Rebuilding An Old High School Friend!

The winch has been been on the jeep since our family picked it up back in the 70's and honestly doesn't weigh that much. And the Buick 3800's are actually quite a bit lighter than the old F-head. The old F-head tipped the scale at a whopping 470 lbs (according to many online sources)... not a very great power to weight ratio to say the least. This little Buick LN3 is just under 400lbs... 392 to be exact. Compared to a small block chevy, which with a cast iron intake is 575lbs, these little 3800's are a thin mint! Given that I dumped the little three speed transmission for the heavier T18, I figure my overall drivetrain is about the same weight as it was with the F-Head... maybe a touch lighter.

Regardless, I do plan on boxing the entire frame to take a little of that "flimsy" out

 

Interesting, I wouldn't have thought the flat heads were that heavy.

 

Slowly got the motor mounts fabbed up over the course of the last few evenings. And now my brother is teasing me about my motor mounts!! I find this pretty hypocritical given some of the stuff I've seen him over engineer!! Regardless they are done and shouldn't be going anywhere any time soon. I used some 3/16 plate I had laying around. Unfortunately I ran out of gas for my welder and couldn't find time to run by and get a new bottle. So I burned them together with a little flux core I had on hand, thus all the splatter.... I guess I'll have to pay for my impatience later with a little extra grinding but that will be LATER









You can see the 2x4 I spanned the springs with to rest the engine on while I positioned it. This worked pretty well because it allowed me to shim it up or down and slide it from side to side to fine tune its position. Much nicer than having to fight it swinging on the end of the cherry picker.

 

They look great.

 

Thanks! My brother saw them and thought I'd decided to stuff a big block under the hood... this from a guy who built a creeper out of 3/16 wall tubing that weighs in at almost 50lbs... to be fair his creeper is kind of handy for rolling transmissions, engines... heck even full drive trains around his garage on

 

No work on our construction project yesterday thanks to Junk Stock.... A bunch of family came over and the girls all ran off to watch my wife spend money on overpriced "antique" dressers & cabinets that I am supposed to turn into bathroom vanities sometime in the future. So my brother, uncle and I were left home with the kids waiting for the inevitable "bring the truck" call

But that gave us some time to piddle around on the jeep so we knocked out the exhaust manifold. These little buicks have a two into one design. Headers are available for the Camaro and Firebird that I could of adapted but in the interest of keeping this as cheap as possible I decided to stick with the stock system.

In the front wheel drive cars the right bank header dumps straight aft which was going to be a problem for our application so we cut if off and welded back on where we wanted it. Of course I forgot to take a before picture until I was just about done cutting off the collector flange. But you can see here about how it set.



The manifold is some kind of stainless... we played around trying to identify exactly what it was but gave up and just welded it back together with some ER308 rod I had laying around. Although it is best to match the rod to the material if you can, the 308 rod is a good all around stainless rod and ended up working well. We cleaned it a little bit in my blast cabinet and used the bit we cut out of the new location to fill the old location. A bit of a self-induced jig saw puzzle but it all worked out pretty good.





Not bad day overall and it kept my mind off all the money my wife was spending and all the extra work for me she was buying

 

Nice work. I'm still resisting the over the top crossover but was also thinking of modifying the stock pipes in some way.

 

I resisted at first as well. But the crossover takes up less space at the back of the engine than the throttle body does and the drivers side of my drive train is also pretty busy with all the normal Willy's stuff (master cylinder, clutch linkage, etc), but I also have the PTO shaft that runs through there as well. So by sticking with the buick manifolds I'm able to move the exhaust to the passenger side and run it over the top of the transfercase. Ultimately I think this will turn into a much cleaner install over all.

 

Hey,

I was wondering what you came up with for a clutch disk and pressure plate?
Know you got a flywheel from the Fiero place but I figured there disk wasn't going to fit the t18.

