I Accidentally Bought TWO Non-Running Humvees at a Government Auction

Getting a Humvey is every man's childhood dream, but how attainable is it? I got these relatively cheap at a government surplus auction because, well, they don't run. In this video, I'll try to get them running, but will parts be expensive and hard to find? Will I be able to legally [music] drive them on the road afterwards? Let's get into it and find out. Now, I should say that I bought these totally sight unseen, and I have no idea what's wrong with them other than that the auction said they don't run. Also, I only intended to buy one Humvey, but I sort of accidentally ended up winning two of them, but I guess that's a story for later in the video. Let's jump in and take a closer look at these. Let's start with the one in the back. This is an M 1097, which is basically the heavyduty variant of the Humvey. It's got a payload capacity of 4,400 lb, which is more than two tons. That's really substantial. It is a four-door with a soft top, and it's got a cute little pickup bed in the back. This thing could come in handy. The soft top seems like it's in pretty good shape, but the doors are missing, which is exceedingly common on these. The batteries are missing, but they go under the seat, which is also missing. Under this missing seat, this is the transmission control module, which has been opened, so I'm wondering if it's in there. On the dash, we're missing the ignition switch. And then we got some wires dangling under here as well. Under the hood is the 6.5 L Detroit diesel V8. And I don't see anything missing here. It looks like it's all here. The one thing I did notice is we have another loose plug here. And this is supposed to connect to the protective control box right in there, which is missing, and it is kind of necessary in order to start the engine. And then the one on the front here is an M1123. It's basically the same as the one in the back, except this is the Marine Corps variant. >> This one's a two-door with a nice big pickup bed. And we've got a door in the back, but that thing has seen better days. This one has the high water foring package, so it's got a big snorkel here to relocate the air intake. And then it's got the big tall exhaust in the back. This one also has the desirable 6.5 L engine, but we're missing a lot of stuff here, including the alternator, the power steering pump, and obviously the serpentine belt. This also has things unplugged, but the protective control box is there. So, I guess we're going to find out if that works. But hey, at least the M4 is not missing. So, the plan is to pull the ignition switch and the protective control box out of the marine Humvey and install it in the Army Humvey, which I will try to start up. And Aspen over here is supervising. There she is right there. The protective control box. Just got a few bolts to remove and it should come right out. I got the control box out and it is in pretty good cosmetic condition. So, I am hopeful that this is going to work. But that said, it is common for these to not work. Okay, so in the Army Humvey, we have an ignition switch. I've got the protective control box hooked up down there. Let's do our due diligence here and just take a peek at the fluids here. Starting with engine oil. Oh yeah, that's got plenty of oil. Let's just take a peek in the transmission to make sure it has some fluid. But we can't check the level unless it's running. But I just don't want to run it dry. That has plenty of fluid. And it looks really good, too. It actually looks new. Coolant. Look at that. It even has coolant. This is great. Look at this sketchy battery setup. I guess that's what happens when you try to fit a big Mercedes battery in this. And it really does not want to go. Anyway, this is a 24volt system, which is why it needs two batteries. And I have everything hooked up except for the ground here, which I figure I'll do on camera in case anything catches on fire. Yeah. Let's see what happens. Good. Nothing is on fire. Okay, let's try starting it up. We should see the wait to start light come on and then once it goes out, we'll crank it. How long is it? Oh, there it goes. I promise that was the first time I started that. That was amazing how fast that was. We have no oil pressure, though. I'm going to shut it off. Let's turn the ignition back on. Yeah, it says zero. That's a little suspicious. I wonder if that gauge is broken or if we just don't have oil pressure. Wow. I promise that was the first time I ever cranked that engine over. I didn't warm it up or anything like that. And it started immediately. I think I may have gotten really lucky with this. As for the oil pressure, definitely going to have to look into that. And I'm not going to run the engine again until I have it sort of figured out. I think it's unlikely that it actually has no oil pressure. And it it seems like the gauge also works. So I'm wondering maybe it could be a wiring issue or a bad sensor. I'm