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Joopacabra

29K views 155 replies 27 participants last post by  mustanggarage 
#1 ·
Hello everyone. I finally decided to start a build thread on my jeep. my wife asked me why it said joop on the side when we got it lol so that is how it got the name joopacabra. here is a picture of my new to me yj.

it is a 1990 with the 4.2 and automatic. it was exactly what i was looking for.

I had a 95 when I lived in utah that I did a 4 to 6 swap and a bunch of other things too. so I am not entirely a newbie to jeeps. I spend a lot of time building and playing with mustangs so I have a fair amount of experience tinkering with cars and I have a really nice garage and tool selection to play with.:2thumbsup: here is a thread I did on my garage.
http://www.garageretreat.com/forums/f7/welcome-doghouse-1794/

I started looking for this jeep because I wanted something I could fix up for my daughter to drive to school in the winter, and because I really missed my old yj. We built a nice 67 mustang for her but it actually turned out a bit too nice and now she is afraid to drive it to school for fear of it getting vandalized so I guess it will be more of an occasional driver than a daily like I had planned. here is a pic and thread of it if anyone is interested.


http://www.moddedmustangs.com/forums/projects/224094-mustang-sarah-pic-heavy.html
I wanted a jeep that needed some mechanical work because I like doing that sort of thing, but I wanted one that the body was in decent shape because I don't like doing body work.
I wanted an automatic because I am going to be letting my daughter drive it. I also wanted the 6 cylinder because after the headache I had doing the 4 to 6 swap before I did not want to go through all that again lol.

this jeep is probably going to be different than the majority of jeeps on here because it has a different mission. I live in Iowa so there is not a lot of great rockcrawling places around here and with my job I can't go far from home very often so the primary purpose is for snow. I want it to be capable of getting through an Iowa winter and be relatively safe on the road. I want it to have good all weather capability and not sit up too high so that it is going to be blown all over the road when the wind kicks up. so a lift is not in my immediate plans. I may replace the springs, I would like to put a bit larger tire under it 31 10.50 like I had in Utah because that is the look I like, but I do not want to lift it any more than necessary.

I plan to fix all of the little problems that it has and at some point swap in a fuel injected 4.0 engine. I have already done a lot to it so I will go through some of that in the next few posts.
 
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#2 ·
I bought this jeep off ebay from someone in Ohio. I never met him and I had the jeep shipped to me. that is the first time I had ever done that so I was not sure what I was going to get. the ebay description said the jeep ran but in talking to the owners mother after I bought it she said that he was having some problems with the idle. I asked them to send me some pictures of the engine because I assumed from the reading I had done on this year jeep that it had the stock carbureter on it and that was probably why it was having problems. they never did send me the pics so I had no idea what I was going to get when it got here. I was very excited when the truck pulled up. we tried to back the jeep off the trailer but it wouldn't start. we had to jump start it and we finally got it running enough to back it off the trailer. it would not stay running at all. I finally got the jeep up the half mile dirt road to my shop and it died again at the shop door so I pushed it into the shop to see what I had bought lol. here are some pics.







overall I was very happy with it. so after I got it into the shop I put the battery charger on it and started looking it over. the first priority was to get it running properly.
 
#7 ·
I paid $3,950.00. I thought it was a pretty good deal. the prior owner did a lot of things to it, some good, some not so much.

I bought this jeep in december so I have had it for a while now so I have already done a lot to it, I am going to kind of chronicle it like it happened up to this point.
 
#8 ·
I have thought about it and I may do that. one reason I was planning the 4.0 swap is because I have a 4.0 that I took out of My sons cherokee. I just finished rebuilding the engine but there was some problems in the wiring and the body was so rusty, and my daughter was begging for a wrangler so I pulled the drivetrain from the cherokee and figured I would put it in the wrangler and scrap the cherokee. I liked the cherokee but like I said the floorpans were shot, the rockers were gone, the fenderwells were rusted. it would have cost more to get the body in decent shape than it cost to buy the wrangler.

anyway bottom line is I have a freshly rebuilt 4.0 that will fit right in this wrangler.
 
#5 ·
looks like the PO spent all his time on the interior, very sharp. from your pics on photobucket I see he also did a carb swap, check to see if he did the nutter bypass or any other work on the ignition, might be the reason its not starting.
looks to be a nice solid jeep, have fun and post lots of pics.
 
#9 ·
now to the heart of the problem.

