Just a small project

Ok, its been a year and its time for an update!

I had to work a crazy schedule last summer doing 60+ hour weeks so I didn’t get a chance to get the jeep out again for summer. A real bummer after doing all that work, but you gotta do what’cha gotta do to stay afloat! This summer looks almost just as busy, but I have a few runs planned anyway.

I decided this spring to take the jeep out to Johnson Valley and the Tinbenders Jamboree April 28th. Having never been, but hearing a lot of stories I knew the jeep needed more preperation before going. I got a bonus at work so I bought some new tires, 39.5 Iroks!


I also bought a winch. I didn’t want to spend a $1k on a new warn so I bought a cheapo Engo off my buddy Dave at Polyperformance.


I’ve been fighting power steering pump cavitation issues since I finished this thing. I rebuilt the scout box and that didn’t help. I ported the valve in the box and that helped to make it steer a little faster, but it still cavitated. Thinking that my old reman pump was finally done, I bought a new PSC pump. It also helped make the steering a little faster. After putting the pump on I decided to relocate the resevior in order to eliminate some sharp 90* turns in the return line and pump feed line.
Old:


New:


Unfortunately, I’m still plagued with power steering pump issues.

There is more to come,
Kevo

 

So now it was time to go wheel.

I brought my friend Chad with me on this trip. He has a fairly well built Toyota, but decided not to bring it, which is fairly wise if you don’t know what your getting yourself into. For those of you that don’t know, Johnson Valley is a large OHV area in the southern California desert. There is almost no vegetation and very little wildlife so it is legal to drive literally where ever you want to. Most everyone camps on Means dry lakebed and all the rock trails are in the surrounding mountain ranges. Basically, any ravine or canyon where boulders have collected, there is most likely a trail. I signed up for Sledgehammer, one of the older trails in the area. I remember when I was a teenager reading magazine articles featuring this trail and I’ve always wanted to run it! It didn’t disappoint us!

After the seven hour tow over there we found our friends and set up camp. You camp on a dry lake bed, there is no shade, water, or bathrooms. Its rough! I was already beat! We ate dinner then decided to hit a trail that evening. My friends said it would be easy and quick, maybe an hour tops. Right! I had forgotten the camera, but no biggie it would get dark soon anyways. We hit the trail head and had to wait for someone else who broke their rear shaft to get pulled back down the trail. So now I’m in a jeep that I built in my garage that I’ve never had on the rocks and I’m at one of the hardest locations to go wheeling and its dark! I’m nervous to say the least! We start in, luckily I got my LED rock lights on before the trip, and almost instantly my PS pump starts whining. I decide not to care and keep going. Its not happy, but its working and the jeep is handling everything with ease. We get the last obstacle and Greg in his YJ buggy has a hell of a time with it and decides to winch forward. Riley is next in his J-truck and promptly gets stuck or more aptly wedged between a rock, a rock and a rock. As Greg turns around to try to winch him, Riley pulls a stupid and gets on the gas and snaps his rear t-case yoke. So now he only has front wheel drive. We spend the next 4 hrs trying to get him out and in the process I break the new winch. It won’t spool in or out, the brake is locked up on it. With the help of some other wheelers we are able to get him unwedged and I manage to pull him back down the trail. I don’t know what time it is and the wind is blowing badly and our tent is flopped over because of it.

Still more to come, maybe I shoulda put this in trip reports,
Kevo

 

Well you got a good lookin rig for sure and sounds like you had the best of luck on the short run. Hope you can get the bugs worked out of her...shes purdy.

 

It may not have been the trip you expected, but you got a story out of it! My vote.....good trip.

 

thats it Kevo...

i quit...

im puttin all my stuff on the curb and telling all my friends that i have seen the coming of moses the mechanic... and i am running away before the rapture...

your work is AMAZING... bravo to you and your success...

im going back to coloring books and crayons

 

It gets better, at least the wheeling does, the camping is still horrible.

After getting an hour or so of sleep I get up to get ready for the actual run that day. Last night was just a not so quick intro to JV. The winch was a requirement for the run so that you don’t hold the group up needlessly. With no more winch and my steering still giving me problems I was unsure if I should even go on the run, but I decided that I came to wheel and I’d let the trail leader know the winch wasn’t working and leave it up to them. In the hustle and bustle of getting ready I forget the camera, but I remember my boss’s gopro camera. Luckily I wound up getting some pics from other people that went on the run with us.

