Looking good Ron!

Thanks. I picked up the driveshafts today.

Damn that is a huge front drive shaft!


It looks great and your almost done (well as done as a project can ever be)

Well, the rear driveshaft is too long so I dropped it back off today. The front one is perfect though.

I picked up the rear driveshaft a couple days ago and had been working on installing the shifter for the transfer case. I finished it all up yesterday. Well except for making a shifter boot for it. Below are various pictures of the modified fuel tank mount, shifter, shifter linkage, etc. The shifter and shift linkage came out of a early to mid F250 and I had to modify it a lot to move the shifter closer to the center of the truck. I didn't take any pictures of it but I wish I would have because I made the arm that the shifter mounts to. The old one was about an inch and a half longer.










I spent the whole day today tracing wiring in the dash harness. The reason is because there were a few things that weren't working. One was the heater blend door. I could turn the heat on and have it blow on the floor but it would blow cold. Another issue was the controls rear blower motor weren't working. The final issue was that the digital temp/compass in the overhead display wasn't working. I figured that there had to be some wires in the dash harness I installed that didn't match the one from the donor truck. It turned out that they were all the same. So I started looking at the wiring diagrams that Phil printed up for me. I started with the blend door actuator and found the the power wire didn't have power. After some trouble shooting I ended up finding this:



That's right, I spent the whole day on an incorrectly installed fuse! When I pulled this harness from the wrecking yard it already had fuses in all the ports. So I just used my DMM to make sure none of them were blown. The ones that were I replced. Well this one wasn't blown but someone installed it crooked so one side had power but the other side didn't. So I replaced the fuse and now everything works. I just need to charge the A/C and I have heat and air again. Next up will be getting the BAR certification!

What are you going to do for a selector boot?

Seems the one in my truck would work well, i'd find one of those.

That's where the rubber dust boot came from but it was just too big for me to use the whole thing in my truck. I'm going to pick up some material to make a boot out of and Amy is going to sew it up for me.

I need to get with you now so that we can charge the A/C.

One of these would work well I think.

Before the refinish

Even if you cant use the whole base the rubber portion comes off by removing the little metal tabs.

Let me know a day when you want to charge it.

That's what I have. I pulled the rubber boot off and am using it as the dust boot. I know in your truck it doesn't seem that big but in my Explorer it is. Right now my leg hits the shifter when it's in 2 wheel drive. I don't want to take up any more room. I just want a simple shift boot.

Redline goods make very nice boots. Custom anything if you want it, I plan on ordering some soon for the blue car, we can place an order at the same time to save on shipping and lead time.

Looking great ron. You always find a way to make me feel like i don't get enough done on my weekends.

Switch the rims from the donor truck onto mine. The backspacing is less than the stock rims had so they stick out a bit further. I'm not sure if that is going to make them rub but we'll see.

Looks good

Nice.

Thanks guys. I took it up Silverwood today to make sure everything works and it did great. We went to the top and then hiked around for a while.





Kylie and Mya as The Lion King.



As Alex the lion from Madagascar.

I need to work on the Jeep now. I haven't done any off roaring in a long time.

Well get it done before May 26th so you can make the offroad run with us.

I haven't even pulled the head off to see how bad things are yet. Plus the tires suck and will get me stuck fairly quick.

Can we have a moment of silence for Eric's Explorer?



I took it to the scap yard today.

I see you've typed something but all I got out of it was "wah wah wah."

I concur but the in-laws took it back so their incompetent daughter has something to drive. I'm gonna try and buy it from them or get one that doesn't require a motor swap.

Sorry but I would have already torn into it to see what was wrong already.

I wanted to but I barely have time to work on my truck. I'm replacing the power steering pump tonight after everyone goes to bed. I don't have time during the day.

I'm lucky that way because I work from home so at 5pm I can start working on my cars.

I work close to home but i still don't have time to get everything i want to get done.

