So I have been trying to figure out the best course of action for getting my XJ back on the road, currently has a blown headgasket. I have what appears to be a decent longblock to use that I got in the spring, but after doing some preliminary work on it to replace gaskets, water pump, etc... I have seen that it needs a little more work then just a drop-in if I want some longevity out of it. It looks like it needs a set of valve stem seals at the minimum and some of the rod bearings have a little more movement than they should (haven't plastigauged them yet though).
I recently moved to the KC area from Topeka and am not sure on good machine shops in the area to go through and do a basic rebuild on this longblock...I would do it myself but if I can find a machine shop to do it for a reasonable price I would opt for that route as I want to make sure this motor lasts a while and not having to pull it again due to me missing a tolerance somewhere.
So question here is this, is it more reasonable for longterm to have this one rebuilt or yank the one with the blown headgasket and use it for a core on a reman unit? And for the remans what is a reliable place for 4.0's?
Biggest thing here is I would like to get this done fairly soon to make sure I have a good winter vehicle again before Winter hits, so if its only a little more to get a reman but I can get it faster with a better warranty then I will go that route...or if a rebuild is less and faster with a decent warranty I will go that route. I guess my real issue is I don't know about any of the machine shops in KC so not sure which ones to trust to do good work and not bend me over in the process.
Thanks in advance for any opinions and/or thoughts on this.
Mike
I recently moved to the KC area from Topeka and am not sure on good machine shops in the area to go through and do a basic rebuild on this longblock...I would do it myself but if I can find a machine shop to do it for a reasonable price I would opt for that route as I want to make sure this motor lasts a while and not having to pull it again due to me missing a tolerance somewhere.
So question here is this, is it more reasonable for longterm to have this one rebuilt or yank the one with the blown headgasket and use it for a core on a reman unit? And for the remans what is a reliable place for 4.0's?
Biggest thing here is I would like to get this done fairly soon to make sure I have a good winter vehicle again before Winter hits, so if its only a little more to get a reman but I can get it faster with a better warranty then I will go that route...or if a rebuild is less and faster with a decent warranty I will go that route. I guess my real issue is I don't know about any of the machine shops in KC so not sure which ones to trust to do good work and not bend me over in the process.
Thanks in advance for any opinions and/or thoughts on this.
Mike
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