'66 Trail Tux Build

X2.. did the same

 

That's what it had, but it would only work off and on. Maybe I'll rebuild that system short term.

Eventually I would like to get a nice temp gauge, and I'd prefer not to have the stock temp gauge idling there uselessly. That's why I've considered converting it to another tank gauge.

 

I would definitely consider putting some money into that 8274 vs putting a harbor freight winch in its place. Best winch there is IMO.

 

I'd like to, but right now the HF winch works and the 8274 doesn't. The steel cable on the 8274 was pretty cruddy (lots of flat spots, rust, some fraying) and I didn't want to spend the $$ on new line and possibly new solenoids just yet.

However, I'm not sure weather or not I'll actually shoot for tcase gears and a tcase/OD rebuild this summer, so that'll probably free up some funds that I can dump into the winch.

 

A T18/T98 SM420/465 swap isn't super easy, but I think it's worth doing over T-case gears. Especially with the transmission you have currently. That low first gear makes all the difference in the world trying to go slow, but doesn't change much else. You can still use a standard overdrive bowl gear if you decide to add an OD to the Dana 18 instead of having to source one to work with lower t-case gears. Final ratio in 4th is still 1:1.

 

A 4-speed is definitely a better choice than the 3.15s from a usability standpoint. However, a 4-speed is also $1k-$2k more than tcase gears and will likely take months, whereas 3.15s could probably be done in a couple of weeks bar major problems.

Right now I have a Warn OD on the back of the D18, so I'd be looking at $1100 plus ~$500 to rebuild the D18 and OD.

I don't have a ton of time between college semesters, and a 4-speed would probably take up most if not all of a summer break. The 3.15s wouldn't take as much time, but will still take a couple of weeks. I may not get to 3.15s this summer at all, as my Dakota is back east and it is sometimes difficult to drive my parents' vehicles when the Jeep is down.

 

Today when I was driving back from work (Yes, I haul a mower in a 58 year old Jeep [Shouldn't have left the daily at college]) my speedo cable decided to die on me. I had noticed a chirping/brushing sound off and on that started roughly 10 minutes before the cable broke. I was driving along just fine, when suddenly the Jeep made a horrible grinding noise quite similar to the sound of me jamming it in reverse instead of 2nd, as I did when I first drove it. It seemed to be coming directly from the trans tunnel cover, and I feared the worst. I pulled off of the 55mph 4-lane road and into a neighborhood as quickly as I could. I shut the Jeep off and gave it a once-over underneath, then a twice-over. Not finding anything wrong, I decided to shift in and out of gear, overdrive, 4x4, and low-range to see if that was the problem. (I have had the 4x4 selector start grinding before as it would not go all the way into 2wd without me stopping the Jeep.) I finally fired up the Jeep again, set off, and everything seemed fine. Until I got it into 2nd gear, which is when the sound came right back and was worse than before. Long story short-ish, I did that a few times before I finally noticed that the speedo needle had stopped moving and was canted downwards. I pulled the cable out of the speedo, and this greeted me:

It is hard to tell in this photo, but the threads(?) are stripped in multiple spots, squared off, and broken at the end. Once I discovered this, I zip-tied it out of the way and gave the Jeep one more test drive. The grinding was finally gone, and I was able to get the pile back home without getting pulled over. On the bright side, this may finally motivate me to pull the back half of the tcase apart so I can get the new speedometer gears in. May even be able to fix a few leaks while I'm at it.

In other news, I threw my hardtop on a couple of days ago for some mock-up. Here's some pics of that.

It was quite a pain to get the roof on by myself, even after I pulled the sides off.

I've figured out that I should mount the doors before I drill holes for the cab, so I can get the fitment right. One of the door's filler pieces is broken off and will need to be welded back on, and I've discovered some rust that was hiding behind the headliner. One small patch will need to be made on the right side, as a 3" section of flat metal is broken off where the roof bolts down to the sidepanel.