Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature may not be available in some browsers.
Hello Guest, we are proud to now have our Wiki online that is completely compiled and written by our members. Feel free to browse our Jeep-CJ Wiki or click on any orange keyword when looking at posts in the forum.
You must register or login to view hidden content on this page.
I ordered a new shaft from Tom Woods for the rear which will be balanced. I only use four wheel drive off road, and rarely exceed 20mph. At this speed balance is not an issue, although, I try to keep my welds even to keep some degree of balance. I know people who have even made their front shafts out of square tubing with no problems. Again, I only use 4x4 off road. If you plan on, for instance, driving down the road when it is snowing in 4x4 range, you need to have the front driveshaft balanced. We store our Jeep during the winter, so 4x4 only sees slow speeds.
In order to get the Transmission where we wanted it for additional ground clearance, it was necessary to build a new Transmission tunnel.
I had already started to weld in the new sections of the tunnel cover when these pictures were taken.
I made a cardboard template and transferred the pattern to the sheet metal. I had already cut the shifter hole while the sheet was still flat. I worked the sheet first with a planishing hammer, then finished with an english wheel to smooth things out.
We decided that we wanted to have a removable cover over the Transmission . Why? I have no idea, but it seemed like a good idea at the time!
Hopefully tomorrow all of the welding and grinding mess will be cleaned up and the seats will go back in. With a little luck, the 2017 maiden voyage may happen this week!
We were looking forward to taking our first ride of the season today, but last night our son brought a gear head friend from work to see our CJ. After looking all our work over, he asked if he could hear it run. More than happy to oblige! I pumped the accelerator with my hand a few times, (no seats in yet) and turned the key..................NOTHING!! I just charged the battery, and it was up to full charge. I hooked up my starter button leads to the solenoid and the engine jumped to life! Phew! Shut it off and it would not start again with the key, only by jumping the solenoid. We have to take a couple of horses to the vet today, so we will have at it when we get back.
On a positive note, I found a wire coming off the steering column which looks as if it pulled out of a butt connector. When I turn the key to the start position, the wire has full voltage! All that we have to do now is find out where it belongs among the spider web of wires under the dash.
We were looking forward to taking our first ride of the season today, but last night our son brought a gear head friend from work to see our CJ. After looking all our work over, he asked if he could hear it run. More than happy to oblige! I pumped the accelerator with my hand a few times, (no seats in yet) and turned the key..................NOTHING!! I just charged the battery, and it was up to full charge. I hooked up my starter button leads to the solenoid and the engine jumped to life! Phew! Shut it off and it would not start again with the key, only by jumping the solenoid. We have to take a couple of horses to the vet today, so we will have at it when we get back.
On a positive note, I found a wire coming off the steering column which looks as if it pulled out of a butt connector. When I turn the key to the start position, the wire has full voltage! All that we have to do now is find out where it belongs among the spider web of wires under the dash.
We found and fixed the blue wire that comes from the ignition switch, through the jumped out a/t neutral safety switch and on to the solenoid. There was a blue butt connector it pulled out of, should have been red for the wire size… We didn't wire it this way and sure am glad we fixed the wiring now instead of it pulling loose out on the trail.
Know why?
We got caught in a thunder storm with the doors off!
What does this mean??
After almost 3 months of work, the CJ is back on the road! :bounce::jeeplove:
The clutch needs to be adjusted a bit, and I think that I will give the engine a few more degrees of timing, but “Chip” is back on the road again. Now to roll a bunch of miles before Ouray, and continue to put the interior, etc. back together, and start making the inevitable tweaks.
We have been so busy with trying to get ready for a family vacation next month, and along with all the rain that we have been getting, have not had much time to break in the newly rebuilt engine. So, while it rains, I decided to try to install sun visors. We picked up a set at a swap meet last year from some guys that we know that have a Jeep salvage business. Problem is, they won’t fit where they are supposed to due to the roll cage. So, I opted for a down and dirty way of mounting them.
I know that this is kinda redneck, but early morning and late afternoon driving into the sun will definitely be easier now.
The drivers side went in easily, but when I attached the passenger side, I found out that the cardboard or masonite that is inside to keep the visor rigid had been broken right where it meets the metal hinge. Oldjeeplady ripped the stitches and I made a reinforcement from 1/8” model airplane birch plywood. I did not have a staple gun powerful enough to shoot staples through the cardboard, plywood, and metal hinge the way the factory does, so I drilled out the original staple holes and made my own staples out of 3/32” TIG rod. Using a hammer and chisel, I was able to bend the staples over and glue the 2 flat pieces together. The wife then restitched everything back together and we now have sun visors!
