1970/71 Gladiator J-4000 Build

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camerafinn
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1970/71 Gladiator J-4000 Build

Post by camerafinn »

Hi All.

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Figured I'd post pictures at the top of the thread. Because a thread is useless without pictures, right?
My name is Finn. I'm from Denver. About 18 months ago, I bought a '70/'71 J-4000 Gladiator. It was built in July 1970, which places it as a '71 model year, but it still had a few Kaiser things left, like Gladiator stickers on the tailgate.
The milage is likely to be only 55,000 -- that's what the previous two owners claimed. The condition of the truck seems to support that. But it also supports that it has been in the Colorado sun for nearly fifty years. Not much was "wrong" with it. It drove, stopped (kinda), played music. I was looking for a DD rig though, and I wanted it to be a little more quiet, comfortable and modern.
I've had my share of DD'ing old factory rigs. I drove a 1967 Jeepster as a DD for three years, and about the only modification it had was lovely zebra carpet.
Don't ya love PO's?
There are some pictures at my first post here:
http://www.ifsja.org/forums/vb/showthread.php?t=179622
(I know it's IFSJA. I hope that doesn't make me a criminal here. I have been keeping the build updates over there, but I decided to make a copy here too. Everyone likes Jeeps.)

Last July, looking over the truck I justified new axles. I had no problems with a 44 up front and 60 in the rear, they pretty much needed to be rebuilt completely. Pretty much every wear item, and alot of items that shouldn't have been worn, needed replacement. The splines for the Selectro hubs were stripped, and on my truck the front hub is integrated with the drum. So I needed to find good drums with Selectro hub splines. Nope. And it was my understanding that the rear break parts were near impossible to find too. And the rear axle was off center for no reason except for clearing the gas tank. (Yes, Jeep could have engineered it to be easier to clear rocks off-road, but this truck was never intended as a rock crawler.) And, I'm in the mountains a lot, and I really wanted discs. Drums get scary on some of our passes. And three gears in a TH-400 doesn't exactly give you the most options for gearing down. So, I looked into which other (Big Three) trucks have the same axle widths as a FSJ (wide-track only) Only Dodge was close. It was hard to tell what the Jeep's WMS-WMS was, and I forget what I measured. I think factory was about 65". Dodge came in at 67" while Chevy and Ford trucks were 69". So, Dodge it was. However, until '81 I believe, Dodge used a unique front knuckle arrangement with a "unit bearing." Essentially, parts are hard to get -- which is why I was changing axles in the first place. Cool thing is 82-89(maybe more?) have a 34" front frame rail spacing, just like FSJs! So, I went out and got an '85 Dodge W350, non running. When I got home, I found some funky bump on the axle and I got to learn about CAD. Joy. Oh well. Buyer error. IF you're following my path, get an '84-'81. They have real lockouts.
So, the stock Dodge CAD setup is a vacuum control. Vacuum controlled things scare me a lot, and it relied on vacuum switches in the NP208 that I wasn't going to use, so I decided to make it cable operated. There is a product called 4x4 Posi Lock made specifically for this Dodge axle, but at ~$150 I was too cheap. Plus, it has an ugly handle.
I happened to find this writeup of exactly what I wanted to do: http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f12/home-made-posi-lock-write-up-595515/
So, I followed the instructions for the most part, however I decided to remove (rip) the vacuum motor, and control the shift fork from there, as opposed to drilling a hole through the opposite side of the housing. The net result of this is that the writeup gives you a shift handle that is "in" for disengaged 4WD, whereas mine is "out". It was a "prettier" solution to me design wise, so I decided that I could live with the handle "out" most of the time.
Here's what I did.
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I'm drilling out the end of the former vacuum motor. Nice jig. I know. It worked.
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Thread the same piece. (I don't have a T-handle for taps this big. It's 3/8 NPT I believe)
Drill a hole down through the shift actuator. The fork runs on this shaft.
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I also drilled a hole perpendicular to this one for two set screws to hold the inner part of the lock cable into the shaft. It was too small for me to thread.
And ta da. Now it works with a cable.
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Finn

You know it's a good morning when the gas gauge works for the whole drive.

