1973 Wagoneer - Full Size Camping Goodness

[Dr. Marneaus]

I picked up a super cheap set of fog lights on a whim a few months before, and figured it a fine time to mount them, on the back! When camping I often times use the tailgate of the truck as a galley area, and have my cook table and whatnot setup behind it, so I wanted some extra light back there. Picked up a relay (might as well do it the right way) and broke out my spools of wire.

and...yeah, they're different colors...thanks for that one, china.

They work though! Cant argue with that for $9

Replaced my tail light and reverse lenses with NOS units from a guy on IFSJA. They were so cloudy that they let almost no light through. One of the tail lenses had red plastic inside it because it was so faded, and the plastic was drowning out the light. I also polished all the reflecting surfaces inside the light housing, and now they are nice and bright!

(new on one side, old on the other)

Compare:

Edited to add: I also did some work on my driver side tailgate latch. since buying it, I couldn't get it to lock into place on that side. it was never an issue, but always a little unnerving.

I messed with adjusting it but to no avail. I eventually compared it to the other side and realized it was worn or different somehow. I broke out the welder and tried my hand at "Creating" some material haha.

Not pretty, but its a latch. it worked, kinda. The locking cylinders on each side have 2 "clicks" now it still doesnt achieve full lock, but it gets it past the first click and if I yank on the tailgate i can only get that side to move maybe 1/4". That'll do. I dont know how else to fix it.

 

[Dr. Marneaus]

Great read! And awesome FSJ!

:coffeedrink:

Thanks! I like story telling, its fun but also kind of offers some insight to the method behind my madness. Almost every single thing done on this truck has been done for a specific reason, most of which involve past experience.

That being said, i should probably do some work here at work for a few minutes. :bigbossHL:

 

[JakeC]

Great looking Jeep! I've looked through quite a bit of your pages over on Jeep Forum when I happen to stumble upon the build.

 

[Dr. Marneaus]

HOLD THE SHOW.

In a series of events totally unrelated to anything I've mentioned thus far, as of today I am in the process of purchasing this:

1980 jayco

That should be a perfect platform for what I want! Its 100% good to go, in great shape, but its LOW haha. I should be bringing it home in a few days hopefully. we came to an agreement, going to pay for it and get the title tomorrow.

It will be a while, however, before it gets the attention it needs to go most of the places I'll want it to. Until then, I'll just have to stick to graded dirt roads.

 

[Dr. Marneaus]

Okay, next step in the winter projects was to update the fuel system. and by update, i actually mean revert to stock.

I had the original tank in my back yard from the PO. I just needed new line, a new filler neck, and a new tube to go to the tank from the filler neck.

I essentially needed everything between the fender panel, and the tank.

dropped the old AUX tank, which i still have waiting for a potential reinstallation at a later date.

the old 'plumbers special' filler neck next to an OEM unit from a member on IFSJA

somebody had cut off one of the 3 mounting points for the OEM 'coffin' style tank. So, i welded it back on (luckily it was still attached to the tank)

got the old tank up and in with relative ease. Added a new sock filter to the pickup, reconnected all the lines, and just needed to address the filler.

I made this awesome thingy out of foil and took it to an exhaust shop to have them bend me a filler connector pipe deal.

Also picked up a foot of 1.75" fuel filler hose, this stuff is spendy at $14 per linear foot. Had to go to Nevada House of Hose.

Eventually got everything in and mounted:

Added an OEM locking gas cap from the 70's and ran new line up to the carb. viola!

The old tank was nice and clean inside, so i just rocked it. Its a bit dented, but thats all. Eventually I sprung a leak at a vent tube in the front (a few months later) and it would seep gas when the tank was full. a little tank sealing putty stopped that up right quick.

That got the fuel system back to OEM status, with the exception of hard nylon lines to the carb. I addressed that a bit later, and just installed a rubber line in the mean time.

 

[Dr. Marneaus]

Now, for the last big thing of the winter projects, and something that stalled me.

Brakes!

I pulled my wheels and drums for the first time ever since owning the truck (yes, i did the transfer case rebuild and t case work and engine swap all without ever picking a single tire up off the ground.

My drums were making noise, figured i had over heated them at some point. YUUUUPPP

So, if im doing new shoes, might as well do new hardware. If im doing new hardware, might as well do new wheel cylinders. If i'm doing new wheel cylinders, might as well do a new master cylinder since i need to bleed it anyway.

judging by the level and condition of the fluid...probably a good move.

So, removed my crappy old non functional trailer brake, got all the new parts, and went to town over a few evenings. Remember, the booster was already new.

I had done drum brakes with help from a friend a few years before on my TJ, but never really did much on my own. I didnt have any of the super expensive brake tools, and was trying to get the darn thing done. This was when disaster struck.

