New Scrambler owner! YeeHaa!

[Pman]

Just caught this post and have been reading through it, great looking scrambo. I will say I am partial to the color/decal combo.

Whoa that looks GREAT. I hope I can get mine looking halfway that nice!!!! What lift does that have? 3 1/2? I'm thinking the one on mine is roughly 2 1/2.

Gazzo- you beat me to it! ONE OF US has the steering wheel installed on the wrong side!!

 

[bbbarc]

Thanks Pman. Yours looks amazing from the pics posted, only original once. It's actually a 4", so gains about 3-1/2" I would say. The ideal combination in my opinion is 4" lift with either 33x12.5 or 33x10.5 tires.

 

[Pman]

Your 4" lift gives it a great stance with those 33's. I just put the 33 x 10.5's and am totally sold on that width. No loss of turning radius!

 

[Polarfire]

Just caught this post and have been reading through it, great looking scrambo. I will say I am partial to the color/decal combo.

Beautiful Scrambler! Are you running dual exhaust?

 

[bbbarc]

Thanks Polarfire. Actually, just single. It's powered by a 304 with stock manifolds, y-pipe connection, flowmaster 40 series muffler w/ 2-1/2" single pipe. Just loud enough.

Btw - The uncut dash you sold me about a year or so ago is in the Jeep. Turned out perfect, looks great in the Oriental Red.

 

[Pman]

Thanks Polarfire. Actually, just single. It's powered by a 304 with stock manifolds, y-pipe connection, flowmaster 40 series muffler w/ 2-1/2" single pipe. Just loud enough.

Btw - The uncut dash you sold me about a year or so ago is in the Jeep. Turned out perfect, looks great in the Oriental Red.

I've heard great things about that particular exhaust setup. With my CJ5-excuse me, my WIFE's CJ5- I left the stock mani's in place (apparently the dogleg ports on the amc manifolds negate any real benefits from headers) but ran dual flowmaster 40's. Sounds nice.

PS--BBARC, I was in Charlotte last week. If I'd only known, I would have stalked your rig while there!!

 

[bbbarc]

Nice, def. give me a shout the next time your in the area. Not too many scrambler running around here!

 

[Pman]

So I get my windshield (for Gazzo, lets call it a windscreen ) reinstalled today, and life is good. Headed back to my office enjoying driving the old cuss, and notice a bit of rattling at the front of the motor, and it dawns on me....TIMING CHAIN SLAP....NOOOOOOOOO!!!! Back when I changed the RMS and had the pan dropped I noticed there was a great deal of slack in the chain, but decided to put it off since I had essentially just bought this thing and wanted to drive it a bit more before going into the front end. Also, while I had the pan down I noticed loads of plastic-like trash caught up in the oil pump pickup screen. Well, it suddenly occurred to me that the plastic "trash" was probably the nylon coating coming off the timing gear. Add to that the aluminum shavings that are now probably swimming in my oil from the chain slapping against the cover.....AAARRGGGHHH! Back into my garage it goes!
At least it's a straightforward job, but what frustrates me is finding TIME. Camping trip this weekend, so looks like it will be pulled from rotation for a couple of weeks. I need a sabbatical just to work on my rigs. Every one of them needs attention right now!!!

 

[gazzo]

Two steps forward, one step back. Always the way pman. Looks good tho

 

[Pman]

Two steps forward, one step back. Always the way pman. Looks good tho

Words well spoken, Gazzo. So true. Oh well, at least I'm (ahem) "geared up" for the project now.

 

[gazzo]

Hey what ever happened to the tensioner? I'm sure there was one, given the casting that would locate one. It would just take up slack and probably quieten things down a little out front. Who knows, it might have even prevented your untimely failure?
Hey guess what, I got a reprieve from a party I dint want to go to with the Interior Minister so now I get to go to the beach house with my boy and his friend and have our own little Sandblast 8 this weekend. We fish, we drive in the dunes in a long jeep, we might even throw the tub in the water. Gold.

 

[Pman]

Hey what ever happened to the tensioner? I'm sure there was one, given the casting that would locate one. It would just take up slack and probably quieten things down a little out front. Who knows, it might have even prevented your untimely failure?
Hey guess what, I got a reprieve from a party I dint want to go to with the Interior Minister so now I get to go to the beach house with my boy and his friend and have our own little Sandblast 8 this weekend. We fish, we drive in the dunes in a long jeep, we might even throw the tub in the water. Gold.

So insanely jealous. I guess the Interior Minister is good with it since you are also relieving her of the boy (aka, your personal assistant)? I'm actually going on a camping trip with my daughter this weekend and leaving the boy with my Interior Minister. Camping on an old plantation, which happens to be less than 10 miles from my house. Even that close, I'm afraid to keep slinging my timing chain into the cover while thinking of those tiny evil bits that may be breaking loose into my oil pan.

