Previously, on legit street cars, i bought a clean title: 98 5.9 liter jeep grand cherokee limited with a hundred and nineteen thousand miles sight unseen from an auction for only seven hundred and fifty dollars back in 98. This was the fastest suv in the world, but mine was abandoned for 5 years and wouldn't crank. It had oil, the engine spun by hand, but the starter was bad so 80 later and we had a new starter and a cranking engine, but it still wouldn't run the fuel smelled like varnish. So i drained some out feder, 5 gallons of 93 and some heat and still nothing.

The jeep had spark. It had fuel pressure compression power to the injectors, but even with starting fluid it just wouldn't go. I also found a mystery bag of mush in the back and we did a lot more in that video. So if you haven't seen it yet i'll leave a link down below okay.

Now that you guys are up to speed and before we dig into my jeep grand cherokee uh, just three things before we start here, first off there's going to be bloopers at the end of this video that show you what i have to deal with filming out In front of my house, it has a lot to do with noise. Second, there were many comments in the last video that i want to address and they basically all had to do with throwing parts at the jeep. So you guys had said, replace the cam sensor, replace the crank sensor put a new battery in it, replace the fuel sending unit which requires the entire tank to be dropped, replace the fuel filter a whole slew of other things, the distributor i agree. There are many possibilities here, but the last thing you want to do is just start tossing money at a car with many many unknowns.

So we don't even know if this engine is any good and i don't want to spend a bunch of money on this car. If it's got a bad engine, because i got ta reevaluate, what i'm even doing with the jeep at that point, so just in general, it's not a good diagnosis method to just spend a ton of money on parts and just hope that they work yep. There's a van just driving by come on people and a plane, there's a plane all right. I'm gon na stand here for one minute in the same spot.

Hang on okay! I think that plane is sort of gone, but anyway my point is: don't throw parts at a problem you want to get in there. You want to actually diagnose it before you waste a bunch of money. Lastly, before we get to this i'll, bring it to the back, many of you were bothered that i dumped out all of this mush in the back of the truck and normally i would be very bothered by that as well. But maybe you guys didn't see that there is a plastic liner protecting the actual carpet, so i didn't actually dump it on the carpet and this had been sitting here leaking and oozing out for probably years so this thing was already destroyed, see i didn't go anywhere Back there and it just leaked out all in there, so it really didn't matter where i dumped this out so just to let you guys know, i don't make it a habit to dump out garbage inside of a car that i just bought.

So we will definitely be cleaning that and uh yeah. We are whipping out the big guns. As far as diagnosis, though we have the maxis elite here, we're gon na be scanning this car and take a look. This is gon na look great guys if this thing runs, i'm going to fix this seat, we're going to sew it up and the interior is going to be great.

A lot of you guys thought it was disgusting, but i don't think it's that bad and let's just take a quick look at this steering wheel, a plane is coming act, quick, all right. What do we got here? What do we got? You know it's not bad! It's not bad. Definitely some wear here on the top, so maybe we'll find a used wheel or but just put that back or dye. This, i don't know we'll see we have the boroscope as well to inspect the engine, so i've kind of written down a list of things we're going to check in my brain there's going to be a methodology behind all of this, so we don't waste a lot Of money before knowing if this engine is good so anyway, with that, let's just start right off with the borescope and we're going to start off with zlinda number one, because we can also check to see when it's at top dead center.

Because i want to verify that the distributor is installed properly as well, so das zlinda one come out right. This thing's, not german, benz, didn't take over for another year. I think after this thing was sold. This is straight up.

American plug number one out still looking fresh and clean, i'm just gon na film. With this, it's looking pretty good. Ah all right here we go cylinder, numero uno. What are you gon na? Look like okay, all right so far, so good at least we know, half of the piston isn't melted away to nothing.

It doesn't have a gigantic hole yet and okay yeah a little carbon build up, never hurt anybody not too bad. Just want to look at the edges of the piston make sure the ring land hasn't blown out. I've been there before on boosted, ls setups, but i don't suspect any issues with that here and yeah. Overall, it's looking pretty good.

