Sometime next week I hope to be bending my roll cage with my home-made tubing bender.  I’m waiting for the die to get here still.  I’m also waiting for the delivery of my windshield and cowl rubber so that I can get my windshield all ready to go.  In the meantime, I’ve been busy updating the website and doing a few things to the jeep.

One of those things was the installation of my brodie knob.  I discovered I could cut down a piece of rubber that I think was used by my dad when he installed his CJ-5 body on it’s frame.  It was the perfect thickness, so I cut it down, shaped it and installed it.  It’s nice and tight.  Here’s a few pics.

UPDATE: I had installed this adjustable pressure regulator from TA performance when I built the engine.  Today I attempted to adjust the regulator to lower my pressure, but it was already adjusted as far out as I could adjust it.  So, took it out and replaced it with the original stock spring and plug.  Sure enough, the pressure dropped to 50psi on idle, though it still climbs to 70psi when revving the engine.

Maybe this is related to all buicks and not just the buick v6?? I’m wondering if my oil pressure is too high, which is causing a couple problems, such as oil dripping out the dipstick hole where the dipstick meets the block.

It seems to me my that on my old 225 odd fire, the pressure was around 40psi and would drop as I accelerated (which was a problem, that finally resolved itself when my engine blew up after about 3 years of good use).

Now, it sticks solidly at 70psi and that’s without a high volume oil pump.  I have a concern that the oil will be spraying rather than dribbling out the mains, which might cause some problems as well? (I read that somewhere)  I can resolved the problem easily by putting  weaker spring in .. I should have one somewhere.

Any thoughts?  I tried to find something on the internet.  The only think I found was that a normal 225 v6 runs about 40psi.

– Dave

I went out today to start the jeep.  The battery was completely dead.  This is the first time I have had any problems with the battery.  Something drained the battery significantly.  The only change I have made was plugging in the head lights, so I will have to do some more investigation into this.

But, I don’t give up easy.  I wanted to run the engine, so I jumped the jeep and got it going.

I ran it half way around the block to help charge the battery.

Exactly half way around the block I ran out of gas.  I knew my gas guage sender needed to be adjusted, but I still thought I had a little more gas.

I coasted to a stop … alternatively laughing and cussing.

So, I went and got gas from my garage, got the truck, put in some gas, jumped it once more, ran it home and put it quickly to bed.  Tomorrow I go get a battery charger …. lol.

One of the projects I have been putting off is the rebuild of my headlight containers.  The headlight directional adjustment pieces were made of plastic. Two of the four had already broken, so I knew I’d have to fix them eventually.

After pondering the situation, I chose to remove the existing directional adjusters off the CJ-3A headlight containters I had.  I really hate damaging these original pieces, however I also knew that the oldsmobile units I use are even harder to find.

Here’s what the original headlight adjusters looked like:

Here’s a closeup of the plastic piece (out of focus):

Here’s the ‘new’ piece that has been cut down so that it will fit (another beautiful pic .. not)

Here are the pieces riveted onto the headlight container.  One more rivet to go.  You can see the old, (blurry) rivets just underneath the new pieces.  Once these were installed, I painted them and put everything back together.

It turns out my power steering pump had some bad bearings, as it squealed pretty good.  I called the local Schucks and the cost for a replacement was about $80.  So, I called the local junkyard and went shopping there.  After searching through four different rows, I found a pump from a ’90 Chevy Caprice that would work just fine.  The cost was only $25 and it came with a guarantee that it works.  For another $10 I also found a chrome extra deep TH350 pan which I had been thinking about getting..

Returning to the power steering pump, I had to figure out how to remove the pulley from the old pump and put it on the new pump.  So, I got online and found a great article from Stu Olson’s Jeep Site that described exactly what was needed.  To save you time, I have boiled it down to four basic steps:

1. Go to your local Schucks or Autozone and ‘borrow’ a pulley remover and installer kit
2. Remove the pulley with the puller
3. Install the pulley with the installer
4. Return the pulley to the store

Of course, being stubborn, I tried a variety of my other pullers, but couldn’t get that damn pulley to budge.  That’s when I finally went to set 1 above.

NAME NEWS:  The name Gus has been retired in favor of Lost Biscuit.

For two years I’ve called my project Gus.  It all started with a hunk of flattie junk I towed home more than two years ago.  As you can see from the pic to the right, the grille is rough and full of personality.  It just looked like a Gus.

