Hello from Oklahoma. I was on the board many moons ago- you can see photos of my Jeep-A-Trencher in the accessories page of this site. Life happened and I put the little 3A in storage for some time. Recently brought it out and started more work. The rear end had at some point suffered a massive failure- this very well may have been why my grandfather parked it over 30 years ago. I finally decided to tackle that and enjoy my 3A again. While I am no master mechanic I think I can now disassemble and reassemble an early Dana44 with the best of them. I think I took it apart and back together 14 times to get it just right. So, after that my wife and I drove it around for a week and really had a blast. It has always suffered from a lack of power and intermittent miss on the #4 cylinder. Not surprised as this engine had never been apart-completely untouched. Even after I inherited the jeep- which sat in a barn all those years I was able to get it running without breaking into the motor. So, thrilled to be able to finally run it down the road on the rear axle I decided to fix the last remaining issue- low power. A compression check showed only 50psi in 1,2,3 and just 20# in 4. I have always though the problem was the rings- most likely broken. BTW I don't know about everyone else who has pulled the head on one of these 60 plus year old engines but it took me a week of PB Blaster, tapping, pulling, banging and a few choice words to get it to separate. I confirmed the problem- both top and center rings were broken on #4. Pulled the others and found all the top rings in bits. Decided to do a valve job while there and am waiting on parts from Walcks to finish this up and get it back together. Glad to be back!
