Lift Install and CDL

A lot has happened since the last time I posted here. Not much wrench time was to be had until I got home from my deployment, and then, much to Shawna's chagrin, it was on!

While still overseas I ordered a 2 inch Old Man Emu lift kit from Tony over at LRRForums. I bought the springs and shocks from Tony and then bought some used Rovertym SLS spacers for the rear because I wanted to keep my airbags for towing. The install went extremely quickly so by the time Carl came over to lend a hand the rear was already finished and the toughest part of the front was compressing the springs.

Before we knew it the truck was sitting almost three inches higher than she had before the job was complete. About a week later the Center Diff Lock linkage had arrived and was ready for install, or so I thought!

The Series 1 Discoveries all had a shifter linkage from the factory to lock the center differential, but with the advent of the traction control on the Series 2 Land Rover did away with it and thought that was the answer. The transfer cases though from the Series 1 were still in abundance and LR did not waste them, instead installing them in the D2s just without the linkage to activate it.

I have the correct transfer case with 'the guts' to lock the differential, but no linkage, so I waited until someone was parting out a Series 1 and bought the linkage.

The CDL install was relatively painless, just a little more time consuming, and the fact that I was missing a part made it all the worse. Total install time was probably around four hours but it took two days in between trips to Autozone and Lowe's.

Once it was all said and done though, she looked great, and drove phenomenally when locked. I tested her out in locked mode out in a field with some gravel in it. Worked like a charm.

Next step of course was a trail test, and that would be coming soon at URE4!

Swivel seal fun

Sorry, been a while since I posted but work has kept me pretty busy. Latest, aside from some small painting projects, has been the swivel oil seal. Some might remember when I bought Sam I was assured by the previous owner that all of the fluids had been changed recently, to include the swivel gear oil.

And then I noticed the oil didn't look so great, and so I dropped all of the drain plugs and took a look see ... and, well, the driver side swivel oil didn't drain at all. So the part was ordered, and it's been sitting in the garage for about two weeks now and I finally got around to fitting it.

What a nightmare. First it was all pretty gross, even after the bath. So my day sort of started with a screwdriver and a chisel getting all of the garbage peeled off of the backing. I pulled both wheels just to have a frame of reference. The first thing I noticed was that the brake adjuster screws were stripped to shit, just chewed up like you wouldn't believe. I skipped a step from the Green Bible here, vowing to come back if I absolutely had to.

Which I did. I removed as much as I could but then had to go back to the screws. They weren't cooperating, so they were drilled out and the hub popped off. I cleaned that up, painted it for appearance sake, and then moved on. After that it all came off as promised, the only snag being I didn't think I'd have to disconnect the brake line so I still have a bleed job ahead of me.

So now she is still disassembled in the driveway, more tools than a Nascar pit crew on race day scattered about and awaiting a trip tomorrow for bits and pieces. More to follow.

Major surgery!

Quick disclaimer: This post may or may not be extremely long and saturated with photographs. I do not apologize, as the purpose of this post was both for chronicling Sam's surgery and for educational purposes of those who are contemplating a tear down of their own.

Okay, as many know I have had a cooling system issue/chronic backfiring issue for quite some time. Most of the components of the cooling system were replaced or repaired at one point or another prior to the major surgery she was about to undergo.

After being anesthetized and preparing properly courtesy of Rovers North, I went in with tools! Pre-ordered was the head gasket, the intake manifold gasket, the valve cover gasket, the carb rebuild kit, the swivel ball sealer and all the other miscellaneous gaskets and nuts and bolts necessary for completion.

First I took a long hard look at the engine compartment and made a mental list on what was going to be removed for work purposes only, what would be removed for cleansing purposes only, and then what pieces would be pulled for cleansing, prime and paint purposes. Once the list was complete I started removing things. First thing was to drain the coolant, and then parts began coming off.

Battery, heater pipes, distributor cap, thermostat and housing, disconnect all the cooling hoses, remove spark plugs, valve cover, carb, manifold, head ... for the most part in that order. Once all of the major players were taken off I did remove some extra things like the expansion tanks, the washer fluid reservoir, accelerator linkage, stuff like that to clean and paint.

Carbon residue on backside of carb ... right at #4 cylinder

Carb removed

Carb is off, juiced up head bolts, valve train is next followed by the manifold.

The valve train assembly took a little ingenuity from those guys at Solihull ... the Green Bible outlines a method of removing the entire valve train without giving it an opportunity to fall apart on you, thus requiring an entire rebuild ... if you can find all of the bits you dropped! Basically once the retaining bolts are removed and the assembly is just resting in its location on the head, you take the valve cover you have already removed, flip it upside down and set it back on the train so that the retaining bolt holes align. Then you take the retaining bolts, thread them in enough to get good grip, and then pull the assembly off and the train remains intact.