Lining up on the lakebed. Hey, that’s me trying to mount the gopro camera!


So we have the driver meeting and takeoff for the run. This run was being led by All Pro Offroad, which was kinda neat since I have some of their parts on my Toyota. Of course out of 10 vehicles on the run there were only 2 jeeps. We get to the trail head and it starts out fairly easy, but I can tell its going to get hard quickly. The steering is starting to make noise, but I learned if I leave the engine running while we stop it doesn’t puke fluid out.

We hit the first major ledge climb.


This took some work to get up. Oddly enough the rocks seem really polished and smooth out there.


I tried all kinds of different lines and with a bit of help made it up, but then I got stuck on another rock.


I was high centered on it and no matter what I did I could not get the rear driver side tire to climb it. I wound up trying to go further right and almost rolled the jeep. I pushed the clutch in just in case and it dropped back down. Here is a video:


We came to the general consensus that I had too much air pressure in the tires. I had been at 4psi last night and people were telling me how much they were folding over so I aired up to 10 for this run. Eventually I made it over the rock and further up the trail and aired down to 6psi. We spent another 2hrs or so getting everyone else up this ledge so I didn’t feel too bad.

Here is a short video I made while we were hanging out.


We went maybe an 1/8 mile further up the trail to the next major obstacle, the plaque ledge. The Victory Valley Four Wheelers pioneered this trail and put a plaque with their club logo on one of the rocks next to the obstacle. You can almost see it above my roll cage.


I spent the majority of my time here grinding my drivers side door panel. The rocks to the right of the jeep want to push the jeep left into the larger rock on the left. The drivers rear is then forced to climb a slight undercut ledge that’s about four feet tall. We stacked a few rocks and that didn’t help, eventually I went further right and was able to crawl up it. Of course the extracab Tacoma behind me walked right up it!

After that the IFS Tacoma in front of us wound up breaking a cv in the front and stopped to fix it. We waited for a while and with some prodding from the others decided to push on to the mailbox. The trail leader was blocking the main part of the trail so we wound up trying an optional line going high up on the canyon wall and making a right turn around a huge boulder. That was probably the coolest climb I did that day and of course no pics or video!

At the mailbox some of the guys took off to run another trail and we waited for the broken Tacoma. After he was fixed and made it up the last climb, everyone hauled but out the last portion of trail and back to camp. I was amazed it was only 3:30 when we got back! I think we spent 7.5hrs going 1.5miles!

That night was the dinner and raffle put on by the tinbenders. Camping was still horrible that night. Our group suffered a cracked trans pan, one roll over going down hill, a broken d-shaft, a broken t-case yoke, and my broken winch. We were all pretty beat on Sunday morning, so with everyone packing up and leaving we decided to leave too. It was a quick trip, but a good one!

The jeep did surprisingly well. While we had some traction issues, I never felt like I was pushing it too hard. Besides the steering issue and broken winch everything else performed flawlessly.

Kevo

 

Naw, its just time and money man! 4-5K a year, 10hrs per week over 6yrs and anyone can do this stuff.

Kevo

 

So you gonna come up and wheel the 'con with us this year? I would love to see your jeep in action.

 

I wish! Its been too long since I've been on the con! Too bad work will keep me here for most of summer. Now if I could only figure out how to take summers off!

We are headed up to the Blue Canyon Poker run up by shaver lake this weekend, hopefully I'll be able to get away from work and do swamp in july and dusy in august.

Kevo

 

be safe my friend!

 

Got back from the Blue Canyon Poker run. Had a great time and the camping sure beats the hell out of camping on a dry lake bed!



The run is not super hard, actually its pretty easy, but its nice to get up to the mountains this time of year. There were a few granite areas to play on.






The steering seemed to work way better than it did previously. I think the royal purple ps fluid actually helped. It seemed that if I left the fan on “high” all the time that it would stay cool enough to not cavitate. So I drove around with the fan on and trying not to rev the **** out of the engine. Steep climbs would still set it off though.

