Murphy's Law Rears It's Head

I woke up Saturday morning feeling quite confident that I was going to make a good deal of progress that day. I had spent the previous night doing research and reading Jeep forums to determine what parts and hardware I needed in order to finish assembling my transmission and get it ready to bolt up to the engine so I could finally drop in my drivetrain and make sure everything works.

I had received two vital transmission components earlier in the week that I had found for sale online, and after I stopped at AutoZone to pick up a clutch kit (which included a pressure plate, clutch, internal slave cylinder, and pilot bearing) and some Penzoil Synchromesh transmission fluid I figured I had everything I needed to complete this major milestone.

The first step was to remove the bell housing and front bearing retainer plate from my old transmission (see below, model AX-5). The only reason I removed these components was so that I could re-use the bolts in my new transmission.

Bell housing removed.

Front bearing retainer plate removed.

The next step was to assemble my new transmission (AX-15, pictured below) with the old bolts. I already had the bell housing; the new parts I received last week were the front bearing retainer plate (the AX-5 plate doesn't fit the AX-15) and the gearshifter mechanism.

Output shaft, connects to transfer case, which then connects to differential(s).

Input shaft, front bearing retainer plate goes here.

On the right is the gearshifter that I found for sale on JeepForum.com

Here is the new AX-15 with the bell housing and retainer plate attached.

At this point, I attempted to install the new internal clutch slave cylinder and pilot bearing, and I discovered that the pilot bearing did not fit the output shaft of my transmission. It DID however fit the output shaft of my old AX-5. So I figured I must have received the wrong clutch kit and I exchanged it at AutoZone for what I was told should be the right one. But after driving 20 minutes each way and lugging the kit to and from my car I realized that the new kit is set-up for an external slave cylinder... which is not what I need.

It seems that I need to exchange the kit again for the original and purchase a new pilot bearing that will fit the AX-15's output shaft. In case you were wondering, Murphy's law basically states that "anything that can go wrong, will go wrong," which was beginning to become the theme for the day.

Gearshifter bolted in place.

This theme only became stronger as time went by. After I had the bell housing, retainer plate, and shifter in place, I decided to mess around with the shift lever to make sure I could shift it into all of the gears (1 through 5 and reverse).

But of course, this was not the case. I was able to shift into 1st and 2nd, and I was able to shift into 5th and reverse, but for some reason I could not shift into either 3rd or 4th. In addition to this issue, I noticed that when I shifted into neutral and turned the input shaft, the output shaft turned as well. This should only happen when the transmission is in gear, so clearly something was wrong. I tried adding the transmission fluid to see if that would loosen things up and get it working, but the problem persisted. After a great deal of tinkering and cursing, I finally gave up for the day after my frustration level reached its limit.

The next day at work, I talked to a guy named Donnie who has a good deal of experience rebuilding transmissions. He had some suggestions on what could be wrong and how to fix it, but after work that day I followed his advice to no avail.

Eventually, Dave and I decided to load the transmission into the back of his truck and bring it over to Donnie's house so he could take a look at it. Without taking too many things apart, we determined that one of the gear forks must be broken or stuck in place, which is preventing me from shifting into any other gear. So, I am now in the process of tracking down the guy who sold this piece of junk to me so I can get my money back...

Donnie investigating the problem.

In other news, I removed, sandblasted, and painted my front differential cover on Saturday, so the day wasn't a TOTAL loss.

Engine Re-assembly

This past weekend I spent most of my time working on my engine. The first thing I did was to sand blast the fuel rail to remove rust and prep it for painting (see above). After it was sandblasted, the surface was clean and smooth and a couple coats of Rustoleum brand black paint made it look really nice.

Then I re-assembled the intake manifold. Luckily, I had plenty of pictures on my phone of what it looked like before I took it apart, so I was able to put everything back where it came from without too much trouble.

The throttle body is still dirty, but it won't be too visible underneath the intake duct, plus it would have been a pain to clean up (not worth it, in my opinion).

There was a hairline crack in my exhaust manifold (header) that needed to be welded, and after that was done I was able to bolt the intake and exhaust manifolds back up to the engine block.

I bought my upper & lower radiator hoses and my heater hoses at AutoZone and attached those to the engine. The engine is about done and ready to go in, but I won't be putting it back in until my transmission is ready (I'm still missing a few parts).

I am going to drop in the engine, transmission, and transfer case all as one unit. But before I can do that, I still need to repaint the firewall and then reinstall the wiring harness (which is going to be a lot of work). Stay tuned!

