that. I cut out my rockers and welded in 2x6 square tubing with a rub rail added frame stiffeners and replaced my floors not all at the same time, but I did write ups on all of it here. It's well worth the effort if you got rust and are trying to preserve.
R&R springs suck. But the worst is over. Carry on soldier!

 

[quicksilver]

Been a minute, but I have the axle gearing done. New leaf springs are on, just need to start engine tare down now.

Everything is even now, just need to add strength to the mounting brackets, I have 1/4" plate which is 4" wide for this.

Outwit the old, in with the new. New studs for the rear axle, they were shot on multiple levels.

Final assembly pattern check. Wanted to make sure the pattern didn't run off the ground down teeth to install the cross shaft, and we're good to go!

Now im just waiting for them to get 8nto the engine tare down, just dropped a 99 tj off to a friend yesterday, next weekend is booked up for work for the pole barn... so maybe if I get outa work early next week, I can start by pulling the engine hopefully. I gots too much going on right meow.

 

[quicksilver]

I also have all the items I need to put my wheel tire combo together, just got the boltless beadlocks the other day last week. I suppose I'll work on those while the shop has my block......

I can't wait to have this all done, hoping that I dont have another engine failure after I'm through with this.

 

[quicksilver]

Well, here we go...

Finally made time to pull the engine, have it sitting on a stand now, so tomorrow ill rip it apart then hopefully I can get into the engine shop sometime this week. June 25th is coming quick. I still have to do gear break in for the axles...

 

[quicksilver]

Here's this....

Would ya look at that...

Order of cam bearing photos, 2 3 4 1. 4 is the only one that doesn't look all buggered up, even one took some damage.... I dont get it. The cam journals look fine, they're not scored up, maybe a little gummed up with bearing material, but I would like to think that a good polish should fix that.

Now to get time to take the block to the shop.....

 

[quicksilver]

Quick update, block is still at the machine shop, they had it in the hot tank last week, nothing has been checked as far as I know. The guy was still waiting to check the bore for the camshaft, but it doesn't look like the bearings spun at all, camshaft has not been polished either.... I know the guy is busy, but come on.... its been there 3 weeks now. It took the other shop 2 weeks to do the works to it. There was nothing wrong that they did either. Only reason its not back there is cause its almost 2 hours away.

 

[quicksilver]

Just got a call from the machine shop, my block is done and ready to go. The cam was still good and fit back in with the new bearings no problem, crank is cleaned up well also.

Upon researching the topic, the guy found that the cam bearings were installed wrong after all, since they are an oil control bearing, they have a groove on the outside of the bearing, and therefor need to be clocked to roughly 5 o'clock instead of 2 the way standard bearings are installed. I just need to go pick it up now when I have the time.

 

[quicksilver]

I may be able to get my engine block tonight depending on what time I get outa work, which will be sweet, might pull an all nighter and get it back together. There is lots of cleaning to do for the other components....

Aside from that, I ordered an entire hydro assist kit from PSC, they had a booth setup at the jeep jamboree, and I figured what the hell, why not, so ill be ordering a truss for the axle also.

 

[quicksilver]

Finally took the block out of the trunk of my cruze and set it up in the shed, removed the camshaft from the back seat of my car and installed that. The block was sitting upright so that the bore of the camshaft was vertical, made for a really easy install. The cam journals and lobes were all lubed with assembly lube before install, the cam turns like a dream in there now. It definitely did not do that to begin with when I first installed it. I got a good feeling about it this time.

I figured at first I'd reuse the rod and main bearings since they've got about 500 miles on them. Changed my mind after I got to thinking about the crud that went through them, so now I have new clevite bearings coming for both. Let's hope I don't have to worry bout that again.

 

[quicksilver]

I got all my parts in that I needed. Installed the crank with new bearings and new rms, which everyone knows is always so much fun to install! The crank spun nice after everything was torqued. Intalled all the pistons and rods with new rod bearings, definitely have the tight tolerance, but its mint in the same sense. Rings are all tight as f*** still. Trying to turn the assembly by the harmonic balancer will no longer do. One of these next days I'll get to timing, and I think I'm even going to advance the cam 2 degrees, also may even sync up the crank sensor and cam sensor.

 

[quicksilver]

Timing set installed at 2° advance, total advance is 5° with the grind of the cam included. Should have much more torque than before. Cleaned the piss out of the lifters, pushrods and head, bolted that whole bidness down and put the valve cover back on. Now I need to clean the oil pump and oil pan to get the bottom of the engine covered. Been working a lot of trouble work lately, so my time has been drastically limited for this project. I'm getting there though, I can almost hear the engine roar again.

 

[quicksilver]

This is a beautiful sight! Now its down to reattaching all the odds n ends. Won't be too bad now

Oh, and fwiw, the first photo was of me in the engine bay polishing the input shaft bearing retainer slide for the throwout bearing, it seemed like it was sticking bad upon reengagement when letting off the pedal. Turns out there was a small amount of material on the top of the throwout bearing that was causing it to hang up. Grease on the slide revealed that and some polishing with 240 grit makes it slide real nice now!

 

[quicksilver]

So as I'm finishing up the engine install, I've got 2 extra bolts laying in my magnetic dish. I cant for the life of me remember where these bastards came from, if they even came from my jeep. They could have been laying in the dish from before for all I know. Regardless, here they are...

I feel like the larger diameter bolt went on the outside of the block given the mud, probably to hold down a ground or a clip, the smaller diameter one looks ike it went somewhere near oil based upon the coating of scummy oil on it... Can't remember though, could have been from another project, just trying to make sure its nothing critical.

 

[Ralph77]

The longer one kind of looks like a CPS bolt to me.
Shot of one of mine out of my '00.
Uses a 11mm socket IIRC.
Don't know about the other one.