How is the other guy's face?

 

Haha

 

95 got a few upgrades in 2021. I scored a set of Hella Rallye 3000 Metal Off Road lights, then I just got my hands on a flawless front skid plate which lined up with the TJM front bumper just fine. The other thing I was super luck to find was an original 95 grill in mint condition with the same color gold paint. It has a little oxidation on the paint, but it looks great vs the all black grill it had on it.

 

Old 95 got a set of off road pipes installed vs the crappy and dead aftermarket cats, and a magnaflow muffler installed today.

 

This was a in frame rebuild, for a bad piston (hole in center). So, pull the head, pan, piston and reassemble. Start it up and sounded great for about two seconds, until that tinny piece of lock washer worked its way past the valve.






Nox Vidmate VLC

 

Well after I started driving the 95 as my daily of coarse summer hits and the AC Compressor decides to lockup. No biggie it served 27 years of faithful service (more than I can say for new cars these days). I had a perfectly good unit from a D2 I just had to slap in. Got that taken care of and the AC is good to go. While we were tinkering with the 95 we inspected the RF swivel assembly and just like the LF which I inspected 3 years ago it was also missing parts.... The 95 had some $$$$ spent on it in 2015 and someone replaced both front CV assemblies (both units are stamped with 5/2015 as the build date. Sadly whoever did the repairs lost all the thrust washers for the upper pins on both sides.... Well we fixed the LF 3 years ago and I was very suspect the RF would be the same story and I was right. Got that all back in order and the 95 is good to go.

 

I decided to surprise my best friend on Christmas Day by driving up and seeing him. I made it about half way into my trip when I stopped to top off the fuel and grab a drink. Out of habit I decided to pop the hood and check stuff. I found coolant squirting out of a pinhole in the radiator. However that did NOT explain why I had so much pressure on the top hose and coolant all over the place by the reservoir. The pressure had caused it to blow out the cap, and that is also why the pinhole was squirting. I let her cool down, and added water. I made it maybe 30 miles down the road when and checked it again. All was good no hard top hose, and coolant was fine. Went another 45 miles and stopped to check it again. This time back to the squirting and gushing out the reservoir cap. I let it cool down, checked all sorts of stuff, and nothing was out of the ordinary. Topped it off again, and all was fine for year another 30 miles. Made it maybe 10 miles from his house and I once again stopped to check it. Thing was back to being a PITA, and this entire time it never was running low on coolant. I then walked around the back to get more water and noticed it smoking occasionally. Smelled it and yep good old sweet coolant.... I crawled the rest of the way and I found out as long as I went 55MPH it was completely happy. The higher RPM's are what caused it to over pressurize.

He was happy to see me but sad about old Goldie Hawn acting up. We relaxed let it cool then went out to piddle. Topped it off, and let it idle, no coolant out the tailpipe, and it never went past 16PSI on the cooling system. Then we noticed it you went above 2,500RPM it would surge pressure wise, and hoses would go rock hard. Then it would eventually go down. Came to the conclusion HG's were done. Which is odd as they only had 6-10k on them. I had to leave, but I went back up the next weekend, and we tore it down, inspected heads for being warped, and we found some old goo on the block no one cleaned off which did cause a little spot on the water jacket part of the HG near #8. We figured that was the smoking gun, so we installed ARP studs, copper coat on the HG's and we even slapped in a new brass radiator as a CYA. Got it all back together and I drove it around town, and bingo back to high pressure on hose and cap hissing.

Sadly we did the exhaust test on the coolant and she's not happy. Either a cracked block, or sleeve is our guess. So she's DOA at the moment. I'll update the thread as we dig deeper.

 

That sucks.

 

Yep I never let her over heat so whatever caused the crack was either before I owned it or it was just a defect in the block casting that age finally caught up with.

My best friend contacted me today and has located a built 4.6L out of a GEMS P38 with a cam, and edlbrock timing chain set which was going into a friends 93 LWB RRC. He's letting me use it and install it & I just need to locate a good 4.6L, and buy the exact parts for him.

 

That's a good friend!