1970.5 Gladiator J-4800 Camper Special Custom Cab - 55,000 Miles (Under Reconstruction)
1967 Jeepster Convertible - 8071 Deluxe - 65,000 Miles
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camerafinn
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Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2016 6:44 pm

Onto The Springs

Post by camerafinn »

Here is the Dodge after stripping:
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So, I got a rebuilt front D-44 HD and a matched 60 rear for ~$100 in the end. Not a bad deal.
Next, I figured out what tire size I wanted to run. Well when you try to put a 12.5" tire in the rear of a J-4000 and keep it within the fender well, it doesn't work. It hits the spring. Hard. If you bolt it up, the tire sidewall has to flex about a 1/2" to get the tire on. AKA you can't drive an inch.
Here is what it looks like with the ride hight mocked up, and the tires on.
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So, because our frames are pretty unique amongst trucks, and get very wide at the rear, I decided to move the springs inboard. I'm not sure if anyone has ever done this, but it wasn't bad. We (Dad and I. Father son project) cut the rivets out of the mounts from the Dodge and used them on the truck. The Jeep springs are by far a superior design, with a brass busing and a grease fitting, however the brass bushings were cracked, so I would have needed new ones. In addition to that, the rear springs for the Jeep are a unique length, and I didn't want to have to have custom springs made if I ever decided to change the rate for the rear. So, I used the springs from the Dodge. I replaced the bushings, and we set them up about the same as they were, only now on the inside of the frame.
Old spring VS. new spring placement:
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Because the frame isn't boxed, we had to box the frame in that area. We decided that we would add a little strength there, so we got a few pieces of 8 inch C-chanel and ground them to fit into the frame.
Here are a few pictures from today, now that the bed is removed: (Ha, yes we did all of this with the bed still on. There was no room to take it off where we were, and we needed to know if the wheel was centered in the arch.)(Also, the mounts are only tacked into place. I need to go back and weld them in.)
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Finn

You know it's a good morning when the gas gauge works for the whole drive.

1970.5 Gladiator J-4800 Camper Special Custom Cab - 55,000 Miles (Under Reconstruction)
1967 Jeepster Convertible - 8071 Deluxe - 65,000 Miles
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camerafinn
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Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2016 6:44 pm

Rear Drums to Disk

Post by camerafinn »

There was a long pause, and in February, I started back up on the truck. When I opened up the front axle, it did look rebuilt, just as the PO said. The rear end was a different story. The drums were pretty "worn."
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The cost to replace everything in the drums was only 100 fewer dollars than converting to discs, so I switched to discs. It wasn't hard at all. It uses "84 K20 front rotors, and the infamous "78 El Dorado rear calipers. I got the brackets for the calipers from Cutthroat4x4. They are thick pieces of steel. I did have to file them some to get them to fit onto the flange on the axle, but that was OK with me. Better to have zero slop than alot.
I didn't take any pictures of the conversion apparently, but I'm not sure how relevant it is here anyway, being a Dodge axle and all. There are lots of good how to-s on the web about this subject. It's not hard to do intuitively either.
I have yet to hook up the E-Brake. I'll post something else on that when I do that. Everyone seems to use the El Dorado calipers.
In this picture I haven't pushed the caliper on fully yet. On one side it slid on pretty easily, but on the other the pads seem to be thicker or something. It took lots of encouragement to get it onto the disc.

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Finn

You know it's a good morning when the gas gauge works for the whole drive.

1970.5 Gladiator J-4800 Camper Special Custom Cab - 55,000 Miles (Under Reconstruction)
1967 Jeepster Convertible - 8071 Deluxe - 65,000 Miles
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Topic author
camerafinn
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Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2016 6:44 pm

The Front Suspension

Post by camerafinn »

