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| 304 Engine Rebuild - Part #1 |
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When I bought the Orange Jeep back in August of 2002, I was told that the engine was a
remanufactured block and that it had about 10,000 miles on it. Now, I am not sure about this or not, but if it had 10,000
miles on it, then it was some of the hardest revving 10,000 miles I have ever seen. Oil dripped from this engine
regularly. Now I know that CJ's are notorious for leaking, however, this was ridiculous. So, with 3 attempts on the
rear main seal and each and every time it came back with the same issues of leaking, I figured that there was something
wrong with the lower end of the motor. On the last pass through the engine, it was suggested that maybe the crank was
"out of round" in which case there was no hope to stop the leaking without a rebuild.
So, I contemplated this, and though about what should be done. People say don't rebuild the 304... it doesn't have enough
this or enough that. Get a 360, or a 401, that will be a much better investment, etc. etc. So, I called up the guys at
affordable Fuel Injection since I had already gone with that setup on the 304 and talked with them about what would have
to be done in order to get that setup to work on a 360 or a 401. They said it would need a new chip and some new larger
injectors, but we could probably work out a price on that.
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Decisions, decisions. Not knowing what to do, I turned to the Jeep forums and eBay and
I saw a 304 engine for sale with a carburetor and all the goodies out in Galeton, PA. So the auction ended and the reserve
price was not met. I had contacted the seller and told him that I wanted the block and that I didn't need the intake or the
carburetor, or the distributor. So, we went back and forth, but he still thought he could get a lot of money for the entire
setup. With the price not met, the auction ended at $150.00 for everything. We talked and settled on a price of $200.00 for
me going to pick up the motor and him helping me load it. Everything would be on the motor that was shown, minus the carburetor,
distributor and alternator. Didn't really matter to me as I had a donor engine, I was just happy that I was able to get an
older model block, 1974 to be precise, and therefore according to the engine specifics, will have better horsepower numbers
then that of the supposed 1976 engine block that I have. You can see the technical specifications for the 304 motor
here.
So, it was determined that Friday would be a good day for us to go and get the motor, however, the weather wasn't exactly
cooperating. The forecast called for quite a snowstorm. Either way I was going. In retrospect, that little voice of reason,
well in this case it was Jen, said that maybe we should wait. I am a man and stubborn, so I was going. She agreed to come
and funny enough, when we got into the truck to go at 6AM (12/09/05), there was a horoscope reading on one of the radio
stations. Mine said that I would embark on travel with a companion; hers said that if she didn't complain about circumstances
out of her control, she would make her partner happy. So with that, we headed off into the storm.
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It wasn't really bad out, a little snow and at 6AM there were no other cars on the road. This
was the case until about 8AM when more people started getting on the road and then the accidents started piling up. Many trucks
were off the side of the road and many cars were stranded. Who takes a Porsche Carrera out in 10 inches of snow with
performance tires on? I'll tell you, people that were put on this earth to piss me off! Well, after a close call with a
car doing a 180-degree turn right next to us and missing us by about 5 feet, we were into PA and through the storm. It was
325 miles to the guy's house and we lost a lot of time going 30 mph in the storm section.
We arrived at his house and when I say he lived in the middle of no where, I mean this place was truly out there. It was a nice
quaint town, but the snow plowing left something to be desired. We loaded up the engine in a couple of minutes; strapped it
down and we were on our way. Our 325-mile journey took 7 hours to get there. At an average of 45 mph, that wasn't going to
work on the way home, so we started back. It took us just over 6 hours to get home with a stop for diesel, bathroom and a
case of Juengling beer for the following weeks card game. That time was a bit better and the mph was averaging out to be
around 55, much better. We didn't really hit a whole lot of traffic on the way home, so that helped things quite a bit.
We saw quite a few cool things on the way home, as indicated by the shots of the Willy's pickup (the number is in the background
if anyone is interested, it was there as of 12/09/05 and is located outside of Gaines, PA). There were a lot of accidents
and a lot of cops in different forms of 4-wheel drive vehicles. It took 13 hours and we were beat when we got home, however,
we were able to get a motor that I will drop off to have it cleaned, inspected, redone, and hopefully dropped into the Jeep
in the beginning of next year. There are a ton of changes coming for the Orange project Jeep to get ready for the new
season, so keep tuned, you don't want to miss anything!
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