Not much to say

Well not much has been going on with project snow ball, as of late my automotive attentions have been focused on getting my new to me Subaru up and running as now both me and the wife have running vehicles to drive as I will be starting a new job that now requires me to commute. So I must reluctantly give the jeep to the wife as Project Scuby is a stick and the wife refuses to learn how to drive one. Hopeful before winter is over here in Arizona I will be able to take PSB to the snow for a little fun with the kids.

Happy new years and happy jeepin.

Head Job

Well been busy for the past few months with kids, work, jeep, and step-kids. :-( But never fear I'm back on task, and last month of mods to PSB was quite amazing. Only downside was that i had an epic failure of taking any pictures in process of the mods. Fist off was to finally fix the cracked header. With a hefty helping hand from my uncle we ordered up a set of APN headers and he decided we should replace the factory head bolts with ARP studs. After may days of reading up on how to do the job on the bulletin boards, we got to it just after thanksgiving. I arrived at my uncles house at 10am and proceeded to pull the power steering pump. Then the belt and the air box. Next was the throttle body and cables, I elected to leave the cable attached to the TB and just lay it over on the passenger side. After that was to disconnect all the electrical connectors and the pick ups for the injectors. And last was the vacume lines and fuel lines and brackets. Then the fun begins, as you must play find the bolts. Their are the easy ones on top and then the not so easy ones on the bottom of the intake. After all that is done you can simply lift off the intake and presto there is that nice cracked header. then two more nuts on the down pipe flange and bang its out. Now was a good time to clean up the injector pockets with some chemicals and brush. After doing an initial fit check the APN did need a little trimming to fit with the intake. I decided to use header wrap to help combat the dreaded under hood temps that will be back next summer. Re-installation is basically in revers order, however I did run into one problem with the header wrap. At the number six pipe the clearance between the exhaust and intake are so close I had to cut off a section of wrap to get the intake to sit down on the alignment pin. About 10 hours later I was back on my way home with a little bit of new pipe smoke and a much better sounding jeep.

Get rid of your hot air

Well after trying all the usual thing i still was not happy with my engine temps down here in the desert. I finally   worked up the courage to cut into my hood. So after looking and reading as much I could find on all the web and blogs +xjtalk.com  and visiting a few junk yards recently for other projects ,I decided that 1: I was never going to find any labarron hood vents as mostly mentioned on the blogs. 2: I was not about to buy any hood vents off the internet as most "quality" vents are going to cost you a few hundred bucks of your hard earned time. and being a blue collar jeeper I would not be going that rout. So down to Lows hardware I went. And found a pair of nice painted, aluminum, made in USA, roofing overhang vents for a whopping $2.50 each.

 So now I had the vents, painted them up and got myself mentally prepaired to cut the hood.

Next I laid up up the cut out on the underside of the hood buy tracing out the vents and taking measuments from the edges to compensate for overhang to glue down the vents to the top of the hood. 

Next drill holes in the corners of the cut outs. not only dose this help with staring your cuts but it will help prevent cracks from forming. Make sure to cover your engine and your windshield to prevent metal shavings from getting everywhere and scratching the window. 

After you have your cutouts for your shape of vent make sure to spray the cut metal with any paint to prevent rusting. 

Then what i did was simply use and adhesive to glue the vents to the top of the hood.

Happy jeepen

Spin me right round

Well today the goal was to simply and quickly change out the distributor input sensor aka cam position sensor. This little magnet pick up that is incapsuolated in a plastic bracket and sold for a deal of $47 at my local o'raillys, at first glance it looked so simple. So as I begin by removing the distributor cap I find that the rotor I replaced only a week ago has had the center post snap off and was melting the plastic from the spark arcing across the gap good to know that the jeep will still run with it broke.  As I continued to dive into the replacement I found out that you must remove the distributor and then remove the helical gear at the end of the shaft, so that you may remove the inner shaft from the housing. After you remove the the shaft the sensor simply slips off with the removal of one screw. Now reinstall in reverse order and use a little fast weld to glue the broken center post on the rotor so that you can make it to the nearest parts store to replace it.

Keep all 4 on the floor and happy trails.

Frying pan to fire

Well I've been off line a will as I have been in the process of relocating to a new city.  So in the midst of job interviews, house hunting, and all the typical chaos of moving. It seems that the jeep is the only family member that didn't what to do the move. Since we been in Phoenix (only about 10° hotter than Tucson) I have been having a challenge on my hands to keep her running cool. It seems that if you want to put your vehicle's cooling system to the test move to Phoenix in the summer.  So now to get you all caught up in what I've experimented with in my attempts to stay below the magical 210° mark.

First installed a 160° thermostat...  No noticeable difference, next installed missing fan shroud...  Again slim to not much help, still running in the 220 range. Last night me and the kids flushed the system, I have the feeling that the glycol ratio was to high... So far better as I type this blog out sitting in the jeep running parked waiting on my wife to get out of the store the temp is staying under 210 however it's only 10:30 the true heat doesn't come till early afternoon.  My next attempt will be to cut vent holes in the back of the hood. I guess only time (and temp) will tell, happy trails and tread lightly

Rocken rod end

Well finialy got the new rod end in. Sooo nice and shinny :-) vary simple and easy install no bumps to deal with thank God. Although once I got the old one out I did notice that my frame side mount is a little wallerd out. So I guess that means in the future I'll be getting a double sheer drop mount. At least for now the new joint has taken away most of my steering wheel play. Next small task is the coolant system

Happy trails.

