The Raider refurbishment Saga.





First off I want to thank the gracious and patient folks around here for all the help in answering my questions, providing info, experiences and parts for a nice price.


Secondly, for this story to really be appreciated, I must stress that up to this point, My Raider had been a rock solid totally reliable Daily driver of several years.

September;
I live in the mountains of E. TN/ W. NC. Myself and three friends were in the Raider headed to a free martial arts class. I had noticed the temp gauge was just a tiny bit higher than where it runs day in day out, but paid little attention to it as I rarely have a 4 man load in the vehicle and figured I was working the motor a wee bit harder due to the load.

Next thing I know the valves are rattling big time. I go to shut it down and it won't stop running. I put it in gear hold the brake and kill it that way. The whole time the temp gauge needle had never gone higher than perfectly level. Turns out the little 3" long rubber hose on the h20 pump ruptured on the back side letting a little hole spray out all the coolant.

I let it cool and replaced the little hose. The auto parts store told me they only could sell rubber hose by the foot so they GAVE me 3" free. So a FREE part caused all this. Keep reading.

I get the vehicle to a friends house where I can work on it. It's not running for crap. I assumed I had popped a head gasket. I pull the head to find each dome of the head cracked between the valves. Great. Upon further inspection, I find what I think may be a crack in the cyl. wall on #2 bore. I cross my finger and have a local legendary mechanic come look at #2 bore and he says he thought it was a crack as well. @#$%^&@%^ !!!

Because I'm broke, desperate and hoping against hope I have my buddy pull the headless Raider to a top notch local engine machine shop for them to inspect this crack in #2. They say it's a crack in the bore indeed. My heart sinks.

Once towed back to my buds house I begin to pull the motor. I get the block out and disassembled of components. I take the block, crank and flywheel back to the machine shop.

They deck the block and begin boring it .040 over. Boring hole one goes fine. Boring block 2 for the sleeve goesàwaità? where did the crack go!?!?!?! I get a phone call: "Hey the "crack" disappeared. It must have just been a flaw in the casting. I will 'flux it and get back to you." Sure as crap it wasn't a crack, but now I have half my cyl. bores .040 over forcing me into an unneeded rebuild. &!^#$%^@#$%&!!!!!!!!!!

So I order the Master rebuild kit. with a balancer elimination kit. SERIOUSLY Sweating where the monies for this was gonna come from I began to pray and fret.
By the time the rebuild kit came in and the machine shop was ready for me to pick up the block, God had placed $2500 in my bank account via relative out of state who ""felt the need to bless me."" They knew nothing of the vehicle troubles nor my financial status.

So I figure if I'm knee and elbow deep into fixing the Raider, I might as well do it right. SO I ordered a new clutch kit and bought a Weber 38. I also bought all new fluids for the entire drive line &rear brakes.

This happened at a most inconvenient time as my dad is fading fast from inoperable brain cancer at an out of state Nursing home. Hoping to get my Raider back together and make the trip to see him at least once more before he checks out kept the pressure on and had me working IN the rain on this and after dark with a head lamp more than once.

I get it all together and take off on the trip to the nursing home, 6 hours away. About two hours into my trip all of a sudden like flipping a switch I got a really bad front end shimmy. BAD death wobble. So I find a parts store and luckily they can have me some idler arm bushings shipped in in a couple hours. They get there and i change the bushings in the parking lot and take off again. The shimmy is not gone, but is no longer nerve wracking. I make it to within about an hour and a half of my destination. I stop for fuel and notice the left rear wheel is it coated in oil.

%!*+$^@#&%#*$%#& !!!!

So I guess the rear axle is now jealous and wants some attention too. I ease to the closest parts store and they can't get the seal for me any sooner than a few days. They (O'reileys) were kind enough to call their local competitors and check on the seal. No one could get it any sooner. So I get a gallon of the thickest gear lube in the place. Outside I jack up the back of the Raider as high as I could get it with the hi-lift jack and overfill the rear diff and take off. I drove about 20 minutes toward dad and pulled over and felt the diff to make sure it was not hot. It wasn't so I went on for another 20 minutes and repeated the temp check.

I visited dad and went and ordered in the "inner axle seal(s)." I visited dad and family. When the seals came in I put them in, and departed for home.

An hour into my trip home and I have a blow out on my RR tire. I find a shop and get the tire problem fixed. I hit the road again for home. An hour after tire deal I was passing through a small town and WHAM I get seriously rear ended. Now I have a broke driver seat, A broke rear window latch a bent trailer hitch and a really bent left rear leaf spring. The other can was a mid sized dodge car and was TOTALED. Everybody was okay and I drove home with the rr of the Raider all jacked up like some hoop-t.

I hurried home having a pressing teaching engagement to get to. I swapped out the leaf spring from a monty in the local parts yard. I also went ahead and bought the rear diff third member and welded it and installed it as mine had a whine to it.