troubleshooting this oil pressure gauge. Got the gauge right here. And then the oil pressure sender is right here conveniently. So I checked this wire for continuity and the wire itself is fine. So I have the signal wire here disconnected. And in this state, when I turn the ignition on, the gauge should read 120 PSI, and it's not. So, I'm starting to suspect that the gauge might be the issue. I grabbed the gauge from the marine Humvey, and let's swap this in and see if it works. Now, before I commit to installing this, I just have the power hooked up, and I have ground, but no signal wire. And with the ignition on, it goes to 120. Yes. So, the gauge was the problem. Okay, let's start her up and see what kind of oil pressure we have. Okay, that's not good. Let's just cut right to the chase and test the oil pressure with a proper mechanical gauge. H, that looks like it's about right. Little bit of teflon taping on this. Okay, that's probably tight enough, right? Okay, let's start her up and hope we have oil pressure. Nothing. That is really bad. It may be my lucky day because under here there is a gear and a shaft that drive the oil pump. And it looks like it's pretty easy to access. Now, for what it's worth, GM used these engines in a lot of their trucks back in the '90s. And the GM factory documentation says for the symptom of low oil pressure, this is most likely the cause. All right. Is this going to come out easily or hard? Hard. I mean, that looks okay. There's nothing wrong with that. Now, if you look in that little hole there, you can see there's a drive shaft that goes all the way down to the oil pump. And if you have the right tool, you can actually use this to prime the oil in the entire engine. I don't have the right tool, but if I'm not mistaken, I think I can get a drill on that and at least prime the lower half of the engine. And if the oil pump is doing what it's supposed to be doing, I think we'll be able to see some oil moving around in there. I'm not seeing any oil moving around in there. So, I think the problem might be with the oil pump or maybe the pickup tube. The search goes on. The signs are few. I roll the Humvee out of view. No oil shows. The engine neglected, but I won't stop till it's corrected. Next, I want to drop the oil pan. See if there's like a clogged pickup tube or something like that. The access is pretty good as you can see, but I do have to remove the starter. And then these two covers also have to come out to give me access to those bolts. Yeah, this stuff is nice and thick, nice and black. And there was no water in it, so that's good. The drain plug has a magnet on it. Love that. Oh, it's so close. I guess you just have to bend it to get it out. This thing looks pretty heavy. So just in case so we don't have any accidentes, I'm going to support this. All right. Is it heavy? Oh my goodness. Yeah, it is heavy. Wow. All right, got it. Hey, there we go. Really good access to the bearing caps so I can take a look at the bearings, too. Pickup tube looks okay. The engine looks like almost brand new. No wonder it started up so easily. This is cra. Wow. If I'm able to fix this and even if I have to replace the bearings, like damn, I think I got a really, really good find here. Well, here it is. And my first impression is wow. I mean, look at that cylinder bore. It's beautiful. You can see the crosshatch. The piston itself looks new. In fact, pretty much everything here looks like it's new. The oil pickup looks good. It's not clogged or anything, and it is fully attached to the oil pump. I have a test to help pinpoint this issue. I'm going to take this container and fill it with 15W40, and then stick this up so that the oil pickup tube is submerged in oil. Meanwhile, a helper is going to drive the oil pump, and we will be able to see if it sucks up the oil. Secondarily, there may be a leak in one of the oil passages that's preventing oil pressure from building up. And if there is such a leak, we may be able to pinpoint it. Get this up to the pickup tube. All right, go ahead and turn the drill. Full speed. Okay, you can stop. Well, that was a good test. No oil was sucked up by the pump. So, that tells me that either the oil pump doesn't work or there could be a blockage somewhere in the system. this bracket off. Okay, there we go. Got my shaft all dirty. This is actually really cool because I can test the oil pump in complete isolation here and if it works, we'll see oil come out right here. Oh, shoot. Look at that. Oil came out. So, the oil pump is fine. I got a blockage somewhere. This oil flow schematic will be helpful for diagnosing this issue. It shows that the oil first flows from the oil pump to the oil cooler. From there, it flows to the oil filter. Next, the filtered oil flows to the oil passages in the engine where it will be delivered to the various bearings and other components that need lubrication. It should be noted that the system has a bypass valve for the oil cooler