Sticker parts

I received my sticker parts yesterday from all things jeep. I was a little bit disappointed with the size of one of the stickers (I hope the Toyota guy have good eye sight) however I am vary pleased with the quality of them.

Chaising Oil gremlins

Well having look underneath the other day. I decided to start chasing my oil gremlins that I've noticed developing on the pan. I could see that one grimlen was definitely leaking from the oil filter elbow, apparently that is pretty common on the xj's. Next time I'm near the stealership I'll have to pick up the oring kit to fix this grimlen. The next leak is definitely from the rear main seal. This one will be put off for the time being. It's not to bad and my past experience with this leak on my old red yj was that it seems to leak even if you change it. And now to the final and best of the grimlens, their was oil wetness along the front of the pan but never a drop over night.  This was found through dumb luck that I happened to find the source. Along next to one of the pan bolts in the front was a small cut as if someone had stabbed a flat blade screw driver in it for fun. We'll happily I solved this one with a little jb weld.

Happy trails

2 wheel is better than no wheel

Well last week we took project snow ball out to see some dusty roads to get her re-acquainted with what to expect in the hopefully near future. We decided to explore the back road to Mt. Lemon or at least as far as  we could get with the remaining daylight we had.

Was a very nice day out in the Arizona county side as I put it or just the old desert as my wife says. Ether way we got to have a little fun the groomed dirt roads that any car could travel. Definitely has helped my motivation to get the transfer case rebuilt so I can hit some real trails and show my kids what true off-roading is all about. I have finally found a replacement rod end to my track bar so I'll be ordering that soon, and will have a write up on its R&R. Till all the big kinks are worked out PSB is just going to be limited to daily driving and the bunny trails. I like to thinks she dreams of the rubicon in her sleep.

Just a little bit of radio

Well this week in project snow ball I dug out the old cb radio to install. After reading a few posts on jeepforum.com about ping pong paddles and mounting to the side of the center console I decided to do something a little different.

So being an aircraft mechanic and having access to an abundance of scrap aluminum and an abundance of bordome. I decided that the only place to put the cb was on the roof but I didn't want to drill into my headliner. So after starring at the ceiling for a few minutes it dawned on me that the answer was staring me in the face. I already had two screws to mount right in the center of the headliner. So I made the boomerang cb mount as seen in the pictures.  Now I have my cb were I want and no extra holes in the ceiling, and all the cables routed in the headliner.

I hope that this gives someone a new look to an old questions if you need help to make one send me a message

Np242 rebuild, ready set go

So today I started the process of rebuilding the 242. With a little help from the wide world web disassemble was fairly uneventful. I will say that I was glad I had bought the propper lock ring tool,  which worked well for all but one of the rings. I must give thanks for the detailed write up on the 242 by baxy at http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f13/np242-tutorial-764168/

Now I'm at the typical hurry up and wait for funding to come in moment as many do it yourself jeepers are.  At least it gives me time to search the Web for the best sye set up for the all scarce dollar.

Why sealant doesn't always work

So last week I took the time to fix a worsening leak coming from the transfer case. The kid I had bought PSB from apparently thought some sealant would fix his apparent encounter with a rather large rock.  As you can see no amount would have ever worked, fortunately for me the kid did give me a spare tcase in the deal so I was able to cannibalize the parts I needed. Now though I have found that the 4 wheel drive is shot as well.  My mistake for not testing it during the test drive. So now I will need to rebuild a new tcase, so with that as the next big problem to fix on PSB I keep the motto of the bionic man in the back of my mind "I can rebuild it, stronger, faster, better". But for now I'm stuck in 2 wheel mode for now.

A new hope with a used Jeep

             Well this month i had to pick up a new used vehicle out of both necessity and whats. Do to financial constraints my wife and I had to let out suburban go it was not an easy situation or diction but it was the only   thing that made since. So I had already been toying around with the idea of stating another jeep project. My first car as a teenager was a red 92 jeep wrangler that i absolutely loved. I told myself that I would never sell it and would give it to my children some day. Well fast foreword a few years and with my second son on the way I decided it was time to sell the four seater jeep. It absolutely broke my heart but it was necessary and I told myself that some day I would own another jeep and share the experience with my kids. So with only a few days to find a new used mode of transportation I landed on "project snow ball" a white 92 Jeep Cherokee.

             Now I don't consider myself a writer of any means but I have finally found something to try the blogging thing with. I am an aircraft mechanic by profession, defiantly not a columnist or blogger. But I have always enjoyed reading funny, life telling stories by writers such as Dave Berry. So I will try to make this story of my new project a real life tale of the ups and downs of taking on a project 4x4 for anyone will to read this in the hopes of avoiding my pit falls and share some sure to be funny mishaps. 

             To get this blog up to date of the project, i have had snow ball for about two weeks as of today. As I said I had only a few days to find a new ride do to losing my main vehicle to financial wohhs. I had been watching CL for some months prior for jeep Cherokees. do to thinking of getting back into off-roading now that my kids are a little older and have been bugging about going camping. So I made the drive up to Phoenix    to take a look at a few jeep for sale and as luck or divine intervention as my wife would say I was only able to look at and test drive one of the four I had planed on checking out. After a somewhat rushed decision I laid down the money for project snow ball. It was definitely not the most ideal deal but it was going to have to work. It had relatively low mile for a 20+ year old jeep and the engine and tranny seemed to be in good working order. the body was in descent shape for a dessert rat and the kid i bought it off had put some money into a lift and nearly new 33" tires. As for the project name I derived it from that simply fact that its a white jeep and that in that last two weeks the list of things to fix on it has grown in size just as a snow ball rolling down a steep mountain dose.