She’s sea-worthy!
Probably not actually sea-worthy, but it’s a figure of speech.
I’ve just made my inaugural trip and I’m happy to report that I am not dead. . . so that’s nice.
It’s a weird feeling driving a vehicle that you’ve personally wrenched on. I usually trust myself implicitly, but this is different. I keep driving down the road thinking, “what if I put together the drum brakes incorrectly?” or “what if I didn’t reattach everything” or “there must be a reason new cars have airbags”. I wouldn’t perform orthopedic surgery on myself after watching a few YouTube videos, so what makes me think I can just fix a car?
In any case, getting to the point where I’m nervously chugging along the back roads of Fall City took a lot of work. Let’s get you updated! The last thing I want is for you to lose more sleep wondering about how this project is progressing.
A few weeks ago, I dropped off a dirty, broken differential to Northwest Differential. As I awaited news on the progress of my derelict rear end, I continued my work on the other broken components.
First. The muffler.
As you’ll recall, I exploded the previous muffler. Fixing this seemed important.
Getting at the muffler was a challenge. The muffler was welded to the exhaust pipes so it was not as simple as disconnecting clamps. I weaseled my way under the rear end armed with my trusty hacksaw and started at cutting the inlet and outlet pipes which secured the muffler in place.
It became clear fairly quickly that the hacksaw was the wrong tool for the job. I had brought a knife to a gunfight. It was impossible to get any mechanical advantage or to create the space necessary for a clean sawing stroke. Had I continued with the hacksaw, I’d still be under the car.
I felt like the Sawzall would be a good choice, but I lacked an appropriate blade to cut through the exhaust pipes. I remedied that with a quick trip to Home Depot and after monkeying around with a few equally awkward positions, I managed to cut the muffler off. Here it is in all its glory:
The next step was getting an appropriate replacement muffler. This was a bit of a challenge. Since I had cut off the welded portions, it was no longer a “regular” length. I had to span 24 inches. With about 1.5 inches of overlap necessary for a clamping surface on each side, I was looking at a 27-inch total gap. After talking with the guys over at Dan Fast Muffler and Brake, I settled on a Magnaflow muffler that would fit. They provided me with an extra length of pipe to bridge the gap between the 20” muffler and 27” gap as well as a few exhaust pipe clamps.
Installing the new muffler was easy. Put pipe in pipe. Clamp. The end. I wanted to hear the sound of the new muffler, but unfortunately, the battery was completely drained. . .not good. I must have left a door ajar for an extended period of time.
I borrowed a 2amp battery charger from neighbor John and let the battery charge up overnight.
I fired it up the next day. The sound is full and throaty as a V8 should be, but not overly aggressive and annoying. I don’t need people to know that I’m coming from a mile away. I have always thought loud mufflers were stupid and I stand by that sentiment. Congratulations dipshit. Your shitty little Mitsubishi Lancer is now loud as fuck and everyone hates you. You’re not a race car driver and Ground FX look stupid.
It’s like you and seven of your closest friends are trying to remake a shitty fan-fiction version of “Fast and The Furious” along I-5. “Moderately Quick and Discontented”. You’re not outlaw street racers, you’re just annoying assholes killing time between your community college classes and your night job as a Taco Bell manager.
I got a call later that day from Northwest Differential. As it turns out, my fears that the rear end was “fucked” were not at all unfounded. While he didn’t use those exact words, he did say that it was in, “pretty rough shape,” which I assume is pretty much analogous. If your proctologist tells you that your x-ray indicates that things are in “pretty rough shape,” you’re in trouble and you shouldn’t have had that last shot of tequila last night. If your financial adviser uses, “pretty rough shape,” to describe your portfolio, you’re going to need to sell your boat and move in to the spare bedroom in your son’s house. “Pretty rough shape,” is the most polite way to describe something that is irrevocably “fucked”.
It needed a new ring and pinion, new wheel bearings, new shims, new races, new side gears. . . basically new everything except for axle shafts. The estimate was around $1950 with all parts and labor. On one hand, I was one step closer to having a functional vehicle, but on the other hand I was one step closer to being completely broke and homeless, living in my own filth under an overpass and relying on my ability to come up with a cleverly sorrowful cardboard sign and the pity of a compassionate community to keep me from drinking myself to death. In short, it was more than I was hoping to spend.
