What did you do in the garage / driveway today?

DOWNS

DOWNS

YJ Enthusiast
Supporting Member
Joined
Jun 16, 2023
Messages
200
Location
HUNT COUNTY TEXAS
Here is a thread for when you don't want to start a whole thread but want to post about what minor projects, maintenance or mods you've done recently.

Removed and reinstalled the T-case on the YJ again today. I pulled it out last week to replace the transmission output seal and while it slowed the leak it didn't stop it. I suspected the transfer case input shaft was the reason for this.

When I pulled it apart to replace it the first time I noticed it had quite a groove in it where the inner lip of the seal rode on the shaft, but the old seal was warped on install by one of the previous owners and had a small cut in it so I figured a new seal would fix it.
It did not. I pulled it apart again, I love how easy these are to work on. I had the tcase out in about 45 minutes. I picked up a "speedi sleeve" which is a repair that consists of a very thin metal sleeve that goes over the old shaft and provides a new sealing surface. I wanted to get a new input shaft for the transfer case but after an hour of exhaustive searching on the parts sites, ebay ect I found that there were no 21 spline short input shafts with the narrow bearing surface avalaible anywhere. This prompted me to use the speedi sleeve.

So got it back together this morning after getting another seal, I Mongoed the new seal I had when it got cockeyed in the bore and I had to order up another one. Whoops. Took it for a test drive this morning after getting it back together and so far no more leaking.
 
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Not driveway or garage, but, back yard!
Today was replace leaky heater core!
When I bought my '89, it came with a brand new in the box almn. radiator!
The one in the jeep looked, well ratty.
Before swapping, I flushed engine and heater core.
Well, first test ride after install and all oil swaps..... Surprise! Antifreeze on floor.
( P.O. had replaced fan motor, one wonders why not the original core, whilst it was out)????????
By passed it and ordered new one.
Came in 2 days ago.
Wasn't a HARD job, more annoying. Had to elongate holes for new core mounting bolts so core pipe not touching anything.
Pulling it out was hard, reinstalling it was as hard??!!
Push, pull, curse, both ways.
I say it took 3 hours to do.
The flex hose to defrost vents crumbled, gotta figure out way to make/ repair what's left of it.
Another job crossed off the," to do" list!
HEI and carb is next!!
Joe
 
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Not today but lately, been working on regearing my D30 back to 4.10 from 4.88. My first time attempting gears. Interesting experiment with tons of disassembly and reassembly for someone who isn’t experienced in gear setup. Taken apart plenty of diffs for various reasons but never set up gears. I need a lot more time than what I had this weekend. This is part of my back to stock saga, except “stock” for me will be lower gears than factory would have been.
 
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machoheadgames said:
Not today but lately, been working on regearing my D30 back to 4.10 from 4.88. My first time attempting gears. Interesting experiment with tons of disassembly and reassembly for someone who isn’t experienced in gear setup. Taken apart plenty of diffs for various reasons but never set up gears. I need a lot more time than what I had this weekend. This is part of my back to stock saga, except “stock” for me will be lower gears than factory would have been.
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The first one I rebuilt was an AMC20 in a CJ5. Thankfully I have a friend that runs his own shop that mostly does modern Jeeps, he's farmed a few older CJs out to me to get running, but he was able to give me pointers and advice along the way and I managed to get it back together without any whines or hums lol
 
DOWNS said:
The first one I rebuilt was an AMC20 in a CJ5. Thankfully I have a friend that runs his own shop that mostly does modern Jeeps, he's farmed a few older CJs out to me to get running, but he was able to give me pointers and advice along the way and I managed to get it back together without any whines or hums lol
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Lol. I've discussed in good depth with some experiences friends and have watched a ton of YT vids. Definitely understand the process, but just so much trial and error to get it right. Hopefully can get the front done this upcoming weekend so I can button it all up and then work on the D35 before I swap it in. D35 should be easier than D30. D30 has multiple weird baffles and such that you have to be careful about not bending throughout the process. I also didn't know that my pinion depth should be around .070 total which I learned yesterday, so I'm going to start fresh with that when I have time and see if that finally gets me about where I need to be, and make minor adjustments from there.
 
Started a cargo box/sleeping platform project on the YJ. I'd like to be able to take this out on solo trips comfortably while also cutting down on some of the gear I carry, such as my large tent. Got the frame and mounting tabs for the cargo portion done today. Tomorrow I'll build the frame (if I have enough 1x1 16ga square tubing) for the sleeping extension and get all the mounting tabs and whatnot done and maybe see about picking up a sheet of plywood to make the tops and the front and side wall of the cargo box. The passenger seat will be removed, and the sleeping extension will be bolted in place where it currently sits.

I envision it being sort of modular. Cargo box for short trips and the like, remove it if I need to haul kids, and sleeping extension for long trips.

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No pictures today. Welded in 21 1"x1.5" tabs to attach the side panels to and support the lids. And cut the side panels with some plywood I found in my attic. Not enough plywood to cut the lids yet and I don't have the hinges for the main portion of the box. The front portion will not be hinged.
 
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Pretty much wrapped up on the YJ's cargo/sleep platform. At this point, it's just testing and tweaking as needed, and maybe a test sleep one night. I also added tie downs to the fender boxes for the "house battery" and the folding table. The folding table is the reason the box is offset somewhat to the passenger side.


