Dauntless Rebuild, Lessons Learned...

- Don't assume a Jeep shop that builds mean nasty rock crawlers and custom late model CJs, TJs, YJs, JKs and JLs know anything about the Dauntless V6.

- Don't assume a machine shop will understand the difference between new era valve seats and old era valve seats, and will replace old parts with new.

- Just because you pull a part off an old Dauntless, don't assume it's the correct part.

- Do read every last post, forum, TB, manual and article on the Dauntless you can possibly find.

- Most importantly...DO NOT ever, ever, ever sell all of your engine rebuild tools thinking you'll never rebuild an engine again! This will save most headaches mentioned above!

 

all of above
is why it's much easier . just to do it yourself
old iron is just that old iron
hope you get it all worked out

 

Hearing all the bad things about machine shops lately makes me feel better knowing I worked for a reputable guy that wouldn’t cut corners.

 

My dauntless is at the machine shop now, and all of the talk of disreputable shops makes me nervous. This guy is pretty oldschool though, and while slow seems to know his stuff. I'm getting him to do the oiling mods in the "blueprint 225" thread, and assemble everything for me since I have zero time with a toddler now. I'm just glad that I'm finally making progress after buying the dauntless in 2012!

 

This shop has a very old machinist that owns it, but he has three other guys that do the work now due to his age. I got the heads back, one was allegedly warped and all valves were still good. He did make good on his warranty tho. Waiting on the gasket set to come in and I'll put it all back together and see how this thing fires up.

 

I just had my 66's Dauntless at a local (Colo Springs) machine shop in September 2019. The owner was an old guy and did a great job with good documentation of all the measurements. They had it for two weeks and in that time did the hot power wash thing, bored the cylinders .030 over, decked it, and machined the crank and polished the journals and bore alignment, complete valve job including new hardened seats for unleaded. $1900 for the machining work, engine kit and gasket set, plus valve job (heads were assembled by them). I did the disassembly and reassembly work myself. It runs really great now. I had broken rings when it was taken apart despite only 40k miles on the odometer...but as a former plow rig for Aspen Snowmass ski area, those were a HARD 40k miles!

I learned: 1) to watch very carefully when sliding the timing gears and chain in to place. I thought I had looked at them closely and gotten the marks lined up but still managed to get them one tooth off. I barely caught this before the timing cover went on. Here’s the moment I caught it:


2) Don't let a high school student who thinks they're macho and doesn't pay attention try to tighten a bolt with 30 ft/lbs when it only needed 12 in/lbs. Broken off bolts in the block suck to remove. Consequently, that student got to come in after school to learn about EZ-outs, center punches, and hand held drills!

3) The rear main rope seal and the straight rubbery seals that go on each side of the rear main bearing cap have these annoying little nail devices that help squeeze the seals in place...THOSE were really tricky I thought and took a LONG time to get installed and trimmed off. Maybe I did them wrong.


4) Use a heavy-enough rated chain to lift the engine. Sounds obvious but I made a poor assumption of a chain that opened up on a link and am lucky to still have toes on my foot after the flywheel (with engine attached) took a nice chunk out of the concrete less than 12" from my toes. I got lucky! See the divot in the floor under the left leg of this stool:


5) The four fan bolts that hold the fan and water pump pulley to the water pump are NOT the same thread pitch as the 6 bolts that hold the crankshaft pulley to the harmonic balancer/crank. I must be a real genius and cross threaded several before realizing why they were binding. Not my finest moment either LOL.


6) If for any reason you've had the engine fully assembled (and running in my case) and you take a valve cover off followed by the rocker arm assembly, be VERY careful about pulling up on the pushrods. I did on one and no big deal, looked good and I set it back down in it's hole making sure it dropped back on to the lifter deep inside the engine. The second I lifted up on apparently had a hydraulic suction from assembly lube on the lifter and it pulled the lifter out of its happy home down in the block. I heard this metal on metal thud from inside the engine as the pushrod came up. UH OH! I tried for 15 minutes with a magnet tool to try to fish it back over but couldn't get it to release correctly even if I could have gotten it to drop back in the hole. Got to do an emergency intake manifold removal (along with all the things that go with that little chore) before I could go home from work. Here’s what that looked like after opening her back up:

 

Thank you for making mistakes so I don't have to.

Of course I will have to make them for myself.

 

LMAO...we need to wrench together! Sounds like we're on the same page!

 

One thing about these little Dauntless motors...they are tough! This one of mine has been through the ringer over the last year and even though it wasn't running right, it did run. Pre-detonation, piston slap, spun bearings, backfire through the intake and now it is running strong after everything is fixed. I see now why so many people like them.

 

So after some serious knuckle busting and wrenching ( was tired of everyone else messing up), Roscoe is finally running good. He'll cruise at 65mph all day with the rpms around 3500. Figuring he's got 4.10 gears. I also ran him for about 30 miles at 70mph taching about 3800rpm. But the latter sounded like the engine was gonna take off and leave us behind. Running an hei distributor from a 1975 Buick Skyhawk, a Edelbrock 1401 4bbl carb with adapter plate and 31" tires he's pulling between 10 and 12mpg depending on the speed. Yep... happy jeeper right now. Next up...fanagling a extra fuel tank under the rear.