Whitey turns red build thread!

Small update on the expo. Last winter, once warmed up it would occasionally puff some white smoke for a few seconds when restarting after pumping gas or like running into a mini market. If it sat for a while it would never do it. Temps rise and summer comes along and no issues. Then sure enough, this winter it starts doing it again on occasion. So I figure head gasket or cracked head. I'll live with it till it gets bad. Well then about 6 weeks ago, I start noticing blue smoke for a few seconds on inital starts. Nothing major but enough to notice it and after 5-10 seconds it would clear up.

Well jump to about 4 weeks ago and it all gets worse, substantially... The blue smoke on startup turns into a massive thick cloud you can barely see thru for about 20-30 seconds! Talk about embarassing coming out after lunch to smoke out the whole parking lot. Once the massive cloud passed it would still puff a little just general driving. Well shoot, I've gotta pass smog in Jan to register this thing and we still do the tail pipe test here in Vegas. So...

Not knowing exactly how far I was gonna have to tear into it, I started by pulling the head on the side my gut said it was on. I forgot to mention, I'd fouled the same cylinder about once every 3-4 months so I assumed that was my smoking gun to tear into first.







Interesting enough, the cylinder I fouled actually didn't look too shaby. Just a TINY evidence of head gasket leakage. But the one front cylinder was definitely getting oil past the rings looking at the oil cylinder and the nice clean piston...

Well, rings... Crap, can't pull the oil pan in the vehicle so...





After some reading and discussion here on the forum, decided for the $350 it was better safe then sorry and I put new heads on it. Honed the cylinders, new rings, new heads, ground and lapped the valves, new head gaskets, all new seals on everything I touched and slapped it back together.



Random picture of it almost back together...



After realizing I couldn't count to 6 properly on the plug wires, I finally got the two that I had backwards flipped around when a 2nd set of eyes found my mistake that I'd tripple checked wrong!!! LOL And it fired up on Xmas eve.

Sitting at about 150 miles on it and it's running 100% perfect and should hopefully be good to go for a long time to come now! Gonna run it to about 500 miles, then change oil and sit on a regular oil schedule from there forward.

Anyways, that's my update... Freshened up the motor in the expo.

Funny part is along at the same time I also had my 6.0L chevy motor completely torn down for a very similar rebuild. Left side of my garage was chevy parts, right side was ford parts! LOL Got the Chevy motor back together and installed over the weekend also. If things go right and I get a couple last parts that my stupid dog chewed up, plug wires, I should be able to fire it up for the first time tonight as well I hope!

 

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When we did my brothers 4.0L we ended up needing a head as it had a hairline crack in it that the machine shop found. Not much money to not have to do it again.

 

So annoyed right now!!! Failed Las Vegas smog test on Sat. Sunday morning, I pulled all 6 plugs and wires, put fresh in. All the old plugs looked absolutely text book perfect!!! The engine is running GREAT yet it still failed. I hate smog tests!!!


After that though, I took my other hooptie I've shown some pictures of previously in this thread out for it's maiden test run yesterday. Still needs a lot of shock tuning and has a few other gremlins to work out with but I'm pretty happy with it for being right out of the box. It'll get MUCH smoother still and should gain some decent speed over what this quick 40 second clip shows...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?edit=vd&v=5dpBP0pnCgc

 

So... Not gonna lie. Not sure how much use the expo is going to get in the dirt anymore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drGSmq2Chzk&feature=youtu.be

 

Looks like it is doing great! A whole new toy to play with, bet your glad it's in the dirt.

 

Took a lot longer to hit the dirt then I expected that's for sure with the unforeseen motor setbacks!

Still have more work to do but it's getting put on the backburner and all my attention is moving to the race truck to get it ready for the mint.

 

that looks like tons of fun!

 

..Just a heads up. .tell everyone I'll be there taking pictures again..

