What did you do to your WK Grand today?

[drover]

I honestly can't see the sense of them myself, 40 years of dirt, rock and river running, scrub country and hundreds of Roo's I can only see them being of use for those low rails around parks or big gutters...........
Don't get me wrong it looks the goods but it won't offer any protection for a Roo, Sheep or Goat ............. we have horses here to contend with so it would be okay if you hit a horse as you could take it off to use on your new vehicle......lol,lol,lol.

[Mudguard]

Originally Posted by drover

I honestly can't see the sense of them myself, 40 years of dirt, rock and river running, scrub country and hundreds of Roo's I can only see them being of use for those low rails around parks or big gutters...........
Don't get me wrong it looks the goods but it won't offer any protection for a Roo, Sheep or Goat ............. we have horses here to contend with so it would be okay if you hit a horse as you could take it off to use on your new vehicle......lol,lol,lol.

Yes Drover I've also come from that background, previously I had the UNEEK bar on the Jeep & hit a Roo low down on the LH side resulting in the bash plate bending in on the washer bottle, a good bar but had its Achilles. The ORA pre-runner is a solid little unit but again only so far, as I said previously I also have reservations with the "nudge" bar thats why I've lowered it and added additional bracing but as my lifestyle has changed somewhat from my full noise 4WDing days I'll just have to line those goats up in the cross hairs a tad better

[drover]

Yep @Mudguard the lifestyle changes sneak up on you, my WG I fitted a nudge bar, one off a Pajero I think it was, couldn't afford a full bar, made up brackets and out around Gundy would take out the odd Roo with precision hits on the posts, luckily my aim was good, this time with a fullbar they don't come near, as Murphy decreed.

[officepolitics]

Finally got the heads off, purchased the vehicle pickles with mechanical issues, turned out to be blown head gasket. Replacement engines were around $7K so I bought an engine with a spun big end for next to nothing. Pulled the sump off the donor engine and sure enough buggered crank and rod. I have seen posts where people are wondering what happens when these engines spin a bigend. Not much to look at I was surprised there was not evidence of excessive heat, so pretty much a breakaway rod, top bigend bearing shell ended up ontop of the bottom shell and mangled the crank. Pulled off a couple of other bigends just for curiosity, no signs of pick-up and all seemed to be running pretty happily. Anyone want pictures happy to post.



With all the accessories removed there is a fair bit of room. there was condensation in the timing cover but no real sign of water lying around in the cylinders, or in the oil or anywhere else.

Plan on doing a top end transplant off the donor engine. Nightmare to get apart. Obviously jeep didn't plan for people to actually work on these engines whilst they are still in the vehicle. The thing that finally put me off pulling the engine was the requirement to drop the front diff and axles. Without a hoist the whole lift up, pull this out, put down undo that bit back up and do this put me off.

The manual is actually pretty good and provides good instruction. The issue is actually getting to the bit its describing. Jeep list a set of special tools that you actually don't need. Crankshaft lock at the rear of the engine, good luck even getting to that! Camshaft lockdown one for each head, cable ties did the job just fine. Also when I wound the engine over to TDC firing the markings on the harmonic balancer was short of being straight up and down, wound it up to straight up and down 20 degrees past TDC, which turns out all the pistons are clear of the any valve interference when the cams are released so didn't really need to hold them anyway. Well done VM Motori engine designer. The issue with pulling the thing to bits is all of the accessories. Special tools you do need are half moon and S spanners (not listed of course). The water accessory feeds (EGR Cooler, Oil Cooler and heater piping runs through the V and bolted to the heads where you just cant get to them. There is a bolt holding the EGR cooler piping that I could get an open ender 10mm spanner on and get 1/16 of a turn out of it. Couldn't get a finger on the bolt at all. Not going to be an issue when it goes back on as the pipe is getting braised up and the EGR will not be going back on this engine. No way I could get at the right hand manifold connection onto the turbo as there is not a spanner made that can get to the bolts whilst the engine is in the car. Pulled the head off and pulled it up and away from the manifold to get it off. The other issue that I went hunting for a tool that nobody makes is inlet manifold. For some reason the manifold wont come out until you pull the left hand fuel rail off. There are very few torks bolts on this engine but they decided to put them in the fuel rails with 3/4 inch clearance to get to it. Went hunting in the shops and eventually gave up and took the angle grinder to a socket drive bit and then used a 8mm ratchet spanner to get the fuel rail off so I could get the manifold out.

It was handy to have the donor engine sitting next to it so I could use as a reference to get close to the things I couldn't see.








Finally and not preaching as each to their own, but here is another example of why to turn that EGR off and disable it as well as install a catch can here is a couple of photos. The oil separator on this engine seems to work much better than the OM642 in the previous model.

[drover]

Great report and I'm glad those days are behind me now, I certainly hate EGR's...

[timsarg]

Originally Posted by officepolitics

Finally and not preaching as each to their own, but here is another example of why to turn that EGR off and disable it as well as install a catch can here is a couple of photos. The oil separator on this engine seems to work much better than the OM642 in the previous model.

would be interesting to pull apart an engine with no catch can and 150,00 + of highway driving. Bet it wouldn't look anything like that

[Grippy]

I fit a slim light bar last week, I figured I wouldn't go overboard with the lights on this rig. Hopefully it's light output is enough, I did a few hours of driving on country roads the other night and the factory HID headlights are pretty good.
I wired this sucker up this morning, working on the WK2 is a nightmare, such a tight engine bay, and couldn't find any of the grommets to get the wiring for the switch into the cabin, so it's wired to switch on with the high beams. All good.
P3II3127