Well, progress pictures are still few and far between, but there have been some key things checked and decisions made.
So this engine was a solid runner and the seller had no issues driving it until he went to start on his LT swap. It's got less than 65k and ran strong with no smoke, but it had an intermittent tick that he isolated to the #7 cylinder. He thought it must be a sticky lifter because it wasn't constant and didn't noticeably affect how it ran.
I was willing to take the gamble on this purchase because he's not a "normal" seller, as an experienced CJ guy and current Jeep engineer and I know and trust him. To his credit, he offered to give me some money back on the deal if there did turn out to be bigger issues and he's been very interested in following my progress so he can know that this will work for me.
So when I pulled the intake, I found a bent pushrod. The spring, keepers, retainer were fine and the valve seems fine when I went to replace the spring and spun/moved it before putting on the new spring. A friend brought a borescope over and we looked at the piston and cylinder walls and saw no evidence that the valve hit the piston. The lifter seems ok, isn't stuck, wear is similar to the others and there's no issues with the lifter bore. The cam looks fine, no issues on that lobe. Rocker and bridge look fine.
So, after talking to a couple trusted friends, I've decided that short of going down the path of a full rebuild (which can't possibly happen right now and would end up causing this to be pushed against the wall for who knows how long) I've checked everything I can possibly check to ensure that things will work if I put this back together with the new cam/lifters/springs/gaskets/main seal and swap my nice oil pump and intake on.
The seller, after hearing that there was a bent pushrod with no other indication of damage, talked to an old AMC engineer he knows and was told that this can happen from a sticky valve after sitting for a while. As the seller had let the jeep sit for periods without driving it, this seems the most likely situation. The other guess is that something hung the lifter up and subsequently cleared. There's also the possibility of a nut or something falling into the intake that got between the piston and valve and ended up going out the exhaust.
I'm going with the fact that this was still a strong running engine and the stuff I've looked at thus far means that the odds are really good that it will work for what I need. Onward!
Offending pushrod next to one of the new ones I have to replace them all showing the bend.
Edelbrock intake removed from the 360 and cleaned up. Found that I neglected to move the intake baffle over from the stock 360 intake. This must be why I saw some oil at the PCV on the 360
I also put an insulating spacer under the carb before the EFI swap that made the carb much happier. I think the intake bathing in engine oil was causing excessive intake temps too. I have one coming from Jody Abbot that will get installed with some steel wool under the PCV to further help keep oil out of the system.
You can see the oil stain from the oil bath it was constantly getting.
I got an aluminum water outlet and oil fill tube from BJ's Offroad with the stuff I bought from there. The outlet on the 401 was nice but the 360's was rougher, so I splurged a bit rather than scavenge the nicer one off the 401 intake (same reason I got the intake baffle from Jody rather than take it off the 401) The stainless oil fill is going to look totally bling. Waiting to get the baffle on before that goes in.
I did a first pass at cleaning up the timing cover. Now to swap the BullTear oil pump setup over from the 360 and bench test my clearances (pump to cover, dizzy to pump).
Valve springs swapped and the block is as clean as it's going to get with bolt holes all cleaned out other than needing to flip it to pull the oil pan and do the rear main. Waiting until the top is back together before I get into that.
The new valve springs were too "coarse" to use the rental valve spring compressor to install, so I got one of the lever arm units from Jegs. This is meant to go on a rocker stud, but my setup is obviously bolted, so I had to make up a "conversion" stud to go from the bolt threads to the compressor threads. I cut the head off of a grade 8 bolt to match the larger stud thread size and chucked it in a drill to take the other end down with my angle grinder to the point where I could run a die down it to match the rocker bolt for the head. Worked like a charm.
Also had to alter the angle on the "forks" of the compressor so that it compressed the springs properly without canting them off to one side. You can see the stud in the bottom here. I use the nut on the stud thread side to lock the stud into the tool, makes it easier to thread on/off. The angle on the forks was more than double what you see here as it came. The forks thread on/off, so I just put them in a vice and bent the crap out of them with my largest adjustable wrench. It's a custom-made stock AMC head valve spring compressor tool now!
As you use it. Very cool the way it "locks" in the lowest position, makes pulling/installing keepers dead simple.
So now I have more time while I wait for the intake baffle to show up. I'll rebuild the drive shafts and finish cleaning up the trans and tcase.
I'm a bit worried that I haven't seen the water pump yet and haven't gotten any word on the lubelocker trans pan gasket and aluminum valve covers I ordered. Running out of patience trying to follow up with BullTear on the valve covers, I've tried being exceptionally patient with all that's going on but this is getting ridiculous. May end up skipping them if no one can bother getting back to me and reverse the charges on the card.
I am dying to get this in and running but I'm trying to be very moderate in how long I spend out in the garage each day with Kate and Laura both home all the time. I've mainly only done from lunch to dinner and not gone back out at night. It's trying my patience but it's also, strangely, making me take more time to clean/prep than I would otherwise. Multiple times while cleaning up the intake I thought to myself "Wow, am I really doing this? I can't believe I'm being this anal! Who am I,
@spankrjs?!?"