Congrats on getting this heap up and running – now get it out of your fleet when you get back from Raptor bashing. One thing I would recommend is to WEAR GLOVES when wrenching. Even cheap disposable latex gloves can prevent grease from getting under most of your fingertips (yes you will likely rip the tips of the glove’s index finger, but usually only one or two fingertips will be destroyed in my experience). If you can figure out where to get the heavyweight gloves Ed China always seemed to have, those would be even better. If you can get over your ultimate cheapness, mechanics gloves work too. You will save enough on hand cleaner to pay for the cheap gloves. Also, as noted by the commentariat on your last Jeep post – next time have the machine shop do the valve job – yes it will be a few hundred dollars, but the head will come back better than you can do in your yard, and you will have time to write another story to keep this site going. These past couple months, I had my floors in my main living area ripped up and replaced with vinyl plank. I had removed all the baseboards and casement molding and once the floors were installed, I needed to buy new trim, put it back together myself and paint. Simple enough job right? Well, no, my dumb ass instead immediately leapt into replacing my privacy fence, which of course was a shitshow that took much longer than expected. Then, I’d started seeing someone at the time, and had to have her over for the first time with a house in disarray, missing trim, furniture still in odd places and a backyard littered with construction supplies. I normally pride myself on keeping things up, so I was stress cleaning until well past midnight the night before to make it somewhat presentable. Projects of any type can take over your life man, and I’ve been there plenty of times. I’d take this weekend to put everything else aside and get things back in order. You’ll feel so much better and it’ll be way easier to focus on all of the things you want to with surroundings that don’t stress you out. These sorts of things are why I have really cut back on my project count, and instead focus on being very thorough about them. Sure, you get less variety, but you also get less headaches. A decent water pump can be yours for $30 shipped from rockauto, the Spectra radiator is the best value around and rebranded in several places is $135, and if you really want to thoroughly clean the block, the biggest cost of replacing the freeze plugs to clean out rust buildup behind them is the intake and exhaust gasket for $20. That’s biggest parts of a complete cooling system replacement and service for less than $200, not including the various other line items that add up. That preventative cost becomes well worth it when the alternative is replacing a cylinder head or worrying about a cracked block, and you ended up replacing many of those parts anyways! I know you say things like this would be done if it was in your regular fleet. Just keep things like this in mind for when you’re planning out the ZJ build – trying to spend less cash by assuming wear parts are good can backfire and eat into your financial and mental health. It won’t get better overseas! Go overboard with replacing cheap parts now like brake soft lines, caliper rebuilds, cooling system service, etc. and you’ll have a dependable machine. And then you can keep writing about reviving weird old junkers, possibly in far off countries, that you can walk away from without stranding yourself or someone else! 🙂
