1970 Jeep Rebuild

What time will she be ready for wine tasting?
Does she want to ride in a Denali pickup or a gangster 1937 Plymouth hot rod?

 

Lol…gangster hot rod all the way!

 

I found my old set of shocks and they are on. A little short on full extension but will be fine for this trip. Also got the tire carrier on. Started pulling out my camping gear and extra parts for packing. Now where did I leave that shoe horn….

 

As some of you know I didn’t make it on the Rubicon trip like I was hoping to. I got everything done and was all packed and was ready to go, when I had a family emergency.
I did get it out this weekend and ran the Deer Valley trail from the HWY 88 side and back. We were camping up at Silver Lake and I took a solo ride and ended up running the trail, (8 hours), which is about 45 minutes from our camp site. The JEEP ran great with only 1 issue, the rear diff cover and the gas tank skid plate wanted to share the same spot. Nothing bent as the diff cover is 3/8” thick and I used 1/8” for the skid plate. If you look back in my thread I already notched it out as far as I could without getting into the gas tank. I’ll need to figure something else out, maybe build a custom tank.

 

One disadvantage of those heavy aftermarket covers. I had the same problem in my 3B and just went with a stock front cover off a Ford F250 D44HD. Those are 3/16's thick and have a "shaved" spot where the ring gear bulge is, originally for tie rod clearance. They work great on the rear and don't peel when the bottom is abraded by boulders. But maybe not as sexy.

 

How was the trail, Rob? Sounds like your Jeep is ready for another run on Deer Valley and Slick Rock.

 

I might look into that, thanks Duffer.

 

The trail seemed a little tougher, with snow moving more big rocks into the trail. There is still snow in the shade, but not on the trail. JEEP performed really well with no issues, fixed the overheating problem by adding electric fan as a pusher.
Yes we need to start a thread and see if we can get a group together for Slick Rock. I heard it opened this past weekend but haven't confirmed it.

 

Sounds good!

 

If you remember I had an issue with the rear diff cover and the rear gas tank skid plate wanting to occupy the the same real estate. I have been taking it up deer hunting every weekend to the ranch and the metal on metal sound as I hit a bump going up the road was driving me nuts. I had some time Friday so I crawled under the JEEP and took some measurements and marked off what material I would need to remove from the skid plate then I removed it and started surgery. After I cut hole in the skid plate I put it back in position to see if it would interfere with gas tank itself, it was just the bottom corner about a half inch. I marked the gas tank then removed both. I took a 2x4 wood block and a BFH and massaged the corner of the gas tank to clear. I then started welding back in the hole I had cut into the skid plate. Painted it and installed both back into JEEP, now I have clearance when I hit bumps in the road. I did run a pressure check on the tank after my massage job on it with leaks.

Hole in the skid plate.

test fitting back over gas tank.


Marked what needed to be massaged.

welded up the hole in skid late.



Massaged the corner of the gas tank.

reinstalled both the gas tank and the skid plate, now I have clearance.

 

More finished pics.

 

My wife’s Cadillac is in the shop getting new transmission so she has been driving my truck and I have been dd’ing the JEEP. It’s been running great but I do have a few things that have popped up. The first is the rear shocks. My good set (Rancho) shocks got ruined when I got rear ended couple months ago. I had ordered new shocks that I thought were going to be the same but the ones they sent were too short, I was trying to get it back together for the Rubicon trip so I used an old set I had in the shed even though they were to short and would bottom out before springs fully flexed. I kinda forgot about that until I wheeled it on Deer Valley trail. I went back through my build notes and ordered new shocks tonight.
The other problem showed its head today while driving on freeway. I was running on the front tank and it started to sputter and died, out of gas, pulled over to shoulder flipped it to rear tank and after a few cranks fired up and I took off again. There was heavy traffic and we only moving at 15-20 mph engine running with no issues, full tank of gas. Traffic started to lighten up and I started picking up speed. As the rpm’ s hit about 3000-3300 it started sputtering and died again. Once on the shoulder it fired right back up and away I went again. As I was picking up speed again it started starving for fuel again around same rpm. I pulled over and it started right back up. I pulled off at the next exit and stopped at the gas station and filled the front tank switched back and drove it home with no issues. I did switch it back to rear tanks a couple times on rest of drive home and it would run then start starving out, switch back to front and it would start running fine. I just had the rear tank out and did some work on it. I didn’t see anything obvious when I crawled under it in garage. I have a inline fuel filter just after the tank before it goes into valve that selects the tanks, gonna start by pulling it and checking and cleaning it. Also going to check the lines feeding the rear tank and make sure I didn’t kink any. If that’s not it I’ll drop tank and pull sending unit and check that.
Anything else I should be looking at?

 

I have been having similar trouble with my new front tank and the old rear tank. I suspect it was the fuel filler caps not venting properly. I had recently put a new cap on the rear. The engine would do fine for a while then sputter & misfire until I switched to the other tank. So I took the new rear cap back off and put my old leaky cap back on, now the rear tank seems to work fine. The front tank I just recently put on a vented cap from Kaiser-Willys, but the jury is still out there. I may be fighting another problem there.

 

I had that same problem with a pressure washer I bought. Took awhile to figure it out but it was the cap.

 

I'm a believer in a dedicated vent tube in the filler neck with a nonvented cap. Add a rollover valve if you want.

 

I didn’t get a chance to look at it today because we came up to the lake for the weekend. Jw60 just reminded me that I blocked off the vent tube with a bolt when I dropped the tank and I don’t remember pulling the bolt and reconnecting it to filler tube.

 

I got a chance today to take a look at what’s going on with the rear tank, found a couple things.
First thing was that I hadn’t removed the bolt and reconnected the vent line.
Second thing I found was I had a slight kink in the supply hose just off the sending unit and the hose looked like it had vacuum and collapsed. I had spare Russell pro II fuel line under the seat, so I pulled the old hose and swapped the AN fittings to new hose and reinstalled.
Third thing I did was pull the inline fuel filter and cleaned it out, wasn’t too bad but it did have some trash in it.
Took it back out and ran it down freeway at 65mph….problem fixed.

 

I’m posting my winter to-do list here for my JEEP projects, so I don’t forget what needs to be done:
1. Change out rear shocks
2. Add dash bar and harness bar to roll bar and tie into frame, or build new cage?
3. Need to revisit placement of rear spring mounts.
I moved them to the rear 1 inch and stretched the front by 3 inches when I did the original build because I was running 31” tires, now I’m running 33” tires. The suspension works great only issue is the tires hit the back bottom of the wheel well opening and I don’t want to trim the body.
This shows where it made contact before I had it fixed.
'
you can see how far back it sits in wheel well.

4. Fuel injection

 

5. Remove unused parking brake on back of Dana 18

 

I’ve been looking at the rear wheel opening and moving the axle forward 1”. I really like the way the suspension works and don’t want to cut off the spring mounts just to move it forward 1”. So l was looking at Ruffstuff and found new spring perches and plates that have several holes drilled so axle can be mounted forward or backward in 1” increments. Reading description they say they are for spring over applications and I’m running the axle spring under. My question to you is do you think they will work in a spring under application or am I missing something.
https://www.ruffstuffspecialties.com/D44-PERCH.html
https://www.ruffstuffspecialties.com/25J-UPLT.html