Neat valve train removal trick ... the cover is upside down on top of the valve train.
I used the original valve cover bolts, threaded them back through just enough
to get tension, and then lifted the entire assembly out of the head.

The head gasket, when removed, did not look nearly as bad as I had thought/hoped. All of the cylinders looked fine, #4 was a little charred but that's where I figured my problem was to begin with so I was okay with that.

Head out of the truck, old gasket in foreground.

Head removed, uncleaned.

I scraped the gasket off, cleaned up the face and prepared for new installation. I checked the plane and all looked good, so I installed the new gasket, all nice and shiny, and then proceeded with putting the head back together.

New head gasket in place. Shiny compared to the old one I scraped off!

All went on smoothly, everything looked good. There was a big amount of carbon build up on the backside near #4, so still, right along.

Cylinder #4 ... this is the end I felt I was having problems with. As I uncovered
things, it all pointed to this end of the gasket.

All the planes looked decent, so I put the finishing touches on some of the painted pieces, reinstalled, and then set about putting the rest back in place. Before installing the valve cover I re-gapped all of the tappets as they were all misaligned.

Valve cover gasket in place.

I started with the thermostat housing and ran into my first problem. There are three bolts holding it into place, and the third I went to tighten down was going fine until finally it broke free - snapping itself off in the housing. While this may sound horrible, it was actually the best bolt to snap as the hole goes all the way through; the other two seat into the head, so I lucked out. A quick trip to Lowe's for some grade 8 bolts and I was back in business.

Put all the housing back together and then made short work of the remaining bits, aside from the accelerator linkage which gave me some trouble, but then all was good. I started filling her up with coolant in hopes of a successful first-fire and noticed coolant ... lots of it oozing out of the gaskets around the thermostat housing. The manual didn't call for any RTV so I hadn't used any ... drain coolant from drain bolt, drop bolt while draining, search feverishly for bolt beneath me with thumb plugging the hole ... find bolt, install on second time, get up soaked with anti-freeze and disgruntled.

I changed clothes, becoming a little more irritated all along. Back to work, remove thermostat housing, coat in RTV on both sides, re tighten all of the coolant hoses, bolt back together. Reinstalled the carb, as I had already rebuilt it the previous night. Read the removal instructions in reverse from the Green Bible to ensure I hadn't forgotten anything stupid and all looked good.

I sat in the driver seat a little anxious ... I knew the fuel bowl in the carb would need to fill before she fired up so I gave the key a turn and let her try and crank; and then she did, and fired up right away. She sounded like she was running high, so I tinkered with the carb until she was running right. A quick test drive around the block was successful for a few minutes ... and then she died on a turn. Just shut down.

After a few minutes of fiddling with her in the dark I phoned a friend who towed me home. Once I got her under the lights I found the culprit ... the ignition wire running from the coil to the distributor had gotten tangled in the accelerator mechanism when I put it back together. After putting a new lead on, and zip tying it into place, she started right up.

Much cleaner and nicer looking than before.

A drank a beer and celebrated the moment.

Conclusion:

With proper planning and no unexpected surprises this was a job that could have taken four to five hours, from tear down to all systems go. It took me closer to 12 overall because A) I did the tear down over the course of a week B) I cleaned and painted a lot of things I didn't have to C) I did a valve tune and carb tun and rebuild and D) I broke a bolt off in the thermostat housing and had to burn time going for parts. I rounded the day out with removing a lot of the previous owner's wire-tying handi-work ... there were lots of green and yellow zip ties in the engine compartment which just didn't seem right so I removed them all started from scratch with black.

Definitely scores a 3 out of 5 on the difficulty level, mainly because there is no real skill necessary, but being able to read the manual is extremely important. The directions are step by step and it is simply a matter of taking enough things off the engine to get to the gaskets that need replacing.

All in all though, a great educational experience and a fun time with Sam! Even baby girl got to help!

Emaline honking the horn and scaring the crap out of me!

Me and my girl after a long day's work.

Timing, points, head gasket?

Okay, so my folks were in town for the weekend and Dad and I set about getting the timing right on Sam. She'd been running a little sluggish and we found out why when we fired the timing light at the pulley.

The manual calls for a 5 degree advance on the timing past top dead center. When we first tested the timing she was almost 15 degrees below top dead center! Basically, from what I understand about timing, is that the timing is all about explosion. The spark is provided by the spark plug, which fires and drives the piston up and down. If the explosion is too early then most of the power to drive the piston is lost sending it upward, and not much is left to push it back down. If it is too late, then all the energy is wasted on pushing the piston down.