I was very pleasantly surprised when I popped the hood to see the weber carb already installed. My Dad is a retired mechanic. he lives nearby now. I finally got him to move out here after I built the shop. He did not want to leave all his tools and stuff at home but since my Mom died he was living all alone out there so I built the shop and convinced him to move out here. Now we tinker in my garage for fun.

anyway once we started looking at the engine we found a couple problems right off. first was that the vacuum advance was completely missing off the distributor. the little lever was sticking out of the distributor just flopping all over the place. secondly the vacuum lines were totally screwed up. and the lines to the transfer case were just cut off with what looked like a pair of side cutters. anyway after quite a bit of reading on here about the vacuum lines we got that sorted out, put in a remanufactured distributor, new plugs and wires, and a new fuel filter. then we did the nutter bypass and voila.



it started right up.:cheers: We spent a bit of time setting the timing, and adjusting the carburetor and it starts right up and runs like a champ. now the thing runs so good I am in no hurry to swap that 4.0 in lol.
 
#10 ·
ok so then I took it for the first real test drive... and found several more problems lol.

1. no heat at all.
2. the heater fan would not shut off. just blew cold air.
3. there were a lot of holes in the floor and around the doors and hardtop and it was plain cold driving (again this was in early january when the jeep finally arived.)
4. the water temp gauge didn't work.
5. the front end needed a lot of work there was a lot of slop in the steering.

so we tore into it. to make a long story short. I found that the prior owner had not installed a thermostat when they put it together. so I put in a new 190 degree thermostat and that helped it started to make a bit of heat just not much. it did however fix the temp gauge lol. I guess it just wasn't getting warm enough to register on the gauge. anyway I decided the heater core must be partially clogged. so I swapped the heater core and did the blower motor upgrade at the same time. I also cleaned the bed liner off the heater plenum. (the prior owner just sprayed it all over in there without masking anything off). then I took the heater controls apart and fixed the switch to shut the fan off. put it all back together and it heats up nicely now.

I had a ball joint in the front suspension that was shot and that was one reason the front end wandered so much so I swapped that. I tried tightening the steering gear box and it helped a bit but it was leaking fluid all over and there was still slop in the box so I bought a new steering box and swapped that in. that fixed my handling up nicely.

the prior owner had also decided to trash the vacuum activated front axle disconnect and the posilock cable was included in the purchase. since the vacuum system had been trashed and I had used the posilock before I went ahead and swapped that in. I found out that I had a bad passenger side ujoint at that time and fixed it as well.

now I have four wheel drive.
 
#11 ·
after that I started tackling some of the little things that needed fixed. first I fixed a lot of little electrical problems like instrument cluster lights, and one of the biggest headaches I had was that stupid little light in the gear shift indicator. the indicator arm was broken and I found a new one to replace it. that was the easy part. I tried to replace the bulb and it would not come out. since I have never had to deal with that problem before I was not sure how the bulb was supposed to be replaced. I finally found out that it was just like the rest of the bulbs in the interior it was just completely corroded in the socket. so I ended up destroying the bulb but I got it fixed. I fixed the housing with j-b weld and painted it black. this was a big problem for my daughter as she can't quite get past the idea of if the gear indicator can't be seen how do you know what gear it is in. anyway it was a small but annoying problem fixed.


then in order to get it inspected I had to fix the horn. that was another much more difficult problem than it should have been. getting it running was easy compared to that lol.

first when I got the jeep obviously there was no horn button on there.


but before I bought a new horn button I started at the horn and found out that it was bad. so I swapped in a new horn. then I could make it honk by running current to it. so far so good so I tried to find a horn button that would work. it turns out after much sweating and figureing that the steering wheel that was installed and the installation kit that came with it were not compatible with this jeep. so I got a new steering wheel and adapter. I also bought the little horn hardware kit from napa to replace the spring contacts. then I had to replace the turn signal cancelling cam.

now in a mustang that is pretty easy. on this jeep it is obviously a bit more complicated because you have to remove that little snapring that holds it all in. I read that there was a special tool needed to fix that, I did not have that tool so I made this out of a couple bolts and a piece of angle iron from my scrap pile.



not pretty but it worked.

then the new steering wheel.



then I tackled some cosmetic issues. first I know I have spent too much time building mustangs but the grimy ugly engine compartment just bugged me so I spent some time with a pressure washer cleaned up where they obviously had a power steering hose fail as the entire engine compartment was covered in it. next I hate looking at rust so the master cylinder cap bugged me.


so I blasted it in my bead blaster and powdercoated it with my eastwood powdercoating system.

