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Expedition Scrambler..?

Yup... Expletive free but it will be quite scathing none the less. I've spoken about using the "system" multiple times with the shops manager and he concurs that if nobody ever says squat then noting will improve. He's not a bad guy, just working with a (very) small group of government employees at a shop that hasn't seen a remodel since conservatively... maybe the 60s? The newest things there are 4 drive on lifts that are about 15 years old. Its a shame that a program that is such a benefit to soldiers and funded in part by the MWR (morale, welfare, and recriation) is so horribly run down.
I can and will be extremely professional with how I word my letter as I know where it goes and it doesn't do to have to stand before "the man" to try and explain an outburst where a better method is expected. But there will be a reckoning. Even if it does nothing but get heard at the top... I will at least make the attempt to get the ball of change in motion. I understand that it won't benefit me in the least since I will be leaving here very soon. Worst thing that could happen is the shop gets closed but I don't see that happening. They recently remodeled the shop on the next base over and that took around 3 years to complete. In the interim the shop was reopened in a temp facility that was actually better than the one I have here. If it wasn't so far to drive and risk having to find a way home should I run across a "no ride home" type of repair, I would honestly work over there. Nicer people and cleaner facilities. Costs me the same either way. But rest assured I will draft a letter and see where the chips fall. :)
 
Jeep Country dance step...

Two steps forward...shuffle back. Repeat.
Today was a better day. Funny how when the shop manager is there, things get done. lol!
Anyway... Got the exhaust all finished fabricating and am almost finished. Still have to pull the Y pipe section to do a couple final welds but All the figuring out and head scratching as well as pipe cutting is done.
I wanted to hear if the scrounged muffler was going to be to loud or not so I needed to get the Jeep started. I haven't run it in maybe 3 or 4 months so of course the battery was dead. Ran a set of jumper cables to it and poured a little gas in the carb and turned the key...VaROOOOOM! Wide freakin open! ACK! Weird/bad noises coming from the engine area and the thing was running balls out so I quickly killed it and started trying to figure out what the heck was wrong.
Well... since some idiot *ahem* decided to tuck the drive train up to nearly flat they somehow forgot to check over the engine area to see what changed. Seems that with the engine now almost perfectly horizontal in the Jeep, the fan made really good contact with the shroud! DOH! Enough that it stopped the fan in its tracks and bent the blade. :( Not sure where I will find another one but I'll need it. It now has a pretty good vibration even at idle. Nuts! But as I looked around to try and figure out why it was only running wide open I noticed the cause pretty quick. The throttle cable is about 2 inches to short now! With the engines rear raised up it actually pulled the thing through the firewall a bit. I'm not sure yet how I'm going to fix that either.... I may have to start scrounging in the junkyard to see if anything is close.
But on the up side I pulled the cable off and then it fired up normally. And after a good dose of smoking out the shop with whatever was inside the muffler... it is pretty dang quiet! A moderate rumble at idle and just a regular growl at throttle. No hot rod/open pipe sound anymore. I will give it a try for a while but I may go with something a little less reserved later on but at least I know they won't get me for to loud a muffler during inspection. :)
I also got the clutch adjusted as the pedal had about half travel before beginning to engage anything. Now there is about a 1/2 in play... I may have to mess with that more once I get it moving around but that will be later.
We have a 4 day weekend here due to the holiday so I had planned to get more done on Mon & Tues. Well, found out that the shop is, once again, going to be closed for the holiday! FML! Days off and can't work on it is killing me! And I don't think I'll have any more 4 day weekends before I leave this place. I have a good idea that I will be putting in for a week's leave so I can get stuff finished. Its not looking great for time to do the XJ either so I'm going to have to do some brain storming. Tomorrow I will get the XJs winch and bumper on for the (hopefully) last time... Gotta crash so I can get up early for that.
 

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If you were closer I'd give you a shroud and fan...
 
Thanks Randy...
It really isn't "much" of a shroud is it? heehee! And I can probably fix it or reinstall it without the bottom part the broke off maybe. The fan and clutch and anything else I may have screwed up are my bigger worries. Any ideas on what other manufacturer/makes fit AMC water pumps?
 
Most fans/clutches are somewhat universal- I know in the aftermarket we only carried
a couple fan clutches that fit most of the standard rotation water pumps.

Pretty much, if it rotates the correct direction and bolts up, it'll probably work.
 
