Adventures of Snoball, the V8 ZJ

PCV system's new. 

Yeah, I'm hoping the coolant is a clamp and not a leak in the cheap aluminum radiator. From the spray pattern I'm thinking whatever leaked might have leaked into the fan, which makes it hard to trace and makes me nervous.

Just thinking.  Maybe change the name from Snoball, to get rid of the effect.

lol. It got the name because of the color, but it was already that kind of project. I just realized that the name fit the way the project was going later.

Maybe I can change it to Old Reliable.  I wonder if it would help?

Haha.  I've been known to pat the dashboard, and say "good girl" to get that extra mile.

I'm wondering about fuel pressure / quantity.  Did you replace the filter?

To replace the fuel filter you have to drop the tank and replace the entire pump assembly. So no...not yet. There's also no test port on the fuel rails. So I haven't tested the pressure either. Pump replacement is on my long term list because the check valve that keeps gas up at the rail is failing - and that's built into the pump too.  

I would think that if pressure was down or the filter was clogged that it would have issues at WOT, and it runs fine. Hell, it runs GREAT at WOT. Smooth, strong and pulls like a freight train.

I've played in the shallow end of the pool for almost all my vehicle purchases.  Buying cars/trucks that are at least ten years old/100k+ miles.

Think I'm done with that.  I loved my old Cayenne Turbo, put 30k happy, mostly trouble free miles on it.  Then it started burning 1qt oil/500 miles.  Nope, not worth rebuilding that engine.

Very happy to be in a low miles Cayenne Diesel with a warranty now.  No need to wrench on it besides oil changes (which I can do from the top with my oil extractor!) for the next 4 years.  No worrying about breaking down while towing the race car. 

Yeah, having a car loan kinda sucks, but the warranty and piece of mind outweigh that...

Well it looks like Snoball's chance in hell has cometh.....

Lol. Nah, the jeep' s safe for now. Sometimes a project just gets under your skin a little and you have to blow off steam.

I hope it not the case but a blown headgasket of cracked head could explain the miss at idle. Was the car overheated?

Most of the time a miss at idle that clears up with rpms is ignition related.

Any codes?

In reply to Opti :

no codes, no overheat since I've had it. Oil is clean, no bubbles in radiator, no oil in radiator, spark plugs look normal - so no signs of head gasket issues. I don't think the old cast iron head 318s were very prone to blowing HGs.

I agree, I think it's ignition somewhere.

Damn, girl, you sexy!

Pro tip : if you're going to spray carb cleaner into the throttle body using the little red straw that comes with the spray can....hold onto the berkeleying straw.

In reply to ultraclyde :

Thank god ahaha. I've been looking high and low for a vehicle and a ZJ is in the realm of possibilities but it looks like I'll be ending up with a 4th gen New Edge Ford Mustang V6 Auto Vert instead. My boss's dad, (I work at a shop called Rad Air Complete Car Care & Tire Centers in Wickliffe, Ohio, which is also the town I grew up in ironically lol,) is wanting to get rid of the Mustang. It came up in conversation the other day when he was there. He's going to work out some numbers for me. It does have well over 100k miles but the car is solid, and well taken care of. Plus all of the repairs were done at the shop so I know I can trust it to be reliable. Although now I'm going to have to deal with getting E36 M3 because I will be driving a Mustang and we all know how many people that got mowed over by them.... Oh well eh haha.

In reply to Bill Mesker :

Well, my other vehicle is an 05 GT Mustang that I bought new. It's got 120k on it and the only thing I've had to do to it was an alternator, ball joints, and wear items.  Ford knows how to build rear wheel drive vehicles well.

Bill Mesker said:

In reply to ultraclyde :

Thank god ahaha. I've been looking high and low for a vehicle and a ZJ is in the realm of possibilities but it looks like I'll be ending up with a 4th gen New Edge Ford Mustang V6 Auto Vert instead. My boss's dad, (I work at a shop called Rad Air Complete Car Care & Tire Centers in Wickliffe, Ohio, which is also the town I grew up in ironically lol,) is wanting to get rid of the Mustang. It came up in conversation the other day when he was there. He's going to work out some numbers for me. It does have well over 100k miles but the car is solid, and well taken care of. Plus all of the repairs were done at the shop so I know I can trust it to be reliable. Although now I'm going to have to deal with getting E36 M3 because I will be driving a Mustang and we all know how many people that got mowed over by them.... Oh well eh haha.