 
#12 ·
some of the things I am very happy with on this jeep are that the seats are nice aftermarket seats that are pretty comfortable. they look better in the pictures than they do in person so I may get some seat covers soon. I had some of those wet okeole seat covers on my 95 and I liked them so we will see. I also am very happy that the prior owner put in those nice tuffy security consoles. however I only have one key for them so I am going to have to contact tuffy to see if I can get some copies. I really like the wheels. I would like them to be a bit wider however. I have always like the look of those bushwacker flares so I plan to put some of those on someday. I like having a hardtop. this one needs some work. the weatherstripping is shot, the attachment point in the front is all rusted, the window tint has holes in it and the rear defroster doesn't work. it also is in need of some paint. but overall the jeep is in pretty decent shape now and I have been using it a lot this summer. I drive it to work sometimes and my daughter has been trying to monopolize it to drive to school. I pulled the top off a couple months ago and put a bikini top on it for the summer and I plan to tackle the hardtop soon because it is going to start getting cold again soon. more pics to follow.
 
#14 ·
That is so clean. If it hasn't been lined to protect it do it. The 94/95 do have factory rust proofing but that thing is so clean I would treat it right. I have a another serious case of jeep envy. That is 2 times this week.
 
#16 ·
ok. so after I did that much I just drove it that way for a while till it got warm out then my daughter wanted to take the top off it and put a bikini top on it for summer and I wanted to look at what was wrong with the weatherstripping.
so I put a power hoist a top in.



and pulled the top. I found several issues with the seals, first the drivers side corner was missing the corner piece. there was some of the old drivers door weatherstripping stuck to the top, but most importantly I think was that the aftermarket roll bar was not adjusted properly. the adjustment slot was not long enough so they could not tilt the windshield back to the proper position so it leaned forward about a 1/2 inch to far leaving a big gap and making the top not fit right. so I spent a little time with a drill and a dremel until I got the windshield to fit properly. then I took a look at the top.

don't get me wrong this jeep is in great shape for how old it is, there is some small problems here and there and this is a project vehicle so I have to find something to tinker with right?
anyway as I said above the front metal trim piece was rusted.


it doesn't copy well but the old window tinting is coming off in places and there are bid holes in it.



the wire to the rear defroster is broken, I don't know if the rest of the system works or not. that is something I still need to sort out.



the good news is the wiper works. the dome light does not.

anyway this is how it looks today.





you can't see him to well but my buddy Josh, my shop dog is in the back seat. he loves the joopacabra. all my dogs love to go for rides, but Josh is the only one I know won't jump out while I am in the store or whatever.

ok next task is to start working on the top. My Daughter started 10th grade on wednesday. she has her school permit so she can drive to school. she is afraid to take her mustang so she wants to take the joop unless it rains so I need to get the top back on it pretty soon. it needs a fair amount of work but nothing major. a coat of paint inside and out, some new weatherstripping and some elbow grease. hopefully I will get it finished and back on next week. I am going to paint the inside bright white with appliance epoxy enamel and the outside semi gloss black. I thought about painting it the tan color because I liked the look of it when I got it, but I decided black would be easier to touch up when the inevitable booboos occur.

so I have a bunch of parts waiting to be installed and a jeep top ready to be freshened up a bit. I will post up some more once I get the top done.

 
#18 ·
I have been working pretty hard on the jeep top in my copious free time this weekend lol. anyway this is what I have accomplished.

first I spent a lot of time on the inside with a scotch brite and wax and grease remover. then I masked the whole thing off, and painted the inside bright white. then I set it down on some buckets to work on the outside.




then I read on here that many people had successfully used a roller to paint the top. I was unsure about that but I decided to give it a try. we decided to use semigloss black paint. first because that is what my daughter wanted and second because I thought it would be easier to touch up later. anyway...




then I lifted it up again and put the new window trim and seals in place, and spent several hours scraping 2 layers of window tint off the windows. I would like to re-tint it at some point but the old stuff had to go as it was peeling off and looked like crap.



I think it looks pretty good.

now I have to do something that I am of two minds about. I have decided that I am going to put carpet in there. :peaking:I like the fact that the jeep is bed lined, however last winter the floor was very cold and it has lots of drain holes in it. I decided the best way to "winterize" the inside a bit more, besides just fixing the weatherstripping, was to carpet it. I will have to keep a close eye on it to make sure the carpet is not getting and staying wet. I know it is not an ideal situation and will likely get me flamed, but as I said the main purpose in this jeep is be a cold weather rig. so I will have to make compromises on what I would like to do. anyway the carpet is bought and is in the process of being shipped. it should be here soon. I am going to wait to put the top on until after I get the carpet in to make it a bit easier to work on it.
 
