After a considerable delay due to family issues, I finally have had some time to work on Randi! One thing that has made this more of a priority: the Suburban blew a wheel bearing during Hurricane Ike, in addition to all of her other issues... she needs a break and some serious work done. After an oil flush, Dawn's Liberty is back on the road, so it will really be nice to have the Wrangler running for those times when we need two vehicles. Now, on to the updates!
I have replaced the coil, plugs, plug wires, distributor cap and rotor, fuel pump and the screen filter inside the gas tank. That last item deserves elaboration...
When the Jeep was parked for the last time 2+ years ago, it had gasoline in the tank. This needed to be drained before the engine could be started, and I wanted to see the state of the inside of the tank, to see if further cleaning would be required... therefore, I decided to drop the tank.
The Haynes book procedure is pretty spot-on, but there are some things that they don't tell you... such as the hose clamps for the fuel filler and vent hoses are in a position that is impossible to reach with a screwdriver unless you already have the tank out. Or that the tailpipe makes it a snug fit and you really need to jockey the tank around the pipe, or possibly remove it. Suffice to say that three hours (and a few bruised knuckles) after I started, the tank was on the ground.
The good news, after cleaning the exterior with a hose, was that the tank was the 20gal plastic tank... the bad news was that there was at least 5 gallons of old gas, and, upon removal of the sending unit, the filter on the end of the pickup tube was clogged and split in a number of places. More good news was that there was very little crud in the tank, so it didn't look like major cleaning would be needed. I started a siphon to drain the tank... the gasoline that came out looked very much like pineapple juice - not what you'd want to run through an engine. After the tank was empty (drained into cans for later disposal), I put a half-gallon of gas and a chain in the tank, sloshed it around for a bit to knock any crud loose and then drained the tank again and sealed it up.
After research, calling various parts houses and actually getting home with the wrong filter, I found that most aftermarket vendors only sell the tank filter for the 4.0 fuel-injected model (for electric fuel pump) so I ended up getting one from Jeep. The price was reasonable and it should last for another 180k miles... once I got that installed, it was time to re-install the tank.
After I positioned the tank underneath the Jeep, I reconnected all the lines to the sending unit and rollover-cutoff valves, then raised the tank and reconnected the filler hose and vent hose... sounds really simple but those are pretty stiff hoses and it took some doing to get them to slip onto the tank. It did take much less time to put the tank back up though - only about 45 minutes or so. Once all bolts were tightened, I took Randi off of the jack stands and moved forward to replace the fuel pump.
The fuel pump was a fairly straightforward replacement procedure, 2 lines and 2 bolts. I also replaced the 6" section of rubber fuel line between the metal line from the gas tank to the inlet of the fuel pump. The only thing left to do now is put some fresh gasoline in the tank and see if she will start!
I have placed her on my insurance coverage, so now I need to go to the county office and get the registration updated - it sucks that you can't go to just any office, but you have to go to one in your county. Once that is done and Randi is running well, it's off to the inspection station... I will probably drive her a bit around the place to make sure everything is running well before that happens.
More updates soon!