In March, we moved to the front. Because the Dodge axle has a cast in perch on the axle, the spring to caster & pinion angle was set. Well, unfortunately, the geometry of the spring mounts in the Jeep was vastly different from the Dodge, and we determined that the spring would need to be "s" shaped. We went to a custom spring shop to make sure we weren't crazy, and they agreed with us that it wasn't really doable with a normal spring. They might be able to make one, but at the cost they quoted, suddenly a multilink front end became comparable. So, out went the leafs, and in went much thinking. I did lots of research about 3/4/5 link systems. I decided I liked the 5 link best. There are four locating arms that run longitudinally with the truck, and one transverse pan hard bar. The two links on each side are close to each-other when looking down on them. This let me have decent geometry without a massive lift. Normally, on a three link, guys will run the single top arm to the trans crossmember. This would not work with so little lift. Plus, one top arm sounds scary. (I don't think I even have four inches. Hard to tell though with how sagged the front end was originally. The front end rides about even with what the original rear height was.) This five link setup is stock on newer 2500 Rams, and I believe also on TJs/JKs.
Here is a picture of the truck after we pulled the stock axle out:
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I considered selling a kit to make FSJs levitate. It looked pretty cool. But then I decided that wheels are probably the way to go for the police and all. So I mocked up the links in PVC first:
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I chose to use 2" OD X 0.25 Wall DOM tube for all four arms, and 1.50" OD x .25 Wall DOM for the pan hard bar. All Heim joints are from RuffStuff, as is the DOM (yes it was much cheaper there + shipping than my local steel yards.) and the frame mount for the top link. The Heims are 7/8X7/8. The top link on the frame end has spacers to reduce it to 5/8, and all the other bolts are 3/4. The axle mount and lower frame mount are from Ballistic Fabrication.
The springs/shocks are 12" travel Fox Factory 2.0 Emulsion coilovers with 12" 350lb/in and 14" 450lb/in springs. In order to get a relatively long coilover in with very little lift, I needed a very large shock tower. I needed about 25" from eye to eye on the coilover to be between 50/50 & 60/40 Droop/Bump travel. Few (one) companies made the 18" tall tower to accomplish that, and none of them fit in the wheel well. I mocked up a tower in cardboard that would do the job:
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Then I drew up the tower on the computer and sent it over to Ben, a friend and the owner of Focused Light in Arvada Co. He's a great guy with an awesome metal fabrication company. They cut the towers for me out of 1/4" steel, and then sent them out to be bent. In two and a half weeks, they were back in steel.
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The Panhard bar was another interesting challenge. The steering on these rigs, as I'm sure all of you know is transferred with a drag link laterally. To minimize bump steer, the Panhard bar needs to be at the same angle and be the same length as the drag link. The problem rose again from the cast in perch. It added lots of width to the differential housing casting, eliminating the extra room where a Panhard mount would normally be welded to the axle. I decided to use the cast in perch AS the panhard mount. I got a 1"x2.5"x18" (2.5" wide is stock Dodge spring width) bar of steel, cut it to 7.5" in length, and had an 11/16" hole drilled down into it. Then I threaded the hole to accept a 3/4x16 TPI bolt.
Like so:
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Then, I bolted that piece of steel in place of the old leaf spring:
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I need to grab a shorter bolt, and add a bolt where the bolt that holds the spring pack together would be, but other than that, I think it should work.
I also made mounts for the axle side of the coilover. They can be seen clearly two pictures ago.
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I had trouble with porosity I couldn't solve while welding the lower frame mounts. Then I noticed the factory Jeep weld was essentially hollow. Crazy porous. So I ground it down. This was about the last 1/4 of the factory weld:
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Built on Friday afternoon?

Anyway, after I ground all of the factory weld out, I had no more problems welding.
Lining up the shock tower with the shadow of a plumb bob:
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Link Axle Mount:
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Top Frame Link Mount (It needs a shorter bolt)
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Another Picture
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Panhard Frame Mount Tacked In
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Passenger Side Axle
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Lower Frame Mount Welded
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It's late. I'm going to bed. I'll post more in the morning.
Finn

You know it's a good morning when the gas gauge works for the whole drive.

1970.5 Gladiator J-4800 Camper Special Custom Cab - 55,000 Miles (Under Reconstruction)
1967 Jeepster Convertible - 8071 Deluxe - 65,000 Miles
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camerafinn
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Bodywork

Post by camerafinn »