This thing's definitely been sitting a while. You can see a little bit of rust, build up in the cylinder wall area here and uh. You can see where the ring was kind of resting for a while, and if this was something more expensive something i was really worried about it. It's a good idea to fog the cylinders first, so i've done that before on the channel, but we just kind of went for it this time and it was cranking over so easy by hand.

I wasn't really worried about it. If you get a lot of resistance, though you definitely want to fog it out and loosen up the rust around the rings, because you can snap one off but yeah the ring lines are looking good. The piston looks good, the cylinder looks good i'd, say cylinder. One is good so at this point, since we have the bore scope in here: let's get it to top dead center and then we're gon na make sure that the rotor which is installed on the distributor is pointing to the cylinder one terminal on the distributor cap That way, we know it's going to be the first in line to fire and that'll verify that our engine timing is in order.

So some of you guys had mentioned that you could have a bad timing chain guide that can cause the chain to skip a tooth and the timing would be off. You can also have a bad distributor gear as well, so this is going to verify all of that all right. So there is a mark on the balancer and then there's a mark on the timing. Cover that'll tell you when you're at top dead center on cylinder.

One or you can pop off the valve cover and take a look at the rocker arms and make sure that they are both in the closed position that the valves are both closed. That way, you know you're at top dead center compression stroke, but ow ow ow. This belt just ate the hair off my arm, oh alternator, and belt. Why all right almost there, and as soon as this basically stops, we know it's top dead center, all the way there we go top dead center right there all right.

Let me pop this belt off really quickly. I can't get my camera in there to show you guys something important, so we're gon na take this belt off. It's a brand new belt by the way, and it looks to be a brand new water pump. Also.

So that's nice, okay! So this is what i wanted to show you right here. My finger is, it says, top dead center and you can see that our mark on the balancer is lining up directly with that. So this is a very easy way of figuring out when cylinder one is at top dead center and now we're hoping that that rotor is pointing to the number one lug here on our cap, and i can tell already that it's at least in the ballpark. So, let's just put this guy back on and yeah, i think we're gon na be good.

This is cylinder one, let's take it off and our rotor is lining directly up with number one, so we are good to go. This is great news, guys a lot of people don't like working on cars with distributors, because they just don't know much about them. They get a little intimidated on how to remove and install them and set the timing, but it's actually quite easy. It's quite basic i've.

Never worked on a chrysler engine with a distributor before and it's pretty much the same as everything else, so there is no reason to pull your hair out if you have to work on a car with a distributor. There are many, many other things out there that will cause you to lose your hair. One of them is genetics and unfortunately, 36 has not been good to alex and i'm starting to lose a little up top. So i've decided to take control with keeps keeps is a subscription service that makes treating male pattern baldness, easy and affordable by keeping everything online.

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I want to take off this driver side valve cover and see how maintained this engine really is. Well, i got to say it's a little worrisome that i just removed. One of the nuts just by pulling it right off, it's not a good sign at all. Oh and there's a bolt, that's totally missing.

Also nice! Okay, before we take this valve cover off, i think we should clean up all these leaves. So nothing falls in there's a bunch of crud down there as well. All right this looks better already. Getting rid of all these minnesota leaves hey in a boot an a and a boot.

Oh, not bad! Don't you know, let's take off this fuel line here. It's kind of getting in my way get out of here. Oh, i need a fuel line tool. All right.

We have our little fuel line, remover thingy push it in there and it releases the little clips, and now we have more room excellent. Oh there we go sounded good come on, come on, come on, it's a thing of beauty, people. This is looking really good in here and you can see where the oil has come back up just from us cranking it so much. So i'm going to go ahead and venture to say we have oil pressure, i haven't tested it or anything yet, but everything looks clean.

You can see these two rocker arms are all the way up. That means the valves are closed. That is exactly what you want when you're at top dead center, and we got one that's a little slightly depressed there, one right there. These two are closed.