 

Ultimately the clutch set up should be pretty straight forward... Pressure plate for a Camaro or Pontiac with the 3.8L and then a disk for a Mustang to get the right 1-1/16, 10 spline input. Famous last words right

The Fiero guys are limited to 9-11/16" pressure plates due to their small bellhousings and I'm pretty sure that is what the flywheel is drilled for. Given that I'm using a Camaro bellhousing for 2.8L/3.1L v6's then I should be able to fit a pressure plate for a 10.5" clutch with no problems because that is what they used. In the end, I need to check the the diameter of the bolt circle they machined the flywheel with to see what my options for pressure plates are and decide if it's worth it to have it re-machined if I really want to put the biggest clutch possible in it. But Summit has clutch disks with the appropriate input ranging from 11" to 8" so once I settle on a pressure plate I can get a clutch disk. I don't need anything too fancy.... I'm not going to try and push a 1000 horsepower through it.

I have pretty much decided that I am going to adapt the hydraulic clutch setup for the V6 Camaro's, since the bellhousing is already set up for it. So I will try to stick with a Camaro pressure plate so all the ratios are compatible and I don't end up with a finicky clutch problem due to too much or not enough throw. Rock Auto has the Clutch Master and Slave assembly for about $100 and Clutch kits ranging from 10.5" down to 8-7/8" for the 3.1L V6 so I should be able to find something that works.

Unfortunately everything Jeep related has come to a screeching halt for the time being as we are working hard and fast on our construction project as I try to stay ahead of my builder on the portions that I am doing myself so I don't slow him down. But once we get all our inspections knocked out so the drywallers can get to work, things should slow down some and allow me to get back at the Jeep... The plan was to drive the Jeep over the new place when we move this June/July... but that might not happen

 

I skimmed through here but didn't see it mentioned... What motor mounts are those from? (The rubber parts that you built your mounts to fit.) Are they just one stud top and bottom?

 

The rubber isolators are just a universal bolt-through kit. I got these from Speedway Motors, part #7209314... $20 for the pair.

 

Thanks! Keep up the good work.

 

S10 and Camaro's with 2.8 seem to have 9 1/8 clutches. Also looks like a '75 Gremlin six poper would have a 9 1/8 with 1 1/16 10 spline.
Trying to avoid the spendy ones at the Fiero place.

 

Thanks for the gouge regarding the Gremlin as an option. I hadn't thought about some of the mopar options. I will definitely check that out! Sounds like it might save me from purchasing separate pressure plate and clutch disk... they are always cheaper to buy together.

 

Not sure if the presure plate will fit the flywheel. But they used the t15 Borg Warner starting in '73 AMC's (Jeeps included). From what I could find they use Ford sized (diameter, spline count) shaft.

 

I was finally able to spare a little time from our construction project this weekend. Deciding I needed to vent a little construction frustration (drywall texture not as advertised... never should have given into the wife's request for custom drywall texture) I grabbed a hammer and started beating on my fenders!

Unfortunately not much I can blame on "the Previous Owner" here because it was all me. Guess that what happens when you use the front end loader on the tractor to drag your jeep out of the brush and weeds and it rolls forward crushing the front of both fenders on the chain you are using to lift it up with... Oh well, I can always use a little more practice with a hammer and dolly.

After lots of banging this is what I was looking at.... Not pretty.



So I thought I might try trimming them a little bit... I hammered a little bit more focusing on the shape of the top and then started drawing lines.





I left a lip that I could fold under kind of like the factory edge was. So I cut along the dotted line and long story short, this is what I came up with.





I think I like it... It is certainly good enough for a farm/hunting rig. Now just have to do the other side.

 

That fender isn't that bad. A friend wound his CJ5 up into a tree when hiis winch wouldn't turn off. He banged it out and it is a presentable 10x10 repair. On another trip we got back to camp and wondered where Ralph was. After a bit I drove back down the road to find him working on the front fender of his LC using a hammer and a rock. He didn't want poeople to know he drove into a tree.

 

Great story! I know full well from experience, you have to watch out for those trees, they have a nasty habit of jumping out in front of you when you least expect it

 

A friend was a bit DK so I was driving his Toyota in Utah. He talked about his father and uncles complaining about the lurch trees up in Wisconsin.