in case it becomes blocked. And it also has a bypass valve for the oil filter in case it becomes blocked. I think the smart thing to do is start by taking this oil filter off so we can try to figure out if the blockage is before or after the filter. Okay, I'm going to use compressed air to blow into this hole right there. And I found a piece of fuel hose that fits perfectly. Look at that. That should seal it up nicely. And then here on the oil filter housing, we're expecting probably oil to come out of this hole over here on the side. Not the one in the center. All right, here we go. Yeah, it seems to be coming out pretty freely there. That's all I need to see. Next, I'm going to blow compressed air into the center of the oil filter housing. And I'll have you guys watch the oil pressure gauge for me. [snorts] Because air has much less viscosity than oil, we don't expect nearly as much pressure buildup. So, I think this shows that there's no blockage. I went ahead and pulled off the oil filter adapter just for a quick sanity check to make sure everything looks good, and it does. I was also able to check both of the bypass valves and verify that those are working. And then I pulled off those oil cooler lines to make sure those aren't blocked. I'm really at a loss for what's going on here. So, I think I want to do a little bit of reassembly and test this again with some oil. But before I do that, I want to pull a couple of these bearing caps off to inspect the bearings and see what they look like. It does look pretty easy to replace them if necessary. So, I'm going to pull off main bearing cap number four. I need a pipe for this. That's tight. Oh my goodness, that's tight. Here's a look at that bearing. I mean, you can see visible wear in here. Right there, you can see there's a scratch. I've definitely seen worse bearings before, and it's not like this engine was about to fail because of this, but I am definitely going to be replacing these bearings. Now, how about we pull off one of these connecting rod bearing caps. And then the connecting rod bearings, they're similar, but maybe a little bit worse. So, this thing is getting a new set of bearings all around. >> The connecting rod bearing says it's standard, so not undersized. So, that's good to know. The main bearing doesn't say, but I'll measure just to be sure. And before I install these, I'm going to apply a little bit of assembly lube just in case I run this engine before I replace the bearings. I don't want to make anything worse. 66 Newton meters for the connecting rod bearing cap. Well, I got pretty much everything reassembled except for the oil pan. We got a new oil filter and everything. So, let's go ahead and retry that test where we drive the oil pump and see if it can suck up some oil. Okay, go ahead. Oh, it's okay. That's good. Yeah, it is definitely sucking up oil now. So, what fixed it? I have no idea. In retrospect, my theory is that when I was blowing compressed air in before the oil filter, I may have cleared out a blockage. Despite slowly ramping up the air pressure, you can see and hear a sudden spurt of oil exiting the filter housing, which to me suggests that there could have been a blockage. I got the oil pan back on, so it is time to add some oil. This thing takes two gallons. I'm going to try using the drill to prime the system here. I want to fill up the oil filter and the oil cooler so that when I actually start it, it should build oil pressure faster. That worked. It built up a lot of oil pressure. I could also feel a lot more resistance on the drill than I did before. See that oil flowing in there? Heck yeah. Okay, let's start her up and see what kind of oil pressure we got. That is some good oil pressure. Let's see if this thing will drive out of here. Reverse. We're moving. Heck yeah. Let's see if we can do a little off-roading out back. Power steering would be nice. Hey, it drives pretty nice though. Brakes are not very good. She works. We got a few rough edges to figure out, but this thing works. It is a few weeks later and there is a lot of stuff to fix on this. Plus, it needs a full service. And a lot of parts have come in. We got nice new seat covers. We got lights, lots of fluids and filters, plus new bearings for the engine. I tried starting this up so I could move it, but it was kind of running like crap and stalling a lot. I think it might be a fuel system issue. But let's start it up and see what happens. and it stalled. That was about a minute of running before it stalled. Let's check the fuel tank and see if any vacuum has built up. Nope, no vacuum. It seems like a fuel system issue. And so the fuel filter, which is right in here. That's on my to-do list anyway. So, let's replace it and see if we find anything wrong. All right, so the fuel filter is right here. And then this hose which comes out of it is how you check for water in the fuel comes out right there. Before we forget, we've got an electrical connector. We got to