Totally Exhausted

May 1, 2009

I havent typed in a while, been working on thesis. With that out of the way now I can get back to work, and back to writing.

Late April of 09 I finished up 3rd year ID, and set to curing my dumb leaking exhaust. Which meant dropping the y-pipe for patching. That being said, the bolts had likely been in the manifolds since new.. and were getting relatively thin-shanked, not to mention fusing themselves to the manifolds. 3 of the 4 bolts broke off, leaving me with a predicament; a y-pipe that couldn't be reattached unless I dropped the manifolds and took the old bolts out.

Getting the manifolds off was actually rather easy. Jeep used hollow bolts that allowed for expansion to release pressure inwards, so they didnt seize. The manifolds came out in a few minutes each. The gaskets however, were a lost cause. one side had more or less disintigrated due to oil leaking onto it for a long time. So I grabbed some new Gaskets at the local Carquest.

With the manifolds off, I removed the AIR lines that hooked up to them, and ended up breaking one, so I plugged it. I wire brushed the rest of the manifolds and grabbed some super high heat paint (gloss white) to go well with the colour of the valve covers and air box.

Cleaned Up a Bit

March 30, 2009

   I decided to get back at the beast and finish up some of the loose ends I'd been tackling for a while. For starters, I finished patching up the exhaust, and got the ebrake work all sorted out. i was finished the frame, so I put the Gas tank back in and hooked everything up.

   I seem to recall the day i dropped the gas tank out, in late 2008. I had to cut it free more or less from it's moorings, because like most of this vehilce, they had rusted fast. I had to break off one of the strap brackets and weld it back together later, and after all the supports were out, and the lines disconnected, i jiggled it free from it's stead. it was about a 1/3 full (roughly 25L), and i was sitting/laying beneath it when it dropped out, in such an awkward way that it pinned me for a bit. long story short, it was an absolute bear to remove, and to re-install.

   After it burbled to life, i took it for a quick spin around the block and parked it back in the driveway (always nose down, otherwise the fuel drains back into the tank and it wont start).

 

   With it in the driveway, I figured it was a good time to drop the Class 3 hitch reciever off, in order to gain some much needed departure angle height. I already designed a bumper for the front, so i might as well do one for the rear, with an integrated hitch (should save a bit of weight by combining the purposes). Most of the bolts put up a huge fight, and i recall breaking a couple. no matter, it might not have passed safety if i left it on. not having the hitch definitely gives the truck a better look, with a slightly more aggressive departure.

 

  

I also popped in my repaired taillights. the chromed plastic housing had broken on one, so i repaired that, plus a broken mounting stud.

Miscellaneous Small Stuff

January 10, 2009

Usually in a project, you come to a point wher you have some small niggly little foybles mounding up, which hinder you from the juicy tasks. Those niggly things came in the form of some of my most despised mechanical tasks; brakes and exhaust. I think this has something to do with the fine dust, and general malicious nature of said tasks. exhaust parts inevitably get hot, thus rendering the pipes, and their accompanying clamps one unit. no bolt ever comes off in exhaust work, and brake-work isnt much better. a myriad of springs keep drum brakes in place, and they require a lot of force to remove them. Plus there's the mess of being underneath the vehicle, in winter.

it feels good to get this stuff out of the way though, so i plunged into the task, tackling the rear brakes first. the old drums were near useless, so i binned them, and bought some new drums (the old shoes were actually fairly new, so they stayed). before throwing the new drums on i cleaned and painted them with calipre paint in grabber orange for added stopping power (not really).

 

  

 

After the brakes were replaced, and new rear lines for the e-brake were installed, i moved on to attaching said e-brake cable back to the front half of the system. the guide clips were rusted off the frame, and the cable hookups had rusted, so i had to build new clips and hookups, as seen in the picture below.

 

 Since I was lacking a spare rim, I searched Kijiji for some replacements. Low and behold some guy in Toronto had a set of 4 for a really good price, so i picked them up. what i can do now is have a set of different tires on these rims, for winter.

 

I also had a lot of rear exhaust work to do. the seam behind the muffler had rusted out, so i cut it out so I could put a sleeve in. I also replaced about a foot of pipe closer to the back. On my way home from Canadian Tire however, my car was struck in an intersection (didnt write it off, but almost). That being said, it would be a while before I worked on the wagon and finished up those jobs, because I had other stuff to do now.

 

update (as of Feb 3, 2010): the muffler is actually fairly rough, so I'll replace that and the seam i put in, to make the beast a bit quieter.

Spinal Fracture

December 12, 2008

   Not me, the G-Wag. As it turns out; Jeep in all their boundless wisdom decided the best thing for the Gas tank was to put a skid plate under it. While I would normally praise this as a slice of factory brilliance, they didn't go about it in the most longevity conducive manner. Since the tank follows alongside the frame, the skidplate ran the length of the tank, also following the frame. This would have been fine if Jeep had left open "ports" to allow debris to fall out, or if they had closed off the front of the skid pan so that dirt wouldn't get in. Unfortunately Jeep; the essential authors of modern-day four wheel drive-forgot almost everything about skid plates when they made this one. It allows dirt and debris to be flung up onto the inside of the skidplate, where they trap moisture and salt (a lovely combo) against the frame. Wagoneer's from the mid 80's to 91 had severely rust-prone frames, and mine did not escape.