1980 CJ5 Renegade. 6-258 engine, Howell FI, T-176 four speed, 300 transfer with Terra Low 4:1 gears, Dana 30 front with ARB air locker, AMC 20 rear with one piece axles and welded axle tubes and an ARB air locker. Both differentials running 3.73:1 R&P's. Onboard air, Warn 8,000lb. Winch- - -
2003 Jeep TJ "Rubicon" with all the Rubicon goodies, Terra-Flex 3" lift, adjustable track bar, sway bar disconnects, LED headlight conversion, Quadratec 9000 winch. - - -
1963 Willys CJ5 with a 134 ci F - head, three speed T90 tranny and a Warn overdrive. - - -
1949 CJ-3A. My latest acquisition and favorite plaything.
Well, like many of you, thanks to Photo Bucket, all our pictures are no longer viewable. Hopefully, we will all be able to edit our threads at some point in the future, but for now, our son set us up with a photo storage site that will work. It will cost us $5 per month for the service, but since we are paying for it, I am pretty sure that it can’t be taken away from us at the drop of a hat. That said, back to the build thread!
After rolling about 130 miles, performance began to deteriorate. I found myself wondering if I had miscounted the number of chain pins on the timing chain when I installed it. Thing is, why would this cause it to go from running great, to loosing power in just 130 miles? Plus, the vacuum had been steadily dropping. This is what actually precipitated trouble shooting since the power brakes were getting worse and worse.
I did the propane enrichment to find a vacuum leak with no success.
I was ready to pull the radiator and take the timing cover off to check, but just as I was about to do this, I decided to do a smoke test to locate any possible vacuum leaks. I should first of all mention that I installed an Edelbrock 4 barrel manifold so that switching to EFI in the future, should we decide to do so, would be possible. I wanted to keep the MC2100 2 barrel carburetor for the time being, so I had to do the opposite of what everyone does, ie, adapting a 2 barrel to a 4 barrel manifold instead of the other way around.
There was some smoke coming from the throttle plate shaft, but not a lot. It was kind of hard to see exactly where the leak was, so I removed the carburetor and adapter plate.
Obviously, from where the soot is, there were significant leaks under the adapter.
I took a straight edge and a feeler gauge and discovered that the adapter was .004” warped. I called Summit Racing and told them of the problem, and they told me that the plate was under warranty, and that they would send me a new one. They told me to keep the old one, so I decided to remove the warp and try it out.
No luck! I still had a huge vacuum leak. Then, quite by accident, I was looking down into the manifold with the carburetor removed, and noticed daylight coming from inside the manifold!
Although Summit told me that this was the adapter to mount my 2 barrel on a 4 barrel manifold, it’s not! At each corner, where the bolts would normally go to bolt the adapter to a 2 barrel manifold, there was nothing but gasket, nothing sandwiching the gasket.
Kind of looked like I had 3 options.
#1 Buy the EFI right now, (6 to 8 week wait, plus our own empty pockets after all the other things that we just did) $1000 to $1200
#2 Buy a 4 barrel carburetor, try to run it with a stock cam, then sell the carburetor at a loss if we decide to go EFI next year. $500 to $600
#3 Make an adapter for the adapter $3
#3 it is! I picked up a piece of 1/4” aluminum and kind of hand machined it.
After cutting, drilling, and filing, I made sure that the adapter was flat by using several grades of emery cloth glued to a piece of heavy, perfectly flat marble.
The end result was an adapter that was within .001” of flat. Good enough for my purposes.
I put it on the engine under the 2 to 4 barrel adapter and fired er up.
The vacuum went from 12” to 13” of vacuum at 1000RPM to 21” to 22” of vacuum. It may look like a wedding layer cake under the carburetor, LOL, ie,carburetor, insulator, 2 to 4 adapter, adapter for the adapter but it works! If anyone asks, I’ll just tell them that it’s a tunnel ram!
Thanks to 007 for providing us with his old carburetor. Using parts from another carb that we had, we were able to build one good one from 2. We owe you a cold one!
I pumped the accelerator with my hand a few times, (no seats in yet) and turned the key..................NOTHING!!
I just charged the battery, and it was up to full charge. I hooked up my starter button leads to the solenoid and the engine jumped to life! Phew! Shut it off and it would not start again with the key, only by jumping the solenoid. We have to take a couple of horses to the vet today, so we will have at it when we get back.
All that we have to do now is find out where it belongs among the spider web of wires under the dash.
:bounce::jeeplove:
