Summer Job!

[Baskinator]

Here are some pictures of the intake manifold with the carburetor off:









The engine:



And the rebuilt carburetor installed:

[ammachine390]

Looks like you have a 258 in there. As stated earlier, you have a mechanical fuel pump, which 4.0s didn't. The valve cover design is for a 258, however, I don't think that style would have been used on an 82. I guessing someone put a cylinder head (or maybe the whole engine) from an 87 or up in yours. And the exhaust manifold looks like a 258's as well.

And by the way, great job on making a ton of progress on your car. I wish I worked as fast as you.

[Baskinator]

Ok, so it's probably just the whole 258 from a late 80s Jeep then. Thanks!

As you can see, I had loosened the bolts for the intake manifold so I could take it off and paint it, then realized that there was some tube going from the intake to exhaust which would prevent it from coming off alone. Not sure what the tube was, but it was sitting underneath where the carb goes and it looked like it would be extremely difficult to remove without screwing something up. I decided not to after all since I only had a day to mess with it and didn't want to drain the coolant.

[GRONK]

That tube is part of the EGR system.  Not difficult to get off.

[Baskinator]

It looked like it was screwed into both the intake and exhaust, correct? If so, I'm pretty sure the fittings were rusted to the tube, making it impossible to unscrew without destroying. I didn't take a real long, good look at it, so maybe I missed something.

[Jurjen]

No, you are right on the money.
When you start messing with it, it will probably be destroyed (pipe will break, or the nut will crumble) and new ones are hard to find.
Most Eaglers plug them anyway (if you do not need it for emmisions).

[Baskinator]

Ok, that's what I was thinking. I'll have to take it off eventually, but as long as I can put something there to make it look like it's together, it should be fine.

[Baskinator]

Here's the Eagle as it sits right now:



Over the weekend, captspillane (Dave) took me on a tour to see most of his Eagles, as well as many other really cool cars he has. The Subaru 360 Microcars were pretty awesome, and his assortment of engines, transmissions, and parts was just out of this world (to me). We even stopped at a car show along the way and saw another Eagle wagon on the way out. Dave is extremely knowledgable of these cars, and was very kind to teach me how to drive stick shift. Needless to say, it was a fun, eventful weekend.

Also because of him, I was able to fix my driver door handle and get the panel all put back together. He gave me a new egg crate grill with no big cracks in it like mine. Still have to paint it black.



The best part is that he gave me a working shifter, so I was able to get that all fixed up!

[Prafeston]

Good deal man. Hope you can get her running it to school with you some time this semester.

[Baskinator]

My hopes are to get it on the road by the end of winter break. Still have a bit of a ways to go, but I think it's doable.

[captspillane]

So you need a welder, aye? This guy made one from scrap metal. Its really just a home-made transformer that multiplies the AC voltage he has it plugged into. You need alot of voltage to weld with a coat hangar, like he's doing. Transformers need AC inputs, DC doesn't work. A slab of metal heats up and loses power too much, so the trick is to use thin slices of metal insulated from each other as the transformer body.  The output of the transformer is governed by the input AC voltage and the ratio of wraps in the center of it. This one probably doubles his input voltage.

[Baskinator]

Wow, it's pretty amazing how people come up with all these makeshift welders. Doesn't look pretty, but at least it gets the job done.

I still have to learn to weld properly, but I'm pretty confident that I could do the repairs myself. I hope to get a lot done when I'm home next in a couple weeks, and possibly get this thing up and driving.

[rollguy]

That has to be the weirdest thing I have ever seen!!

[Baskinator]

Fall Break is coming up and I will be home next weekend to work on my car. With a limited amount of time, I am gathering parts and deciding what I want to accomplish with this.

There are a lot of things I can do pretty easily, but I'm not exactly sure how long they will each take. I will have about 4 days and I want to complete as much as possible. I know I can work on several things in sequence, and I'm planning out exactly how I want the process to go so it will get done faster.

Right now, it basically goes like this:

-Re-do transmission pan gasket (correctly this time)
-Remove front and rear driveshafts
-Jack up trans crossmember to remove bolts and slowly lower transmission for access to cooler line fittings
-Replace transmission cooler lines
-Clean up around trans and crossmember gunk
-Jack up crossmember and reinstall bolts
-Remove and replace all four u-joints on the driveshafts
-Reinstall driveshafts in alignment
-Fill transmission fluid
-Attempt to finish bleeding brakes
-Finish hanging exhaust
-Possibly test drive?

The actual list is a lot longer and more detailed than this, with individual steps so I can check off EXACTLY what to do. I've got all the little things covered, like making sure to have the hood open when the trans is lowered and drawing a line on the driveshafts for removal. I've been making myself well aware of the entire process for all of this. Just didn't want to bore you more than I already am

If I get a chance to meet up with Dave (captspillane), I would also like to change out my coil spring seats if he has them, maybe upper control arms too, and paint them all up including the springs. Then I want to put on a new steering damper/shock/stabilizer, whatever you want to call it, so I don't have problems with it in the near future. Maybe I'll even get to put some other tires on as well, the one is completely flat.

I highly doubt I'll get any welding done, but ya never know. Maybe my brother will volunteer for that???

[Baskinator]

So, I got more and less done over break than I had hoped for. However, it moved along nicely and is just a few steps away from a drivable vehicle.

I painted my brake drums with caliper paint:


Painted my rear drive shaft and installed new u-joints:


Got pictures of the rear brake overhaul I did a while back:


Dave also came over and helped immensely. He's a real animal when it comes to these cars

He put on my new steering stabilizer, which looks great and is snugged up with some anti-seize lubricant. Unfortunately I didn't get a pic of that while I had the chance.

I re-did the trans pan gasket, but the threads on a few bolt holes were stripped which probably caused some of the leakage before. We went back to Dave's garage where he custom made a couple new slightly larger bolts and enlarged the gasket holes, then came back and tapped the holes for nice new threads. The pan went back on snug with the new bolts, but some of the old ones were still spinning a little bit so we left it be for now.

We also tapped the bolt holes for the trans crossmember and put in some much nicer, clean bolts. They went in like butter, and had some anti-seize on them too. One old bolt head sheared off, so that will have to be drilled out later.

I was removing the trans cooler lines, and when I looked up, Dave had all of my seats out of the car stacked in a neat pile. I couldn't believe how fast he did it, but that's great because they needed to come out to remove the carpet eventually. I got the trans lines off, but didn't have enough time to put new ones on.

I also removed the front drive shaft to replace the u-joints the next time I'm home. While looking up at that, I noticed my kickdown linkage to the trans is rusted in 3 pieces. Maybe that's why it wouldn't shift, but I hope to get that fixed next time as well.

I helped Dave in his garage tear down the suspension and front crossmember on one of his Eagle parts cars, while he disassembled an engine and guided me along the way. In exchange, he gifted me with these gems:


plus a pair of barely used front shocks. I'll get these scrubbed down and painted later and replace my rusted out junk. They were from the car we took apart, those springs were a bear to get out.

We had a little confusion for one part though. When I replaced the rear u-joints, there was no ridge to hold the two bearing cups in place. The old ones were held by a pair of U shaped clips, but the new part doesn't have a slot for these clips. I tried reusing the clips, but they pressed out the boots on the cups and it still slides back and forth. Anyone know what I'm talking about and a solution, besides using the old bearing cups?