What is it about summer in Southern California that tempts me out of my comfortably climate controlled cave and out into the glaring brightness and unbearable heat of the East San Diego hills to bake in the sun? Is it the thrilling speed of a Ford GT? Nope. The sexy curves of a ’59 Porsche? Nah. The desperate necessity for reliable transportation? Not today! Today I’m fixing a nasty salvaged jeep. Again.

It doesn’t make sense, I admit it. Is this a sickness? A disorder? The futile functions of a delusional mind? No. This is The Free Model T.

Happy Independence Day Rustlovers. There will be rust.

As previously hinted I’ve been doing some work on The Summer Project. While originally satisfying the call for a cheap 4×4 this jeep has revived in me a passion for Jeeps and a deep love of inline 6 cylinder motors. I even had some stickers made:



When I first bought it I was disappointed for days that it didn’t have the 5.2 liter V8 but now nothing could make me trade my 4.0 for anything else. I fixed the summer project into a Baja bombing beast on a tight budget doing everything on the cheap. Now I have a new ideal in mind, a new summer project. Time to fix this thing right!

Over the last few months I pulled the tired 200,000 mile engine out of the jeep and tore it apart. I tested cleaned, painted, rebuilt, or replaced every part on it. I had the head machined and rebuilt professionally at Action Cylinderhead in Santee, Ca. I liked their work so much I had them bore the engine .030″ over, install the freeze plugs, cam bearings and press the new Pistons.

Assembling the motor I got silly and put silicone gasket sealer between every mounting surface of every bracket and component to keep water intrusion from corroding bolts. Every plugin and connector received a generous application of dielectric grease. All the aluminum components were clear-coated. Why all the absurd overkill? I do the unthinkable with this jeep and drive it in salt water and despite all the work I’ve done I plan on continuing this appalling practice.

I could type a complete list of all the parts I installed on the motor but I think it would be a boring read and a waste of time so I’ll just give the highlights and post a bunch of pictures of the build:

MSD coil

Accel wires

Iridium spark plugs

Cloyes timing set

Mobile 1 synthetic oil

4 pintle 19 lb fuel injectors

Stant thermostat and cap

Chromoly rings

Hypereutectic pistons

Lifetime warranty water pump, alternator, fuel pump, oil pump, balancer, starter, distributor power steering pump and box, idler pulley etc!

Boom! Now I have a jeep that’s worth FAR les than the sum of its parts. Here are some pix of the build:

Pretty nasty. Lots of burnt oil on every surface. Lots of external rust.

Added a helicoil to fix this stripped exhaust manifold hole.

Engine primer.

I stamped my cereal # onto this boss on the block.

Crankshaft in.



Shiny Pistons at TDC

Timing chain.

I degreased and pressure washed most of the external components.

You can see the RTV silicon squirting out from under the bolt heads.

After paint I sanded and clear coated the timing marks for visibility.

Intake was too nasty from salt to clear coat so I painted it for future protection.



Engine in, new exhaust mocked up.

New injectors and thermostat housing.



I used the old distributor with the drive gear removed and a drill to prime the oil system until oil came out of all the push rods.

A little oil…

A lot of oil!!!

Installing components.

I broke in the engine by running it with high zinc oil for 25 minutes at 2200 rpm then drained the oil and added a pint of Lucas ZDDP additive and 6 quarts of mobile 1 10w30 oil as well as a WIX XP synthetic oil filter. Now. It runs like crap. Darn. It’s hard to be discouraged though when I just picked up this gem:



Well Rustlovers, stay tuned for the diagnosis! Same rust time, same rust channel.