Well, so much for the best of intentions. Pulling the oil pan just far enough to clean the surfaces that were leaking and seal them with RTV should only have taken most of a day, two days tops. This afternoon I was able to get the pan loose and drop it down the better part of an inch to clean the front up and seal it but of course, with my luck it can't just be that simple. When the oil pan dropped down the rear part of the gasket stuck to the engine block. Even though I was successfully able to get it loose without breaking it I can't get it back into the groove in the back of the pan so that the pan can go back into place. So now I'm going to have to tear apart half of the underside of the front of the truck to get the front axle out of the way so I can drop the entire pan down and out. Then if there's any luck left at all in my life I can get the gasket back in the groove where it belongs, clean all the surfaces that need RTV on them so it will stick and seal, get the pan back into place without screwing up anything else and then work to get the front end put back together. What should have taken some hours is now going to take another week or two to complete.


Yay me.

 

Okay, a great update!! Monday I ended up not having to drop the pan to fix the gasket. When I unbolted the front axle it only fell about 1/2" with the steering bar still in place. That extra 1/2" afforded me enough room to get the pan down far enough to reach around from the passenger side and get it back in the groove. Once I was satisfied the gasket was in there good I cleaned up the front of the pan/block/timing cover and siliconed it. I then put the pan back up in place, torqued it down, and left it sit so the silicone could set up.

Yesterday I went out and put the remote oil adapter back on the block and the starter back in. I put just enough back together to be able to start the truck and check it for leaks. I started it up and let it warm all the way up to operating temperature, then did some small engine revs and let it sit and idle again for a few more minutes before shutting it back off.

I'M BACK IN BUSINESS!! There wasn't even one drop from the front or the back of the pan!! Today I'm going to go out there and get all the little stuff attached back to the pan and get the front axle mounted back up. Then all I have to do is get the hood and the front skid plate back on it and I'm good to go!

 

It's not 100% just yet. There's some issue with the starter that on occasion causes a screech/tapping sound. It doesn't do it all the time and it goes away after a short period of time. I found it didn't do it as often when I didn't torque the bolts for the starter as much as they should be. I'm thinking it needs shims to get the clearance right between it and the flywheel and if so will be the first starter on any vehicle I've owned that had to have them. If that's not what it is then I'm at a complete and total loss as to what's making the noise. That little issue along with some little issues it had with the torque converter locking up before the old engine died that's still present and while it's back on the road things aren't perfect.

On the audio side, I went ahead and started to prepare the PR's for tuning!

 

Here's the enclosure, PR's and sub with the supplies needed to put it in and get it tuned. I have a box of washers to go with the bolts. I can't wait to get this thing tuned and running!

 

Ok so I'm confused. What are the PRs?

 

PR's or passive radiators are used in the place of a port. To start with all they are is the moving parts of a driver without a coil that can have weights attached in some manner. Those weights are what tune the PR to the frequency one desires just as you would do with the length of a port. Air has mass, albeit not much but a given volume of air does have mass and anything with mass has a resonant frequency. That volume of air inside of a port can only move back and forth through the port up to a certain speed before it compresses. When a sub plays above the tuning frequency of the port the air is trying to move faster than the mass of the air can allow it to. Instead the air inside the enclosure compresses and it controls the cone's movement, much like a sealed enclosure. Below the tuning frequency the air moves easily in and out of the port and no longer helps to control cone movement. With the PR's the only real difference is that no air is moving in or out of any opening in the enclosure. Instead of an air mass in a port the air moved by the driver works against the cone of the PR and the mass of that moving assembly determines how fast it can move. PR's offer better transient response than a traditional ported enclosure but have a much steeper roll off below tuning. The biggest advantage of using PR's is that the enclosure size isn't as large as it would be with a traditional ported enclosure. There are many cases where a person has mated an 15" PR with a 12" driver. It doesn't take much to figure out how large or how many ports it would take to be equivalent to the surface area of an 15. Consider that much port area and how long a port would have to be to tune to a standard frequency for subs (say 35hz in a 2.5cuft NET enclosure would need 123+" of port length) and the enclosure would have to be monstrous to include that port. Where as with the PR it only needs to be as big as the driver requires with a side large enough to fit the PR on. The PR isn't quite as efficient as the regular port due to the mechanical losses in the moving parts and their moving limits but because it can be much larger than the practical standard port the end result can be much more efficient with much less total space used.