LET THIS BE A WARNING TO EVERYBODY

Please. use the proper tools. specialty tools exist for a reason. I had wised up and was wearing safety glasses and thick gloves for the 4th and final wheel, after having had close calls and actually having to redo several wheels a few times because of forgetting or rushing.

I was sitting here working on it, all safety geared up, with my girlfriend sitting behind me talking. I like a true idiot, was almost done, and was using a pair of PLIERS to stretch and attach the final spring at the top of the shoes.

This was the setup when everything went bad.

I stretched the spring, lost my grip on the pliers, and slipped. I was literally using all my weight to pull on the spring, so i went flying with pretty great force. Oh well, that had happened a few times before, and once i kinda scratched my arm on the fender but it didnt even bleed.

Well thats because the other 3 fenders didnt have this freaking meat hook installed on them by a sloppy PO with a sawzall.

Do you notice the hair and a little bit of red on there?

K, paused for a sec, i'm getting sick to my stomach thinking about this event haha.

Well, my arm connected with it at great speed with great force. I fell to the groun looked at my arm and screamed out a sring of obscenities, followed by 'WE NEED TO GO TO THE HOSPITAL RIGHT NOW' the rest got blurry for a bit, my girl ran for a towel , i ran inside put my arm under the sink while resting on my knees. started staring at it, fiured i didnt need to go to the hospital, after all, then when i stood up and almost passed out and had to lay down with my feet up, I figured it might be good to get a doctors opinion.


Well, 16 stitches and a tetanus shot later I am pretty glad I went.

I'm posting links rather than pictures, look at them if you want. and use them as a warning not to be an idiot like I was. This could have been even worse, I got lucky, and I learned a hell of a lesson about using the right tools.

THESE PICTURES IN THE FOLLOWING LINKS ARE GROSS AND GRAPHIC, BUT KINDA COOL. CLICK AT YOUR OWN RISK

Think I should go to a doctor?
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f143/MadMaxima/2012-02-03_18-56-24_568.jpg

getting cleaned by the dr.
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f143/MadMaxima/2012-02-03_20-02-13_627.jpg

close it up! My favorite part was when they jabbed a needle into the open wound about 12 times before it started going numb.
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f143/MadMaxima/2012-02-03_20-10-51_185.jpg

all done! The jerk didnt even shave my arm, had fun pulling hair out of it for a few weeks.
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f143/MadMaxima/2012-02-03_20-23-39_244.jpg

a few days later
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f143/MadMaxima/2012-02-05_21-48-11_30.jpg

When I finally removed the stiches:
http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f143/MadMaxima/2012-02-15_08-57-38_229.jpg

For those of you who dont want to click the links, here it is tonight, 6 months after it happened. I'm pretty sure I'll have that reminder for the rest of my life. But hey, chicks dig scars, right?

For the record, i hurt myself alot.

Anyway, the brakes sat like that, unfinished, for a few weeks until i got the guts to go out and finish it. I bought a 13 dollar brake tool set from harbor freight, and with a set of brake pliers i put that dang spring on in literally 5 seconds, while being 100% safely out of the way.

Please, use the right tools!

I also picked up a body lift, 1", but never got around to installint it. I have rubbing issues in the back on some off camber stuff, and this should give me the little boost I need.

Lastly, i went back to the exhaust shop, and had them install a flowmaster and a new tail pipe so i could have my rear window down without getting choked out, and without overheating my gas tank.

I buttoned everything up, and was done with this round of mods. whats left to do other than test em out?

 

[jarmentrout]

I have a 77 out back. Emily. Has a number of great parts but she'll likely never go down the road again. Here's a few off the top of my head:
Bored 360 with an 84 electronic pickup distributor and MSD module. Incredible sparks!
Dana 44s on both ends with disk front. Rear has a Detroit tru-trac
New plastic gas tank and sending unit copy of original and mounts as original. Tank skid plate too.
I have 2 carbs available, a holly 650 double pumper spread bore and an edelbrock 600 square bore
Has a nice inside spare tire holder that was a factory item from earlier years. Mounts the spare behind the driver covering the rear side window.
Low mileage rebuild th400 trans
Quadra-trac transfer with the Doug Nash conversion kit so I could run hubs. With the bolt on low range.

And there's a bunch of other things. Email at john.c.armentrout at gmail.com

If anyone is interested... Located in Maine.

 

[FellowTraveler]

My first thought is a "Cummins" under the hood the 4 cyl would do fine with a little tweeking and the 6 well it needs no comment. Transmission selection I'd do a GM 4L80 e w/proper side drop t-case.

Those old full sized jeeps are perhaps the best off road/do-all jeeps ever.