Cool... Thanks Randy. I hope this week during lunch I can try and scrounge one. I'll try and make little steps of progress until Saturday but I want to be able to move it around (and stop! haha) under its own power by then. Times getting short and I need it mobile and tagged asap! Only about 65 days and counting... :)
 
I got a half day today since most folks still haven't returned to work from the holidays yet so I made a little progress and had a heart attack!
Ran to the off post store that's like a German Ace hardware and picked up the electrical terminals for the wire and some high temp paint for the exhaust. Then I went to the shop to pull the front "Y" pipe section out to do final welds on it thinking it would be too easy. Well... it was but as I was dropping the pipe down the drivers side doughnut gasket slipped out and I got to watch it in slow motion as it fell past my face and shattered all over the floor! Just like the passenger side one did last week!!! About gave myself a heart attack going "Noooooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!!" since I realized there are none around here. Just damn! So after welding up the pipe and hitting it with a coat of paint I decided to drive all over to try and find one. I tried local auto parts stores and even the dumpsters and all the junkyards around hoping to find one that I could make work. Nada! So on my way back to post I stopped in the on post little store where people get their car fixed and can buy some parts. Last time I was in there to ask about the same thing, one of the employees said they don't have any so I figured I was wasting my time. But the other post where I tried the guy just said "whats that" as I put the good one on the counter. I just walked out after he didn't know what it was. But today there was a different guy working the counter at my bases store. I showed him the good one and the shattered one and he went to the back and came out with about a dozen different sizes! Argh! But thank goodness! I'm tired of having to order these little dumb things for no reason. Heck, if he didn't have one I was going to just JB weld it back together and hope it lasted. :)
So back to the shop I went and got all the exhaust put back up in the Jeep. It was about closing time so I shot it with another coat of paint and will torque the manifold gasket bolts again tomorrow or Saturday. I may try and add the fluids tomorrow at lunch and then if I get off work in time, maybe try bleeding the brakes after work. Its soooooo close now... I can taste it! :woohoo:
 
Congratulations:cheers:

I always take for granted how i can just run to 3 different parts stores within 3 miles of my house to get what I need. I always forget about the 'fun" you get to have due to your current location:crazy:
 
Got off late today so all I could do was go by and pick up some oil and brake fluid for the Jeep. Tomorrow... luck favoring me, I should be able to move the Jeep under its own power.... Wish me luck. :)
 
I'm soooooooooo frackin' close I can smell it but still no joy!
Today was a fight... nothing else describes it better since everything I did was a struggle, well, except for getting the fluids in. That went pretty easy, especially since I was able to do them from the top. :)
But as I've mentioned, the shop here is less than up to standard and today they had both the lazy nimrods running the place so you either do it all on your own or waste your time hoping they will get off their butts and do something. The brakes was the major stumbling point today since I never got around to getting the Russell speed bleeders on this jeep. So bleeding brakes alone is pretty much impossible, right? I waited 10 minutes to get one of the vacuum bleeder devices and another 40 minutes trying to get it to work. Asked the shop guy to come show me what I could be doing wrong and it took him 25 minutes just to come see. Not because he was busy, just lazy. Then he looks at it and says "I don't know..." shrugs, and walks away. FAK! After about 20 or 30 more minutes a guy I know showed up and so I offered to pay him to help me. He's a good mechanic and is like me in that he doesn't like to get pulled away from his work to do others so we understand each other. But he did help me and it still took about an hour to get all the air out of the lines and have a decent pedal. We had to pull both the rear valves out to see why they were not flowing fluid and then one of them just refused to go back in. Its always the little freakin things that piss you off, ya know?
With brakes done and fluids in I turned to the carb and the short linkage issue. The problem was really two fold in that the cable was now to short to reach the carbs pivot and the bracket that holds the cable's sheath was to far away from the firewall. After a bit of head scratching I started with the bracket and figured I'd go from there. The simplest solution was to simply cut the bracket and weld the square hole part further back, add a gusset for strength and your done, right? No. I got it cut and cleaned up and then went on the hunt for the welder as someone during the week had rolled it away. What I didn't know was that they had also jacked up the wire in the gun and created a hug bird's nest in the welder! So it was back to trying to get the lazy workers to help me fix it. They get all pissy when someone else fixes stuff (no idea why?) but the worst part was trying to get them to scrounge up a new tip for the gun. They have them... but for some reason hoard them like gold! It took an hour and 20 minutes to get the welder back to working agin and 30 seconds to weld my bracket!
*tangent*
Why do I keep mentioning time here? Because to use the shop we get charged by the hour. A lift by like the one I'm on is about 40 bucks for an 8 hour day. When I spend a good portion of my time waiting for employees or having to fix shop equipment it cuts into my production and costs me money. Makes sense to be annoyed by that, right? Well, adding to my annoyance is the workers attitude about how long my jeep has been inside and the huge bill I've amassed because of it. I get it... the jeep is in the shop and I'm getting charged. But the flippant attitude and snide remarks about it were enough to push me a bit to far. I feel another letter heading to the manager of the facility tonight. Not the shop manager...his boss! Higher if I could find out who that is. Nothing I say will change a thing, at least as long as I am here. But I'm going to vent to them and let my voice ring out. If they don't like it.. I don't give a rat's rear... enough is enough.
End tangent*
So... I got the linkage figured out and robbed some parts off of a 4.0 TBI to extend the linkage swivel backwards and then just tacked it on since I couldn't think of any other way to make it stay in place. Seems to be fine but just as I get done tacking it on, Mr. Lazy # 2 comes by and yells "CLEAN UP TIME!". I'm the only one in that end of the shop. Yelling it? Really? That was it. Packed up my stuff and left before I lost it.
So at the end of the day I am so close I can taste it running. All that is left I think is the fan issue, a fresh battery (which should still be covered under warranty), and put a seat in it. At that point I can at least move it around and see what I have. :) From there it will be moved into a flat bay (on days I can work on it!) and I'll begin repairing the floor and making real seat mounts. Hopefully that will be next weekend.
 