I then hooked up a good sized trailer and picked up a 250 lb. "circus tent" I was to haul to the survival skill gathering I was teaching at. An hour into this 4 hour trip the trailer tire blows, on the interstate in a mountain pass where trucks have a hard time slowing down and the emergency lanes are not hardly wide enough for motorcycles. SO I drag it on the rim for 20 miles out of the mtns. Of course it was 5:05pm on saturday in a teeny one horse town. It took forever to get a tire and get going. 2 hours later just after dark I'm motoring along nearly to GA admiring how strong the new motor & Weber is compared to the old motor/set-up when I hear a CHING and white smoke begins POURING out of the back of the Raider. ??????

%&^#@!@#$%^&* !!!!!!!!!!!!

I pull over and by the time I could raise the hood all the coolant was on the ground. Upon inspection it was obvious one of my fan blades had sheared off and hacked up the radiator right good. No more denial : there's a black cloud over the Raider and me!!!!!! Of course this too had to happen on a desolate stretch of interstate as well, after dark. When I did get a ride to the parts store Of course they did not have a rad for the Raider. So I bought $20 worth of 5-min quick steel epoxy and plastered and spackled the left side of the rad which looked like it had taken a single round of buckshot. Now for the "cures in one hour" wait.

#$&*)@#$.

An hour later I filled the rad back up and the "gushing" was at least down to only vigorous seepage. So I took off. It ended up being a drive 10 miles, then refill the rad deal. All in all between the tire blow out and the rad, I made the 4 hour trip in TWELVE, going through no less than 18 gallons of water.

Once at the location of my week long teaching event, I ordered in a new Rad, New flex fan from Summit and a new water pump as the out of balance fan had the pump bearing squealing by the time I reached my destination.

So now I was teaching by day and when the parts came in wrenching by night.

I got all that junk installed and the trip home, believe it or not was uneventful!

Meanwhile there's still a mild shimmy in the front end. I go to a tire shop and they find a trashed idler arm, a bad upper ball joint and two bad control arm shafts/bushings. How did this shimmy just show up instantly in stead of a little at a time beats me!

I got the parts ordered in and sitting here. I guess more wrenching the next couple days. And there was a cold snap this morning so the speedo is squalling againààà. I got a new instrument cluster from the yard. I installed the tach and lo/behold it works. Nice to have a tach again. Speedo is next after the suspension components.

Looking back:
The fresh .040 motor with the Weber 38 is outstanding. I wish I had gone .060 over, no joke.

(I forgot to put in the story) I love the winch I sprung for. I ordered a 8k winch, was invoiced for an 8k winch but received a 10K winch. I have already been able to help a whole slew of folks with it from unsticking vehicles to pulling logs out of the forest for firewood for others.

The $50 roof rack mounts I got form Proline racks (per a thread reference here) was a good buy. I made a 3' x 6.5' roof "basket" out of lumber and I don't know how I ever got by without it.

This pretty much has/will have the Raider refurbished (the Trans & t-case was rebuilt 2 years ago) except for the some rust in the body. Hopefully the check from where I got rear ended will get the rust fixed and the underside and outside rhinolined!

Thanks again to all the kind and helpful folks here for sharing their knowledge and helping me along the way during this frustrating time.

man i thought i was having a bad time with my raider.

Man, if you didn't have bad luck, you'd have no luck at all! I don't know if I would've persevered like you did, but good on ya!

Sadly, I no longer have my Monty, sold it a couple of weeks ago to someone who's definitely going to give her a good home (he's restored Landcruisers in the past). But now I have a 1986 Mercedes 420 SEL to tinker with. Found this beauty on eBay, 100K miles, one non-smoking owner, $2400, solid 9 out of 10. Changed the air filter, plugs, and wires last weekend. Getting the rear brake pads, rotors, and fuel filter done tomorrow, new AmFm iPod head unit this week, and probably newer 15" MBZ alloys with new tires next week. I'm sure I'll be missing that Monty the first nor'easter we have, or snow fall, or other bad weather.

Hopefully, the worst is behind you...knock on wood...!

I think after getting rear ended I would have a new target for my AR-15.

Good Luck you need it <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/cheers.gif" alt="" />

Well wish for your Dad

Man, sounds like you can make a horror film out of this!

Tresmon, have you ever heard of Miracle Mineral Solutions (MMS) from Jim Humble? It has a really good chance of helping your dad as it has cured hundreds of people of Cancer...It works for almost anything, you really should check it out and order some for your dad. There's a site called keaveycorner that has it pretty cheap, 20 bucks for the base MMS and 50 for the MMS with DMSO for Cancer. Its worth a try my friend!

Hope that helps you.

Dang, man. If you add a train, yo mama & an ex-girlfriend to that story. You'll have a platinum country song!

Sounds like you have lots of patience & tons more character after this adventure. I'm glad your little rig is still terrorizing the highways & by-ways.

All the best to your Dad.

After all that you still can see the 'humor' and can share the story with others really shows your character. Kudos to you and hope all goes well for you and your dad. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

Tres, I genuinely admire your tenacity. Lots of us would've given up by then. But you stuck it through and I'll be you have a very good future ahead of you with that Raider.

Thanks for the kind replies!