remove this whole canister here. So, we'll start by removing these hoses. If it looks like access is poor, that's because it is. Well, this is what came out of it. There is a lot of sediment down there, so it seems like it is very much time to change the fuel filter. I assume this is jet fuel, which is what the military usually fuels these with. And I don't see any water in there, so that's good. 7/16. That's the one. There it is. Getting this thing out is a little bit fiddly. We got it. The housing has a little bit of gunk on it, but it's not like too bad. Not enough to cause issues. The filter element itself, I mean, [snorts] it's covered in this metal bit here, so it's hard to see. From what I can see, it doesn't look too bad. Okay, it looks like Okay. Yeah, no, that does come off. I have a new fuel filter made in China. I guess for a while this was one thing that was really hard to get and then some companies in China decided to start making them and so I guess thanks for that. I just hope it's high enough quality. I cleaned this out with brake cleaner as best I could. Get a new O-ring on here. All right, all back together and ready to go back in. So, I got the fuel filter back in and hooked up. Now, let's check to see if the lift pump works to actually fill this thing up. So, the lift pump is this right here. It's a mechanical lift pump driven by the engine, which means the engine needs to be cranking over in order for it to work. All right, I'm going to crank it over and let's see if anything comes out of this drain. I cranked it for a while, but nothing came out. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm thinking we might have a bad lift pump. This is a lift pump from underneath. We got the output here, the input here from the fuel tank, and this right here is the oil pan, which is what you guys are attached to. Let me just see if I can blow compressed air into the fuel tank. This might give us an idea as to whether or not it is obstructed. [snorts] H. [clears throat] Okay, that is a big hint right there. This lift pump might be okay and we might just have an obstruction. I ended up looking at the parts diagram for the fuel lines and I noticed part number 27 located in between the lift pump and the fuel tank. If we look at the part listing, it says number 27 is a valve, check. In common English, this means there's a check valve which was preventing my compressed air test from working. I should say that previously I was looking at the M998A1 Humvey troubleshooting manual and the fuel schematic doesn't show anything in between the fuel tank and the lift pump, but it turns out the earlier Humvees, including the M998, which is what this manual is for, didn't have this check valve. Okay, I'm back to thinking that the lift pump is probably the most likely issue. The other bolts are on the top of it. So, I think we'll get those from the top of the engine. I have no idea if you guys are going to be able to see this, but let's give it a try. Ah, it's on tight, too. It's inaccessible and tight. Got it loose. Bolt number one. Okay, second bolt. Hey, there it is. So, here it is. Now, does this thing work? So, there's a push rod in the engine which presses this in and then that's what causes it to do pumping. It's extremely firm. Is it supposed to be that firm? I kind of doubt it. Well, let me get the pump out of the other Humvey and we can compare. Well, I'm underneath the marine humvey removing this other fuel pump and I accidentally bumped into the oil pan. Listen to that. This is completely empty. So, this does not bode well for the condition of this Humvey. So, I got the pump out from the marine Humvey. And there are some differences here. So, starting with the Army pump, it's very difficult for me to press this down. I can press it a little bit and I can hear some suction. I don't know if you can hear that, but something is obviously obstructing this so that the pump is not working properly. And I also wonder if the push rod that's supposed to push this in the engine could be bent or damaged because this is so hard to push. Now, the pump from the marine Humvee, this is a little bit concerning because the bolts that hold this on were loose and the fuel output line was not even connected on it. So, I wonder if maybe they just threw a bad pump on there. With that said, I can depress this lever and it feels like I would expect it to feel. The big problem though, I I don't hear any suction noises when I press this, but let's see if we can test it. So, if this works, we should get some fuel coming out of here. Yeah, we have nothing going on here. So, we got two bad pumps. And unfortunately, these pumps come in two parts. The upper half is crimped onto the lower half in such a way that I can't take it apart to try to fix it. While we're waiting for that fuel pump to come in, we have a power steering fluid leak. And I think there's a good chance that's the reason why there's no power steering and no power brakes. The