teaching an old motor new tricks

Hey all,

got a hell of a deal on a nice 94 2 door XJ that was running like hell, it had plenty of power but stumbled, had a lot of hesitation and ran really hot

we knew it was burning coolant and had a bad head gasket (exhaust gas was coming out of the radiator cap) quick compression test told us that cyl 1 was the culprit..you can see how shiny the cyl is from the coolant cleaning it, and how the head is all white and the plug is fouled. (spilled a little coolant into cyls pulling the head)



we had a 93 head laying around and we sent it to the machine shop for a valve job and to be reworked...came back from the machine shop with a full master gasket set, picked up some engine paint, too .....total $240



header had a big crack in it, so we drilled the ends of the crack and welded it back up while we were in there.


cleaned up the intake and valve cover before starting to put it back together.





we also ordered a bunch of small things like full replacement set of PCV/CCV fittings, thermostat (gasket came in the kit), oil filter adapter o-ring (leaky) and some other knick-knacks.....total $40

altogether i have about $300 into this, that is doing all the labor ourselves, using an old head that we had laying around. it really helped having a spare because it severely cut our downtime.

-Tim

good job!

thats awesome. did it solve the problems you were having before?

norcalchris said:

good job!

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thanks!

XCastleXJ said:

thats awesome. did it solve the problems you were having before?

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we haven't buttoned it all up yet, since we are waiting on the CCV/PCV parts. it wont run until monday

It ran well before, it just overheated badly and burned coolant because of the head gasket...this should solve all those probs...ill let yall know how it runs


-Tim

great attention to detail!

damn! whoever painted that did a good job...

that paint looks awesome. what color is that? looks like it might be orange in the pic.

its dupli-color engine enamel, picked up the brightest neon orange i could find...
looks alot like a oldschool chevy or mopar orange

sweet man ,I'm in the stages of putting my motor together, everything is fresh and new, I'm going black,matches everything else.
buddy tried to talk me into ktm orange!

bcmaxx said:

sweet man ,I'm in the stages of putting my motor together, everything is fresh and new, I'm going black,matches everything else.
buddy tried to talk me into ktm orange!

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good luck gettin yours back together, it is always fun...just like playing with legos was when we were smaller haha.

i had an old car with an orange motor, and i thought it looked cool, so thats why i chose orange...plus, it add HP

-Tim

Hey,

We got it all buttoned up and back together, New PCV/CCV fittings, replaced the o-ring in the oil filter adapter that was leaking and shes alive.

the radiator petcock is leaking, so we are deciding what to do about that, but other than that shes runnin like a top

-Tim

good to hear! I just finished gasket matching/porting/polishing the intake and head. 8 hours with the die grinder! the other mechanics were not to pleased with the noise. I am very happy with the end result. Now I'm trying to round up nuts and bolts that I have lost over the years.You ever bough oem jeep parts? it's like I own a ferrarri engine ,stupid prices for everything. I've also been taking pics as I go and I'll post up when I'm done. With machining and parts I'm into it for $3200, I was stupid not to build a stroker,but you live and you learn!I had a race shop do the machining/balancing and assembly of the shortblock.I can barely wait to throw it in!

hey guys

so happy with the way this thing is running that i forgot to post back up after we finished. It is running very strong with the new head on it

Here is a vid of us testing out some scrap tires on lame rims that we had in the garage. shifts thru 3rd gear spinnin them



-Tim