The truck was in really good shape, from the outside. There was nothing other than surface rust anywhere. It also appears that it was undercoated at the factory, and the undercoating stuck extremely well. To strip it from the frame, you have to really get on it with a wire wheel on the grinder. When I bought it, I knew that bits of the driver floorboard were rusted through though, and I expected to replace them. When I pulled up the carpets, It was worse than I expected. All of the rust had come from the full-of-leaves cowl vents.
This was just what I could pull out of the floor with pliers on the driver's side:
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It appeared that someone had treated the 8 inches nearest the door with a rust-stop, but I guess they were too late.
We got new panels from Z&M for the whole floor. Here is the driver's side after replacement:
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We cut out lots of good factory metal, but there were patches of cancer all the way up on the tranny tunnel, and I didn't want to make a floor that was stitched up with "z's" all over. The front firewall replacement was crazy challenging to get in the right shape.
I did most of the shaping with a home-made english wheel to get the curves.
Most english wheels are welding bottle caps, right?
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In addition to that, I had to replace a little bit of the kick panel on the driver's side:
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Not beautiful, but I'm learning to weld on this project.
The passenger side wasn't quite as bad (no holes all the way through: close though)
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It was easier to fix:
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Then we took the body down to town to get sand-blasted, which is where it is right now.
I really appreciated Jeep's "Wiring harness" with all of it's PO modifications included:
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Unknotting:
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I think I'll put it back together with a fuse box.
I took the engine apart yesterday, so I'll post that tonight or tomorrow.
Have a good day y'all.
Finn

You know it's a good morning when the gas gauge works for the whole drive.

1970.5 Gladiator J-4800 Camper Special Custom Cab - 55,000 Miles (Under Reconstruction)
1967 Jeepster Convertible - 8071 Deluxe - 65,000 Miles
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camerafinn
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Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2016 6:44 pm

Engine Disassembly

Post by camerafinn »

6/18/17
Getting the engine out with no body was pretty easy. We took the drivetrain apart from the back forward so we didn't have to support the transmission. Everything came apart easily, not much to say about it. I was surprised though to find that the TH-400 had an adapter to go to the BOP pattern. The pattern on the transmission didn't look like a Chevy-90-Degree either. Does anyone know what it is? Is it just "TH-400" pattern, and GM made adapters to put it behind whatever?
Anyway, we popped the engine out:
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(It was late and I was tired)

While I was taking it apart, a few things made me think it'd been rebuilt at some point. One of which was the cam, which still has fresh grinding marks on it:
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Some of the lifters were barley worn too:
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Additionally, the timing gear is supposed to have nylon teeth, but it was a solid steel gear. The timing chain was stamped "Morse." I doubt Morse made GM's timing sets. The rod bearings were Clevite, which is not "standard" according to the service manual. I can't remember what company the book named. It started with an "M" and was a model "400." I'll go look at the book today and post back what it was.
The 7 & 8 rod bearings were pretty bad, but weren't spun:
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Also, unless this was done at the factory, it seems that someone had numbered the rods:
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There was a serious amount of carbon though:
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Does anyone know if these bottom three water passages in the head are supposed to be blocked by the gasket, or was this the wrong gasket?
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As excited as I was about the prospect of installing these new-to-me multi piece piston rings, I think I should probably go with the standard type on the rebuild.
Detonation anyone?
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Finn

You know it's a good morning when the gas gauge works for the whole drive.

1970.5 Gladiator J-4800 Camper Special Custom Cab - 55,000 Miles (Under Reconstruction)
1967 Jeepster Convertible - 8071 Deluxe - 65,000 Miles
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camerafinn
Posts: 17
Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2016 6:44 pm

Some Progress

Post by camerafinn »

6/22/17
I dropped the block, crank, rods and pistons off at the shop today to get some work done on them. The block will be bored out some to get rid of a gouge in the wall of #1. I bet the decks will need to be milled flat too. I'm hoping the bearing surfaces on the crank are good enough and don't need to be ground, but some of them felt a little rough. We'll see what the shop says.
Also, the sand blaster finished up with the body, so it will go to the painter tomorrow.
It feels nice to be making some progress.
Finn

You know it's a good morning when the gas gauge works for the whole drive.

1970.5 Gladiator J-4800 Camper Special Custom Cab - 55,000 Miles (Under Reconstruction)
1967 Jeepster Convertible - 8071 Deluxe - 65,000 Miles
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camerafinn
Posts: 17
Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2016 6:44 pm

More (Slow) Progress

Post by camerafinn »

10/19/17
Another Hiatus.
A few updates.
Body: the painter did such a bad job with the body work and paint that it had to be re-done. He didn't block anything, not to mention there was so little paint in some areas that it had surface rust. We tried to get him to fix various things, but it got worse every time. It's at someone else now. The new guy is doing a good job, going quickly, and keeping me updated.
It's current state:
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Engine:
Buicks have notoriously bad oiling systems. One way to help mediate this is to increase the size of some passages. Running a 12 inch bit through your engine block by hand is a little scary. It came out well.
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Also, shiny new parts!
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I've assembled the short block so far. Hopefully I can get the long block done this weekend.


