Winter 1996-97

Well, it really wasn't a second rebuild, but it took almost as long. After my little knock knock incident, and doing all that work to get the jeep back together I really wasn't in the mood to tear things apart again. It was also getting to be winter and even though I had a garage, and it was dry, it was still cold.

So the jeep sat there. Sometimes I would get a bug and do a little bit of work on it. Take the oil pan off. Take a couple of the bearing caps off. Sure enough, they were all copper. I even found one rod stud that I had half stripped while putting things back together the first time.

The thing I was not sure of, was whether I could get all the engine bearings out, and put new ones in without taking the transmission out. I was able to get all the caps off and the rod bearing off without a problem, it was the main bearings that I was worried about. So, I let things sit for a while. The jeep was going nowhere I and pretty much decided I didn't need it until spring anyway.

Well, I was wrong a couple of times.

First, around the end of November, I decided to remodel my bathroom. Basically tear out everything but the tub, re-tile the walls, and floor. I figured I could do all this in about 3 days. Well, those 3 days turned into 5 (and this was my only bathroom). I had to make some emergency visits to friends houses a couple of times. So how does all this relate to my jeep you ask. Well, on about day 4, I got in my car to go get some stuff I needed from Home Depot, and sure enough the CRX would not start. And I had no clue why. And of course my backup vehicle, the jeep, was missing some pretty important engine parts. It turned out to be some ignition part thingy, but how the hell would I know that. You open up the hood of cars these days and you need a masters degree to figure it all out, and a computer to tell you what's wrong.

So, that was the first time it would have been nice to have the jeep. The second time happened just about a month later around Christmas. The CRX was running just fine and I took it home for Christmas to Orcas. Well, if you live in the Northwest, you know what happened during Christmas of 1996. A big ass snow storm.

If you live in Seattle, you know that this city panics big time if it snows, and when it really snows, like it did over that Christmas week, things really get ugly. And if the jeep was running I could have taken it all in stride. As it happened, the snow was too deep a some points that I couldn't get the damn CRX out my garage, it was just too low. Man how I needed the jeep.

So I set out to finish replacing the bearings. I was able to slide the main bearings out without too much trouble without taking the transmission apart. Hot shit, I though, putting it back together should be just as easy, and you know what, it was. I lubed things up well enough with pre-lube that with a little tapping and prying (in just the right places) I was able to get the new bearings in place.

The big test was when I fired it up for the first time. I turned it over, crank, crank, crank, then it caught, then engine started running and I was looking at the oil guage. It sat there at 0 psi for what seemed like the longest time. My hand was on the key, ready to turn if off at any second, then pow, it jumped up to 50! Ok, we were over the first hurdle, now lets let the engine warm up and see where the pressure goes.

Before replacing the bearings, when the engine was warm, the oil pressure was down around 5psi, and on the freeway, it was up around 12.

The oil pressure started dropping as the engine warmed up 50, 40, 30 , and eventually it settled out just able 20 psi. When you gassed it up, the pressure went up to about 35. Ok, thats better.

So what about the noises you ask. Well, the knock, knock wasn't there, but there was still the same sort of noises that I had before. Not really valve noises, but not really a loud knock like at Southcenter Mall. After talking with Don, we figured that since my main bearings were toast, my cam bearings were also probably toast, and maybe the cam and lifters were making the noise. The noise sort of came and went, so I wasn't really worried about it. I had my jeep back and running. Of course, it hasn't snowed since then...