 

I'll be in the drivers seat this side at the crack of dawn so I'll look for you! Had so much going on last year that I didn't even realize that was you standing in front of us! LOL This year is much different! Last year, I was working on the truck right up till we left for the start line. Last night I tinkered with it for about half an hour and I'm 2 weeks out basically still and I'm pretty much ready...

 

..Ten days and they drop the green..

..If you are getting bored with nothing to do, I can always swing by in my Ranger and we could do pit repairs on my truck as I will be coming in hot off the desert from chasing a couple races in Az this weekend and will more than likely be needing repairs, lol. .......

 

You know the really scary part!!! The last couple nights in a row I've felt myself with a sense of confusion standing in the garage looking over 3 separate lists thinking I must be missing something... This can't be it... There must be more!!! Has to be!!! I can't really be this low on to do items...

There's some redundancies below but better overkill then under with this stuff!

This is my current ongoing list, plan to have it 100% done by end of day Sat. This is my getting close to finished end of the process daily changing list...



This is my MAIN prep list. There's more to it then this but the items on it at least trigger a mental memory "to do"... Highlights are things I'll do a day or two before the race next week.



This is my Thursday/Friday/race morning list. Left column is everything we carry on board with us. Middle row is list of pit supplies to load up and haul out. Right column is my race morning list and also my "don't forget to take or do this stuff before tech idiot" list.

 

So... Regarding that truck above and the Mint 400... Here's a pretty darn good recap of who we are and how our day went.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YyGzhJ38XU&feature=youtu.be

 

Awesome video! And again congrats on the win!!!!!!!

 

Put another 200 miles of dirt on the log book yesterday.

Juicing up to go...



being chased



Packing up to start the fun after a early rise and shine.















Lunch break..



More fun ahead...



Trees?









My dog found this pool full of fish very refreshing in the summer heat!





End of the road, we fit... But the 4 foot drop out the other side was a no go...



Ehhh, no biggie, we'll find another way around to catch back up with the trail. Hey, every other one we crossed was dry and aren't we in a drought?



It looked dry but those are the tracks I left after BARELY getting out of it, thank god for 4x4, low tire pressure and lockers front and rear. Because of where I initially got stuck and the natural layout of the land, even having the other truck and tow straps, it was going to be a bad scene if I didn't get thru it. Took a bit of effort and some back and forth rev to 2nd low RPM mins but pushed thru and got out. I hate mud by the way...





Post trip celebration at the Tonopah brewery about 7ish last night.. Got back home to vegas about midnight...

 

Some more pics a friend took in no particular order.

Some animal life....







My dog working out some puking issues before we even got started basically.



Yeah it was nasty...





Dead end, at least for us...





Lunch time wheel bearing check....













Sat morning

 

LOL, great, more temptation for my terror! He had a rough start to the day out there. Think he ate something he shouldn't have or whatever cause right as we took off he turned into a pacman eating everything imaginable trying to shove it in his stomach. about an hour later and 4 healthy sized pukes later he was himself again other then some hacking here and there over the day. I think the puking knocked him out of balance and got him a bit dehydrated. He sucked down almost 3 gallons of water during the run in a single day. By the end of the day though he was acting normal and seemed fine.




Basically what we did was run the first portion of the 2013 Vegas to Reno race course. Seemed like fun and well, turned out it was fun.



My GPS file was broke into 3 sections, here it is laid over google maps basically to get an idea.

This is mile 0-92 of what's shown above.



This is about mile 92 to mile 184 of what's shown above.



And the rest into tonopah.




Our only issue trail wise was just south of goldfield at about mile 172 the course went under the highway thru a concrete tunnel. The exit of the tunnel was washed out and we had to find another way around. It was about a 4' straight drop and we weren't capable of it.



So we backtracked to find access up onto the highway and we ran north a bit and hopped back on the course at mile 190. In the process of finding the course again is where I stumbled into the mud on accident!


This BIG lake bed though was basically at about the mile 140 point on the course map I attached above and seen on the top left portion of the course in the 2nd google maps image. Hopefully it's large enough to read the numbers on...

 

Looks like a blast! Always nice to have 4WD when needed