Engine mounts and more measuring

  Once the engine is in it had to be "leveled"  (chebbys need a nose up attitude  for proper engine oiling I was advised)
The banks were leveled and clearances were checked again.  Once its in move the driveshaft, steering, and anything else around to make sure it doesn't hit.  Move the distributor about an inch off the firewall ( luckily the jeep "engineers"  left a divot in the firewall for the oil pressure unit off the engine)
 
  The engine and transmission were wired into position where it was to be mounted and measurments were taken... again.
  Remember the 1" factory jeep offset from the factory?   Keep that in mind when mounting the new one!
 
Measure from the frame to the center of the engine mount hole on each side.. TWICE!
 We used DOM tubing and poly bushing mounts.

The finished drivers side mount (loosely bolted until the other side is put on)

note the steering shaft that rides just above the mount, the steering u joint clears the stock exhaust by 1"

Finished passenger side mount.

On to the engine wiring...(oof- luckily I went thru the wiring prior to planting the engine otherwise this would take weeks)
Whats left:
driveshafts (easy), clock transfer case ( relatively easy), bleed manual drum brakes (usually a thorn in my side) , maybe get power steering installed ( have to do something- there's bump steer going in and out of the garage), radiator and transmission cooler, and the exhausts aim a little at the frame rails.
 The chebby is only 50 lbs more than the AMC engine, puts out an extra 150 hp and 75 lb ft of torque.  This ought to be an interesting ride..

tranny advice and engine mounts

Before; in the econo delivery vehicle...

And now: the "shiny" rebuilt tranny assembled to the torque converter (tc) (btw chevy t.c. slide down the input shaft x3 bumps to be seated , otherwise they don't seal and the vehicle won't move :O

The powerplant

Ready, aim....

Even with those antique 31's flattened the Commando is muy tall to get the

powerplant over and into. Removing the grill and radiator support would make life easier.

It's the little things that will kill you in life. Not only is the hoist maxed out but measuring the engine hoist reach is pretty important too.  Note the lack of bumper clearance near the ram.

Bumper removed and twisted into position

The stock location for the crossmember is a wee bit off.  It needs to come forward almost

its full width.

Measure 28 times, insert once

Step one, chain the engine, hoist it and measure existing tranny crossmember to existing mounts, then measure new tranny mount to new engine mount which happened to be 38.5"

The Engine

Driver side measurement

Passenger side measurement

Driver side stock mount location

Passenger side stock location

As you can see the distance from the firewall to the stock locations is close, but due to the chevy distributor curse, the mounts will have to move forward

Engine mounting prep

To mount the lump (as the English say) quite a bit of prep work needs to be accomplished.
  The game plan is to use the stock chevy engine mounts (if it ain't broke theory) and bring a tube support from the frame
with a poly bushing that will mount thru it.

chebby mount

Tube cross mount with poly bushings.  A tube will come from the frame mount

plate and weld to this.

The drivers side mount for the AMC 258 I-6 is smaller than the passengers mount.

Also , did you know, the engine mounts were offset 1" to the drivers side to give clearance to the driveshaft?  Hmm? Hmm? Bet you didn't.

Note the darkened area of the original mount, and the extra drilled holes on that side.

The passenger side mount  WILL fit on the drivers side without any drilling. (thank goodness)

I'm hypothesizing that the V8 option got equal mounts on either side.

Engine wiring and prep

Easier said than done.  From what I've read TBI engines need "4" wires to run. Wiring "kits" that eliminate all the unnecessary wires are $350 which also eat into the budget. (such that it is)

So with a wiring diagram and a couple hours I tore into the stock wiring harness to trace down what I read as necessary wiring.  The wiring labels are what the wires were coded off the computer plug.
 Another handy use is to keep the stock chebby underhood fusebox and wire more Jeep electrical stuff through it.  Thus ending the 38 year reign of inept wiring.

 The biggest pain of it was the firewall pass thru.  It's just a square plate that the wires pass through with a bunch of glue sealing out the elements.  They aren't organized or anything, so I had to use an ohm meter to check continuity.

I started tracing and marking everything from the computer side of the wiring.

I think I traced everything that's needed....

This is the diagram that was printed off and ran down.. its for a '95 tahoe, but almost everything matched.

There are a few extra unused circuits like rear window defroggers, but that can be used as extra lighting

or something like that.

Power Steering!

I made it back before the donor truck got scrapped and got the power steering box.

 I soon realized that Chevys have a backwards pitman arm setup because of the independant front suspension...

 they turn a rod that turns a bellcrank that turns the wheels. 

I think a new pitman arm will fix this.

swivel joint replacement

This picture doesn't do this justice. The drivers side must have been left locked and drove on for thousands of miles. 

To remove these, there are "c" clips on the inner side of the joint caps that need to be blasted

out before trying to press or" gently" hammer them out of the shafts.

