Well, I've now graduated out of the "New" section so now I can come here and play...
I bought an 06 Limited a couple of weeks ago as a project vehicle. I thought it was going to be an easy fix, but I was wrong, very wrong..
The vehicle had overheated. One of the plastic "T" junctions of the heater hose near the firewall failed and lost most if not all of the coolant, which caused the overheat condition. I had it towed home as it barely ran and when it did, it made a helluva racket.
1st order of business was to pull the plugs and do a compression test. The rear cylinder on the driver's side registered at "0" PSI.
Not good..
Removal of the valve cover assured the valve train was intact. I was hoping that the valve train was the issue...but no...
So, I removed the driver's side cylinder head. Yes, friends..the intake valve seat let loose, fell in the combustion chamber and beat the ever loving day lights out the piston and the cylinder head!
Fun..
I removed the passenger side cylinder head. All looks good there...
I was simply going to drop the pan, remove the piston, replace it with a good one, replace the heads and intake and go from there but after I saw what a nightmare it was to remove the pan, I said no way - I'm pulling the engine.
Obviously you are far more mechanically saavy than I am, but, it doesn't take a mechanic to see that that certainly doesn't look good; I'm looking forward to following your repair work and seeing some of the step by step pics, if you have time to take some;
Don't know about whether I'm mechanically savvy or not, I just seem to end up rescuing vehicles that have major failures. I didn't expect this one to be so catastrophic, but I'm this far now, so I might as well see it through.
I'm not a detail person when it comes to step by step pictures and write-ups, but I will provide an ongoing writeup as I move forward with this project in the hopes that it will help others.
I recently retired from the corporate plantation, so I have the time and opportunity to do this. I built a shop behind our home expressly for these types of projects and have a small lift (MaxJax) which helps immensely in getting things accomplished.
Thank you for your interest in my little story....
Don't know about whether I'm mechanically savvy or not, I just seem to end up rescuing vehicles that have major failures. I didn't expect this one to be so catastrophic, but I'm this far now, so I might as well see it through.
I'm not a detail person when it comes to step by step pictures and write-ups, but I will provide an ongoing writeup as I move forward with this project in the hopes that it will help others.
I recently retired from the corporate plantation, so I have the time and opportunity to do this. I built a shop behind our home expressly for these types of projects and have a small lift (MaxJax) which helps immensely in getting things accomplished.
Thank you for your interest in my little story....
On the commander, there is a structural support bracket where typically an inspection cover is at where you have access to remove the flex plate bolts. In the case of the Commander, once the structural support bracket is loose, it is impossible to remove it from the vehicle as it hits the lower crossmember. I tried six ways from Sunday to remove it and its not going to happen unless you raise the engine. Rather than putz around with doing that, I somehow positioned the structural support where I could just barely remove the flex plate bolts.
All other engine/transmission bolts have been removed and the hydraulic engine lift is in place ready to remove the short block. I will probably have to remove both engine mounts completely before lifting it out as I suspect pulling only the 2 long bolts from the engine mount is not going to get the job done as you are going to have to pull the engine forward slightly do dis-engage from the locating pins mating the engine to the transmission.
177K on your 06? I say rebuild it. Comon DDD, you have that sweet shop to work in and the engine is already down to the short block. At least bearings and a ring job, oil pump and lifters. You are already going to have a set of reman heads on it. I say go for it. We have your back, at least for encouragement anyway.
Removed the offending piston today. It will definitely will have to be replaced. Surprisingly, the connecting rod bearing is in perfect shape, considering the mileage - I was surprised.
Getting the crankcase pan off took some real effort. I don't see how anyone could remove the pan while the engine is in the car. You must separate the windage tray from the block and separate the windage tray from the crankcase pan. A stiff putty knife and a hammer is the only way to remove it and you must go all the way around the pan to separate it. Once separated, you can lift the crankcase pan off and then you have to remove 4 bolts and disconnect the oil pickup tube before removing the windage tray. There is no other way....
Oh, BTW - the connecting rods are "cracked". Look closely at the connecting rod bearing cap and you'll see why...
Definition of a cracked rod:
Connecting rods form the link between the crankshaft and the pistons and transfer the gas and inertial forces to the crankshaft. For the connecting rod to be mounted on the crankshaft, the large connecting rod eye must be divided.
One form of creating this division is "cracking": Cracked connecting rods are initially made as a single-part component. The large connecting rod eye is then broken in two in a targeted manner. The two parts are
screwed together again during mounting. The cracked fracture surfaces achieve an excellent fit precision between the connecting rod shank and the bearing cap.
To prevent a mix-up, the connecting rod shanks and bearing caps that belong together are labelled with an identical pairing number.
Thanks Big Blue! It was a long time coming. I spent years on my back on a hard garage floor in both the heat and the cold. About 5 years ago I bit the bullet and spent the money to have a 24X24 shop built so I wouldn't have to tie up the family garage. I've got AC in the summer and heat in the winter and I put down a Racedeck floor a couple of years ago. The lift sure helps too, makes getting underneath any vehicle pretty much a breeze now.
Okay - I've pretty much made up my mind about how to proceed with the rebuild...
I'm going to replace only the one piston. Looking at the connecting rod bearing surface tells me that its getting good oil (oil been changed regularly), and the engine is balanced correctly. I know from my prior compression test of all cylinders that all of the other 7 are in good working order, hence the decision to replace the damaged one only.