hose that's leaking, I believe, is this return hose right there. You can see the leaking a lot better from underneath. And that's the hose right up there. I've already got a replacement hose here. And it looks like the best way to access this is from up top. I think you guys will get the best view from underneath. Some of the things on this vehicle are not easy to get to and even harder to film. Yeah, there's no power steering fluid in there. All right, got it. Nice shiny new hose. Oh, fits beautifully. Other hose clamp. So, this is the power steering fluid reservoir which is fitted to the later model Humvees. And this thing just takes regular old Dexron 3 ATF. Nothing too special. And you can see over here there is a sight glass. You can see it's red in there indicating that it is full. But it's not actually full because I have to bleed the system first. In order to bleed the system, I have to get the front wheels off the ground, which turns out to be tricky on a vehicle with such high ground clearance. Once off the ground, the procedure is to turn the wheels from lock to lock 40 times, adding fluid as necessary to ensure the system doesn't suck in any air. I didn't actually count how many times I did it, but I did it long enough that I was able to do it a bunch of times without having to add any fluid. And so, I think it is probably good to go. And you can see that the sight glass does have red fluid in it. We won't be able to test the steering and brakes until I replace the fuel pump and can get the engine running. So now let's take a look at the lights. This is actually pretty cool how the lights work on this. So let's put it into run. And then by default the lights do not come on. And also the brake lights don't work. And you can't just turn the light switch here. What you have to do is you have to unlock it. Then you can turn the light switch. That position right there enables the brake lights to work. And then if we go one more, that enables the brake lights to work, but also turns on all of the lights. And you can see we are missing a headlight there. Looks like that corner marker is out. That marker is not out, but it's really dim. Both of the tail lights are working. That marker is definitely good. And this marker up here is also out. And check out the party piece. It has blackout lights. Do I have to unlock it to do that? There we go. What that does is it turns on this light right here so you can drive around at night covertly. Also, these are the blackout markers. They're very dim, but I would imagine they're fairly visible at night. One on this side doesn't work, but honestly, I'm not really worried about that. So, I bought three marker lights. And then the exciting part are these headlights. These are actually quite expensive. I think it was 400 bucks for a pair of these. These are the really nice LED headlights. And these are made by Truck Light, which is the company that makes them for the military. So, we got flathead screws in the front and 7/16 nuts in the back. There [clears throat] we go. They have numbers in there 17, 18, and 19 to show you where to plug in each wire. And then, I don't think I showed you guys this yet, but they all use these connectors. They're like waterproof connectors. Every single wire has a number marked on it. This one says 17. Okay, perfect. Excellent. Very cool. It is getting dark out. So, let me do the other side and let's try these out. Yeah, I think they look better in person, but they look great. got to make sure to hook up the ground here. Okay, turning lights on now. Hey, it works. These plates are a little bit rusty for my liking, and I've been wanting to try a rust converter. So, let's get this loose rust off and give it a try. All right. This can is pretty old, so I don't know if it's going to work. No, that's a little better. And it's got nothing left. Can number four. Oh yeah. Okay, the new fuel pump has arrived, but unfortunately this is really hard to depress and it feels just like the old pump that came off of this vehicle. So now I'm not sure that the pump was the problem. Anyway, let's get this new pump installed and we'll give it a try. We got a new gasket. I took this plate off which also gave me access to the push rod and this looks totally fine. So I greased the end of this push rod so that it'll stick in there and it'll make installation of the pump easier. Just got to find the hole. There we go. Will it stay? Yes. The push rod has to be pushed all the way in to get the pump in place. Oh, it's coming out. No, I'm using RTV on this side, so I got to be a little careful with this. Push this push rod up out of the way. Now, before it comes back down, we'll get this pump in here. There it is. Okay, that's not going anywhere. Okay, let's go back to this drain here. See if we can get some fuel to flow. Let's check flow at the fuel line going into the fuel filter housing here. That'll cut the fuel filter housing and that drain hose out of the equation. Oh, there's