Rebuilding An Old High School Friend!

Man that's gotta feel good!

 

Looks fantastic. Great work

 

Ditto. Looking good.

 

Time for a long overdue update... Despite all the spring time chores, I finally completed the grill modifications and got it prepped for bedliner. Then Thursday, with a little help from my lovely wife, we finished the bedliner on the tub and and coated the grill.



Now I'm trying REALLY, REALLY hard not to just start throwing parts at it. Trying to give it the full seven days to fully cure. But it is SO hard!!! We'll see. It is supposed to rain all day tomorrow so I'll be stuck inside and I may go ahead and set the tub on the frame... but that's it. No parts until Thursday... maybe, Wednesday.

As a distraction, my son and I did take some time to flex the suspension on Sunday evening to check the driveshaft lengths and make sure there wasn't any binding in the steering.





I was rather surprised how flexible it was given that there isn't much weight on it. But the drivelines and steering all checked out good so time to throw the tub on and start emptying all those boxes of parts I have laying around!! Just not until Thrusday. But if you think about it Wednesday evening is really almost Thursday. And if I end up setting the tub on the frame tomorrow, it would be a lot easier to use the rear seat belt anchors to help lift the tub with so maybe I just install them. And my wife thinks I have a problem with patience. Ha!

 

It's looking like a Jeep again!



Unfortunately, the body mount bolts that came in complete stainless bolt kit I purchased literally years ago when it was on sale, are almost completely wrong. Most of them are way too long. Oh well, I guess I'll have to find time to run past the hardware store tomorrow. Hopefully the rest of the kit is a better match!

 

Looking great

 

Is that bedliner on the outside? Looks good.

 

Yes, that is bedliner inside and out. It is rolled-on Monstaliner. I really like rolling it on because you avoid all the overspray and mess all over the shop.

 

Final assembly continues. Running into all those little, "I'll fix or figure that out during final assembly items." But I finally got the tub bolted in place and both fuel tanks are in for good with all the fuel lines 100% complete.



I also have the clutch and brake reservoirs mounted and plumbed. Thanks to my helpful wife, who after 15 years of marriage finally understands the HOLD part of pump and hold, the front brakes are bled. However, I have been fighting a couple of small leaks on the rear circuit. The biggest problem has been a short 2 or 3 inch line that runs between my brake light sensor and the proportioning valve. It is too short to fit in my fancy flaring tool with both nuts so the one end I had to flare with my crappy, old school flare tool and that is the one that is giving me fits. I actually remade the line, which improved the problem but did not fix it. So I guess I'm going to have to pull that section again and maybe hit it with some emery cloth or try to widen the flare a little more. Annoying but that is how things go.



Ultimately, I need to scrounge around the house and find as much card board as I can to position under the jeep to check for any further leaks. That brand new brake fluid can be really hard to spot with old eyes.

 

Great job.

 

And progress has officially come to a standstill... as I dive head first into this spaghetti makers nightmare!





It sounds like several of us are at this stage. Maybe time for a support group. The most depressing part of this is I had parts of this figured out and pieced together when I test started the engine... 3 YEARS ago. Now I'm left trying to figure exactly what in the world I was was doing and basically starting over from scratch.

 

I'm game.

 

Hello, my name is Mark and I'm confused by the electrics.

 

Eleckity flows like water. Voltage is like differential pressure, current is like flow rate. Water flows down hill. There. Done.

 

Yeah, and relays work like canal locks. And the ECU works like a magical bucket with lots of a holes in it, switching circuits to ground and opening holes in different parts of the bucket.

 

the genie that makes all electric things work lives in that little puff of smoke, once that's gone so is he.

 

At least mine has a wiring diagram to follow. Not sure if that's good or bad...

 

Leave room on the firewall for the hanging pedal mod.

 

I have wiring diagrams... in fact several. Luckily I was able to pick up a full factory electrical service manual (probably a $300 or $400 manual when new) for $15 on Ebay. It has absolutely been a God-send when trying to figure out the factory ECU and what exactly it is doing. It has also been great for figuring out the factory gauge specs for things like the oil pressure so I could find compatible aftermarket gauges and avoid a thousand or so tee's and adapters to add yet another sending unit. But you combine that 450 page book with the painless wiring instructions (which contains no actual diagram, which I found disappointing because pictures you know are worth much more words) and simple vintage Jeep diagram... that's a lot of lines and pages for increasingly far sighted eyes to follow.

I did take the time, 3 years ago when I did enough to start the engine, to start laying out my own wiring diagram and that has helped. Just not as much as I thought it would. As currently my biggest problem is all the cryptic notes I left myself on the little tape flags at the end of many of the wires. I'm sure their meanings were completely obvious at the time but now, 3 years later, I find myself at a loss and am having to chase the wire back to the ECU, check its pin location and then start flipping pages in the big book to figure out if the green wire that simply says "FAN GND" needs to be grounded or if it switches to ground to activate the fan relay for instance. (the latter by the way)

So the big lesson for everyone out there is that there is a limit to how much information you can fit on a 2x2 inch piece of tape with a sharpy. Also the odds of you getting back to the wiring as soon as you think you will may not be very high. So you might want to consider a notebook to provide a little more granularity to your future self.