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'Mater - '77 Cherokee S 4-door

That's not (my guess) from an oiling issue but from a very dissimilar hardness to the drive gear. Pretty common when folks install one of the Chinese El CheapO Dizzys and it usually eats the cam and takes a chomp out of other parts. I don't recall anyone saying Mallory dizzys had that effect. Most folks just swap the new drive for the old one of the known to be good matching metals.
 
The Mallory was never installed, he gave up on things before that went in. I see where the PO had boxes from Crown for both the dizzy and cam gears. Curious to pull the timing cover and see what's going on there now.
 
Well, things fell into place for me to get the new engine off of Toby this weekend and I was able to get a cherry picker lined up too (I hope) so I started in full bore on prepping the engine to pull tonight.

Starting point, bird and mouse poo and nut remnants everywhere, but otherwise quite clean really.

Edit: wow these pictures suck... sorry. Should have used tapatalk directly!
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Laura was dying to "polish" it, which amounted to detail spray and a paper towel. She was proud to "get her hands dirty" and actually asked me if it was ok to get them dirty. "Of course it is!!"
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I also got her to help with my anal retentive labeling of everything as I was disassembling. Can you tell whose is whose?
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Finally got the wires, what there are of them, apart to sort. This will be getting fixed on reinstall.
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One question is this rod between a bolt on the block and what appears to be the wiper motor assembly? The assembly end seemed to have an eye that had broken off (not surprising given how much the engine moves). I had pulled the rod out from behind the wiper motor (towards the firewall) to take this picture. For now, it's just stuck on the motor.
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I cleaned up one side of the top of the grille/radiator support, just to see how it would clean up. Can you tell which is which?
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Had to drink THE FSJ beer. Founder's All Day IPA with the GW on the label.
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This was interesting, a heat shield I guess around the fuel filter.
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Air cleaner housing didn't have anything in it and the filter is unused. Carb looks great, no tags and I didn't bother pulling it yet.
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Basically where i got. Everything on top and in front is done/off except for the tranny cooler lines. No big surprises unless you count being pleasantly surprised at how generally clean things are thus far.
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That rod thing I am not sure about. I checked a 78 j-10 w/ 360 I have and no such rod. What bolt is it attached to? Does it pass down past the manifold and bolted onto the block or is it attached to a manifold bolt? With the PO's craftiness with that heat shield it could be anything :p

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Ok, putting in the new motor, which little bits and pieces will I need to have on-hand. I'd like to make a purchase so I have at least most of it on hand. I can already tell I'm going to be glad for the new semi-local AutoZoo with much later hours than the local part stores I usually use...

Should (I think, need detail from Toby on exact state of motor) consist of:

Swapping intake and carb on.
Swapping exhaust manifolds (kinda debating new option here just to avoid any potential warping issues, talk me out of that though)
Mounting all the front mess
Oil pan (already have new gasket kit for this)

Needs:
Black RTV
Intake gasket(s)
Carb gasket
exhaust gasket
Oil Filter
Lots 'o vacuum caps (current are all shot)
Timing cover gasket (Have water pump gasket)
Probably should do water pump, will look for receipt
Thermostat (recommended temp range? Hoses are all good/new)

What engine oil/addatives for first run/break in?

What else?
 
Bolts to plug up the airtube bosses, assuming all that is going away. Keep the Banjo Bolts and replace them with plain. They are made of Unobtanium, and will come in handy for trades/extortion some day.
New belts. Does your alternator have the twin belts? Not sure when that appeared.
I would just do stock manifold and stock water pump.
 
There is no air tube. Think those are welded shut IIRC

Belts are good, but I want to remove the York to trade/sell since the incomplete AC is going anyway, so I need to figure out/get the non-AC belt setup. Any value to the unit in front of the radiator (condenser?) it's coming out too and looks serviceable.

Alternator is dual belt. Need to find a thread on swapping to modern alt. too

Starter is going to be the Mean Green out of the Postal AK part haul. Same as the 258 :thumbsup:

Sent from my iPad HD
 
hey BW, like I said in text, I love this thing!!!
Just as an FYI, I think I might have some AMC v8 gaskets in the "gasket" area of the garage. I will dig around tonight to see what I have left. I might even have a few timing covers (I used to have at least 10 of the factory covers and a few were already cleaned up with new oil pumps in them). Careful on waterpump, have your old one in hand, there were a few different options and they all seemed to bolt on, but some of the castings were different and located the acc brackets in different places. With my CJ it was hard to tell what was supposed to be there vs. what the PO had actually put there.

When our CJ had the AMC in it, I did the HEI swap and it was one of the best modifications I ever made to it. I would be more than willing to help if needed. Also, for an Alternator, I used a unit off a 1986 Camaro Iroc (305 TPI version is 96amps at Orielly if I remeber correctly) I was pretty much able to reuse most of the factory AMC brackets for this, and just swapped in a new pigtail and some cleaned up wiriing. I did this to both my Wagoneer and the CJ, much better than the stocker that was for sure. Looking forward to seeing this gem in person
 
Jeepin said:
hey BW, like I said in text, I love this thing!!!
Just as an FYI, I think I might have some AMC v8 gaskets in the "gasket" area of the garage. I will dig around tonight to see what I have left. I might even have a few timing covers (I used to have at least 10 of the factory covers and a few were already cleaned up with new oil pumps in them). Careful on waterpump, have your old one in hand, there were a few different options and they all seemed to bolt on, but some of the castings were different and located the acc brackets in different places. With my CJ it was hard to tell what was supposed to be there vs. what the PO had actually put there.

