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Nasty's Trooper Project

19K views 76 replies 11 participants last post by  bradzuzu 
#1 · (Edited by Moderator)
It's been a long time since I did anything aside from lurk or respond to threads. So I thought I'd start another to document the rebuild of my engine and any eventual projects I come up with.

Last fall I decided to do a fluid flush on my 4l30. Unfortunately all the crap floating in the fluid was the acting friction material and the since the new fluid was.....well new, 50 miles later I had 1st, sometimes 2nd, 3rd rarely and 4th came and went as it pleased. During the trans swap my buddy pointed out he could turn my engine over with one hand using the flex plate. A quick compression check showed 4, 5 & 6 had 120 PSI or less. At least I now knew why my throttle pedal only increased the noise coming from the engine but didn't give me anymore power. I didn't bother with the other 3 cylinders because the FSM states that any cylinder below 128 PSI requires an engine tear down.

Since I still drive my Trooper on the rare occasion I decided to just buy a junk yard engine. My mechanic tossed a started on it and did a quick compression check. Cylinders 1 ,2 & 3 had 30-80 PSI. I had several very colorful words to say. It came with a warranty and I probably should have taken it back but it only cost me $200 including the gas to go pick it up. So I set about ordering all the parts needed for a rebuild. Most of the parts came from eBay. I'm still debating on whether to use the HG that came in the eBay gasket kit or pick up a set from Fel-Pro.

Just so everyone knows these engines are heavy. My neighbor helped me unload my JY engine from the back of my Trooper and hang it on the engine stand. It only took the two of us but it was a retarded idea to have it loaded in the back of my Trooper and then have 2 guys pick up a fully dressed engine. My wife got a very good laugh watching us struggle with the stupid thing

Once the engine was hung it only took my 2 hours to strip the intake, exhaust, fuel and ignition system off. It would have gone a lot quicker if I hadn't take a few pictures and didn't have to dig around my shed to find tools. I still need to find the right socket to get the harmonic balancer off but I ran out of time before heading to work. I didn't take any pictures of the engine hanging on the stand but I did take some of the intake and exhaust ports.

This is one port on each side of the Lower Intake Manifold. The screw driver is 2.5mm at the tip. The port mating surfaces are mismatched so badly the screw driver tip only covers half the area. Each port looked the same.
Top of Lower Intake Manifold
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Bottom of Lower Intake Manifold
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Here is a couple shots showing all the ports have the same mismatch.
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#27 ·
Just a quick update. I was going to finish buttoning up the engine until I realized the M8 bolts ARE NOT included in the head bolt kit I bought. When I looked in the manual it states to reuse the M8 and replace the m12. Wish I'd seen that earlier. I have 5 of the 6 bolts somewhere but the last one had to be drilled out when I removed the heads. So I'm either going to hit up Jerry for new ones or see if I can source a bolt locally that will work.
 
#28 · (Edited by Moderator)
So last week I went ahead and temp installed the heads. The reason I say temp install is because I didn't have the M8 bolts yet. It's a good thing I didn't torque anything down because I found the locating dowels when I was searching for another part. The dowels are small spring clips that insert into the block to line the head up correctly to the block. Not having them in isn't necessarily going to cause damage but they are there for a reason. It's pretty easy to see where they go because the the holes are enlarged for them to fit.

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#29 · (Edited by Moderator)
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#30 · (Edited by Moderator)
I got a quick picture of the intake port that looked the best. There's lots of room for improvement on these heads. Unfortunately I don't have the time or place to do it anymore. I forgot to get a picture of the exhaust side but they don't look any better. These are the 92-95 DOHC heads. If I had to make an educated guess the big performance gain these heads have over the SOHC is the bump in compression.
92-95 SOHC 9.3:1
92-95 DOHC 9.8:1
96-97 SOHC 9.0:1
Wish I'd taken some measurement before I bolted the heads on. Between the cylinder bore increase and heads being decked I should end up somewhere between 9.9:1 and 10:1.
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#31 ·
You've been having a little bit of fun I see .. I wonder if you'll have any pining issues ?

Good to see you messing around with stuff :)
 
#32 ·
I'm really not sure what I'll do if it does ping. The PCM will pull timing until the knock goes away but I'll loose quite of power that way. If I crank the fuel pressure the PCM will shorten the pulse width to keep the AF/R to stock levels.
 
#33 ·
After all the messing around with mine I notice the areas that the system goes into open loop or just enrichens itself at higher rpms ... For instance lite throttle up past 3500 it will drop to 13.1 afr out of boost but that's ideal to be able to step down more ... Also you could always install atoning retarder , I think you can find something basic for less money than the fic6 I'm using ...
 
#34 ·
Hey Nasty, have you made any more progress with the rebuild? I remember you had issues with the distance after moving.

I got everything started with my project and then suddenly got a job offer in another city; have barely had any opportunities to make progress each time I go back to my folks' house where the Trooper had been during these months. Finally making time this weekend.
 
#35 ·
I've made a little progress. At this point I need to pull the old engine and swap all the external parts over. One of these days I'll pull it in the shop and get it done.
 
#36 ·
Good to hear. My new job uses CAD software so I've been playing around with the idea of designing some timing covers with a slot for the cam sensor, then finding a 3D printing service to produce them.
 
