Didn't know were to post this so here seems a good place.

I had been planning my trip to Zion for weeks. The plan was to drive the Rover to Zion hitting some light off road trails in the area. See the park. Hike. Camp and drive home. An easy three day trek right?

After getting this truck back a few months ago I dived right into preventive maintenance once again. The prior time I spent six months repairing and modifying the truck to make it a truly reliable vehicle. I have spent 1000's of dollars and hundreds of hours. Cleaning. Inspecting. Repairing. Replacing. Anything and everything that looked even remotely worn out has been replaced. Bearings. Brakes. Fuel. Ignition. Vacuum lines. Filters. Fluids. Lights. Electrical. Connectors. Sensors. Grounds. CV's. Swivels. Tires. Suspension. Countless hours laying under This truck making lists. Finishing those. Making new to do lists. Over and over. I tested it. Made changes. Took it out tested it again. I bought good quality parts just to be sure.

Armed with my AAA card, tools, fluids of every type, spare common failure parts, I packed up and set out.

Then the hiccups started. 20 miles into the trip. Surging. Coughing. Temps reading way higher than normal. And a off and on vibration I was prepared to just ignore to try and have a good trip. No check engine light. After pulling over and inspecting all my new parts I didn't see an obvious problem. The only thing odd I heard was a bubbling sound from the tank when I primed the fuel pump w key on. I gave it a few more miles and decided to turn back.

This is the reward for all this work?? Damn it's depressing. I wound up taking the wife's Yaris and staying at a hotel there instead.

I really feel like if I spent this much time money and effort on any other vehicle it would have zero issues. I mean it's a 99! It's not really old by most standards. I know for a fact any non enthusiast owning this truck would not have maintained it like I have for the last year. How can I possibly have a breakdown having done all this?? I don't think my particular truck is more or less bad than another. I have repaced parts i read about as being common problems. Vss is new. Crank sensor. O2 sensors. Temp senders. Fuel pump. Everything I could replace I did. Every connector and wire was inspected and cleaned. None of this was done right before I left. It's all been driven on over and over locally. For the icing on the cake the shifter handle decided to break as I put it in park at my house..grrrr.

It would have been nice to get some sort of reward for all of this effort. I'm sort of disgusted with it at this point. I've never had a vehicle break down on me before after I've gone through it like this. This is completely frustrating. This is not my first time doing this. But it is the first that it has been so frustrating.

 

Sorry for the frustrating experience. Seems to happen to a lot of us with 15 yr. yar old vehicles. My 2005 decided to slip a liner after lots of upkeep and parts. Wife's 96 D1 always got us home, but sometimes decided to stay in garage, fortunately never in bad weather. My Classic shot craps when I used it as a city mail truck ( it really hated stop and go) and popped an ignition module and shredded fan and poke holes in radiator and bonnet, then first cold weather the power steering shot craps in a snow storm. Take a breather and return to your Rover, will need some more TLC. Hopefully just a burping of the coolant and a check of fuel system. New fuel pump connections under chassis might need tending. I had a fuel filter blow and drain half my fuel before I could get back home. No CE light looks to be possible fuel pump issue, even though it is new.

 

Yea I know it's probably fixable. I just know that if you inserted a different vehicle in place of the Rover and did the exact same work to something else, it would probably be fine. I've had reliable great cars and trucks having done half the work. I've had a 96 F350 that had 500K on it. It towed a gooseneck trailer fully loaded hundreds of miles at a time. I never did this much work to it.
I've built hot rods and trucks. From the 40's 50's 60's 70's 80's and 90's. I've never had to do this much to make a simple trip. And certainly not this much and it take a crap 20 miles in.

The fact that I spend a significant amount of time defending this truck is a real sting. All my car friends don't get it and constantly break my ***** for driving this. I'm always telling people that the poor reputation is false and largely to do w lack of maintenance. Now I'm starting to second guess it.

 

how often (and how far) did you drive the truck before the trip? why did you replace all of the stuff you replaced?

 

I replaced coolant thermostat and hoses last week. The rest has been done over the past year. Some more recent than others.

My main reason for replacement of most things was preventive. I read the tech sections of forums started to see reoccurring themes in failures. So decided to get to them rather than wait for a failure.

Also I got very little maintenance records w the truck so I had no idea when or if anything had ever been done. Parts that looked worn or in some way subpar were replaced.

 

In the past 3 months I've probably put about 500 miles on it.

 

You just got unlucky. I drive mine in remote mountains all the time with no issue. I've been there though. In the beginning it was very frustrating.

I bet the two issues you had were just two things that were easy to overlook.

It could be simple as the cooling system wasn't burped completely. Those air pockets can be elusive SOBs. Top off coolant. Cap expansion tank. Raise front passenger side. Remove radiator cap. Run engine until warm and coolant begins to exit radiator. Rev engine to help coolant flow. Cap radiator. Done.

It sounds like your fuel pump can't suck up fuel, and so the engine isn't getting fuel, which would explain the surging. Remove the pump assembly. Check the line from the pump to the top of the assembly. If there's a crack or it isn't tight then the pump is just going to be spraying fuel back into the tank.

Another idea. Do you have a scanner with live data readout? Take your truck out and drive it. Hopefully it coughs and sputters. While it's running like crap, look at your MPH on the scanner. If it's a bogus reading, then your transfer case mounted speed sensor is bad and is telling the ECM you're going a billion MPH. The ECM would then say screw that and cut power momentarily. To test if it's causing problems, or if you're in the boonies and have trouble with the speed sensor, crawl under the truck and unplug the sucker.

Ignore your buddies and try not to give them a hard time when you pull them out of a ditch.

 

You need to wrench less and drive it more. Replace what you need to, not what the internet tells you.

 

Yes and no. Most of the stuff he replaced was wear items, meaning they wear out. I definitely get the idea of getting ahead of the game and replacing things before they wear out on the trail. I like to do that and then keep the old parts as trail spares.

SHIFT, it sounds like bad luck.
Can you go into detail on your fuel pump replacement? Was it the entire sending unit you replaced, or just the little pump itself. If the latter, what type of hose/clamps did you use?

 

I do have a live data scanner yes. And unfortunately I feel the need to carry it with me when I drive this truck. Haha. Good to know. Thanks for the tip. Since I replaced that part and it had been working fine for months I didn't think to check out the data then. Dumb.

Fish I replaced just the pump itself and did the appropriate loop w fuel injection hose and clamps.

And I do understand the point of not listening to the Internet. I get that. I was trying to use everyone's experience w the same truck and get ahead of the game. I kinda feel like it was wasted effort at this point. I wish I had the blissful ignorance of cars that most people have. I can't stop thinking about noises and feelings and diagnosing constantly.