I was gifted a 2001 Rubicon from my father-in-law back in June. It had apparently been run out of oil and seized. I accepted the gift (headache) with some hesitation, knowing this was likely going to be a money pit. So now it’s my problem and I’m looking for some advice on whether a rebuild would be feasible, or just bite the bullet and order a 14 hundred dollar engine/trans assembly from eBay.
This last weekend I got the top half torn apart and found several areas for concern.
1) The piston must have seized in the cylinder and the crank didn’t care much about that and ripped the skirt right off.
2) The wrist pin flopped around in the top end long enough to knock off about half of the bottom of the sleeve. I can’t save the jug at this point.
3) Somewhere in this destruction, the connecting rod bent over about 15 degrees about 1-1/2" from the top.
4) There is no sign of the piston impacting the valves, but I can definitely see light through one exhaust valve.
So there is a fair amount of metal floating around the case. Normally, that would not bother me and I would just be careful in replacing all the bearings and seals, and make sure everything was nice and tidy before doing so. But as I am reading, this HondaMatic unit sumps oil from the crank case and uses it as hydraulic fluid. I’m not exactly interested in tearing this thing apart, putting all new parts into it and getting it running only to find out that the debris has found its way into the trans unit.
So my question; Is this engine/tranny/sub-trans junk, or is my risk of rebuilding without major issue minimal?
