"gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee" (gogmorgo)
09/05/2015 at 17:26 • Filed to: None
2
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"gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee" (gogmorgo)
09/05/2015 at 17:26 • Filed to: None | 2
| 2 |
Copied and pasted from my project thread update over at
!!!error: Indecipherable SUB-paragraph formatting!!!
. Let’s hope the pics work.
I was planning on stripping down the donor to prepare it for scrapping today, but it’s raining, so here’s the story from the last couple weeks:
Three Sundays ago, I drove into the city and dragged this thing home behind my Dad’s Envoy:
It doesn’t look too bad in the picture, but it’s pretty rotten out. A classic case of someone taking excellent care of the exterior of a vehicle but never washing underneath. The running boards likely didn’t help with the rust. It feels like the driver’s seat is about to fall through the floor, it’s that bad. UHaul can’t keep track of their $#!& so instead of trailering it back it wound up on a dolly and I was afraid it would break in two the whole drive back, about 180 miles. I was also going to visit my sister in the same city, so it wasn’t that far out of my way.
It’s a ‘93 Country, so pretty spec’ed out. 243,000km on the odometer (150,000 miles). 4.0/AW4/242, D30/C8.25, full centre console, power locks and windows, etc. Complete except for the rear hatch’s interior panel and the fog lights (but there’s still a switch). Ran/drove good, trans and t-case shift alright, pretty well everything worked except the a/c allthough I haven’t tried the radio. All still factory stock except one CV shaft swapped in in place of the U-joint on the passenger side of the front axle. All in all a whole lot of Jeep for $300. I guess the guy picked it up for parts, but then his wife totalled their XJ, so his buddy was going to take some parts and never got around to it, and then his landlord started pressuring him to get it off the property.
Got it home to my place at 10pm that night and drove another 70 miles to my parents place to pick up my MJ. Got up at 5 the next morning to load it up (I was working at eight) and then dragged the MJ up here. Monday and Tuesday were busy, but Wednesday I picked up some plywood (for making backyard engine swap easier... floors are sooo underrated) and other things, and got started into pulling apart the MJ.
By the time I ran out of daylight, I had the header panel and upper rad support out, and about a third of the accessories off the motor. I left the radiator in place because it’s bolted to the a/c accumulator, and since the A/C is still working on good old R12, I didn’t want to crack a line or otherwise compromise it.
The next day, Thursday, I got home from work and went straight at it without changing out of my work uniform or even going into the house. I got the rest of the accessories off the motor, and everything out from underneath the transmission, with the drivetrain supported by the two motor mount bolts (minus the nuts) and a piece of unsplit firewood under the t-case. All the electrical and vaccuum connections I unplugged got tagged with red tape and a sharpie to make reassembly easier.
On Friday, one of my roommates helped me pull the motor. This is where the plywood comes in, as it would have been impossible to roll the engine crane in the grass once it was loaded. As it was, it was still pretty tough. But wolla:
For anyone wondering, a 5/16” chain link will slip perfectly over the head studs, and then the nuts off the motor mount through-bolts will thread on. It’s almost as though AMC wanted to make it easy to pull the motor. I pulled the trans and t-case out as well, since the ones from the donor had half the mileage and I wanted to use the 242 and this just made it easier, and may have prevented the loss of some fluids (I live in a national park, so that’s a bit of a concern). Also since I was going from a ‘91 to a ‘93, I just left all the sensors in place as I assumed they would all be plug and play and this made for less work. This wasn’t entirely the case, but more on that later. I also just unplugged the injectors and left the fuel rain on the intake, which wasn’t an issue. I didn’t want to compromise the seals on the donor’s injectors, as they were stuck in place but the MJ’s spun in their seats.
I had to take a break over the weekend because my baby sister was getting married, but I didn’t loose much work time anyhow as we got a pretty severe storm and lots of rain.
The following Monday, I started tearing into the XJ. Because I didn’t have to go pick stuff up first, I got about half the stuff out of the way of getting the motor out.
Again, with the red tape tags. It was a bit easier going as the A/C was completely discharged and I could just get it all out of the way.
Tuesday saw the engine start to come out... except then I discovered I forgot to unbolt the exhaust and managed to kink it and wedge everything HARD in place. Even after separating the downpipe and manifold, I still couldn’t move the engine at all because of the exhaust. It rustwelded itself together and I didn’t have anything to cut it with, so I gave up struggling with it in frustration about an hour after dark and went to bed with all my tools still scattered around the back yard.
The second Wednesday of the swap, I borrowed a Sawz-all from work and had the offending bits of exhaust out of the way in a few seconds. I got the motor trans and t-case out as a unit, and had them sitting in the MJ (with two bolts and a piece of firewood) by the end of the night. I didn’t have anyone helping me pull this motor, and even though my roommate who helped get it out of the MJ didn’t really have much clue what he was doing, it really made me appreciate how awesome that second set of eyes could be, noticing what I’d been caught on long before I’d even realized I’d been caught.
So yes, the MJ had a motor back in it!!!
On Thursday I had to make a run into town after work (well, a town with an Autopac place) right after work to renew my driver’s license and the tags on the Lada, so I got three birds stoned at once and re-registered the MJ as well. This was also the day before about half the summer staff at the park left to go back to their winter occupations, so there was supposed to be a massive social gathering of sorts. So I only got about an hour of wrenching in that day between that and the insurance trip, and then none of the people leaving showed up because they were all packing to move. So that was a waste of a bunch of daylight. I still managed to get all the stuff buttoned up underneath the transmission and some stuff back under the hood, but not as much progress as I would have liked. Part of this was my fault as I managed to get a LOT of stuff pinched between the head and firewall without an extra set of eyeballs around to watch stuff, and getting it back out was time consuming.
