Tackled this over the past several days. I was able to get the rear lower johnny joints serviced on Thursday and started draining and removing parts the following evening once I had tracking numbers and knew when I could expect deliveries.
Prep
With the rad, fan and belt removed, this is where we started. Its obvious that this is not the factory water pump. The lack of mopar logo, the purple heater pipe and the worm clamp give it away. All of the other components appear to be factory including the thermostat.
Pump, water neck and generator bracket removed. The idler pulley looks iffy, but it spins true and its quiet.
Hide your eyes Irun, the block is dirty and… pealing? I’m not going to utter that word. It’s dirty.
This is before I spent an hour scraping the old gaskets off. I followed JMTs lead and carefully used one of these to get it completely clean.
Timing Chain
From here I pulled the harmonic balancer and the timing cover.
I must have read through this thread at least a dozen times getting ready for the timing chain swap.
OG chain and sprockets
Removed and gasket scraped. You can see the cleaned pump and thermostat surfaces here too.
I used all Mopar timing parts (chain and sprockets). It turns out I ordered three different crank seals. I ended up installing the one that came with the FelPro TCS45458 timing gasket kit. It is a National branded seal, was marked “USA” and most closely resembled the original that was removed (except the color).
I, sadly, did not get a picture of new new chain and sprockets installed…
Getting the cover back on was kind of a trick. The FelPro oil pan gasket (maybe they are all like this) has very tall shoulders around the timing cover. I pulled it away from the pan, set the cover in its channel and then slid it back over the chain. At this point, it was sitting tall and the bolts would not easily thread on. I started with the four bolts through the oil pan to “pull” it down in to place. It worked and I was able to loosely thread the cover bolts in place.
I did not track down the Timing Case Cover Alignment and Seal Installation Tool 6139 as specified by the FSM. Once the cover bolts were in place, I used the harmonic balancer itself to center the cover and seal (tools borrowed from O’Reilly). It worked as intended and only cost an extra ten or so minutes to pull it on and back off.
cooling
From there, I didn’t take many pictures of the cooling component installs. I was ready to have the Jeep back. The pump was replaced with a Mopar unit. I ordered a Dorman heater pipe, but the damn thing simply would not thread into the threaded hole of the pump. It felt cross threaded, but it was not. I gave up and used ole reliable, purple pipe with a fresh wrap of teflon tape. The bolts for the pump were also wrapped in teflon tape per YouTube wisdom(?) and the gasket installed dry.
Rather than order a Mopar or Stant and receive a Motorad, I cut out the middle man and ordered a Motorad 2000-195 for $4. Yes, its a “performance” tier thermostat but at 195*, it has a check valve and did not need to have a hole drilled. Actually it was $3.33 - a price I am perfectly happy with.
I ordered a “matching” motorad waterneck and gasket. The gasket was dipped in clean water and installed wet. The bolts did not get teflon tape and the existing temp sensor was reused.
The CSF radiator has not arrived yet, but as mentioned, my original mopar unit was in good shape with no leaks and was cleaned, rinsed and reused with a new Mopar cap. New upper and lower Gates hoses were used. The upper gave me fitment issues and was a little too long but was made to work. No issues with the lower but I did notice it lacked the internal spring of the factory hose.
+fan hub
+belt
+radiator
+fan & shroud
She fired up first crank.
After a 15 minute idle and a spirited rev session in the driveway, nothing exploded and temps were more under control than I’ve ever seen. What’s more, zero leaks of any kind.
Around town, I never saw temps higher than 208* and mostly hovered around 202*. Previously, on the highway, temps would rise to 230 and then creep up over 235-240. A 10 minute spin on the interstate 70-80mph and the max temp recorded was 210.8*. Great success.
Also, I’m sure this is just placebo and confirmation bias, but I swear it feels peppier. Either that or the perfect weather today combined with being back in the driver’s seat triggered some endorphins. I was able to easily get up to 82mph without much fuss - something I’ve rarely pushed it to do in the past. Whatever, I’m not sure if that’s mechanically possible for a new timing chain to make any measurable difference in power. It was a great victory lap.
I still have a fresh set of O2 sensors to install on the bench, more JJs to service and a nice new winch rope to spool.