I'm not aware of a tensioner on the 258?? Do tell.

 

[gazzo]

Yeah there's some slot sort of deals in the case where one could imagine sliding a plastic bow that would curve inwards taking up the slack on the loose side. To it just looks as though they gave up on the idea and deemed it unnecessary.

 

[Pman]

Yeah there's some slot sort of deals in the case where one could imagine sliding a plastic bow that would curve inwards taking up the slack on the loose side. To it just looks as though they gave up on the idea and deemed it unnecessary.

Gazzo- ran across that tensioner device in the TSM today. BUT, it was for the 4 banger. That must have been where you saw it!

My back is killing me. Tore into the front end today to replace the timing chain. Went ahead and pulled the grille so I'd have easy access. This "push bar" tube bumper really kept me from having a luxurious work position, but still beat trying to do this while leaning over the 7 slot.

That's one thing I love about Jeeps. Drain the radiator, disconnect the hoses, remove the four bolts holding the radiator to the grille, remove the 6 fender to grille bolts and the one bolt at the bottom of the grille, detach and remove the headlight harness and you have loads of access.

Now that I was staring into this Scramblers gaping maw, the next thing I removed was the fan, fan pulley and harmonic balancer pulley.

Then off came the harmonic balancer using my el cheapo Harbor Freight balancer removal tool:

 

[Pman]

Next I removed the alternator (with the associated bracket attached to two timing cover bolts), moved it to the side, then removed the timing cover. The bolts are various sizes, and since I can't remember what I did 5 minutes ago, I flipped an old cardboard box over and kept them organized with my Van Gogh timing cover picture:

And herein lies an old saggy timing chain with about 10 feet (ok, that's-ahem-"stretching" it a bit) of deflection:

 

[Pman]

Next I removed the oil slinger (it just sits on the crankshaft; it doesn't "attach" to anything; once you tighten the harmonic balancer down it snugs everything up. This really had me scratching my head as it just seemed weird that it was just sitting there loose), then reinstalled the balancer bolt and used a socket wrench to rotate the crankshaft until the marks on the crank and cam faced each other and lined up. Hard to tell from this pic!

Next I removed the camshaft bolt and pried the crank and cam timing gears off with my fingers.

At this point a normal person would take the opportunity to clean the mating surfaces with the gears off. For some magical reason, EVERYONE I KNOW WANTED TO STOP BY MY HOUSE TODAY, so I kept getting sidetracked, and put the new timing chain set on before scraping the gasket surfaces. Does that happen to y'all too? Drives me crazy. I need to get a garage hidden in the woods 5 miles out of town.

ANYWAY, now that I got that off my chest, my next step was to take the new timing chain set, line the timing marks up with the chain on, and install it as an assembly onto the crank and cam. The crank gear was a tight fit on the crank nose, so I had to gently nudge it on by tapping it with a brass punch.

Much improved!

You'll notice I had to cut off the blue part of my oil pan one piece gasket. I hated doing that as I have ZERO LEAKS with that gasket. But the last thing I wanted was to have to redo this whole mess, so off it went.

 

[Pman]

I then installed the new timing cover crank oil seal, put RTV and gaskets on the appropriate surfaces (oh, someone came up my driveway right as I was about to reassemble everything with the RTV clock ticking, so I shoo'd them away pronto), and put it all back together.

Next, to get the harmonic balancer pressed back on, I got a longer bolt (the crankshaft bolt wasn't long enough to thread on-besides, even if it could have there wouldn't have been enough threads to gain "purchase" without the risk of stripping those threads) and, with the old washer, used a box end wrench to press it on 75% of the way, removed that bolt and reinstalled the original bolt to snug it up all the way. Worked perfectly.

I put the belts on but haven't reinstalled the radiator and grille since I spotted some surface rust on the inside of the grille that I want to address tomorrow before I button it all up.

Bourbon and Ibuprofen time!

 

[jammer1]

Looks like it's coming along. You'll have her ready for work monday. Nice write up.

 

[Pman]

Thx Jammer. I know it's a fairly straightforward job, but thought I'd chronicle it just in case someone wanted to know how to get to it.

It's amazing how simple it is to do this on a CJ. I had to do the same repair on a Wagoneer a few years ago and it was way more difficult (plus the 360 timing cover is a completely different animal).

 

[gazzo]

Would have been a perfect opportunity to give the inner fenders a good scrub and maybe even reach in there and cut and polish? One (two) of those areas which, when clean, can really make the engine bay sparkle, especially with all your original enginey stuff in there. What's the go with that thing beside the brake booster? Is that to do with your park brake?