Over the following months I traded parts and pieces away until I finally gave away the last piece, the grille, to Mitch because I had decided against using the grille.  However, the name continued to stick.

During the past month, I was playing some xBox online with my sons, specifically Call of Duty World at War (It’s a kick to play).  Karson couldn’t find a username he wanted so he just picked two random words and came up with FoundedBiscuit.  His brother, Colter, wanted his own handle and came up with LostBiscuit.  During the summer we became Team Biscuit.

The first time I heard it, I told them I thought that Lost Biscuit would be a great Jeep name.  After thinking it over and asking them a couple day ago, we agreed that Gus should be renamed Lost Biscuit.  Given that I’m a former chef who still loves to cook, having a food as part of the name is entirely appropriate.

PROGRESS

Drove Down the Street: Today marks the first day I drove Biscuit out of the garage and down the street, very slowly.  The first thing I discovered is that power brakes work really well.  I’m thrilled with them so far.  The th350 also feels great — I thought there’d be a little lag in drive like I feel in some vehicles with an automatic, but as soon as I tap the gas at all the tranny bites and moves the jeep forward.  The lack of tranny noise, especially in low range, is nice compared to the manual trannies that I have experienced (with the exception of the ford toploader dad used to have).

Brake Lights Fixed: I got the brake lights fixed; the lights work when the pedal is depressed now (as opposed to staying on when it wasn’t depressed).  I used a brake pedal switch and assembly from a late 80s cherokee that had 6 wires coming out of it.  I mistakenly wired the two wires that were ‘on’ when the brake wasn’t depressed.  I just had to hunt for the two that were ‘on’ when the brake was depressed.

Power Steering Fluid Faux Pas: I learned today that if you accidently overfill the power steering fluid that it will pressurize and shoot out a tiny little hole in the cap, bounce off the ceiling in your garage, and shower stuff below.  oops!!!  Lesson learned.  Truly, it was an honest mistake.  I had taken off the cap to get out any remaining air and the fluid looked low.  So I filled it up a little farther, put on the cap, shut off the engine and SURPRISE — a stream of fluid shot out the cap.

Some of the remaining fixes:

1.  Fix turn signals- these don’t work at all
2. Fix small leak in brake fluid “T” at the front
3.  Fix driver’s side head light wiring (something is crossed)
4.  Build pattern for seat covers that I can send Jim (Thanks Jim!)
5.  THE BIGGIE:  Buy tubing for rollcage and build Cage (Steve, if I get Bisquit up there, can you still help me with this?)
6.  Get glass and cowl seal for windshield.
7.  Get Steering Wheel wrap and quick turn knob for steering wheel

UPDATE 2: I’ve made a major adjustment to my basic wiring schematic.  This fixed my alternator issues and got my volt meter working correctly.

Major Changes:

1. I corrected how I wired my Ford Starter Relay (aka Remote Starter Solenoid).  Basically, when the starter button is pushed, it ‘closes’ the connection in the Relay, which ignites the left side of the relay, in turn causing the starter to start the engine.
2. While my schematic was actually correct, I had mis-wired my Delco 10si alternator because the wiring that came with my wiring harness caused me to mix up the sensing wiring and the field wire.  In my case, the sensing wiring is on the left and wired to the volt meter and the field wire plugs into the right and wired to the battery.
3. I hadn’t added a power wire to the volt meter side.  I made sure the power wire was only powered up if the power switch was on, to reduce the chances of the batter getting drained.

Here’s some links I used to resolve my questions:

• Identify your GM alternator
• Here’s a related alternator page
• This page discusses updating your GM Alternator on your older vehicle
• Here’s a wiring 101 website
• http://mightymo.org/Proj_OneWire.html

Below is a video that documents the third start of the engine. It’s pretty brief, but I didn’t want to do much more than idle it at that time.

The main issue with getting the engine to work was that I simply had the distributor wires  in the wrong places .. i was off by 180 degrees.  Once I fixed that, it started immediately!  Frankly, I was surprised when it started.  I only swapped the wiring because I saw someone else on the web with a HEI distributor with the wires opposite of what I had done.  Since I was out of ideas, I figured swapping wouldn’t hurt anything and, VIOLA .. it started instantly!

Once I had it started, I had to go back through and fix some of the mistakes in the wiring I had made, including discovering and fixing a key wire that ran underneath the jeep — that was a pain!

Now, most everything works.  One key issue is that the alternator isn’t working.  But, I think I should have that problem solved by tomorrow.