When our CJ had the AMC in it, I did the HEI swap and it was one of the best modifications I ever made to it. I would be more than willing to help if needed. Also, for an Alternator, I used a unit off a 1986 Camaro Iroc (305 TPI version is 96amps at Orielly if I remeber correctly) I was pretty much able to reuse most of the factory AMC brackets for this, and just swapped in a new pigtail and some cleaned up wiriing. I did this to both my Wagoneer and the CJ, much better than the stocker that was for sure. Looking forward to seeing this gem in person
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Nice man, thanks! I'm hoping to find that this timing cover doesn't have any issues as I'm assuming I'll need to reuse it, but spares or maybe a better-condition version would be great. I'm sure we can work something out on anything you'd want to get rid of :cool:

Appreciate the heads up on the waterpump. Guess at this point assuming it's just a 77 Cherokee pump is a bad gamble, could be anything I suppose.

Mallory HEI is definitely going on! Did a junkyard HEI on the Postal 258 and loved it for cleaning up the engine bay if nothing else. Between that and the alternator mess going away (thanks for that too, will check the model/year to grab one from to confirm) along with the fact that it's already been cleaned up so much, this should be a squeaky clean engine bay when back together.

I should be out there tonight and most of tomorrow (other than parts run). TONS of beer in the fridge :D
 
I see remnants of the air pump system and air tubes in that last picture by the master cylinder. Not the pump - that silver thing with the red label and the big hose. That all can go. Were the tubes cut/welded past the banjo bolts, maybe? Hard to see from the pic.
 
HAH, that's Jankowski's J10, he's showing me that he doesn't have the support/rod thing I asked about on his very similar rig :D
 
Pull the dizzy and make sure the gear has LOTS of break-in lube on it. I recommend picking up a bottle of the Comp Cams break-in lube anyway, and I think that would be OK to use the same additive for the distributor gear:
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One thing my engine builder warned me about is that in the last 12-15 years, oil refiners have made a point of reducing the ZDDP content of consumer motor oils due to their clogging of catalytic convertors and the fact that auto manufacturers have entirely moved away from using hydraulic flat-tappet lifters. (I think if you were using roller-lifters, newer oils would probably be OK, but that's just my conjecture.) He cautioned, particularly on break-in, to use the ZDDP additive in an oil that already has a higher ZDDP content such as the Valvoline ZR-1 (NAPA had to special-order this for me), or even diesel oils such as Shell Rotella. I've noticed that O'Reilly's has started carrying an "off-highway use only" racing oil by Edelbrock that has a high ZDDP content that I'd be willing to give a shot too. And actually, the last time I was in an O'Reilly's, I saw they had a synthetic Valvoline ZR-1 on sale. (I should have just bought a case of it.)

Even on the 4.0 in my wife's ZJ, I'm making a point of running diesel oils.
 
On the alternator: I'm also running a 95 or 96 amp GM sourced alternator from a mid-'90s C/K truck. You do have to rotate the case; if you're nice, NAPA will do this for you. Once the case is rotated, it is a directly replacement for the AMC version. I didn't have to swap any pigtails, but maybe the '70s-era AMC wiring harnesses are different from the '80s-era?
 
bigwalton said:
Looked through some of the boxes in he back seat at lunch. Found a new valve cover gasket set and oil pan gasket set along with a new water pump gasket and front main seal from a timing cover set. Drooled on the nice, shiny Mallory dizzy too.

Then I found where he kept the munched dizzy/cam gears. Yeehaa! Is this the typical result of the oiling issue everyone talks about? The one cam gear is basically GONE on the one side.

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Eek! I've had nightmares about this image. I couldn't stand keeping the broken ones around because they always made me cringe.

Answer: Yes, this is definitely the problem that everyone (me included) has. There are a number of potential issues to check.

Everyone who experiences the problem agrees with the following:
1. Verify that the timing chain gear itself has the flashing cut out of the slot so that oil can flow from the front cam/bearing/journal. AMC always made sure this flashing was gone, but many of the aftermarket manufacturers didn't realize how critical the oiling slot is, and/or just don't bother to remove the flashing. I've had mixed results; some sets had the flashing removed, and some didn't.
2. Use a quality set of hardened gears. I've run through both Crown and Mallory. The gears need to be a matched set, that get broken-in together, with a quality break-in lube. The current iteration of my 401 is running happily with Mallory gears.

My experiences have brought me to these additional conclusions:
3. I am running an aftermarket timing chain set that came with a thrust plate that I had to drill and tap to install into the block. I therefore completely eliminated cam-walk as an issue, but the engine STILL ate a set of gears. Therefore, I am not convinced that cam-walk is the primary cause of the problem.
4. My very first build on the 401 used a Crown timing chain cover, and I went with a bronze distributor gear to be sacrificial. This worked just fine to get me several thousand miles across the continent, and it served as a daily-driver for a summer, several wheeling trips, and a move to a differnet part of Alaska. Then I lost a lifter, which lead to a new cam, and the beginning of my cam-gear problems. I bought one or two more Crown covers, only to have the same problem. Allegedly, Crown initially mis-machined the placement of the distributor hole in a batch of their covers. The AMC-speciality company that sold me my last Crown cover mic'd the cover to verify that the hole was to spec. It still ate a gear.
5. Based on the above, my most recent engine builder asked to return to an OEM cover. We put in new oil pump gears and added Bulltear's stainless oil pump midplate. The engine has over 2,000 miles without any issues, and builds reasonable hot-idle oil pressure.
 
all this engine swap talk... where the hell are the pictures??? :shrug: What are all these letters and words? I cant read them ,they are not in Canadian. :rotfl:
 
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