I might be selling a very clean, low mileage ZJ, 5.2 very soon. Let me know if you're interested.

In reply to DrBoost :

I'll keep you in mind if I decide against the Stang DB

Got the wires installed, fished the little red straw out of the intake, cleaned the throttle body and IAC well, and got the new catalytic converter on with a new rear O2 sensor. I also found the source of at least one coolant leak - a loose overflow line clamp.

The jeep runs better than it ever has. Acceleration is smooth, a lot of the vibrations are gone, and the engine doesn't bellow like a box truck acove 2000 rpm anymore. I think the cat was causing a bunch of issues.

Unfortunately it still misses at idle.

I'm going to throw an ignition coil on it just to say I did. If that doesn't help I may just learn to live with it.

New coil. Cleaned all the grounds I could find. Still misses.

Did some family exploring in Oaky Woods WMA this afternoon despite a good bit of rain this morning. Got a little muddy. Had a good time.

Note the overland-required shovel straps perfectly to the bike rack. I just threw the axe in the back.

I swapped out the isolator on the rear exhaust hanger back to the stretched out factory piece last night and most of my drone is gone. Still have some vibration but I think there's a solution there somewhere.

In other news, my miss seems to be getting a little worse. I'm about ready to take it to a local shop and pay them to deal with it, or at least pay them to run the diagnostic on it if they're willing.

For what it's worth check out Dodge TSB's.   For instance:  TSB NO: 18-48-98     That era Dodge had a number of  TSB's .  Maybe the coil is giving you problems?

Ive looked at a bunch of TSBs. New Coil, no change. 

The problem is that I've eliminated all the cheap possibilities. To recap I did a full tune-up 2 months ago (accel cap, rotor, Delco wires, champion plugs, all the recommended brands) and it ran fine. Also did the TPS at that time. I also cleaned all the grounds I could find. It developed a miss at idle a couple weeks ago and has been getting slightly worse.

So far I've pulled all the plugs - gaps and burn look fine. New set of wires, spaced out to prevent arcing. Cleaned Throttle body and IAC. Replaced PCV system. Replaced Cat and rear O2 (unrelated issue). Replaced ignition coil. Gave the PCM the shake test while running. 

I'm down to the more expensive issues, but it doesn't fit the common symptoms of any of them. Such as:

Bad PCM - it passed the wiggle-the-wires test, which is the most common failure mode, but not the only one. Not sure how to test it further. Replacements are $200 and mixed quality

Blown Head Gasket -  No water in oil, no oil in water, no steam cleaned spark plugs, no smoke, so I think this is unlikely but I can't rule it out. $$ to fix because everything on the freaking engine will break taking it apart. I have NOT done a compression test yet.

Blown intake plenum gasket - no fouled plugs, mpg hasn't changed, no oil in intake (well, not much) so I don't think so, but the kit to fix it is about $150

Bad crank sensor and/or distributor coil (cam sensor) - doesn't match symptoms, mopar sensors are $100-ish each. Crank sensor is a bitch to do.

Bad fuel pump - I know it's got some check valve issues, but if pressure was low it might cause this. I would think it would be more noticeable at WOT than at idle though.  Pump assembly is $150-$200 plus dropping the tank.

All of which is in addition to needing to do all f the control arms on the front so I don't eat the $900 in tires I just put on it, and rebuild the parking brake so I can tow the boat to the ramp. The ABS light's on but the brakes feel okay, and the transmission shifts funny sometimes. And I've got about $6k invested in a vehicle that's worth $3k in great running shape.

Easily climbs over everything I've tried to drive over. Still misses at idle. 

I hope that bike is for fun, and not for "Just in case".    Is the miss something you know is there, or more of a misfire?