Relatively busy weekend with car stuff.
Started by helping my brother in law with his 2000 Wrangler Sport. He bought it from a close friend of his about three weeks ago, and it looked like this.
It looks closer to this today.
Yes, he did all the work himself.
I started helping him Friday night put a 4" lift on it from Rough Country. We also swapped the rear axle to a Ford one from a first gen Explorer to get rear discs and a new ratio (can’t recall exactly, but I think it was something like 3.06 and went to 3.6?). Anyway, Jeep near the coast means lots of rust from beach runs.
Then on Saturday went looking at Suburbans. I’ve irrationally decided I want 4WD. Not without logic though, follow me here:
- Took the first real road trips with the family this summer (we normally fly)
- Suburban is a great road trip vehicle for us
- Assuming this COVID thing sticks around for a while, we will probably go on more road trips
- If we go somewhere cold in the winter I’d feel a lot more safe in 4WD (or at least AWD), so I would probably rent a 4WD Suburban or Yukon XL
- If I do that 2-3 times, that would be at least $2-3k in expense (generally at last $900 to rent 4WD Suburban for a week)
Still with me? I said there was some logic, I didn’t say it was great.
So, I started looking at ones that are basically mine but with 4WD - 2015/2016 LTZ or Premier trim, second row buckets, around 100k miles. Also Yukon XL Denali, but those are another $2-5k normally.
What I quickly found after two test drives was that mine is in really good shape for 100k miles. I’m going to have to search a lot harder to find one that drives as solid and is as clean on the inside.
That is the good thing - I’m in no hurry, I don’t NEED to do anything, so I can just keep looking. I think I can trade up to one with 4WD and only pay about a $2-4k difference, and if I find one that is in good shape I think it will be worth that to me. And if it isn’t worth it to me, I can just walk away.
After that I also compression tested the E28. I was very happy - cylinders 1-5 were 122-130psi, and 6 was 142. I did crank on 6 longer than the others, so I may be a bit low on 1-5. Either way, good compression across the board. I didn’t have any concerns going in, but nice to know.
Finished up the weekend yesterday back on the Jeep, trying to get the gears out of the front diff - since the rear was changed he needs to change the gears in front to match. That is where the specter of David Tracy loomed over us - too much rust to get the bolts off. We tried lots of PB Blaster, impact wrench, and heat to no avail. I think he is going to start cutting off bolt heads today.
Now, I didn’t get as much done as Long Voyager does in one evening, but productive overall.