slow day at work, and its been almost a year since I posted about the engine troubles.
First: The crack in the engine that had been covered and painted by the PO's was indeed fatal to the block. It had already been repaired once, possibly twice, and the engine shop was not optimistic about being able to weld a crack of that size with unknown material hardness.
First was to find a new block, which was thankfully inexpensive and not too far away.
This required lots of new internal parts and only some things from the original engine could be reused. It's basically a brand new engine at this point.
I didn't remember to buy engine enamel in the proper OD green, but the local autozone had an approximation of GPW grey. I do have a GPW radiator, so it didn't feel too horrific to have a swapped engine.
We did have some minor problems with the rebuild, and one major one. the dipstick tube was installed backwards (easy) some tubes I had given them were missing (annoying) and the timing was 180deg out (thought we were screwed until we just lifted it out and rotated it). We missed one important detail though, which is towards the end of the post.
Here in Detroit, we have the yearly Dream Cruise in august-a huge weekend of classic cars driving up and down Woodward. Dream cruise had always been the moving goal to get the jeep done by. With the first engine, we had it done and running when the engine seal blew and we missed our goal, despite being running ahead of schedule.
This year wasn't much different. We picked up the engine on monday, hooked up parts on tuesday, installed the engine on wednesday and thought we were home free-all I had to do was put on the fenders and finish some connections, easily done.
Then when we fired it up and tried to back it out of the garage, it wouldn't shift. We knew the transmission was good because it had been driven plenty after being rebuilt. A furious night of google led me to suspect I had installed the clutch plate backwards-the very first part we put on the block. Looking through the inspection cover indicated as much, but we weren't 100% sure. We could explore other causes, or pull the engine out to check.
On Thursday, the engine came out, and the clutch plate was indeed backwards. I flipped it, and got the engine back in to position, but without help, I couldn't align it and get it fixed back in place. Our options were to spend friday night mounting the engine and fenders to get ready for saturday, or to instead drive my 5 ton truck friday night-the only time they let us do so.
We ended up driving the 5 ton friday night, and riding in my friends Willys saturday morning. In the afternoon, we finished mounting the engine, and I spent sunday bolting the fenders on, replacing little parts and finalizing everything. The jeep was done, 364 day early for next year.
The jeep was assembled, driving, and working great. The unit markings were done, 9th Air Force, 349th Troop Carrier Group stationed at Upottery in England-the guys who flew the 101st to Normandy. We were enjoying the jeep, showing it off to the family and going for rides when I noticed the thermostat was running at 190-200, way too hot. upon returning home from a short drive in hot weather, I got out and found coolant spewed everywhere in my engine compartment. Took all night to clean it off, but the underside of the hood is still gross. Driving it more, it stayed extremely hot, and was continuously losing coolant even when slightly underfilled.
I went digging through the box of returned parts and found my old thermostat, which was in fact a new one I had installed. The engine rebuilder had taken mine out, assumed it was old and broken, and installed a new 180 thermostat replacing my 170, but with the weather as hot as it was, the engine was dangerously close to overheating, to the point of venting coolant. I drilled a tiny hole in the old thermostat to approximate a 160 thermostat and reinstalled it, which was a huge pain in the ass. By this time the weather was cooling off, but I pushed the jeep hard on some straightaways and never got higher than 180. No more coolant leaks, though a new gremlin has popped up in the oil pressure gauge not wanting to work.
While I didn't quite get to enjoy the jeep as much as I would have liked during the summer, I spent a good amount of time on the weekends going for rides as the weather cooled off. We put up the top and bought some jeep caps for the guys to wear, and we kept it out until it finally started getting wet in November. The speedometer ended up dying as well, but it was CJ replacement, so I finally replaced it with a wartime styled speedo. The last remaining part from a CJ that was thrown in is the air cleaner, which is an easy fix when I get around to it, along with a new battery that will work with the hold down strap to finish off the engine compartment.