   I found a rather poor patch job completed in the same method as the old floor patches. a smattering of rivets were procured, along with some galvanized duct-work metal, and the weekend warrior broke out the tin snips and rivet gun. the patch job was then iced with a slurry of undercoating tar to hide it from any suspicious mechanics. I broke out the cutoff wheel and went to work, slicing out the badness where necessary.

   I ended up with a long chunk of the bottom of the rail being cut out, and found a small crack beginning to creep up the side of the frame a 1/4". I made sure to weld that up nicely, and set about forming some 3/8 angle iron to fit my frame.

 

    I had to make a few cuts so i could bend the metal to fit the frame shape, and then patched the cuts back up with the scrap metal and some welding.

   Some test fitting and then clamping allowed me to line the whole thing up and weld it in place. Although the rusted portion was near the back, I ran the angle iron the entire span of the frame, thus making it a double purpose patch and skid-rail for off-road use.  I was more or less pleased with the patch, and it should allow the vehicle to pass certification. It's amazing how many problems I didn't know about when i bought it (I may have waited and bought a better one had I known, but that's neither here nor there at this point).

Facelift

November 1/ 2008

As is obvious in the above picture, the steel back-panel behind the plastic grille was in some need of repair. Namely it was shallow rust pitting that had eaten the steel and generally dulled the paint.

as an interesting aside, you may note the round cutouts behind the square headlights, along with the round cutouts to the inside. the knockout for the rad is also strangely well thought out design-wise. There is a simple explanation for this though, and it has to do with Jeep's *cough*laziness*cough*. Jeep had it in their mind that instead of changing the body style like other competing automakers, they would simply stick a new grille overtop of the original 1963(ish) grille steel.

This handy Chart (Prepared by someone by the name of DANHS) shows all the Grilles over the years; all of which were backed by the grille you see in the upper left (minus the chrome pieces). I would eventually like to revert mine back to the rhino or the razor grille, since they look so much better than my worn out, cracked, and faded plastic grille.

That aside, I removed my plastic grille, affixed with only 3 real bolts, and an assortment of oddly placed screws that held it to the body (oh the woes of what are termed "old man" fixes). I gave the whole surface a sanding, and removed the rust with the wire wheel and some rust converter stuff. the shallow pitting was pretty easy to fix with some light bondo work. I took the front bumper off too, since it had rotted out at the mount points and wouldnt pass certification. masked the essentials and shot some primer onto the grille to provide a good base.

with that done, i grabbed a can of canadian tire near match black I wanted to use up (this was more to see what it would look like and get it all one colour, as opposed to a final painting). turned out pretty well I'd say.

Also, after doing this, I fixed my turn signals (which had some broken plastic clips, and were simply screwed in by wedging them with screws drilled through beside the lens (more old man fixes). i made some new sprung steel clips and mounted them to the lights, and probably fixed a few other things in the process.. i dont entirely recall.

Fixin the Trunk

September 15-20/2009

Sitrep on the trunk: in the words of Jeremy Clarkson: "it's all broken." As posted in a previous blog (sometime in december 07), I removed the carpet and found the rear seam to be more or less non-existent. I once again grabbed the trusty angle grinder, and set about playing surgeon. I severed off what i could, which involved removing a rather hefty piece of metal that runs across the rear seam. It had fallen victim to the plauge of what i call "cauliflower rust;" where the rust seems to split the metal open, and continuously fan it out in a puckering flaky mess... which in some ways resembles cauliflower.

With a now 2 inch wide chasm between the rear panel and the trunk floor, I had a bit of a conundrum; how do i span the gap, which is corrugated on one side, and flat on the other? since the floor is typically made using high-pressure press dies at the factory, I really couldn't duplicate it to factory spec. i did however, have a garage vice and some hardwood floor blocks (maple, no less). I set about measuring and marking out the shape of the corrugation into the 2 blocks, making a male and female portion to be mounted in the vice. Since it was a lighter duty vice, and a rather awkward bend, I had to use a slightly thinner guage steel so it would form better. I stripped the siding off a free shelving unit (properly treated and stripped of it's paint of course), and cut out a piece big enough to span the gap. I then marked out where to put the depression in the metal, and set to work.

I had to press it in 3 sections, because doing an off center press on a piece that long would curve it wildly because of tension. I tacked everything in, then secured it with some light welding

over the next few days, I finished up the pressing and welding, and shot down some paint to keep it from rusting. also got it from below too.

I also took this opportunity to sand down the tailgate and window cover, and give them a coat of paint.

Lastly, to use up the can of paint, I gave my drivers floor a light coat of black to tone it down a bit.

Safety First

September 13/2008

With the majority of the floor patching done a while ago, I figured I should paint it before it rusted; too late. Some time spent with the wire wheel cleaned it up as well, and i was able to get some paint down on the drivers side.

I also managed to patch some nasty rust that had plagued the B-pillars, around the seat belt mounts. since the mounts were made of pure rust, i grabbed the strap, gave it a good tug, and with one hand ripped the drivers side belt from it's moorings. the passenger side wasn't much better; a turn of the bolt more or less broke the entire assembly free from a semi rusted mount. I braced the mounts, welded in new nuts, and stole some old belt mounting bolts from an 84 Buick Century I had laying in the field. I then welded a piece of sheet steel over the old hole, and shot it with primer.

With that done, I did a test to see if everything still lined up. Didn't care so much about the prettiness of the welds for 3 reasons. 1) you'll never see it; 2) it's a flux-core wire, and 3) novice welder on sheet steel.