 

[PhotoJared]

This thing is such a piece!

j/k this thing is awesome

 

[Dr. Marneaus]

This thing is such a piece!

j/k this thing is awesome

We'll see if I ever let you hitch a ride to death valley again!

 

[PhotoJared]

We'll see if I ever let you hitch a ride to death valley again!

I joined just to say that lol. Not really

 

[Dr. Marneaus]

Alrighty, guess we'll update now, with some actual usage and results of the mods done to the truck.

I had everything back together, my arm was healing up, and I was itching for a camping trip. vegasjeepguy and I decided to make a short overnight run up to Carpenter Canyon, just outside of Pahrump, NV in the spring mountains. The campsite was right around 6500' elevation If memory serves, maybe he'll chime in with the details.

The trail is mostly a dirt road, but then gets tighter and twisty and has some steep sections. We headed out on a Saturday in February.

some light snow on the way in

We set up camp and I got to test out everything I had done so far. We set up vegasjeepguys tent, as it's a bit bigger than mine and it was just me, him, his son, and one of their dogs.

Theres a nice little spot near our tents with a small drop off, so with the truck backed up to it, it was a perfect counter-height to use the tailgate as a galley.

My girl had gotten me a nice lil christmas present this year, and I was excited to try it out! Filled it up with soem chicken, onions, spices, bacon, and a little beer.

After dark we were cleaning up from dinner so I got to give the lighting a test, again, very helpful to have them there on the truck.

My only observation on this is that its obviously better to have the lights mounted up higher so they provide more area light rather than just below waist level. If I was less concerned with keeping original appearance I probably would have mounted something above on the roof rack or on the mounting points for the rear airfoil (which is not installed at this time).

Well, it dropped down into the 20's that night and snowed a little bit. Exciting, the coldest I've ever had the truck, and the first time I've had snow on it. It was very serene in the morning, so peaceful and a pretty sight.

Well before we even got packed up vegasjeepguy fired up his TJ just to get it warmed up a little. I figured it would be a good idea as well. I crossed my fingers, said a little prayer, and hopped in. Turned over just fine, took a few tries but it fired up. Ran like crap for a good 5 or 10 minutes (missing pretty bad) and I flooded it once, but after about a minute of keeping the RPM's up it was idling on its own, and after it hit operating temp it was purring like a kitten.

Loaded up and headed back to civilization

Hit the highway and bombed up over the hill back into vegas doin 70mph with a smile on my face.

The new fuel tank worked out, my brakes were nice, the lights got used, the cargo cover kept everything in place and provided easy access to everything I needed, and the truck ran 100% from door to door, it was probably about 100 miles of highway and 25 miles offroad, including pretty decent elevation change in both situations.

I was happy!

From there i just kept driving around, we did a few runs in the meantime, just standard stuff no overnighters or anything. I drove it out to Frontsight in Pahrump a few days when I was taking a class out there, and it made it up and over the pass every time without any problems.

All was well in the world of jeep!

 

[Dr. Marneaus]

So, with a wonderfully functional jeep I took the next step in testing, we set up another 'long' trip to try and force out any more potential issues, though none were EXPECTED.

This time I went more prepared. With much better knowledge of carbs, and I had done extensive fiddling with timing and carb adjustments, learned how to read a vaccum gauge, studied on the effects of elevation on fuel mixture, so on and so forth.

I added a u-joint and ratchet extension, timing light, and vacuum gauge to my on-board tool arsenal. I actually kept them in the front seat for this trip because I had a notion of what might (and did) happen. The truck was running fine at las vegas elevation, and it ran fine on our trip up to 6500' but that was only an overall elevation gain of about 3500' from where I am in vegas.

The plan was to head out for a weekend in Death Valley, at Thorndike Campground. This was in May I think, maybe it was March, I dunno. This trip involved leaving Vegas and descending into Death Valley, we ended up bottoming out at 185' below sea level and topping out at the campground, which is at 7400'+ We would be gaining that 7000' difference within 20 miles of road, significantly less distance as the crow flies, so I knew i'd be in for some interesting carb-related antics. Unfortunately my Edelbrock performer doesnt have automatic altitude compensation like the stock motorcraft 2bbl's did (oh the troubles of having a factory 4bbl).

Anyway, enough about that!

One issue I had is that i REALLY dont like storing fuel internally, and this trip was going to require some distances without gas stations, and I always like to have extra fuel just in case. Not to mention, i knew we were going to have alot of stuff in the truck, and the back seat was going to be occupied. I picked up a reciever cargo carrier (vegasjeepguy gave me a deal on it) and got it mounted up to the back of the truck and tested the fit. As always, it was loose and wobbly. I ended up wrapping the hitch with 10mil pipe tape before sliding it into the receiver to make it a tight fit. The thing didnt wobble at all on the whole trip.