Frame:
In one of the early posts I made a joke about the frame being made on a Friday because the welds were so bad.
Well, June 26th 1970 was indeed a Friday:
(Frame after sandblasting)
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Painted:
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So that's where I'm at. Oh, exciting stuff. I ripped apart a 67 Electra in August to get the SwitchPitch 400, and I'm almost done rebuilding it too. Interesting to note that Jeep used Nailhead TH-400 transmissions behind Buick engines with an adapter instead of just using Buick TH-400s. I bet they were on sale.
I really hope I can get it done by Christmas. Being in school has slowed this down a bit.
Finn

You know it's a good morning when the gas gauge works for the whole drive.

1970.5 Gladiator J-4800 Camper Special Custom Cab - 55,000 Miles (Under Reconstruction)
1967 Jeepster Convertible - 8071 Deluxe - 65,000 Miles
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Topic author
camerafinn
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Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2016 6:44 pm

Happy New Year

Post by camerafinn »

1/1/18
Happy New Year.

The truck is back from the painter, and it's pretty good. It's got some orange peel, and needs touchup in a few spots, but it's all right. I don't care so much how it looks as if it just stays on. The trans is finished up along with the adapter and the t-case, however I've figured out that the cam hits the rods. The cam isn't that big, not even quite .500 lift, but I'm running Molnar Rods, not factory. I'm working on putting the interior back in now
Finn

You know it's a good morning when the gas gauge works for the whole drive.

1970.5 Gladiator J-4800 Camper Special Custom Cab - 55,000 Miles (Under Reconstruction)
1967 Jeepster Convertible - 8071 Deluxe - 65,000 Miles
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Topic author
camerafinn
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Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2016 6:44 pm

The Engine Spins Now

Post by camerafinn »

1/3/18
I called Molnar Tech -- the people who made the rods -- and TA Performace -- where I bought them -- and they both told me to just grind off what I needed to. I'd understood that this was SOP, but I've never built an engine before so I wanted to check. Buyer beware.
I checked the rods, and only cylinders two and six hit the cam. I took about 60 thou off rod six, and forty off rod two. I ended up with about 20-22 thou of clearance on both. Engine is going back together today. Here are the rods:
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Finn

You know it's a good morning when the gas gauge works for the whole drive.

1970.5 Gladiator J-4800 Camper Special Custom Cab - 55,000 Miles (Under Reconstruction)
1967 Jeepster Convertible - 8071 Deluxe - 65,000 Miles
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Topic author
camerafinn
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Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2016 6:44 pm

The Engine is Built Again

Post by camerafinn »

1/3/18
Today was consumed by re-assembling the engine.
Moring:
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Mid day:
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Evening: (Ready for Paint!)
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It spins nice, there's good piston to valve clearance and cam to crank clearance. It's funny, I'm more intimidated of rebuilding the carb than the whole engine, or transmission for that matter. I don't know why, I guess I just don't understand them very well. If anyone has good tips for Quadrajets, I'm all ears.
I'll paint the engine tomorrow.
Finn

You know it's a good morning when the gas gauge works for the whole drive.

1970.5 Gladiator J-4800 Camper Special Custom Cab - 55,000 Miles (Under Reconstruction)
1967 Jeepster Convertible - 8071 Deluxe - 65,000 Miles
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jpswapmohn
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Location: CO

Re: 1970/71 Gladiator J-4000 Build

Post by jpswapmohn »

CF, great threat on your efforts and progress. So, what the heck are the nipples in the center of the “original” pistons all about? I know you think it was rebuilt, but i haven’t seen a piston like that before.

You are definitely going deep into this thing. Great to see the details on the front suspension. I have a CJ3 that i want to do that to for the same reasons: don’t want to lift it more but want some articulation. Never done one and a little intimidated by it.

Won’t grinding the rods throw the balance off? I am assuming it is externally balanced.

Keep up the great work. The big question is: Which Christmas?
One day I will wake up and realize that my jeep is complete...one day, I just know it.
88Wag, LT1/4L60E/NP242, J20 axles, etc. http://imgbox.com/g/rNuIasKYrS
95YJ, STaK, D44's, SOA, ARB's, Bilstein 5150s, 35" KM2's
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camerafinn
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They're in!