Uh, no sludge. It looks very clean in here very nice, and this is a good indication that the engine oil was changed on time. Usually when it's not, there is a lot of gunky black stuff that just kind of looks like what we have in the trunk of the car. So good sign right here, guys i'm going to go ahead and throw the valve cover back on we'll put the plug back in and yes, i will do a valve cover gasket.

If this engine is good, i'm not gon na. Do it right now we're going to take little baby steps in rewarding the jeep for doing good things? The distributor was installed right, so it got a cowl cleaning and we will reward it with more new parts as we go along and as this jeep is good to us yeah we got a flat all right. Everything is back together, eight, seven, six, five, okay, we're checking actual live data here and take a look at these guys right here, crank and camshaft position: it's not the quickest, but it is showing something, and that is a good sign. So i was looking mostly at the crankshaft position counter.

If this was at zero, we may have a bad crankshaft position sensor. This is all going away because i turned the key off, but it looks like we're getting a reading from both the cam and the crank sensor. So that is good and were we getting any engine rpm there we go. It's just really slow, okay, so yeah.

It's picking up some engine rpm 133 - that's totally normal for the state of this battery. Right now that one didn't have the booster on there, so uh! So yeah, that's good and you guys are curious. The battery has died a million times, so we don't have any faults there, all right, so i've just been checking, spark and injectors randomly everything seems to be good. Our timing is good.

Our wires are good and it still doesn't start so we're gon na go ahead. Uh, try the starting fluid one more time and i've used a piece of wire to crack the throttle body open a little, because my helper in the car cannot reach the pedals. Are you ready to go all right, i'll? Tell you when go ahead! All right! That's good okay, so we've essentially replaced the entire fuel system with a can of starting fluid, so this should at least start and run, and sometimes you can keep an engine running just by spraying a little bit in there at a time. So we have eliminated a possible bad fuel pump or clogged fuel filter, even though it very well may have those i may have to replace those right now that shouldn't be an issue we know we have sparked the timing's good.

If you guys watched the last video, we had good compression as well. So to me this is pointing to a clogged exhaust system. If the exhaust is totally clogged, it's not going to start no matter what it's got flow. It's got flow, go, go, go, keep on going baby, keep on going, keep on going all right guys.

I got my neighbor in there. I'm gon na give it a little gas. I have started the ml. This thing just seems to need some juice all right.

It needs a little juice. I'm here too go for it, kev whoa. Yes, what this is beautiful, all right, see if it idle. We did it all right.

It's a little rough. It's a little rough, oh yeah, all right now i want to see and it wants to die, hang on hey uh, so i did swap that that relay and it could have been the auto shuttle it could have just variable. Yeah possibility hang on. Let me just swap it back real, quick and we'll see all right if you guys are wondering what i did to make it start.

All i did was swap the auto shutdown relay. I guess that's a common thing on these all right. So, let's see, if it doesn't start, we know it's, the relay relay could have been stuck open, yeah possibility yeah, that's the only thing. Okay, it's running runs really bad.

Okay. Let's talk about how i got the jeep grand cherokee running yesterday or in the last scene, for you guys it's a new day for me, it's a little cold. It's been raining, but whatever we have a jeep that runs, and now i have a battery, that's charged. So i fixed my cheapo battery charger last night.

It had a broken solder joint inside i let it bake overnight and now this thing will crank on its own, so we no longer need the ml55 any longer, i hope uh. So, in the first video we had a bad starter. That's why it wouldn't crank. We had really bad spark plugs, and now you just saw everything we checked to verify.

This engine is good. So our second issue was this: the auto shutdown relay now i haven't thought about this relay in, like 20 years since tech school i learned about this guy, but in most cars the function of this relay is simply built into the engine's computer. So it's just software. It's logic in the engine's computer, so here's what this does.

Basically the engine's computer grounds this relay and then this relay powers up the ignition system, the fuel injectors and on some cars, the o2 sensor circuit - and this has a timeout feature. So if it sees you turn the ignition forward for about two seconds or the engine hasn't started for about two seconds, it will shut it all down. So the reason i think we were getting spark and injector pulse width was because this thing was failing. It hadn't completely failed just yet um, but because we had the varnish fuel or we still do and the battery was a little low depending on how my little jumper was doing.

