Getting it running...
added 3/27/98
OK, so now I am the proud owner of a non-running,stock
Samurai in need of some obvious attention. On to the
prognosis: After careful disassembly and inspection, the
motor appeared to have been rebuilt by someone who had no
(nein, nada, nyet) idea what they were doing. One very blown
head “gasket”, which as it turns out, was a used one,
installed the wrong way and sealed up with silicone. Three
of the head bolts were finger tight, one was stripped
completely. Two badly burnt exhaust valves, clearance having
been set so they never completely
closed. Camshaft lobes and journals scored badly
from lack of oil (probably due to the leaky fuel pump). This
pretty much set the pattern for the rest of the motor, in
other words, pretty useless junk.
So, what to do? My options at this point were either to find
replacement motor (in hopefully good shape) or upgrade to a
1600cc motor out of a Sidekick/Tracker. After calling most
of the wrecking yards in my area, I found there were two
high-mileage Samurai motors available, and no Sidekick motors
at all. After dragging home the better looking of
the two motors and doing some inspection, I found it had been
oil-starved at some point as the camshaft journals were badly
scored like my original motor.
Back to the yard for the other motor. It turned out to be in
pretty good shape internally, so we took it home and
installed it. When we started it however, it only ran on
three cylinders. A quick compression test confirmed a
cylinder with 50psi reading (normal is about 190psi). Off
came the head, and indeed it was a badly burnt valve. We
also noted at this time an excessive amount of piston rock in
the cylinder bores, but as the cylinder walls were still in
pretty good shape, we left well
enough alone. The head was rebuilt properly and re-installed
on the motor. It started and ran pretty well, thank God.
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