I’ve looked at relocating the pump and that’s not going to happen unless I switch it with the alt that’s down low on the pass side. I’m not completely ruling that idea out just yet, but I may try mounting the resi a little closer. It looks like I can get a psc resi closer than my old Toyota res if I relocate some egr stuff, 8” away vs. 16”. I’m thinking I can also make up some heat shields to keep the lines and resi from absorbing radiant heat from the exhaust header.

At least we’re making progress and the jeeps getting used!

Kevo

 

Is there such a thing as a power steering fluid cooler? Seems like a small tranny cooler might work.

 

As far as I know everyone just uses tranny coolers. I do believe they make a few different fluid coolers that could be used for PS.

I've allready got a large(8x10 I think) trans cooler right in front of the rad for the steering. Thats why I was running the rad fan all the time. However, the cooler is about an inch to 1.5 inch in front of the rad. I've been thinking of just running a dedicated fan on it. Basicly anything I can do to eliminate heat.

Its baffling that by just porting a steering box and adding a hydraulic ram that its changed the hydraulics enough to cause such a headache. It is nice when it works though! Even with jeep nosed down and all the weight on the front end thats welded I can easily turn the wheel, albeit slowly.

Kevo

 

that video is SWEET... nice job on the build, dood...

very nice indeed

 

Lets see if a I an put on paper what I am thinking. Is the pump, pumping the fluid and some where in your system there is a restriction and the fluid is not moving that fast. Therefore the fluid stays in the pump and is heated up. Is a bypass needed or is it possible

 

I’ve been working 6 days a week again, but I found some time to work on this thing today.

I ordered a new PSC reservoir and had a heck of a time trying to fit it in there. I decided to get rid of my EGR in order to make it fit. The latter jeep 4.0HO motors don’t use EGR and I really doubt that I need it now that I don’t drive it on the highway at all. I made a nice little aluminum block off plate for the EGR, and I was able to mount the resi closer to the pump. So now my pump feed line is only 9” long instead of the 16” previously and I was able to ditch the one 90* fitting at the reservoir. Other than being huge and difficult to mount the reservoir is pretty nice, even has a filter in it.



Started working on a grab bar for the passenger side. I’m going to make it collapsible to make getting in and out easier. I haven’t had anything for the pass to grab onto and I am concerned about someone grabbing the sides of the cage and losing their fingers in a rollover.



Installed a new temperature sending unit for the radiator fan. That was surprisingly easy and straightforward so I’m not expecting it to work well. I had a temp sensor that was mounted to an extra threaded port on the t-stat housing. Even though it’s the wrong location for a fan sensor, it had been working well, but after this rebuild it seems to not want to kick on till 210* and that’s higher than I’d like to be. I was able to find a different sensor and its now mounted in the water pump where one of the heater hoses plugged into. I have no idea how well that will work, but I kept the old sensor in place just in case and I can easily swap the wires over. Ideally you want the fan temp sensor in the cold side of the radiator, however my radiator has no provisions for a temp sensor.

I’ve been thinking of building a 9” rear-end for the jeep recently. Its very low on the priority list, but I’d like to get an ARB for the rear at some point and there is no sense in getting one for a rear-end I’m not going to keep. The 70hd I currently have is BEEF, but its also huge, heavy, and the hubs stick way out. I actually have a half inch less ground clearance with the 70 on 39.5s, than my Toyota on 35s. While I doubt that my current motor can break the 70 I also think it would have trouble breaking a 35spline 9”.

Kevo

 

Cant say nothing bad about a 9". They are great axles and should be a good candidate for a swap.

 

Time for a july 4th update.

Luckily I didn’t have to do my patriotic duty today and go to work(I work in the defense industry), so after going on a quick hike with the lady, I was able to get in some jeep time.

Got the roof rack done. It has no bottom, its simply a square hoop that bolts onto the roof.


Then I finished Carries “oh $#!&” bar. Its extendable.


I also removed the power steering filter I had gotten from napa. At the time it seemed like a good idea, but I’m wondering if they just don’t flow that well and it was causing a restriction in the lines the whole time. The new psc res has an internal filter so I don’t need it anymore anyways. I guess I’ll find out in a few weeks.

Kevo

 

sweet. When you takin her back out?