#21 ·
Thanks. I love my shop. I pretty much live out here. I have my mini fridge, my tv with surround sound that connects to my wireless computer network so I can watch movies on vudu or netflix. I have my laptop and a full bathroom, so I usually stay out here unless we are eating or sleeping lol.
 
#20 ·
yesterday I got quite a bit done. I took the bikini top off and pulled the seats and center console. I had to have my daughter help me with the center console. someone had to hold the wrench on the underside after all lol.


then I took the rear view mirror off and put one in from a 99 mustang convertible. it has the built in maplights and surprisingly it slipped right onto the original mounting bracket. then I ran the wires down behind the weatherstripping and plugged into an add a circuit in the fuse box.



yes the windshield is dirty but its a jeep for crying out loud lol.

then I started putting the carpet in. I want to be able to pull it out and replace it easily when it gets wet or stained so I did not use any adhesive. it is just held in by bolts and a few screws.

btw here is a little tip I like to use when I am installing auto carpet. should anyone decide they want to put carpet in some where.

I have an old electrical tester that I broke years ago but it works great for this. if you can find the hole from the top just poke it through the carpet. or you can poke it up through the carpet from the other side. either way once the probe is poked through the hole this is for one of the seatbelt mounting tabs.



then take your soldering gun and it will melt right down along the probe and into the hole. if you poked it through from the bottom it will fall out or just pull it out from the top. then the soldering gun will melt the carpet back to the edges of the hole, you can move the gun around a bit to make the hole bigger. once you are done you have a hole that is melted just like you would do with the cut end of a nylon rope. it won't fray or pull the strands of the carpet like using a drill or hole saw.



ok so as I was installing the carpet I found some little things that needed to be addressed. there were some small parts that had surface rust, or just looked bad. like the tailgate latch.


so a little time with a wire wheel and my little scotch brite pad on my air sander.


and a little time with my eastwood powder coater.


a little wire wheeling, sanding and some chassis black.


then my wife bought me these little LED lights for my birthday and I did not really know what to do with them but I decided to put them on my center console. they stick on and are out of the way. I decided to just wire them into my light circuit so they come on whenever I turn on the lights.
to Illuminate the Dew lol.


carpet is in.




then I put new weatherstripping on the top and put it back on.



today I have to put the door weatherstripping on, then I will be done with this segment of the build. I plan to just drive it this way over the winter. next spring I will start the fuel injection conversion.
 
#22 ·
well, that was a nice surprise. replacing the weatherstripping around the doors is way easier than it is on an old mustang. I believe I got it on there properly, and it seemed very easy....which means I probably did something wrong lol but we will see. anyway the top is back on and it is ready to go out and do some cruizing later today.
 
#23 ·
ok I finished the weatherstripping and sorted out the problems with the dome light. it was just a burnt fuse and a bad door jam switch, and a broken bulb. I also got the windshield wiper fixed. apparently I bent the little switch on the rear window, but I adjusted that and now pretty much everything works. I don't know for sure about the rear defroster, I don't really know how to test that. I guess I will just have to wait till this winter and see if it works lol.

one last pic today, kind of an overview pic.

 
#26 ·
thanks for the comments, and I agree with the armor lol. as far as the mustang goes she drives it to school for game days. she is a cheerleader so she likes to take it for game days. the rest of the time she drives the Jeep. and thanks for telling me how it is supposed to be spelled lol.

the only problem with the jeep right now and it is really pretty minor is that sometimes it takes a while to get it started. you have to pump it and pump it before it primes enough to get it going. I could put an electric pump in at the tank and that would probably fix the problem, but I have planned to do a fuel injection conversion on this jeep since I bought it. I had some problems with my sons cherokee and I never did get it sorted out. there was some problem in the wiring. anyway that hurt my pride lol so I always planned on converting to fuel injection so that I can learn more about it and to vindicate myself a bit for my prior failure. having said all that I really liked my fuel injected 95 it was a great little rig.

so I was scouring ebay a while back and I found a Hesco MPFI conversion from Summit racing for a pretty good price. (relatively speaking) I wanted the hesco kit because it has basically everything in it for the conversion including all new distributor, wiring harness manifold. everything.

last friday I started working on it.
 
