7/23
11:40 AM Mountain time, Helena Montana
I
don't even know where to begin. Since last time (Eric takes a
deep breath), we managed to nurse the Dog down here from Great
Falls. We hooked up with John Bushnell, a local CJ-7 owner and
possibly the most energetic and enthusiastic person that I've
ever met. We then went to meet John's friends, Stan Cronin and
Clay Burkett. Stan owns Cronin Automotive and Clay is another
local Jeeper/mechanic. Between them and John, they diagnosed our
problem as a leaky exhaust manifold gasket (shows what I know).
We went to Stan's incredible shop at his place just outside of
town (see pics, and that's only half of it). Once there, we changed
the transmission fluid/gasket/filter, removed the intake/exhaust
manifolds, heli-coiled a stripped-out thread in the block, installed
new intake and exhaust gaskets, installed new intake and exhaust
gaskets, installed a new exhaust manifold, reinstalled the intake
manifold/carburetor, and finally set the timing (whew).
The
ride to Helena, MT |
And now -
the details. The drive to Helena was incredible and we had plenty
of time to enjoy it - driving as slow as we were. You can see
from the pictures that there was some incredible mountains and
valleys and we spent a while driving alongside the Missouri river,
which was amazing. The Dog made it okay and we got in touch with
John just before lunch.
John met us in his nice '86 CJ-7 and we talked
for a minute then went to find Stan and Clay. They were nice enough
to take a break from working on a Toyota pickup to check out our
problem. Stan, the master mechanic (really - I saw the certificate)
had it nailed in about 30 seconds and proved that I don't know
didly about diagnosing engines. It was coming (mainly) from the
front exhaust port and the bolt there looked a little sketchy.
Luckily, someone had the forethought to grab John's old intake
and exhaust manifolds (he's got a Chevy V-8 in his ride now) which
Clay still had, in case mine turned out warped if we had to go
so far as to take them off.
From there, John, Jason and I went out back to
Stan's incredible garage at his place "in the valley"
to work on the Dog. On Stan's recommendation, Jason and I dropped
the transmission pan and changed the fluid and filter which went
much smoother that it would have in Jason's driveway with the
use of Stan's air jack, jack stands and bottle jack to support
the tranny. Stan showed up a little later as we were getting ready
to start the exhaust leak and we discovered that the front lower
manifold bolt on cylinder #1 wasn't even finger tight. What turned
out to be the real problem was a broken bolt in the hole, leaving
only a couple threads for the bolt that someone tried to jam in
there. In an attempt to try to fix the problem without taking
off the manifolds, we tried drilling the bolt and backing it out,
but no dice.
At some point in all this mess up to now, another
local, Doug Herold (a Bronco driver, but we quickly forgot about
that) showed up after seeing on the net that we were in town.
He turned out to be another vital pair of hands and another mechanically
knowledgeable head, especially on the carb/intake side of things.
When that didn't work, we moved up to the heli-coil
kit, which required removing the manifolds to get room enough
to work. What we noticed upon removing the manifolds was that
someone JB Welded a bolt in there and that's what was broken off.
We drilled out the hole and decided to try to put the heli-coil
insert in with some of our own JB Weld to hold it because the
coil only had a few threads in the back of the hole that were
actually grabbing. That went smoothly and we moved on to the gaskets.
At this point, we hadn't entirely removed the manifolds, we just
got them off and out of the way. When we went to reinstall, we
found out that the exhaust manifold was badly warped and we couldn't
even come close to getting a couple of the manifold bolts back
in.
Jason,
John and Doug hard at work on the Dog. |
Off came the
manifolds and after unhooking a few hundred vacuum hoses (seemed
that way anyhow) and shoving some wiring harnesses around we got
them out. I measured mine versus John's old one to discover mine
was indeed warped by close to 1/4"! We swapped in the "new"
manifold and reinstallation was a relative snap. It was an interesting
time trying to reconnect everything that was removed to get the
manifolds out and there's a nice picture of all of us (I should
be there too, but someone had to sneak the picture) trying to
follow Chilton's vacuum diagram.
Everything did go back in and with the exception
of one misplaced vacuum line on the carb, it all worked great!
No more exhaust leak (although we weren't able to get the full
torque on the heli-coil, but very close) and the engine starts
and idles much better than before. We got the timing set and everything
was finished.
At this point, it was around 1:30 AM and even
though John had to make it to work in the morning, he was kind
enough to show us an AMAZING place to camp at a state park right
near his house. The Jeep made its first real off-road trip to
get up to the site! It was just a dirt road with slight ruts from
rain, but it was definitely off-road and we're no longer off-road
virgins! There's a nice picture of our little campsite. Not a
bad view! This morning, we met Stan, John and Clay for lunch on
us where we found out that John actually ran out of gas on the
drive home from the campsite and had to hoof it to the service
station!
We couldn't have asked for anything else of these
guys and we can't thank them enough for what they did to help
us out. All of them are the nicest people you want to meet and
if there's more like them in Montana, I think I'm ready to move.
Throughout the day (we were at it for 13 hours), Jason, Doug and
I took breaks to sit, have a drink and rest, but John just kept
at it all day. I know he had three young boys at home and I don't
think it's right that he is able to have that kind of energy,
but I thank God he did!
Update: we've been on the road now for a couple
of hours and we're on I-90 heading to Billings. The Jeep's running
better than ever, the gas mileage seems to be back up and we're
cruising along well at 65mph. The scenery's still incredible.
I didn't know central Montana was so hilly. We'll see where we
make it tonight. We're hoping for the Mt. Rushmore/Devil's Tower/Badlands
area. Assuming things stay good mechanically, we will have a little
time to play with here before we need to make it to the Jeep Jamboree
at 4WD Hardware in Ohio.