Oh the humanity!  The little needle bearings should be 10 fold for

2 u joints.  You can see that 1 race out of 8 is shiny like they should be.

There are rings of powdered (pulverized) bearings that came from the inside of the caps.

Check everything on a used Jeep.. don't assume the owner knew what they were doing!

brakes and broken : (

The commando came with a box of brake shoes and cylinders that I hadn't looked into much due to the other issues.

The rear axle, except for the brake manifold block, was done!  New shoes and cylinders already installed.

The front passenger side brakes were done, so just a quick drivers front and it's all done right?

You know where this is going..... while testing the front hubs there was a lot of slop and some clanging before the pinion started moving

The swivel joints (axle u-joints) were original and had NO bearings left in them.

So disassembly begins

Remove the 6 bolts from the hub... the lock nut, ring and main 2 1/4?" nut to pull the hub off the spindle

Remove the backing plate and the spindle will fall off in your hands.

IN YOUR DREAMS! With a dead blow whack on all sides of the spindle and when it starts to separate use

a prying device of your choice to seperate it

38 years of contact.. 39 and it would have been chemically welded together.

Make sure to check the race of bearings in the spindle where the outer axle goes in.

One side was ok, the other was almost shot.

On to the swivel joints

Brake check, axle ratios, and seeing if I've got gas.

The 700r4 transmission got dropped off at the shop today.  Pleasently found out that it was already changed to a 30 spline input previously.  Its going to get a monster shell to keep the stock shell from blowing up.  The guy at the shop says they blow up from dropping from neutral or dropping in drive from reverse.  The example he had in the shop showed the splines broken off of the shell.  The original is a stamped piece of steel with a very thin piece where it went from the spline to the shell.   Going to get a converter, shell, and 11 vane pump if it doesn't have one already.

  Next I checked the parking brake cable.  It seems to pull the brakes, but is bound up on driver side.
I ended up jacking the rear up to check pads, cylinder etc.and was pleasently suprised that the rear pads and cylinders were already replaced. the driver side just needed cycling to loosen it up. yeha
 the axle ratio IS 3.73- could be better, but that is good for a set of 35s or flattened 37s w a V8.
The brake lines were cleaned and re mounted.  If I get time later the axle will be pulled and cleaned.

To get fuel injection the commando will need a good fuel tank with a return line.  A inline fuel pump will have to pull from near the tank thru hard line to the throttle body.
 On jeeps goofy attempt at controlling gas fumes the red tube and black tube start on the upper side of the tank ( this will be the return line location) and go into the cab(?) then back out to what was the charcoal filter up on the firewall. the rest of the gas tank lines are standard .

There are 3 bolts holding the gas tank on, two on the front and one in the back off a bracket.  The bracket in back had been hit and split the gas tank mount at some time.
The tank will have to be checked for leaks.

Under dash birds nest

To figure out where the lovely non stock wires go- there was some detective work.
A lot of wires were scabbed in, the new brake switch was installed so it didn't work, there are extra wires that went to ??
There is a 10 ga wire that comes through the firewall, hooks to a thermal fuse, BUT has power wires coming from the input side and the other side of the fuse to who knows what.

This is the slimmed down version of all the wiring sans turn signals.  It's amazing how easy it is to follow the wires when half a dozen brown wires are removed.













The wires for the right rear feed THROUGH the tailgate hinge and have been replaced with old tape and a prayer that it won't cook the wiring again. Again, multiple bumps with metal hitting wiring and poof! I beleive this is part of the under dash cooked wiring bonanza that happened. Why it didn't happen in the wires that come up the side of the jeep I dunno.
Here are the good wires from the passenger side light.  They were scabbed on to tiny replacement wires that had no business being on a electrical circuit.

 Amid the carnage under the hood I had noticed a red line that went back to the fuel tank from the charcoal cannister.  Here's the other end that hooks to a ? under a large box that is designed to take up space.  This is going away. Paper wasp nest and all....

Behind the box and gas vapor manager is how you take out the tail lights.  There are supposed to be 3 bolts even though the lower was broken off.  I cut a section of bolt and replaced the lower one so it can bolt on.

Electrics and stuff.

 

It's pretty sad when people make fun of  English vehicle wiring, but the same year jeep has more wrong with it.

I had to cut most of the wiring harness from under the hood, just leaving lighting.

  In order to get to some of the stuff, it was easier to pull the control panel and guage(s)  to access the jacked up wiring harness that bubba repaired.

The silver thing is the light for the control panel

through the guage cluster showing the white defrost vents sans tubes and the factory cheesy fuse holders

Half of this crap is either cooked, or goes nowhere so out it goes

Whoever designed the commando came in on a monday after a wild weekend
this is the dash vent control cable that opens the vent on the cowling.
The cable is close enough to the windshield wiper arm that when the arm comes around
it barely hits it.
Add in several bumps and a bunch of years and you get:

 I lubed the cable and de-kinked it in one spot.  Heat shrink to the rescue!