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DOWNS said:
Got the blower working again.

https://www.facebook.com/blackredlinedrvr/posts/pfbid02knAR2AdpzC7NYwpdXsJQff6q3oWsjqKoCR4HK5AsBHddXR9ZPEVqXxghZaXaFPhGl
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Curious what was wrong with it? 10y ago (right after I got mine), it was super intermittent. I was not automotively inclined at all back then, so after struggling to remove the heater box (due to AC in the way), I had a shop change the blower assuming it was bad, and throw in a new heater core while they were in there.

Didn’t fix it. Turned out the problem was the arm on the blower switch was slightly bent and so it was just on the cusp of turning the blower on when it was supposed to be fully on. Made for finicky operation along parts of the slider. Bent the arm back to proper shape a bit and it worked perfectly from that point forward.
 
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Still not entirely sure. I think it's probably ignition switch/wiring related, based on my troubleshooting and going by the wiring diagrams, the heat/blower wiring is pretty simple overall. I'm still undoing a lot of wiring SNAFUs from the previous owners, some of which involved the column wiring, which based on how power flows in this circuit has got me thinking it's part of the column wiring that's causing the issue. Basically, I have no power at the fuse panel for the heater/blower 25 amp fuse. Until I can dig deeper into the steering column, I wired the fused side of the blower microswitch to my aux fuse panel. So other than the system being able to run while the Jeep is "off" everything else works as intended.

I also had to fix the vacuum switch and blend door cables. The blend door cable had a kink in the slider panel end that I straightened out, and the vacuum switch was detached from the slider panel left to dangle with the vacuum feed line unhooked and left to dangle.

What I really need to do is pull the dash panel back and fix what's hacked up. Same for the column as a whole. They removed the horn switch from the steering wheel and put it on a push button at the base of the column. I've got the center "cap" but need to grab the horn button hardware and rewire back up properly.

The joys of undoing 28 years of neglect and "fixes".
 
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Troubleshot the 4wd indicator. Everything I can test checks out. Bulb is good, vacuum switch is good, power at the connector and ground is good, trying to think of how I would test that circuit in the gauge panel itself, as it has that paper thin printed circuit thing on the back of the panel1. Still no joy. Oh well not a critical part.

Added a flip up table to the tailgate. Just gotta figure out a prop rod or some other kind of support.

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DOWNS said:
Troubleshot the 4wd indicator. Everything I can test checks out. Bulb is good, vacuum switch is good, power at the connector and ground is good, trying to think of how I would test that circuit in the gauge panel itself, as it has that paper thin printed circuit thing on the back of the panel1. Still no joy. Oh well not a critical part.

Added a flip up table to the tailgate. Just gotta figure out a prop rod or some other kind of support.

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Which part are you talking about when you say “power at the connector and ground”? The connector at the CAD for the light switch?

The light switch on the CAD (91-95 models) is usually not in good shape by now. The wiring is integrated into it and often starts to corrode and crumble. If you haven’t verified that switch to be working yet, it may be the problem. That part is unavailable to buy but a dodge version exists and just needs a quick weather pack pigtail made. That’s what I’ll be doing on mine.
 
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Yes, looking at the wiring diagram, this circuit uses a switched ground instead of switched power. Like a horn. So I've verified the following.

Bulb-not blown confirmed working by hooking it to a 12v source and it lit up.

Switch at the CAD-functional, verified using continuity setting on multimeter. Open circuit when in 2wd, closed/continuity in 4wd.

Power at connector at switch-verified with multimeter

Good ground though connector-verified with multimeter.

Vacuum motor at CAD functional-verified by putting shifter in 4wd with front passenger tire jacked up and not able to rotate after shifting into 4wd.

I even tried removing the CAD switch from the equation by jumping the power wire to ground, no luck there either.

At this point, I'm leaning towards the printed circuit on the back of the gauge cluster to be the problem but I need to shoot the gauge cluster connector to be sure.
 
DOWNS said:
Yes, looking at the wiring diagram, this circuit uses a switched ground instead of switched power. Like a horn. So I've verified the following.

Bulb-not blown confirmed working by hooking it to a 12v source and it lit up.

Switch at the CAD-functional, verified using continuity setting on multimeter. Open circuit when in 2wd, closed/continuity in 4wd.

Power at connector at switch-verified with multimeter

Good ground though connector-verified with multimeter.

Vacuum motor at CAD functional-verified by putting shifter in 4wd with front passenger tire jacked up and not able to rotate after shifting into 4wd.

I even tried removing the CAD switch from the equation by jumping the power wire to ground, no luck there either.

At this point, I'm leaning towards the printed circuit on the back of the gauge cluster to be the problem but I need to shoot the gauge cluster connector to be sure.
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Gotcha. Probably is a printer circuit board issue then. The bulb does use a switched ground. The 5-gauge cluster has a switched ignition power circuit that powers the gauges (there might be 2 ignition power wires split amongst the 5 gauges, it’s been a while since I looked at the diagram) and they are each operated by ground so ground for the 4wd bulb runs through the CAD switch.

Unfortunately you’ll probably need to either rig up your circuit board or buy another cluster, as I don’t think anyone sells a replacement circuit board for 92-95. But maybe that has changed since I last looked.
 
"...At this point, I'm leaning towards the printed circuit on the back of the gauge cluster to be the problem but I need to shoot the gauge cluster connector to be sure..."
Have you tried to clean up the contacts at the bulb and the circuit board? This resolved a problem for me on my gauge cluster. A tiny piece of 220 or an emery board might be worth a shot. There's a lot of years of moisture getting back there to corrode that board. Good luck.
 
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Replaced all the radiator and heater lines. All still marked with "DOM 05/95". I can't believe these things lasted almost 30 years without failing and needing to be replaced.
 
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