Post by camerafinn »

I've spent the past few days painting stuff, and running around town looking for the snap ring that retains the transmission to t-case adapter inner splined shaft to the bearing. I should have taken a picture for that description, but I didn't. Anyway, I found it at a bearing supply house, Whisler Bearings and Drives in northeast Denver. There are a few nice things that offset living in a bigger city, and finding obscure industrial parts in one day is one of them.
On Kaiserjeeps' suggestion, I grabbed a new double roller timing chain, and because America is amazing, it arrived today.
So here's that:
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Additionally, thanks to Kaiserjeeps, I was able to order the mount between the crossmember and the adapter. It is a Crown mount and the part number is: J1370910.

Then I got the engine all prettied up, painted, and off the engine stand for the first time in months!
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Hooked up to the tranny:
3
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2
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1
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They're in!
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Yes, there is still no timing cover on the engine. The oil pump rebuild kit from TA is in the mail, but still not here yet. Whenever it arrives, I'll rebuild the pump and get the cover back on.


jpswapmohn, Thanks for the kind words. I really don't know that the nipples in the pistons are about. It seems like a great way to get a hot spot in the piston. If you saw, the pistons, you probably saw the lack of rings. There was only one that wasn't blown to bits. Seems like the engine had some pretty bad detonation. I don't think you need to be scared of making a multi link. I got the basic idea for mine by looking at an '03 Ram 2500, and I did the math using an excel sheet somebody was kind enough to create. You put in your link lengths and heights, and it calculates your roll center, anti-squat, and other stuff. Pretty helpful. You can find that sheet here: http://patooyee.com/calculators/calculators.htm
Also, on the suspension, I just had to come to accept that I needed to get it as close as possible to the math while still being on my frame. Ha. Math doesn't always (rarely) work perfect in the real world.
Yes. You are absolutely correct. Grinding the rods certainly does affect the balance of the engine. The shop said not to worry, I'd just end up with a little overbalance like factory. All in all, I took off about 1.2 grams from rod six, and 0.8 from rod two, and 1 gram is about tolerance for a good balance job, so I hope I'll be OK. The Buicks aren't really revvers either.
Haha the Christmas post. That was from mid October. So clearly this Christmas. Well that didn't happen. One day, one day...
Finn

You know it's a good morning when the gas gauge works for the whole drive.

1970.5 Gladiator J-4800 Camper Special Custom Cab - 55,000 Miles (Under Reconstruction)
1967 Jeepster Convertible - 8071 Deluxe - 65,000 Miles
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jaber
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Re: 1970/71 Gladiator J-4000 Build

Post by jaber »

Awesome progress. Its going to be a fun truck to drive.
My thread is also on both sites, most of us here still troll IFSJA...
Your Jeepster is beautiful.
There is a hot rod wire harness co that is reasonable, I'll look for the link for you, might save time if that helps...

Edit- here's a couple ...
http://www.keepitcleanwiring.com/produc ... ness-kits/

http://www.rebelwire.com/
Jeff

'46 cj3a
'51 Willys p/u
'51 Willys Parkway Conversion
'74 CJ5
'75 J-20 Wrecker
'75 J-20 Cummins service truck
'77 J-10 p/u
'79 Cherokee
'88 Grand Wagoneer
http://s252.photobucket.com/albums/hh14/jeffaber/
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camerafinn
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Wiring

Post by camerafinn »

Hey Jaber,
Thanks for the links on those wiring kits. I've already got one from KwikWire, but it looks like it's the same deal as those. My dad assigned himself the job of wiring the truck, so maybe I'll be spared a bit of pain. I'm back at school now, so progress is going to slow down again.
Thanks for the compliment on the Jeepster. Somebody re-did it in the 80's, and it's pretty decent. The powertrain needs to be rebuilt though.
Finn

You know it's a good morning when the gas gauge works for the whole drive.

1970.5 Gladiator J-4800 Camper Special Custom Cab - 55,000 Miles (Under Reconstruction)
1967 Jeepster Convertible - 8071 Deluxe - 65,000 Miles
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swampedge
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Re: 1970/71 Gladiator J-4000 Build

Post by swampedge »

Very nice work.