On Friday I had the entire evening to work on it, so that was good. I had just about everything plugged in. I did run into a couple issues with sensors. The first was the oil pressure sender, which had a different plug on it. I just swapped out the newer sender for the old one.
The temperature sender also appeared to have a different connector on it, a kind of blade in a size and shape I’d never encountered yet. But because of the inaccessibility of the sender, I just spliced the newer connector onto the older harness. After then trying to plug it in for a good five minutes, I realized the reason it was different was because the sender was broken in half, and I was trying to plug the broken halves back together. I put the MJ’s connector back on and swapped in the sender there too.
The third sensor was the crank position sensor. Completely different plug on it. I was going to swap the old CPS back in, but holy hell is it impossible to get to with the motor and trans in place. I tried for a solid hour with wobbles, u-joints, and all kinds of extensions, from both above and below, and couldn’t get either of the bolts turned. Then I had a better look at the connectors, and the chassis side wiring was the same colour in both harnesses, so I chopped the plug off and spliced in the newer style, matching wire colours and hoping it would work out. (it did. :D )
There are no pictures from the second Thursday and Friday because I worked until after dark.
On Saturday morning, I hooked up the battery starter, and fuel lines, and FIRED IT UP!!!! This video is the first start attempt: (caution, expletive of joy/satisfaction at end of clip):
After the first failed crank, I realized the fuel pump wasn’t coming on, and the knocking sound is me kicking the bottom of the tank. This was a problem/solution that I discovered when trying to move the MJ into the spot it was in when I pulled the motor. I attribute it to minimal quantities of 16-month-old fuel in the tank, as there were no pump problems when I parked it last year or any time I fired it up to move it over the winter.
The second time I stop cranking is because I realized the coolant overflow hose was hitting the fan. Amazing what you can see with no hood.
The squealing noise is a loose serp belt. I shot the more family-friendly video a few posts up after addressing this. The squeaky door has also been addressed.
After this moment of joy, I got everything bolted back on, except the hood because I needed a helper for that, the exhaust because it’s a rusty piece of poo, and the rear driveshaft because I replaced the u-joint but misplaced my brand new strap kit and was waiting to find it. I also swapped the 242’s shifter gate it. Unlike what I read on a few forums, this wasn’t absolutely necessary. Both shifter gates allow for the same range of travel and I was able to get all the 242’s positions with the 231’s gate, but the shape of the 231’s makes for awkward shifting with a 242 under it.
I didn’t drive it at all that day, but in drive and 2wd (without a rear driveshaft) I discovered the speedometer wasn’t working. Turns out I forgot to plug it in, but that was the least of my concerns. The connector was completely wrong, and unlike the CPS, I couldn’t just splice the newer one in because they had the wrong number of wires. I did a small amount of research and didn’t really turn anything much up, beyond that the two speedometer gear assemblies should swap across, so I figured I’d try things with a clearer head the next day.
On the second Sunday of the swap, I pulled out the two speedo gear assy’s and discovered another point of confusion. The MJ’s gear was green and the XJ’s was orange. To make sure there wasn’t another difference, I counted the teeth and discovered that they were one tooth different. I later discovered that the number of teeth was cast into the plastic and that was wasted effort. But then I did some research into which one I should use, and this is when I discovered why they weren’t compatible.
In ‘91, Chrysler changed the speedometer from a mechanical one to an electronic one... except they really didn’t. They just split the traditional mechanical speedometer in half and put all the spinning parts down at the speedometer gear and then used wires to get the eddy currents to the gauge needle. This reduces inaccuracies caused by wear in the mechanical parts, and the jumping needle that old mechanical speedometers tend to have. It still wasn’t the best setup, and in the middle of ‘93 they switched to a Hall-effect type, which is very similar in function to a traditional tachometer, working with pulses to provide a much more consistent reading that wouldn’t be affected by a change in resistance in the wires. But enough theory.
I still wasn’t sure which speedo gear to go with (having no certain data on the rolling diameter of my tires and the very small difference between the gears) so I decided to stick with the gear that was in the 242, which meant swapping the gears between VSS’s. Only after popping the gears out did I truly understand the difference between long- and short-shaft gears and why my choice wouldn’t work, and why I’d been stressing useless over it. I stuck the MJ’s speedo gear back into the MJ’s VSS, and the MJ’s VSS into the 242’s hole, clipped and taped the CAD switch wires near to the plug, got rid of all the useless CAD vacuum lines, put the speedo wires in a new split loom, plugged in both ends of the modified harness, took the MJ for a spin (in 4x4 i.e. front-wheel-drive because I still hadn’t put the rear driveshaft back on) and the speedometer now works flawlessly.
I also got some assistance putting the hood back on (somehow it lined up perfectly in the first spot I bolted it down... score!).
Monday morning I drove it to work. In FWD with an open manifold. My God is it loud. I found the missing u-joint strap at work (I took my driveshaft there to install the joint) and put my driveshaft in that night.
Being able to drive my MJ again is the MOST AWESOME THING EVER.
Although I’m not quite done yet. More on that later. I’m about to prepare a pic dump.
handsoff
> gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee
09/06/2015 at 23:38 |
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Why can't I recommend this! Good work saving that manche!
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gogmorgo - rowing gears in a Grand Cherokee
> handsoff
09/07/2015 at 00:17 |
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It's a survivor all right. 310,000 miles and it hasn't always been looked after.