some fuel there. We did get a few weak spurts of fuel there at the beginning, but that was it. Also, I noticed right after I finished cranking there that the power steering fluid level is not high enough anymore. So, I'll add some more fluid. Next, I disconnected the output line from the pump. So, let's see if we get any fuel coming out of here. Well, I didn't see any fuel. So, the problem must be from this hose here back to the tank. This right here is about halfway in between the tank and the fuel pump. And this right here is the check valve. And this is a barbed fitting. First, I'm going to try blowing into this check valve towards the pump and see if it's free. It's possible that that check valve could be stuck. I have a piece of fuel line fitted to my compressed air right here. Let's get this fuel line over this barbed fitting. Very good. And now I'll blow into the fuel line. Oh, whoa. So, the air is not going through that check valve. So, I think the check valve may be the problem. And I actually really like that because I'd much rather replace the check valve than have to pull down the tank and mess around with that. Now, just to be sure it is the check valve and not a blockage in the hose. If I blow air through it, it should pass. And it's not. If you could see it coming back out this way. This check valve is definitely the problem. All right. My new check valve came in. Now, this is not the official milspec part. The milspec part I found online for just under $300, which is ridiculous. Whereas this cost about $20, I think. It's got the same size fittings, same size internal diameter. I mean, it's a check valve. It'll work just fine. That should be good and tight. Would you look at that? I cracked it because it's too tight. Gosh darn it. There we go. Looks a little bit different, but does the same thing. >> I got it hooked up and the arrow is facing in the direction of fuel flow. So, let's give it a try. We're going to have some patience. We'll give it a go. Oh, well, now some fuel's coming out. That took a second. All right. I mean, we got fuel coming out, so I think it's working. Let's see if we can get it running. It might take a little while for the air to bleed out of the system. As an experiment, I want to crack this injector line and see if we're getting fuel to it. Maybe that's loose enough. Okay. Yeah, we're getting fuel to it now. All right, we've got it in the shop and I want to start with something easy here. I want to change the fluid in the differentials, front and rear, and then also the geared hubs, which there's one on each wheel. And because those geared hubs are there and they're quite large, look at these brakes. The brakes are inboard. How cool is that? Let's get the fill plug off first. Do we have any fluid in there? Yep, we got some fluid in there. Okay. Yeah, that oil doesn't look too bad. Kind of looks like this is a magnet. Oh, yeah. There's quite a bit of metal on there. Magnet all cleaned up. And that is why the oil looks so good. I love when they do this. We are down to a drip. So, that is good enough for me. I'm filling this up with ADW90 and I'm going to fill it up with this fluid transfer pump. If you have a lot of fluid to pump, this thing makes your life a lot easier. So, I'll put a link in the description. Just a little bit of pumping to do. And we can open this valve and fill her up. And once fluid starts to come out the hole here, we can just close this valve and we're done. This takes a half gallon of fluid. And the military manual says to change the fluid every six months or 3,000 mi, whichever comes first. I think that's a little excessive. Looks like some fluid is just starting to come out. Beautiful. I also changed the fluid in the front differential and it was quite the same as THE REAR. OH, THAT'S HEAVY. OH, DAMN. Here's a closer look at this geared hub. You can see the half shaft comes in right here. And there's a gear right here. And then there's another gear below it, which is much larger. And that sends power out to the wheel. And there's actually a reduction ratio here of 1.92 to1. And that's almost like being in low range all the time. What it does is it sends more torque to the wheel. I believe this is the fill plug. And this down here is the drain plug. Okay. It's got oil in it. And this takes one pint of fluid. And we're full. The other three hubs all went similarly well. No issues. Next, I'd like to service the transmission by doing a drain and refill, plus changing the filter. And it looks pretty straightforward for the most part, except that this crossmember is in the way. And that crossmember is holding up the transfer case and the transmission. So, I'm going to have to support this before I remove the crossmember. We'll start by draining this pan. And it has a drain plug, which I absolutely love. Makes this a lot less messy. Oh, this is tight. Oh my goodness. Wow, that was tight. Okay. Yeah, fluid looks pretty good. All right, I've changed my