I joined the Army in 1978 and got off active duty in 1992 and then the NG until I got medically discharged in 2006. I REALLY enjoyed basic but it isn't the same now. If I was young and could do it again I would join and go Ranger or SF in a heartbeat.

Now I'm just trying to get back to where I can work in my shop for 6-8 hours a day and not pay for it for the next 3 days. Me trying to weedwack my yard is fun to watch but I get better all the time. With winter and SNOW coming I will be clearing my driveway. I can't say I will get a big work out but it's enough. Once it starts to warm back up I will get the engine into the machine shop and get it ready for me to put it back together. Then the fun starts as I rip the suspension out and redo all of it. But I think I want to have the Jeep running a drivable again before it do that.

 

I was Marine Raiders but going for MP this time

 

Thanks to the shutdown I took the engine over to the machine shop about 2 weeks ago now. They are checking the block, hot tanking it, new cam bearings that should be it. Also took them the crank to verify that it is a stroker crank and check journal sizes.
Also took them the heads and they are checking them with a basic check since they are new plus verifying which springs I have installed and maximum lift height.

Ordered a cam thru Hipotek that should be a torque monster with the 408 stroker.
My stock pile of parts I have been ordering over the past 8 years but couldn't go out and install them.



Most of my attention has been on the Jeep itself. Now let me tell you trying to pull a engine/ transmission combo by yourself when you only have one good leg is a CHORE....





And of course missed one ground wire on the back of the engine.





But the engine & tranny are out and I am currently working on a new suspension for the TJ along with redoing some things I never liked.



Once I get the engine back from the machine shop I'll be starting the build of the engine.

 

Awesome! Great to see progress on this!

 

Ahh,, this answers my question from another thread... major overhaul

 

Glad to see some major progress Rick. Crazy to think it's been this long in the making.
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To start with here is an update on my engine:
Got a call from my machine shop with an update on the engine. Man am I glad I took this thing in and had everything checked. So it appears that the last shop that did the build on this engine had "F"d it up pretty good. The shop hadn't used a torque plate when then bored the block so the cylinders were out of round. So they fixed that. Then on top of that the stroker crank was/is an internally balanced crank and the other shop had assembled the engine with the stock 5.9 harmonic balancer and flex plate. These are made for externally balanced engines. Now I already had this suspicion that they had installed the WRONG parts. Then on top of this the crank wasn't balanced completely so they did that. At this point my short block is ready to be picked up. Next are the heads. They are going to go thru them and I should be able to pick everything up early next week.


I got my new bump stick in last week for the engine. Richard from HiPoTeck got it custom ground for me.












Becasue I am stretching my wheel base I had to cut my frame and am going to be moving the axle hump back 5" to match the stretch that I am doing with my wheel base.





Then I needed to remove the stock crossmember so that it can be moved. This crossmember also supports two of the body mounts so it needs to be moved to support them.



I also killed a few trees and used up a lot of ink printing off pin-out charts and wiring schematics for both the Dodge Ram truck and Jeep so I can start working on the new wiring harness for the engine swap.

I can't load my pictures from PhotoBucket for some reason so I did it thru the forum. You can figure out what picture goes where.