It wasn't enough time for it to start immediately. So it was timing out a combination of timing out, but probably more so that this thing was just bad. It just had an open because we tried this, you know 50 times and it would never even come close to starting. So i swapped it with the ac clutch and it worked now i've since swapped it back and it still works, which makes me believe that this just had an open and me just jarring it around fixed it temporarily, but either way it's just a cheap, normal relay.

We can just get this at any auto parts store and the jeep runs, but it doesn't run very well. I think this is maybe running on four or five cylinders at the most and i'm gon na go ahead and say it's because of the fuel injectors, with the way that that fuel smelled, four or five years old there's no way these injectors aren't clogged up. They might even have a little bit of rust depending on what type of fuel if it was a fuel with 10 or 15 ethanol. It can definitely mess up injectors after so long, but this is a budget project guys we got away with a starter, an 80 starter and a relay to get it running, and i don't want to drop 400 on new fuel injectors, so we're gon na try and Fix them and i'm going to see what we can do with this little guy here, oh yeah, it's still rough okay, real rough yeah, it's running really bad yep and it's dead hang on.

I want to show you guys something if i can keep it running. Okay, see how i got it running real nice now, oh i got to be a ninja here check it out, keep it yeah all right if you can get it to run and idle smooth like this, with the starting fluid, it tells you that you have a Fuel system issue so right now this is running really nice and that's because each cylinder is getting some fuel or some starting fluid. In this case, it's a really good indication that it is the fuel injectors that just aren't functioning. Look at that.

It's perfect. It kind of eliminates ignition issues and stuff, like that sounds good guys, listen to this engine, no knock, no tick, all right good night, all right! One last thing i want to do here. Yeah we got good fuel pressure. All right, i wasn't able to hold the camera at the same time, but while i kept it running on the starting fluid, i held this gauge open here, uh just to purge out as much fuel as possible.

We were holding steady before i hit that button at about 50 55 psi fuel pressure, uh, and that is fantastic. So i just wanted to purge as much out as i can to get the new stuff and the heat and the fuel injection cleaner in the tank kind of all mixed together. So a fuel injector is a very basic thing. It just opens and closes there's a seat and a little needle, and that's what sends the fuel through the injector when it's activated by power and ground.

So what we want to do here is we want to see if we can jar up whatever crud is in there and we're going to do that by activating the injector quickly with this little guy. So all you do is give it power from our battery. That now works and is charged and it comes with a connector uh. You can get different connectors for these things depending on your injector, but we have the right one.

So all we did was disconnect the factory fuel injector connector and we put in our little test. Connector there - and here you guys, can probably hear this - we're gon na hit this button i'll, do it again and right now that is pulsing the fuel injector, so that just gave it 50 pulses. We can even do a hundred pulses all right so right now we're activating the injector, just like it would be activating with the car was running um, but we can modify the speed here and so i'm going to go around to each injector and i'm just going To pulse it, we'll give it probably like i don't know, maybe 500 pulses, or maybe a thousand probably just take me a couple minutes to do all of them we're going to try and jar them up and then we'll fire it up again, it's running on its Own again, so we might have purged out enough of that bad fuel to uh, give it a little bit of a better chance of running i'm gon na. Let this go for a few minutes guys, let's see what happens.

Oh wow, this is the nicest it's run on its own. I know it's still running bad, but this this is uh. This is pretty good. Oh yeah, wow.

Okay, hang on a second, i have an idea. We got to take advantage. Let's get this thing in the driveway, so i can at least air up the tire and we'll be closer to the garage. All right, let's find out if it shifts into reverse yeah, we're in reverse we're rolling we're rolling in the jeep with a flat tire, and you miss fire engine.

Oh too, close to the curb it goes, goes into drive as well sweet. This is so cool don't die on me now, baby don't die on me now. Just got ta make it to the driveway. Luckily this thing's not leaking anything.