I'll have to hone that one cylinder and I will be taking the damaged piston to the machine shop later this week and have them source and press the new one on. Then its simply a matter of cleaning everything and putting it back together. Its still going to cost me at least $1K to put it back together, figuring new heads, new intake, new timing set, rings, and all the necessary gaskets needed. Still not cheap..
I'm right there with you....I'm a clean freak myself Dan.
To make the image larger, you right click on the image go to properties, copy the address which would start as https:// and paste the address in between
Im not sure where "rocket city" is, but i am seriously debating going down south, or west to get my next xk. 177k and not a spot of rust !!! Unreal !!!
The biggest problem with repairs in Michigan is that you have to weigh the cost vs the life expectancy before the body rots out from under you.
Rocket City = Huntsville, Alabama. So named as Werner Von Braun came here from Germany and was instrumental in turning the city into a Mecca for Space exploration, which then branched off into Missile defense. There is still a big NASA presence here...
Yep, Red & Black oxidize faster than any other colors, particularly in hotter climates that you would typically find in the South; That is a well documented fact.
Id take fade over rust every day of the week.
Theres a guy in town here that claims he has a ceramic based paint coating thats supposed to eliminate waxing for 3 yrs for $300.
Not sure of details, maybe thats for another thread.
Another cleaning day. This thing was filthy when I got it. I cleaned all the door jams, pulled all the seats and console and have been working on restoring/cleaning the leather seats as they were never touched. They were dark, dingy and shiny looking. I'm happy to say they now look really great. The carpet was a mess from 2 small kids in the back and a dog. I called Stanley Steemer and they did a fantastic job of cleaning the carpet. It almost looks new again and they got out stains that I wouldn't have been able to get out.
For the leather seats, I used a drill brush and woolite cut with water (8 parts of water to 1 part woolite). There is simply no way I could have cleaned these by hand and gotten the results I did with the drill brush. I finished them off with Lexol conditioner and I am well pleased.
I moved the Jeep out of the shop for the carpet technicians to clean it. You might be wondering how I was able to move a disabled vehicle back into my shop by myself (there is an upward slope on the concrete skirt on the outside of my shop). I mounted an ATV winch into the concrete floor and I simply hook the winch to the jeep and press a button.
Just got through honing the one cylinder. I had to buy a flex hone, new piston rings, piston, and rod bolts to do the job. I bought a 320 grit, silicone carbide, 3.75 inch hone. The piston diameter is 3.66 inches so I went with the next bigger size of hone, and it worked perfectly. Hone wasn't cheap from brushresearch.com, but it was the right tool. New piston pressed onto the connecting rod. I had the machine shop check the straightness of the connecting rod because of the piston damage caused by the dropped valve seat. There was no issue with the rod, but checking gave me some piece of mind. Next is to go ahead and install the rings and the piston and torque it down with the new bolts. The bolts are TTY, so I had to buy new ones. Fortunately they were just 2 bucks a piece at the dealer.
Still lots more stuff to buy for the engine and then its simply putting everything back together. I've yet to buy a new set of heads. I've got a source about 2 hours south of me, so that may get done later in the month....
All the best to you in this. I have a similar situation with my 07 XK. I bought it used at an auction. It was sold as running and driving but that was not the case when they delivered it. It was delivered in beautiful condition - recently detailed. Anyhow the motor was shot as the number 7 cylinder was shot. Because I was limited on time and can only work on the XK on Sundays and Mondays I took a shortcut and a risk. We bought a used motor that supposedly only had 120,000 miles on it from a wrecked XK. Anyhow long story short we replaced the engine but still had electrical issues. I had to replace the clockspring in it also. Got it all up and running and not two weeks later some drunk person rear ended me in a hit and run. The XK was parked. Back to the story......I'll be rebuilding the original motor with new heads and I'll do a complete engine rebuild on it. It'll give me a second motor for incase purposes. Since then I've just been fixing the few things that are wrong. Right now I'm down to three things on it but I'll fix those this weekend. Thankfully I found this awesome forum a little over a week ago and received the help on these last three things.
All the best to you in getting yours taken care of.
I wouldn't mind having two Commanders, one for a daily driver and then one to customize.
I am with you on having 2 commanders. I am looking for a 2nd one as well. The 1st one is being used as a learning curve as I haven't worked on a Jeep before. Commanders are relatively cheap down here. Most of them are 06 vintage. I would like to find an 09 or 10, but they're simply not available in this region of the SE.
Best of luck to you and if you need any help, just holler!:smile2:
Serious eye candy.
I'll be getting ready to rebuild the motor in my 92 K1500 and then I'll start to rebuild the original motor from my Commander. I may still pull the heads off to check out the block.
Heads are on. Next up will be to install the timing components and get it dialed in correctly...
Interesting note on the refurbished heads. If you look closely at the area around the valves, you can see where they staked the valve seats to keep them from coming out again. Now, whether or not this actually works - only time will tell but these guys have been doing this for quite a while now without problems, so it must be good.
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Related Threads
?
?
?
?
?
Jeep Commander Forum
291.6K posts
43.8K members
Since 2005
A forum community dedicated to Jeep Commander owners and enthusiasts. Come join the discussion about lift kits, modifications, reviews, purchasing, troubleshooting, maintenance, and more!