Sam was firing way too late, by 15 degrees. So we adjusted the distributor until she was in set parameters meted out by Land Rover almost 35 years ago. Now she runs great, more power, hopefully better fuel consumption, and a lot less backfiring than we were getting before. The carb still needs tuning, but we'll get to that shortly.

I am also under the assumption that my head gasket is blown. Not sure how it happened, but it's better than a cracked block that I first thought I might have. My coolant has been frothy, a messy substance and, while I'm not positive, I think I've got some oil in there. Will attack once confirmed. Never done a head gasket so this should be interesting.

Have attached some photos of the fuel sediment bowl which was checked last week, as well as shots of the spark plugs.

Spark plug #1

Close-up, spark plug #1

Fuel sediment bowl, cleaned, from underneath

Fuel sediment bowl, dirty, from underneath

Wow!

There was so much garbage in there I had to scrape some of the goo out with a screwdriver!

Again, dirty.

Fluids and such ...

I'd gotten her up and running, still need a carb tune and some timing done but the fuel management snafu has been alleviated. Somewhere along the way while fussing about with the engine the fuel line from the pump to the carb had been pinched behind the thermostat housing and was starving the carb, making for poor, poor performance.

That's been sorted out. Since I'm waiting for my father to come down this weekend with the timing light, I figured I'd go ahead and do the inevitable, probably something I should have done a while back but didn't have the inclination. I drained the engine oil, the two differentials, as well as the swivel ball housings of their gear oil.

Once all the drain plugs had been tapped I checked for metal deposits and gunk. The motor oil looked extremely black and murky, and inside of the filter cannister I found sludge ... like Exxon Valdez type sludge. I had to wipe the inside of the cannister with a towel and even then it came out like a runny peanut butter. The filter was in real bad shape and probably hadn't been changed in years. I'm glad the guy at the parts store pressed me to order a filter (they didn't carry it) because if he hadn't I would have done as the previous owern seems to have and just changed the oil, leaving the filter in place and tack it on that "when I get around to it" list.

Filter arrives today and I can pick up after work so that will be nice. The differential oil looked water-logged on both ends, so again, I think the previous owner loved going through deep water but didn't bother changing the fluids when he was done; which is dumb. Diff plugs are easy access and you can buy EP-90 buy the gallon for around $10.

I left them to drain while I set to work on the swivel balls, which is the reason I started tearing things down in the first place. I was driving the other morning and after about five miles I started hearing this strange noise from the front right tire, like it was rubbing on something. I didn't find anything, but parked the truck until I could investigate. And this led me to dry as the Sahara swivel ball on the right side.

The swivel ball is slightly pitted, although not more than normal, but when I ran my fingers across the metal I didn't feel a layer of grease as I should have. I opted to drain them both in the front and refill. The passenger side ball was fine and drained some (not much) oil, which also tells me the previous owner neglected this part of routine simple maintenance as well. I topped up the passenger side with the appropriate gear oil, but the drive side just kept weeping it through the seal, which is bad. I filled the swivel ball with grease to keep it from drying out until I can pull the entire assemble as rebuild with new seal.

RoverJoe called me in the middle of this to discuss plans for Uwharrie Safari in May, and one thing he mentioned that made me wonder was that in all his years of Land Rover owning experience, there were three types of owners for these finicky vehicles; first you had the 'New Owner' who bought because they wanted the image, and then as the mileage crept up and they were running out of warranty quickly traded in for something different. The second was the 'Blase` Owner' who bought because it was either a good deal or just something to cart them around. These folks typically do little maintenance, intend on beating it up on the trail and then just ridding themselves of it when it's no longer useful. The third is the 'Caring Owner' like myself. The man who bought the vehicle for his love of the simplicity, the mechanics, and the desire to see it back on the road doing what it was designed to do for years to come.

I'm quickly learning Sam's previous owner was a blase` owner. A lot of the little things he could have spent small units of time and money on to keep her healthy just weren't done. Sure some things were accomplished, but I'm willing to bet they were let to fail before any action was taken. And that's how a lot of owners are unfortunately.

Anyway, sorry for long post and no pics, cameras and gear oil don't mix well together. Will post again this weekend sometime after Dad and I figure out just how bad the timing is!

Tricked D90

Found this shot on the internet ... future plans for Sam maybe? Actually I'm just testing out the new 'Clips' from Firefox. More to follow I suppose.

clipped from www.speedace.info

Nothing special

Not much happened today. Cleaned up the engine compartment a little, tightened up the steering, adjusted the parking brake, stuff like that. She's coming along, definitely.

As she sits right now. Nothing special, but she's coming along.

A little posing side view ... finally got the spare tire back on the roof rack.