#37 · (Edited by Moderator)
Wednesday I finally pulled the trooper into the shop for the engine swap. Not sure how you guys pull these engines in a driveway. I used a lift and this is probably the worst engine I've pulled in awhile. To be honest though I'm usually pulling BMW or VW/Audi engines. Anyways not a lot of pictures because I was by myself.

Spent a couple hours Wednesday pulling the manifold and driveshafts out. Really I screwed off for the most part and turned 45 minutes of work in a few hours.

Went back to the shop on Thursday and pulled the transmission and transfer case. I ended up pulling them as a unit without removing the exhaust. I have custom exhaust so I'm not sure if you do that with stock exhaust. Think this took me all of 3 hours. I kept forgetting to disconnect stuff like the shifter.

Friday I pulled the engine. Talk about a pain in the butt to do by yourself. There's so many little things tucked in ridiculous places and when the engine is coated in a mud/sand/oil mix you can't find anything. I ended up taking the tires off and setting it on the ground to make it easy to clear the radiator.

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#38 · (Edited by Moderator)
Some shots of the engine coming out. Tomorrow a friend from work is going to make me a bracket for the cam sensor. Hopefully I can have this thing up and running tomorrow sometime.
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#39 ·
Woohoo! Good luck! Extremely interested in seeing how y'all approach the sensor holder design.
 
#40 · (Edited by Moderator)
Doesn't seem like a lot happened today. Basically spent the entire day pulling parts from the old motor, cleaning them and then installing them. Lots of really dirty parts on the old engine.

My buddy in the photo is going to make the bracket. We talked and agreed a piece of bar stock bent to mount on the existing cover holes should be plenty strong.

Ended up going to Pepboys to find the 2 bolt exhaust flange. Damn things were $25 each because they are stainless. Really wish I could have found some cheaper ones but I want this engine in place tomorrow.

I was seriously considering not pulling the coolant supply pipe from the cylinder crossover pipe. In the end I figured I would since the rest of the o-rings were basically plastic and crumbling. Glad I did because the o-ring was completely flat and cracked when I touched it with a pick.

Not sure why the first pic is upside down. I didn't take it that way and it doesn't show up like that on my phone.

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#41 ·
I swear that pulling and cleaning parts part is the most agonizing time consuming job !!
I hope you get it all put back together and running with minimal issues ...
 
#42 ·
Well I wanted it together this past weekend but ran into a couple snags though. Main one was my buddy wanted to work on his Harley while he helped me with the Trooper. Then he screwed up the bracket entirely. The other issue is the exhaust manifolds. The OBD1 manifolds dump almost straight down where as the OBD2 manifolds dump at more lik 45 degrees.
 
#43 ·
Regarding the manifolds, i remember Jerry and i spent a lot of time going back and forth in our PM conversation. It all centered around, "As i move downstream along the exhaust system, at what point do i no longer need to use new (i.e. DOHC) parts, and simply have to fab a connector or a bend to meet up with the remainder of the original exhaust system?" I take it that's where you're at now?

How are things looking, otherwise?
 
#44 ·
I'm just about done. Need to buy some high pressure hose to connect the trans cooler since I ripped one. I have to either buy a larger step bit or use a grinder to finish enlarging the hole for my cam sensor. After that it's just fluids and the exhaust. Honestly the exhaust is one of the simplest parts. The DOHC manifolds dump almost straight down so you just need a 2" 2 bolt flange and a single bend to connect to your cats. Don't waste your time buying new parts or anything like that. Just get it all installed and to an exhaust shop. Should be fairly cheap to fab up what's needed.
 
#45 ·
All good to hear. I never realized your Trooper was green. I think the gray trim on your's looks a lot better than the platinum-ish trim on mine.

If you have some time, feel free to post closeup photos of the sensor holder and also your method for securing the coils to the valve covers. They will be much appreciated!
 
#46 ·
I'll get some pictures when I go back to the shop.
 
#47 · (Edited by Moderator)
Here's a picture of the bracket I made. It looks like crap and I plan to build a much nicer one once I make sure it works. Going to be a bit before I find out if it's right though. I was under the truck finishing some stuff up when I noticed coolant dropping from the oil drain plug. I check cylinder 4 and it's full of coolant. Not sure how but my head gaskets are leaking. One is OEM and the other is Fel-Pro. Hopefully it's just a bad gasket because if the heads are damaged this truck is going to the scrap yard. I'll know in a few weeks.

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#48 ·
Yeah I remember you describing getting the heads redone as a pretty big headache. Fingers crossed then; good luck!
 
#50 ·
Brad: No, what I was referring to (if I'm remembering correctly) was during his teardown of the old motor he sent off the heads to be rebuilt and the shop either left one of the parts out or installed something incorrectly.

Nasty: Any luck with the coolant leak, or are you still waiting to find out? I can't imagine how frustrated you were after a year of work...
 
#51 ·
The machine shop left off one of the cam end caps and the seal. I haven't pulled the heads yet. Kind of holding off until I have a gasket set and new bolts on hand. I'm really hoping I just didn't clean the mating surface well enough. With the luck I've had with this project though I wouldn't be surprised if the heads were junk and the machine shop didn't catch it.
 
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