I guess i work at home, shit, i'm at the shop more then my house.

So as usual, I get one running and something has to happen to another. Amy drove the Explorer today to go meet her sister for lunch. She called me just a couple minutes after leaving and said she heard a big bang and lost all gears. I told her I'd be right there. I tried to take the Suburban just in case we needed to tow the Explorer home but the battery was dead. So I jumped in the Cobra and drove it over to check out the Explorer.

Just as she said, it had no gears. I tried shifting the transfer case in 4H and 4L but still nothing. So I put the transfer case in neutral and rolled it forward to make sure it would roll which it did. When I put it back in 2H, it had first gear again. There was traffic though so I couldn't go. By the time traffic cleared it lost gear again. So I did the same thing with neutral but this time I had to go to 4H to get anything.

Traffic was clear so I flip a U turn and headed home. Luckily it kept gear for most of the way home. As I pulled into our housing track it lost the gears again. So I did the same thing only I couldn't get it to engage. On the third try though I was able to get it to grab in 4L and I made it home.

I pulled the transfer case out tonight and will take it apart tomorrow. I also charged the battery in the Suburban but it's bad and would only hold 10 volts. So tomorrow I'l also be getting a new battery for the Suburban. The worst part about that is this is the battery out of the Chevelle. The previous 8 year old battery that used to be in the Suburban went out about a year ago and since the Chevelle wasn't running I stole the new battery out of it. It's only about a year and a half old.

If the battery is that new from purchase (may be a bit older from manufacture) and you got it at AutoZone, etc., you should get a pro-rated refund for dying so early.

We have similar luck.

It has a 5 or 7 year free replacement warranty from Autozone and after that is pro-rated. It was the highest cranking amp battery they carried at 1000amps. I was having trouble with the Chevelle starting after it was warm and the 1000amp battery took care of that issue.

Yes we do.

I pulled the transfer case apart but it was fine. I did discover though that it uses an electro magnet to engage 4H. With that knowledge the issues I had with it driving home made me think something could be wrong with the rear end. So I pulled the cover off and discovered the pin broke and the spider gears were laying it the bottom of the case. So I pulled the transfer case for no reason. The worst part about it all is that Amy told me she thought something happened to the rear end but since it rolled fine and didn't make any noise I told her it probably wasn't the rearend. I was wrong. So my plan is to pull one from another Explorer at Pick-A-Part and swap my clutches into it. Mine only have about 30,000 miles on them.

Oh that's not good.

It's better than being the tranfer case or transmission.

That's true, less expensive parts and labor.

Sorry to hear about that Ron. At least it will be cheaper and you can have some more practice before I ask you to help me with mine again. I need to fix the shim or whatever is causing the rear end to make so much noise. It is louder than before. I was also thinking while we are in there we can replace the clutches as well. I only have a little 70K but since we are in there might as well. Carbon fiber make sense or is that overkill?

Need this thing to last until I drop this one in. Hoping my old company will do this for me for an article.

Did you pull the cover off like I told you to see if a shim slid out? I wouldn't waste the money on the shims unless you have noticed it frying one tire. I have over 193,000 miles on the ones in the Cobra and they still hook. I replaced the ones in the Explorer a while back but it sees one tire in the air a lot so the old ones wore out. Since the cars tires are always both on the ground they don't wear out as bad.

I went to Pick-A-Part yesterday and pulled a carrier from a '96 Explorer. I made sure that it was a 3.73 carrier just like mine was because they are different than the lower geared carriers are. Then I pulled my carrier out and disassembled it. I had to grind down the pin hole because the ring gear wouldn't go past it from the damage. Then I reassembled the new carrier with the thickest clutches between the two carriers. All I need to do now is pick up some new bearings and have them pressed on. I don't have a press so I'm going to give Gonzalo at GTR a call and see if they have one and if they'll let me use it.

I have one.

You're further away but if they don't have one or won't let me use it I'll call you.