Got sent to work even earlier so no progress done before I left.
Just got home last night, today got to tearing into the truck.
Power steering and front cover of engine removed.
We will rebuild the power steering pump in the morning (I don't like rebuilds from auto parts places, and I have a tiny bit of experience with hydraulic pumps, so....)
Lykins sent me a timing chain (thanks, that was awesome). Then I went to work. Oddly they sent another one after I got to work and the wife let me know. Oddly the next day UPS showed up to pick it back up. Weird we thought..... Well, once I got back home and tore the front of the engine down, I quickly realized I didn't have the correct parts. So I looked up the part number and apparently I have a timing set for a Jeep Cherokee. I can only assume (since I wasn't here) that the second set they sent was the correct one, and the part that was supposed to go back was this incorrect one. Either way, whatever, I don't care, I went out and got the proper part, so no worries there.
When I pulled the timing cover the (roaring) sound I assumed was the timing chain became apparent. The fuel pump eccentric fell into my hand, the bolt stripped out. Apparently the bolt lacked loctite and the camshaft pin was WAY too short to hold the eccentric in place. Failure diagnosis: Pin too short, eccentric rotated with the cam until it unscrewed the bolt, roaring sound was eccentric and bolt grinding into the timing cover. This explains why they installed an electric fuel pump (I wondered why the heck the truck would have an electric AND a mechanical fuel pump).
This goes back to my heart sinking feeling when I was told "Yeah man, the engine was rebuilt, but I think he set the valves wrong or something."
As a matter of fact the valves were set wrong, they set them like adjustables instead of setting them via torque as per the positive stop rockers they are, doh! Taken care of.
On a happy note, I happened to have the correct camshaft pin in one of my "buckets o misc engine bullshit" and also have a spare camshaft bolt for this engine. I very timidly screwed the bolt in, and thank god, the threads in the cam were ok. Should get all of that bolted back together sometime in the morning. Of course, this does concern me regarding the rest of the engine, but I guess we'll take it as it comes, I dont' feel like pulling the engine to retorque everything. I do however need to find a proper washer for the cam eccentric.... seriously people, when you have a wear mark on the eccentric and decide to use a washer that is half the size...... I mean WTF? Another case of a rebuild being: 2 cans spray paint, some new parts, and little to no talent or common sense in building an engine.
