Originally Posted by Mark Doiron

Thanks! My 3.8L is approaching 300K miles and I plan to put a reman in. But appreciate the detail you provide in your post about your work. Good job! My biggest worry is the electrical that will be touched. The cheap engine loom falls apart when touched. And I don't think the connectors used are much better (I come from an avionics background in USAF, where the standards for durability were significantly higher that typical US automobile.). I'd love to replace the harness, but all I can find are used ones on eBay. How were your wiring and connectors? I have some high temp split loom* and some quality tapes to repair the cheap plastic loom.

*This is the same stuff used in my Gladiator, so I guess Jeep realized that their earlier product was crap. And that's one (good!) reason newer Jeeps cost more.

Originally Posted by JustbKuze2010

I would suggest looking for an improved type of reman where they use better parts than OEM - bearings, and oiling system improvements. I think there is something like that from Jasper but I have seen others. I didn't look too hard because I decided not to go that route early on.

I would say that my experience with the electrical harness was that it was "normal" given the situation. Mine had relatively low miles at 65K. You have a whole lot more. The mile issue being the amount of time that the harness was under the hood baking away in the (IMO, way too) hot engine bay. Most of my plugs came apart with again what I would say as "normal" or expected resistance. I gave the tough ones a shot of WD-40 which helped where they were stuck. I guess the hardest part I would say was just figuring out the unlocks for the plugs where they are blind, and not breaking them. Gentle finesse is all I can suggest.

The good news is there really aren't that many plugs. It looks intimidating at first but IMO a lot of that is due to how much room is taken up by heat shields and how dirty it is. I cleaned the heck out of the under hood with Purple Power cleaner and a hose. (Ive cleaned engines/stuff with Purper Power for years, its great. Get a 5 gallon pail, it is the best deal by far.) I left most of the heat shields off and instead and wrapped the exhaust manifolds and down pipe in heat wrap. (When I put the long tubes on I am going to have more wrapped surface so I should have less under hood heat. I will post a pic of my under hood when it gets light out.) I think that pulling the upper intake as I did was a good way to go, it made a little more room to get to the wires in the back. The bolts holding the EGR pipe to the EGR valve snapped off, so expect that may happen to you and plan to replace the EGR valve.

There was no issues with the wire jackets or anything like that. The split loom was again "normal" - a little brittle where it was really hot but mostly fine. My opinion is to try to take it apart carefully and reuse it. Unless you start taking it apart and have a disaster, then replace it with a used one from a low mile wreck - low mile being key as it means less time baking under the hood.

Originally Posted by JustbKuze2010

Internally the engine was in pretty good shape, except for the bent rod. It was very clean, the PO had Amsoil use records, and it shows.

I found some weird marks on the cam bearing journals, and the cam bearings didn't look great either. So I paid someone to install them at a local machine shop. He butchered them and charged me $125. So I ordered the tool to do it myself and two new sets of bearings. I dont know what the issue he had was (he complained at the shop 'it was hard and I won't do those again for any money') as I had the butchered ones out and new ones in in about 20 minutes. And most of that time was spent learning the finesse of the cam bearing tool.

The cam had one lobe with a weird spot. If it was a flat tappet cam, there would be no question, but this being roller, I considered hard before I ended up replacing the cam and lifters. Melling brand stock replacements.

I rebuilt the oil pump and really shoved the plug down in to apply additional pressure on the relief spring. It has great oil pressure now (I dont know what it was before the rebuild, I added a mechanical gauge as part of this), 50-60 psi hot down the road, idle at 20 hot.

New water pump just because I was there.

1 new Mopar piston and rod assembly. The machine shop that surfaced the heads and flywheel for me could not do the full block work for months. If I wanted to wait and not have it all summer, I could have had it bored and used new pistons and rods from the older 3.8L to get away from the cracked cap style the JK 3.8 uses. But I am really not spinning it all that hard, and I dont plan on any power adders so it should be just fine. The engine was pretty good really so it didn't need a full bore and new pistons. I reused the other 5. I honed all 6 holes.

I used all Fel-Pro gaskets. I copper sprayed the heck out of the intake gasket and used some of that black tar stuff around the water ports where they leak. If you ever mess around with the intake on one of these, watch out for that stamped gasket. Its RAZOR sharp.

I should have gotten the Centerforce flywheel but it was going to take too long to get. I just got the new clutch kit and had the flywheel surfaced. I used nice ARP chrome moly bolts for the pressure plate.

I primed it good with engine primer and then painted it with Hemi Orange. I used VHT black wrinkle on the valve covers and intake just to make it look nice. That is good paint, but I felt like I didn't need 3 coats like they said. The one valve cover I did 3 coats on doesn't look as good as the one with 2 coats or the intake.

I blocked off the EGR valve and plugged the hole. I turned it off in the ECM using my HP Tuners software. I am still learning on the HP Tuners Suite; there is a lot to learn. (I am a software tech so stuff like this comes naturally for me but for the Dodge tuning there is not good documentation).

Originally Posted by Thiago34

Hello, good evening, I have a JK 3.8. I would like to ask a few questions. The first would be, benefits of removing the EGR valve?

Originally Posted by JustbKuze2010

EGR introduces a lot of gunk into the intake manifold over time, along with heat and as its namesake states - Recirculated Exhaust Gasses. It's something that the EPA mandated decades ago and is a component that enthusiasts have always removed wherever they could get away with it. I can only speculate that the amount of emissions reduction it has on a single vehicle is miniscule and maybe even immeasurable, but on the millions of vehicles with it world wide I suppose there is a difference. An engine always runs "better" without it, but I would also say this aspect too is essentially immeasurable.

In the case of my Jeep, it was broken, a bit of an expensive part, and primarily, I had the ability to eliminate it without any check engine lights because of my HP Tuners tool. Unless you have the same, there really isn't any reason to try to remove it.

I can try to help with whatever other questions you have so ask away. My jeep is running great, I have it tuned really well with my HP Tuners tool. Great torque from 1500-2500 which is perfect for trail riding. Im getting consistently 18+ MPG on the dash indicator and that is on 33's and stock 3.21 gears. I am going to be working on the long tube header and AFR gauge setup finally in the next few weeks, which will bring further improvements.