Yesterday was hot and miserable out but Rachael and I got a lot done on the Jeep.

First task was to adjust and bleed the brakes.  I expected to find leaks and I was not disappointed.

Here was one.  This is one of the front wheel cylinders.  There was another at the rear “T’ fitting.  Both responded well to tightening.  Once the air was out of the system the brakes work great.  Even the parking brake works.

I have had a surprisingly tough time finding a replacement for the missing axle washer.  Last weekend I was visiting my dad and he found a washer that was close in his parts stash.  He did some redneck engineering on the washer and now I have two.  Thanks Dad!

Next I finished lubing the chassis.  I put grease in the front axle knuckles, hit every grease fitting, and topped off the differentials with GL-5 gear lube.  However the big job was the transmission and transfer case.  To fill those I found a gallon of the correct GL-4 gear lube on Amazon.  There seems to be really mixed opinions about using GL-5 in the gearboxes of these cars.  So finding GL-4 seemed like cheap insurance.  I also bought that pump you see.  That turned out to be a REALLY good idea.

The fill plug for the transmission is buried up inside the frame rail between a br.acket for the parking brake cable and the shift linkage.  Plus the exhaust pipe is right there in the way.  My 9/16″ wrenches were all to long to turn this plug.  I was seriously considering cutting a wrench in half when I remembered I had a cheap wrench set squirreled away.  That wrench was short enough to turn the plug.  What a pain.  I drained both the transfer case and the transmission then refilled them.  That took most of that gallon of gear oil.

Next the steering box.  The fill plug is right there where the clean spot is.

The picture is fuzzy but the plug was full of goop.  I kinda wish I could easily clean out the steering box but I don’t see how to do that.  I just topped it off with gear lube.

Wheel time!  Here Rachael is putting lug nuts on.  Once we got the wheels on we lowered the car off the jacks and onto its wheels for the first time in more than a month.

And the Jeep rolls again!  It looks a lot better with wheels.

More Jeepster porn.  The lawn tractor next to it was built in 1967 as well.  With the car on the wheels I tightened the axle nuts and put cotter pins in them.

Now that the Heapster is out of the way I was able to do a much needed cleaning of the garage.  The puddles are water from my cleaning up the mess.  I put away all the tools, wood blocks and Jeep parts that have been getting underfoot.

All the rust that I removed from Jeep bits ended up on and around my drill press.  So I cleaned this up too.

Much better.

I also installed the dust caps I found online.  These look like the are destined to fall off the first time we hit a bump.

Aw crap.  Brake is leaking.  I jacked the car up again and pulled this wheel.  Turns out the brake line was finger tight.  I have no idea how I missed it and why it did not leak while we were bleeding.  Weird but an easy fix.

Next step was flushing out the cooling system.   I pulled the coolant overflow bottle out for cleaning and found the bracket was pretty rusty.  So I pulled that off, cleaned it up, and painted it.  So much for my clean drill press.

The radiator slid right in.  Although I almost dropped it right on the fan.  Stupid move but I averted disaster.

The top hose was almost 4 inches too long but fit fine once trimmed.

The bottom hose was about 1/2″ too long and rubs on the oil filter.  I can’t remember if it used to do that.

I filled the cooling system up with water (no sense putting antifreeze in there yet) and hooked up the “gas tank”.  It had been a long day but I really wanted to get the car started.  But it was not to be.  When I turned the key the engine tried to crank once then would not crank again.  It looks like my electrical gremlins are back again.  We pushed the car back into the garage and called it a day.  At least the car rolls and stops now.