I loaded up my truck with all the crap for me, my girlfriend, and her sister, vegasjeepguy loaded up his jeep and trailer, then PhotoJared up there piled a bunch of stuff into our vehicles as well for him and his fiance (this was pre-lift on his chero) and we hit the road.

So, we had 4 people, and 5 peoples worth of stuff in the back. All in complete comfort! I was smart and took the girl's in my truck...or wait...was that smart?

See why I didnt want to have to pay for gas?

As we started climbing back up out of death valley towards the campground, my truck was pinging pretty bad. I pushed on for a few miles and stayed off the throttle as much as possible and things smoothed out. Eventually, however, the truck started surging like it did in the past, and I was getting nervous. We had come a few hundred miles already and were within 20 miles of our goal. Again, i tried to go slower and stay off the skinny pedal.

The truck would start surging, and i'd pull over and let it idle for a minute, then i'd drive for another 10 minutes, and it would surge again. pull over, let it idle, drive. I probably stopped 3 or 4 times on the way up to the campsite within the last 15 miles.

At this point the truck wasnt doing well, i could drive a mile or so and would have to stop. I advanced my timing a bit to try and make up for the altitude, but that wasn't really my issue.

I was crawling up the dirt road to the campsite, and the truck just stopped moving. idled like crap, pressed the gas it would just sputter and not drive. I shut it down, rolled backwards into a spot off the road, and waited. We were literally 1/4th mile from the campsite and I was dead in the water!

I let her cool down for about 15 minutes, and fired it back up, then drove up to the campsite with no issues other than running a little bit rough.

we made it!

We set up camp and proceeded to enjoy the evening.

View from the campsite

So, after we were finished camping, we packed it all in and I started her up for the return trip. We made it down the hill and I paused to dial back my timing to around 14* where the truck ran best under normal conditions. Photojared and Vegasjeepguy are pretty used to this sight...it's all too common when traveling or wheeling with the beast.

As we started to climb back out of death valley on the opposite side, the truck started pinging REALLY bad the second we hit an incline. I hopped out, rolled it back to about 10*, then drove back to Pahrump without issue.

The girls were beat, but again, this is why I love the waggy. Sleeping like babies!

So we were coming back from Pahrump on the last 50 miles of the trip and as I was climbing up the pass to get back into vegas, the truck started acting up, surging and losing power. I kept off the throttle and we barely made it over the top, at about 30mph in a 75 zone. soon as we were ehaded downhill everything returned to normal.


Sooooooo. another successful trip that taught me a few things. I had made the drive to pahrump several times and never had this issue before, and I had gone to similar elevations without problems as well. The best I could figure was that it was more about the length of the trip, than anything else. I didn't have problems like the trip to Ely, this was different, and I was running decent gas. After searching and reading and talking to a bunch of FSJ'ers I came to the conclusion that it was simply a heat issue. The higher temps for a 4.5 hour drive just allowed to carb to soak up too much heat, my gas was likely warm as well, the mechanical fuel pump was warm, the fuel filter was hot, the steel lines were hot. Everything was just too hot, and percolation occurred.

However, we'll still count this trip as a success because the truck didnt leave me stranded, and this seemed to be the only problem that needed to be addressed as a result of the trip!

Lets also note that while it's given me some trouble, the truck has still never left me stranded to where I needed to call for help. It's not stuck or broken down until you need to be towed out! :safari-rig:

 

[jeepdreamer]

Good to hear you made it. Hot fuel is a royal PITA to deal with and the 360 in my Scrambler has been known to have the occasional issue. Try and ensure any and all areas where the fuel line runs is either as far as possible/practical from exhaust and other heat sources. Where there is no option, try making heat shields and use only metal line in that area. Rubber absorbs and retains heat longer. You may even want to install a poly spacer between your carb and the the intake manifold. If the issue still persists, try and make a fuel "cooler"... just like any other (transmission, P/S) cooler, you'll just plumb in some sort of baby radiator and allow it to get the fuel cooled off before it enters the carb. Good luck.

 

[Dr. Marneaus]

Good to hear you made it. Hot fuel is a royal PITA to deal with and the 360 in my Scrambler has been known to have the occasional issue. Try and ensure any and all areas where the fuel line runs is either as far as possible/practical from exhaust and other heat sources. Where there is no option, try making heat shields and use only metal line in that area. Rubber absorbs and retains heat longer. You may even want to install a poly spacer between your carb and the the intake manifold. If the issue still persists, try and make a fuel "cooler"... just like any other (transmission, P/S) cooler, you'll just plumb in some sort of baby radiator and allow it to get the fuel cooled off before it enters the carb. Good luck.

I ended up fiddling around and then decided to attack the problem hardcore and fix it once and for all.....might as well do an update!