Prepping For Paint

I didn't get too much done yesterday, I spent most of my time removing different things from the firewall because I'll be repainting it soon, and the less clutter on there the better. I removed the brake fluid reservoir, the clutch cylinder, and the master cylinder.

I need to buy my paint soon, I've pretty much decided to keep it white. That will eliminate the need to remove everything from the interior and paint all the components and hard-to-reach spaces, and I like it white.

I listed my old engine (the 2.5L I4) and transmission on eBay the other day, so hopefully I will be able to get it out the way and possibly pocket some cash at the same time.

I'm Back Baby

I finally got back to work on the Jeep after a ~2 week hiatus. I didn't get too much done, but I took care of some of the less enjoyable items on my list. I finally was able to remove the rear fender flares. I ended up having to cut off two bolts on the driver's side fender because the heads of the bolts were wedged too deep inside the plastic that covers the inside of the wheel well.

Another thing that I had been dreading was removing the wiring harness from the firewall, which actually turned out to be a fairly simple job. There were some wires/plugs that were hard to reach and took some elbow grease but in the end I got them all loose.

The third thing I did was to get all of the caked on mud and dirt off of the AX-15 transmission that I bought earlier in the month. As you can see from the pile in the dustpan, there was good amount of dirt stuck to it. I still need to clean out the inside of it (Dave mentioned that I can use diesel fuel to clean the internals) and the exterior could use a hosing off.

Dave recently touched up the paint on his Jeep; it's looking really sharp. He was welding his chrome step rails on while I was working on my Jeep.

I'm Speechless, I have NO Speech...

... because I don't really have much to talk about in terms of the Jeep. I've been pretty busy lately due to my recent attempts to begin working out after a month haitus so I can get back into shape. That, combined with some awful weather (30's and snowing the past two days), have resulted in little to no work getting done on the ol' Wrangler.

I really like the way the white hard top looks, I'm thinking of doing this with my hard top.

Last Thursday I attempted to remove the rear fender flares (the black things that extend out from the body over the rear wheels), but the bolts that hold them on are a real b*tch to get out because they become wedged deep in the plastic and its hard to get a wrench on them. Also, the flares are filthy because of my bright idea to drive the Jeep through the mud when I was test driving it on Day 1. So not only are the bolts hard to grip, but there is caked on mud everywhere that falls in my eyes/nose/mouth every time I try to remove the flares. I finally gave up after 30 minutes of struggling and eventually slicing my thumb open.

My desktop background right now, I'd love my Jeep to look like this (except white).

I will be heading back to Boston this weekend for Easter so the Jeep will still be on hold. I may get some work done on it next week if the weather is nice. Next weekend I will be travelling to South Bend, IN for the annual Spring "Blue/Gold Game" and to visit college friends. So there might not be anywork done for a couple weeks.

Shout out to my boy HC for reading the blog and insisting that I keep posting, it's nice to know someone is reading my drivel... (Well maybe some parts. What parts? .... the uh, drivel parts...)

Engine Touch-Up

I didn't put in too much time yesterday because I had some errands to run, so I just spent about an hour painting the intake manifold and touching up the paint on the engine. The intake manifold didn't turn out as good as I had hoped when I picked it up from being hot dipped at NAPA, so Dave suggested that I use some silver engine enamel; I'm really happy with how it turned out. This is how I was hoping it would look after I picked it up from NAPA yesterday.

Fun with Transfer Cases

As I mentioned in an earlier post, when I traveled to East Sparta, Ohio on Sunday I received a bonus free gift when I bought my transmission. The guy I bought the tranny from just happened to have a pile of old transfer cases sitting behind his garage, and when he heard that I was looking for a 23 spline input shaft for MY transfer case, he told me to have a look through his pile to see if I could find one. I was lucky enough to be successful in this search, and on March 31st I finally took on the project of making the input shaft swap.

The old transfer case was already cracked open, and after removing a few bolts from the housing, Dave and I were able to break it open. The trickiest parts was getting the metal retaining clips off of the input shaft so that it could be pulled/pushed out of the housing.

Since I wasn't going to be using the old T-case, I wasn't worried about what I was doing while I took it apart.

When it came to taking apart my T-case, however, I needed to be really careful and I made sure that I took note of how everything fit together so that I could reassemble it correctly.

The new shaft fit perfectly in my T-case and after some struggling to get the two halves of the case to slide back together, I was finally done.

Before I started this little project, I was really worried that I would do something wrong like lose a piece, or put it back together incorrectly. But now that I have finished it and have been successful, it makes me realize that I could handle pretty much any type of task as long as I take my time and pay attention to what I'm doing.