That's a lot to digest but hopefully it explains it well enough.

 

Ahh ok, I think I get a basic grasp on that. It definitely looks awesome that's for sure.

 

Well I didn't get time to fire up the sub and tune the PR's Thursday like I had planned and Friday, well, it led to the fact that the Jimmy is now down again. Drove it home Thursday and aside from the quirky stuff with the overdrive on the trans goofin up (which it did before the engine ever got ruined) it seemed just fine. I drove it into work Friday morning and never noticed an issue and because I went in early and it was very dark outside I didn't notice the problem I had until I was getting ready to leave Friday afternoon. After I got the sub enclosure loaded in the back of the truck with the stuff to take it home and tune it I went to the drivers door to get in and drive home when I noticed an odd puddle just under the truck below the rocker panel. I knelt down to look and saw a nice big red puddle all over the underside of the truck from the rear axle to just underneath the transfer case. ATF was covering the entire underside of the truck of the same area and when I went and checked the level in the trans I found it didn't even register on the dipstick. At some point during the drive to work Friday morning a seal or something of the sort failed somewhere and it blew all the ATF out of the transmission. Considering the amount of mess that was still hanging on the bottom of the truck and how low the trans is on fluid I would imagine it happened very close to work or it wouldn't have made it that far.

I have a spare transmission that was freshly rebuilt before the engine spun a bearing in a '98 Blazer that I bought for $500 awhile back. I had originally planned on rebuilding the engine and using it simply as another vehicle/play vehicle and possibly putting a low budget wall into it and other fun stuff like that. However that plan got shattered when a drunk ***** decided it would be fun to use his thirty/ought/six to blast holes in the truck. He shot right through the worst possible places he could. The windshield got broken but the worst part is the parts where it should seal have been torn up by bullets so replacing it is useless without doing extensive repairs to the body where the windshield should go and seal. Bullets went through the dash destroying the instrument cluster, the steering column, the climate controls and through the heater core. That all happened at some unknown point in time and when I finally found the damage on it where I have it stored at my dad's property where no one was living at the time the entire interior is also ruined due to the weather getting in and animals. So, the only thing it's good for now is parts from the areas of the truck that weren't damaged by bullets.

So now it looks like I need to pull the trans out of that truck and get it put into the Jimmy before I can do any more driving with it. I'm contemplating going ahead and getting the PR's tuned while I'm working on that so everything regarding the substage is done and complete. Then I can turn the PR's back around like they're supposed to be and have it ready to go when the truck is. I'm also looking for a mechanic that can do the trans swap for me for a reasonable price because I really don't have the time or patience to get that deep into this thing again.

 

Alright, I couldn't help it. I had some free time at the end of the day today and just couldn't stop myself. I threw my battery charger on the Jimmy, hooked up the sub to the amp and the remote wire so it would turn on and went to tuning the PR's. It took me a little bit to get the hang of it as the process was a first for me but damn does that XCON kick some ***. I'm going to take a small scale to work tomorrow and verify the weight is equal between the two PR's but so far they're tuned down to around 31hz. The sub has amazing impact for a single 10" sub and I've not EVEN begun to get serious about setting the gains and crossover settings yet, only some quick preliminary settings and setup to get it playing. I played some music on it and it belts out lows with great authority off some Jay-Z, has great speed for the fast drums on Disturbed's version of Land of Confusion and can blend well and be subtle and accurate for Journey's Faithfully. Now I really hate the fact the transmission decided to give me a fit cause I could spend a LOT of time playing with and listening to this sub! I've gotta get this thing on the road and trustworthy again!!!!!!



For fun here's a quick pic I grabbed of the sub hooked up and some weights on the PR's.









Nevermind the mess, I've been working out of the truck doing repairs for quite awhile now.

 

I had a similar incident with my transmission where my cooler line blew off and lost 2 gallons of trans fluid but luckily i was able to catch in time before it did a lot more damage. So now my 1st to 2nd slips if it shift after 3k rpm