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Driftwood
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Re: 1970/71 Gladiator J-4000 Build

Post by Driftwood »

Finn, how is this project coming along? I wish I was brave enough to remove and rebuild my 360.
1979 Wagoneer
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camerafinn
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Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2016 6:44 pm

More Slow Progress

Post by camerafinn »

Hey All,

Over the past few months, we've been making some progress. It is slow though, school takes a lot of time.

While I was installing the manifold, I sheared a bolt off in the head. It must have been a bad bolt, because it was Grade 5, 1/2" (I think?) and I was under 50ft-lbs. Anyway, I managed to drill it out and use a bolt puller.

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Also, the rebuilt transfer case I'd picked up didn't shift correctly, so I opened it up to find the shift fork was on the rail at the wrong spot. I don't know how you miss the big hole, but it wasn't right. You can see the dent from the previous location next to the hole.

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First thing we did was to put the interior in. Under the carpet, we put foam then vinyl to try to dampen some of the sound. Then we put the seats in.

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Then I rebuilt the overdrive. It is a Borg Warner R-10 OD that was adapted by Rancho to fit onto the Dana 20. They aren't too common, but I don't think they are extremely rare either. I believe you can buy an entire one from Herm the OD guy.
Back case off:

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When you pull this part off, 12 roller clutch pins will also fall out. Put them back in with grease, just like needle bearings.

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Re-install with grease:

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Keep pulling gears and snap rings. This part is the dog-like clutch that engages the OD. The circular cut in on the right is where the solenoid hooks in.

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This is the governor with the top removed. It works by pulling down the internals once the drive hits a certain speed.

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And these are the contacts on the top of the governor. I had to re-make the horseshoe piece, and the long straight one. They had fallen into the governor, and were all but gone. I just took a small section of copper pipe, cut it to one layer thick, hammered it flat, cut a small square, and then filed it to the right shape.

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Buttoned back up and painted:

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Also, the engine originally had a thermostatic spring choke, and it was a bit hard to start. I looked at an electric choke conversion, but I don't like the electric choke we have on our blue Jeepster, it's hard to keep it running for the first few minutes in the winter. My red Jeepster has a manual choke, and I really like it. It's easy to drive in the winter. So, I made a manual choke for the Quadrajet. I used an "L" bracket, and welded a split shaft collar to the top of it. That bolts to the thermostatic choke cover in the manifold. On the other end, I used a spare Vent control knob so that it wasn't obvious it is a choke. And after all, a choke is kinda a carb vent, right?

Here is the carb:

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And the choke "Vent" knob:

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So that's about where we are. I put in the steering box too, but I still have to get new tie-rod ends. Since I changed axles, the knuckles don't have the extra tapered hole for the drag link, so I'll have to get the passenger side tie rod end with the tapered hole for a steering stabilizer, and put the drag link in there. Does anyone know much about tie-rod ends? I was going to use GM 1-ton ones. I'm not sure what should go back on the Dodge axle, and I think bigger ones would do better with the big tires. Do y'all know about the taper situation? I think I have to buy one of those tapered reamers to change the size of the tie rod ends, right?
For now, we are working on the electrical. We got new connectors, and a Kwik Wire fuse-box and harness. It's kinda sad to run out of the mechanical things, but it's closer to driving each week.
Enjoy.

P.S. My dad and I are going to come to Ouray.
Finn

You know it's a good morning when the gas gauge works for the whole drive.

1970.5 Gladiator J-4800 Camper Special Custom Cab - 55,000 Miles (Under Reconstruction)
1967 Jeepster Convertible - 8071 Deluxe - 65,000 Miles
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swampedge
Posts: 341
Joined: Mon Jun 11, 2012 5:21 pm
Location: Melbourne,Fl.

Re: 1970/71 Gladiator J-4000 Build

Post by swampedge »

There is a factory “choke” bezel found on many of the 6 cylinder trucks. Jim


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You really are judged by the dogs you have!
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Topic author
camerafinn
Posts: 17
Joined: Mon Jun 13, 2016 6:44 pm

Choke Bezel

Post by camerafinn »

Hey Jim, that's a great idea. I didn't know they put manual chokes in them. I'll keep an eye out for one of the cables, it'd be cool to have the right bezel.
Finn

You know it's a good morning when the gas gauge works for the whole drive.

1970.5 Gladiator J-4800 Camper Special Custom Cab - 55,000 Miles (Under Reconstruction)
1967 Jeepster Convertible - 8071 Deluxe - 65,000 Miles
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