#27 ·
I had considered doing a cam swap but I decided against it. I am however going to swap the 4.0 head on though.

first step to make access easier, pull the grill and radiator.



then I began disconnecting wiring and vacuum lines. then since we were going to pull the head it, is a lot easier to pull the head, intake and exhaust all at once than to do it separately.

so I set the engine at TDC and took the distributor cap off confirming that the rotor was pointed at number 1, and pulled the head.

then I had planned to change the timing set, so I pulled the harmonic balancer and the timing cover.

when I pulled the timing cover I found the crank sprocket positioned with the dot toward the cam sprocket. the cam sprocket dot however was 180 out. I rotated it around so the two dots are aligned. here is the pic.



however the rotor looks like this.



now keep in mind this engine was running just fine when I took it apart. but this as far as I know looks like the distributor is in 180 out of time. I called Hesco and asked them about it and they said to just re install everything like I took it out.

so I swapped the timing chain. it looks like this now.


the distributor looks like this.



before reinstalling the head I rotated the engine so the cam sprocket was at 1:00 and the crank sprocket was at 3:00 and counted pins. 15 count just like it should be. so I positioned it at TDC with the rotor pointing at number one again even though that means my timing dots are not aligned. reinstalled the head, torqued it properly.



now I need to pull the distributor:confused:. the new distributor has a pin in it to keep it from rotating. My concern is that this looks like it is 180 out to me. should I reinstall it like it was? I know it is not that big of a deal to pull the distributor and swap it 180 but I wanted to get some more opinions before I pulled the distributor.
 
#28 ·
so I searched the internet, posted questions on this forum and on Hesco's forum and at first I really got no answers accept for people assuming that either I had done something wrong installing the timing chain or that I had just moved the spark plug wires to make it run. I had done neither of those. finally Lee from Hesco let me know that in fact this is the way it is supposed to be.

Lee from Hesco posted this
"The timing dots when aligned has the engine at TDC firing #6, also at this time the #1 valves should be a "SPLIT OVERLAP" (that means the exhaust is almost closed and the intake is starting to open). Most engine builders use this to rough degree a cam in."

anyway that slowed me way down. I was concerned that something was not right and while I kept working on it I was kind of dragging my feet because I did not want to do anything wrong.

actually before Lee answered me I had put my finger over the spark plug hole and confirmed I was on the compression stroke so I had decided everything must be right so I continued putting things together. it was a relief to here from lee that everything was as it should be.
 
#29 ·
Since I wanted to do some checking before I did anything else, and the new harmonic balancer I ordered had not arrived yet anyway I started doing some detailing. I like to make things look nice when I put them back together besides just working right. so I started wire wheeling the exhaust manifold. I found a big crack in it. that explains why I could not get that stupid exhaust leak stopped. I thought it was coming from the flange. anyway I considered swapping in the header from the cherokee but when I put it on there it hits the shifter linkage. I considered modifying that, but then I would have had to run a custom exhaust from the header to the cat, and have an oxygen sensor bung welded into it as well. I also considered buying a new manifold. 259 dollars at NAPA. or a new header from summit 350 to 450. in the end I decided to see if someone could weld the manifold. I happen to know a guy, I work with his wife. anyway he has a welding and forge shop, does a lot of wrought iron work and can weld cast iron. he said he could fix it for me so I dropped it off at his shop, and I picked it up the next morning. I also had to swap in a new temp gauge sending unit because I broke the old one when I put the 4.0 in the cherokee.

since I was kind of at a stopping point Dad left for the night and I spent some time blasting and powdercoating some of the accessory brackets.
 
#31 ·
here is the valve cover. it is a stock valve cover off a 93 cherokee. I stripped it in my blast cabinet. then I powdercoated it white with my little eastwood kit.



then after that cooled I blew on the red. and wiped off the raised areas with masking tape. just blotting it on there, move blot etc.



then I baked it using a portable IR heater I got when I bought my powdercoating kit.

 
#32 ·
the nice thing about powdercoating is once you buy the kit, it cost less than 20 bucks in powder to do all that.

anyway if anyone is reading along on this they will already realize that I screwed up. the 4.2 exhaust manifold will not fit the 4.0 head,,,crap. so after spending 75 dollars to get it welded, and over an hour wire wheeling it and painting it with high temp paint, I have a really nice looking piece of scrap metal. so anyway I decided I would have to use the cherokee header. the downside to this is that I had to modify the shifter linkage bracket and I will have to custom fab the exhaust from the header to the catalytic converter and add an o2 sensor bung in the down pipe.

here is what the shifter linkage bracket looks like after I modified it.



I painted it with chassis black for rust prevention, and then I bought a downpipe from napa that a guy on another site suggested. it configures the exhaust pretty close to what I need. I will just have to cut it down and have it rewelded. I absolutely can't stand exhaust leaks so I will have the muffler shop guy do it for me.
 
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