Went to get the paperwork straight so I can tag the Scrambler again and got nothing but flak. Had my 1SG call to try and UnF the situation and hope we now have a solid pile of papers to make it work. I'll go sometime tomorrow and see.
Stopped by the shop to pay up my bill and I guess shoked the manager when I didn't squabble at the 650 bucks! I'm not sure if he expected me to gripe or what but I told him I always pay my due and my opinion on the shop and hours and such don't really effect the fact that I know I have hours with the Jeep in the shop. He thought about it for a while and I guess realized I was legit so we talked a bit about my thoughts and why things are what they are etc..
He then shocked me and said he was going to just make it an even 500 since much of the reason the jeep stays inside is because the lack of help to push it in and out.
So yeah... had to kiss most of the paycheck goodbye but it is what it is. Good note is I am that close to being able to move it around and not have to push. :)
Pulled the battery and took it back to the shop with the reciept. Wasn't sure how that was going to play out since the yellow top Optima was about 3 months shy of the 2 year warranty cut off. The guy looked at it, then at my reciept and says "be right back". Comes out with a brand new one, no questions asked. :) So Saturday I WILL be moving it around. Hopefully into a flat bay so I can knock out the floor repair and seat mounts. Still a good amount of work to do but I'm pecking away at it.
 
I got one of those shrouds hanging in my shop that you can have if you come back to Atlanta. Its just down the road in newnan.
 
Thanks man....I think I'm going to try and fab one up out of aluminum or something at some point. But a visit would be worth it just to see the diesel 8. ;)
 
Both Jeeps are on the boat....WOOOOOOT! It was a HUGE fight and lots of stumbling blocks but I got it done! The XJ arrives first (28 MAR) so I'll pick it up in Baltimore, MD. The CJ will be about a month behind thanks to the Government slow boat. But at least they are all headed home!
I also got a used computer and am working on getting some kind of internet established. I'll have a few lazy days once I final out today and head to the airport. I don't actually fly until next tues so I'll try and post up some of the stories of the builds from hell! :)
 
Man, time flies when you are having fun ;) Congrats on getting them on the boat and on the way home, that is great news... take it easy, post up some stories and before you know it, the Scrambler will be home.

cb
 
Just thinking about you last night. Wondering how you are fairing. Good to hear all is coming together.
 
Argh....
Sitting in the airport hotel and typed a big update last night and now its gone? :( Nuts! My "new" computer is nothing but a huge PITA!
Oh well...
Suffice it to say that all projects done to the extent of getting on the boat and I go wheels up tomorrow morning! WOOT! No idea how I'm gonna get from Baltimore to Ft Myer yet but we'll see. :)
Let me see if I can load the pic of the XJ as it was put on the truck...
 
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