I still had about a week before picking up the rear end so I turned my attention to the interior. The carpet in the back of the vehicle was brittle and tearing, so that had to go. Ditto for the tailgate carpet. I folded up the back seat, removed the seat belts which were bolted into the body and ripped out the carpet. While it didn’t look too bad to the naked eye, it practically crumbled in my hands. Since I was going to redo the cargo area carpet, I decided to redo all of the carpet. The last thing I wanted was to have two slightly different shades or textures of carpet. This would look out of place and a bit wonky. An entirely new set of carpet, cut to shape and ready for installation was $375. Not bad. I also opted to get some mass backer to minimize road noise. Another $115.
I also decided to order a new headliner. The old headliner was sagging badly off the backer board and the previous owner had already removed it. I still had the backer cardboard so, I should be able to simply remove the old material, clean the board and apply a new headliner. That was $75.
Behind the cargo area side panels were two speakers, or more correctly was ONE former speaker and one empty space where a speaker should rightfully have been. The speaker that was there did not work (in the sense that it did not emit sound. It would presumably “work” as a paperweight, a trivet, or in a pinch, as a weapon), and the other had presumably been stolen by the most desperate thief ever.
For all its luxury at the time, the 1990 Jeep Grand Wagoneer was downright primitive when it came to a sound system. In addition to the two 5.25” speakers in the rear side panels, there were two 5.25” speakers nested in the driver and passenger doors. Despite the delightful crackle in the front speakers, I decided to replace the entire set of speakers.
The speakers in the rear had room to grow with some slight modification to the bracketry, so I went with two 6.5” Kicker speakers in the rear and two Focal speakers in the front door panels. I expected the removal of the door panels to be complicated, but it effectively consisted of removing four trim screws, four bolts holding in the armrest, one screw holding in the door knob, a coupe screws holding in the decorative trim around the power window controls, and carefullyremoving 6 retainer clips.
“Carefully” was the operative word here. Because of the age of the door panels and the gradual absorption of moisture over time, they had become a little soft. As I tried to pry out the first retainer clip, I ripped it right out of the door panel. With a bit more finesse, I managed to get the remaining clips out without further collateral damage. The speakers installed easily and I reassembled the door panels. The sound was by no means exceptional, but it was several levels better than “tinny, crackly and awful.” There might be more work to do on this in the future. There’s nothing worse than listening to NPR with poor low to mid-range sound.
Functional exhaust system? Check. Music? Check.
All I needed now was a rear-end.
Having learned from my mistake transporting the rear-end to NW Diff in the back of my car (it smelled like differential fluid for a week and made more of a mess than I envisioned), I borrowed neighbor John’s pickup.
Reattaching the rear end was a bit more difficult than detaching it. I had to raise one side of the axle up with the floor jack high enough to get the new U-bolts around the leaf spring and axle and then repeat on the other side. I gradually tightened each side and moved the floor jack under the nose of the rebuilt differential to keep it from tipping forward.
With the U-bolts securely tightened to the precise feet/pounds of “about as tight as I can,” I reattached the rear-stabilizer bar, the two rear shocks, the brake line, and finally, the drivetrain.
I tightly bolted down the differential cover and filled it with SAE 80/90 gear oil.
Lastly, but certainly not least. . .the drum brakes.
A word about the drum brakes. When you look at the components of drum brakes it looks like the most haphazard assortment of garbage in the world. It looks like someone blindly reached into a junk drawer, took out a bunch of springs and brackets and decided, “yep, that’ll work.”
I had no idea how to put these back together. Fortunately, I had a nice “before” picture to work toward. Over the course of a couple hours, I managed to reassemble the brakes. As I was about to put the drums back on, I noticed that my before picture looked. . .a little different than my after picture. This was a problem. Apparently, it matters that your rear brakes actually function appropriately. The way that I had assembled it would have caused the brake shoes to actually contract during braking. . .you might understand this to mean “not braking,” and you’d be correct. In short, I had put the brake lever and the emergency brake on opposite sides of the hub when they’re supposed to overlay one another.
The first attempt at putting together the brakes took me about 90 minutes. The second assembly took my about 10, so the good news is that I now know really well how to assemble and reassemble drum brakes. . .so I’ve got that going for me.
Brake drums on. Wheels on. Lugnuts tightened. Jack stands removed.
We’re rollin’ now. Literally.
I backed out of the garage, out the driveway and out onto the country roads.
Next steps: figure out why I keep stalling out after going down my driveway, identify source of slow but persistent oil drip, install new carpet and headliner and put 40-gallon aquarium in the back with a miniature Great White Shark.