Last week I told you about how I met the VPracing team and about how I met my first friends in the Ultra 4. This week I will tell you the story of how I met a fellow ambitious automotive enthusiast.
A few weeks back I was spending a few minutes on Facebook looking through the different groups I’m a member of, when I came across the Facebook post that my new friends put on the group page I follow asking for help getting their new to them Jeep Wrangler running I was very excited to help where I could.
I responded to the post and began to talk with Tyler, the dad of these friends I would come to make. We spoke about their situation, He said that they bought the Jeep with no engine in it and they don’t know how to get it back together. So, I went to their home to survey the situation and see what would be needed to get their Jeep running at the top of its game.
They were missing very little to get the Jeep running. Just minor things that had become worn from the engine sitting out in the weather for years. Like the water pump, serpentine pulley bearings. I left them with a list of things that would be required to continue the process of returning iit to a running Jeep.
The next time I visited their house we got to work immediately, transferring brackets and components that could be easily transferred with the engine out, and less easy with the engine in the Jeep. When I replace an engine I like to put as much on before I put it in the engine compartment. Whoever took the engine out of the Jeep left several things in the Jeep that I would normally leave on the engine, and took off several things that made me scratch my head asking the question why.
We were on a roll getting things lined up to put the engine back in, when we got to the oil pan we found that when the engine had blown up, it threw a rod through the pan. That stopped us in our tracks, like I said above I like to put as much on the engine before putting it in the compartment. Since this was a big problem we called it a day and I returned a week later once they had the new oil pan.
We got the new oil pan installed and went to put the engine when we discovered that we would encounter the same issue with the engine hoist that I do every year when I pull the engine in the Race Jeep. The arm that the Pittsburgh engine hoist comes with just isn’t long enough to get the engine high enough or far enough into the engine compartment to get the engine mounts to lined up let alone get it to par up with the transmission. So, once again we had to call it a day, I went home and built a longer arm with a 45 degree kicker so that it would get the engine high and far into the engine compartment.
I returned the next Friday to give the best we could to get it running and we were so close! But unfortunately we ran out of daylight. I returned the next day (Saturday) to get it finished for them. Without further hiccups we were able to get it running in the afternoon.
The amount of excitement that this farther and son had to get there Jeep running brought the biggest smile to my face! It had been a while since I have put a stock engine back in a truly stock vehicle, It was a chance for me to relearn old skills. It was a very fulfilling couple of weeks for me.