I can't say the same for the ml. I think it's leaking power, steering fluid right. Now. Look at this! We're driving the auction jeep.

Yes all right here we are it's shaking yeah, it's not running the best. I hear a bunch of coolant when i rev it up might be a little low wow. This might actually be running on six or seven cylinders right now. Wow all right, i'm gon na shut it off and check the coolant.

Oh yeah, okay, it's not good. These tires are all shot anyway. So i don't really care best shocks ever mush hello. I will dispose of you.

Ah there's an extra belt in here. Okay, great! Yes, nice, oh, this is great. Look at that tire perfect! Oh man, i was worried. It was just gon na be a just a normal black steel wheel, but they hook you up with a five nine specific wheel.

Oh no, my gosh! This is holding air guys. I did not know this. I didn't see that this is still holding air crazy. Look at that.

This thing is very, very damaged and yeah. I mean we're gon na go with it, because the other one's not happening right now, and this is holding air so we're gon na roll with this guy. Oh no yep, oh yeah, it's holding all right, so the tire pressures have been set nice. The coolant is definitely a little low.

Let's take a look at what we have in here. It's nice and clean nice and clean and green. That's a good sign, so we'll just top up the reservoir a little bit. We should be good to go all right.

Let's keep going i'm going to pop up the fuel rail we're going to leave the injectors connected, we're going to pressurize the rail with the factory fuel system and then we're going to use the injector tester tool to pulsate each injector and watch the spray pattern. Just get these harnesses out of the way too there we go. Let's give this little gentle persuasion here and yeah, okay, pretty much out of there all right yeah. That is not what you want to see.

Look at all that corrosion! It was a miracle. These things were working at all. Oh, this is so bad, but when i went around to tester they were all clicking. They all sounded normal.

These o-rings are probably super dry rotted, but we can probably clean these up and save ourselves about 400 versus just throwing new ones in there. So, let's hook up the tester, let's pressurize this rail and see what it looks like wow, that is really bad. I should probably have a rag soaking this up, i'm just spraying fuel everywhere: okay wow, that is really bad. It's just a straight up stream! That's horrible! Let's try this one! It's not going to run really great without it being atomized.

It should be more like a mist. Oh this one too wow, that's hard for you guys to tell it is working. It's doing the exact same thing as the other ones. Kind of not a lot of fuel coming out and what is coming out is just straight as an arrow, no atomization whatsoever.

So these injectors just need a serious, serious cleaning and some new o-rings and this engine should run like new all right. So there are plenty of tools on the market to clean fuel injectors some of these machines hook up to your car's fuel system and you end up running the car off of a cleaner, that's kind of sold at shops and dealerships as more of a maintenance item And then they have serious machines where you remove the injectors and clean them outside of the car. These tools can range anywhere from a hundred dollars to a couple thousand dollars, but in the next video i'm going to put together a budget solution for you guys. This is gon na cost, maybe three or four dollars.

You don't need any special equipment and it's gon na clean these nasty injectors outside of the car. It's gon na be a serious cleaning and we're gon na restore these injectors to new and we're gon na make this 5.9 liter engine run like new and then we're gon na go for our first drive and if this thing shifts, if it drives nicely we're gon Na reward it maybe some new brakes, maybe some new tires we're gon na continue on with this little mini restoration project on the jeep there'll, be some cleaning. You guys are really gon na be impressed with this interior when i'm done with it. So stay tuned guys for the next video and if you haven't seen the first one i'll link it down below so with that give this video a thumbs up.

If you enjoyed this type of content subscribe, if you're new, we got a lot of cool stuff coming to the channel. I bought a new and really old and questionable car that hasn't ran for a long time that i'll be revealing in a couple of weeks. So stay tuned for that, but, most importantly, have an awesome day i'll catch. All of you in the next video was because this was inter was because this thing was, you guys are really going to be impressed with this interior when i'm done with it.

So, okay, hang on plane's coming you.