What Started As A Fairly Simple Job, Turned Into A Major Undertaking

One of the broken motor mounts.

Last year I broke the motor mounts on my Jeep pickup while trying to pull a stump.  Last fall I bought new mounts and started to replace them. What I thought would be a fairly simple job of jacking up the engine a little and replacing the mounts turned into a much bigger job. I got the bottom nuts off with no problem. The upper ones were very difficult to get at, so I thought I'd remove the bracket from the block. One of the bolts was rusted and I couldn't get it to turn. The socket slipped on the bolt and rounded the head. I then used a chisel bit in my rivet gun (or air hammer) to try and get the bolt to break loose and turn. Then water started to come out of the engine. I tried to catch as much as possible in a pan because anti-freeze is expensive.

The cause of the leak. The freeze plug was rusted and I knocked some rust loose trying to remove the bolt below it.

 Because of the location of the bolt it was hard to get a grip with vise-grips. All I managed to do was round off the head even more. Now I know why the bolt was rusted. The freeze plug had been leaking for some time, but with lots of stop-leak it wasn't a big problem. Just add a little coolant every once in a while.

 Decided to hang it up and moved the Jeep to where it wouldn't be in the way during the winter. Last month I started to work on it again. The weather was much nicer now than last fall, it was snowing then.

Well, that didn't work.

 Discovered that this position wouldn't work to lift the engine out of the Jeep. I positioned the truck with the hoist in front of the Jeep and securing the hoist to the front of the box. Even tho I put beams under the box to support the hoist, there is still a lot of twisting. It doesn't help that there are no rear shocks on the truck. Blog post Aug. 2012.

New freeze plug installed.

 After I got the engine out and in the back of the other truck, I was able to remove the rusted bolt on the bracket and the rusted freeze plug and put in a new one.

New motor mount in place.

 Once I got the freeze plug replaced and replaced the oil pan gasket and valve cover gaskets I had a friend come help me put the engine back in the Jeep. It didn't go as easy as either of us thought it would but after several hours it was in place with enough bolts in place to hold things together. Then I spent several days putting things together. Hopefully I got it to the point where all I need is some more anti-freeze and some gas and a battery.

The shroud for the heater core got damaged while removing the engine.

The shroud for the heater core is fiberglas and while trying to remove the engine it poked a hole in the shroud. I have a older Jeep Wagoneer and I pulled the heater core assembly off it and put it in the Jeep truck. The Wagoneer is a '67 and the truck is a '79 but both had the same mounting set-up. The older one was metal. Hopefully the heater will work as I plan on using the Jeep for plowing snow this winter and it would be nice to be comfortable. Not like my previous plow rig.