I've had a chance to put a few hours into the submarine this weekend.
First thing I did was charge the battery so that I could roll down the rear window to remove the top. - I'm pleasantly surprised that the rear window and power door windows all function, as does the clock, and the radio powers up. (Had some dash lights too)
Pulled the top so that the interior could start to air out - it's moldy/mildewy but overall pretty decent:
So far so good; I thought to myself: "I'll drain the oil, pull the plugs and turn the engine over by hand, put fresh oil in it, and see if she'll start.."
Well, the crankcase was way overfilled. With water.
The intake is also full of water - TB and AFM were holding water and are pretty corroded at this point. Either this thing went way under when parked (and the interior doesn't really reflect that - it doesn't look like any water got high enough to get to the rear deck behind seats), or someone was trying to cross something too deep and ingested lots of water (like 10 quarts!) into the running engine - I guess either could have easily been the case with the flooding we had here in NC last fall.
In any event, I'm assuming the axles, transmission, and transfer case are in similar shape - although I haven't checked them yet. That said, I have an '88 roller with both axles, so I'll be fine there.
I also have a rolled a '95 Taco with a 3.4 and a 5speed, so I'm thinking about binning the 3.0 and swapping the 3.4, although I haven't researched it enough to know what I'm up against there. I'm definitely a fan of the 3.4 though.
Any advice/wisdom for me so far?