mind. I'm not going to remove the crossmember, but instead I'm just going to remove the transmission mount here. And I think that'll give me enough clearance. This is harder than I expected. It's like almost as hard as a Land Rover. I got to remove this crossmember, I think, to get it out because the filter is stopping me from moving the pan this way and the exhaust here is stopping me from moving it this way or down. I should be able to detach the filter and get that in the pan and then get it out. Oh, got it. I basically need like three hands here to hold all this stuff up. That just made such a mess. Okay, I got all this cleaned up. The pan cleaned up, the magnet here. There was actually a fair amount of metal in there, so I am glad I'm doing this. This is the new filter, and it has a seal here, which we have to replace. This is not quite press fit, I don't think you would say, but it is in there pretty snugly. So, we're going to have to pry it out. It doesn't look like I'm going to be able to pry this out with a screwdriver. So, I'm going to use the screwdriver as a punch and see if I can deform it to loosen it up. [applause] Oh, yeah. Beautiful. And then the new seal. I should be able to tap this in with a socket. There we go. And before I stick the filter in there, I'm just going to stick my finger in there and lube it up with some transmission fluid. New filter. Uh filter's dated 2025 and the old filter was dated 2019. All right, let's fill up the transmission. So, this is the 4L80E, which is the desirable of the two transmissions, and it takes about 7.7 quarts of Dexron 3 fluid. This might take a little while. Okay, that's good for now. Before I can measure the level, I have to start it up and then go through all the gears just to fill the valve body with fluid. Go into reverse, neutral, drive. Back in the park level is actually a little bit high, but it's pretty close. I didn't look all that good. Next, let's service this transfer case. We have a drain plug here. We got a fill plug here. Take a look at this. This is a plug. If you look in there, you can see there's an electrical connector. And I think that goes to this right here, which is the speed sensor, which is sort of missing. I'm not sure exactly what's going on here, but that probably would explain why the speedometer doesn't work. Take a look at that. It's a new process 242, which is the new transfer case, and it's dated 2015. So, this has been replaced. Fill plug first. Hopefully this doesn't come shooting out too fast. Oh my goodness. Yes, it is. I missed my drain pan a little bit. Okay, that's good enough. Looks like I'm going to have to pump this manually, which I'm not super happy about, but uh I guess that's life. What does this There we go. Okay, it works. This took quite a while to pump manually and not all of the footage was familyfriendly, but suffice it to say that I succeeded in pumping the better part of a gallon of fluid into this transfer case. Yeah. Okay, that's definitely full. I have all new bearings for the engine. These are Molly Cleite metal bearings, so they're pretty much the best you can get. We have eight sets of connecting rod bearings and one big set of main bearings. So, we're doing what is called an inframe bearing replacement. And I've gone ahead and removed the oil pan and the oil pump already, so you guys don't have to watch me do that again. This is not something that you can do with every engine. It's only possible if you can access all the bearing caps with the oil pan removed. Okay, let's start with the connecting rod bearings because they are a bit easier. We just push the piston up a little bit. Should be able to get at the upper bearing half. There it is. It's got a lot of compression, which is good. Okay, got the upper half out. Look at all that wear. Okay, nice new bearing. I've got the upper bearing half in place as you can see. Lower bearing half. We just slip this in. You want to make sure this little tab falls into the slot that's meant for it. And I am going to measure the oil clearance with this plastic gauge. I've got a little piece of plastic gauge on the lower bearing shell. Now I'll reinstall this bearing cap dry with no oil. Pull this back off and take a look. There was a little oil on the crankshaft, so it didn't stick very well on the bearing, but it did stick fairly well to the crankshaft itself. That looks like it's a little bit smaller than 2000 of an inch, which is actually perfectly within spec. So, that's great news. And for final assembly, we're going to use some of this good old assembly lube. I want to make sure I get the upper bearing shell as well. I'm going to go ahead and do the other seven off camera and we'll skip to the main bearings unless I find anything interesting, in which case I'll show you guys. I got all the connecting rod bearings replaced. These are the old ones and there's nothing really too notable here. They're all fairly similarly worn. Let's do main bearing cap number one. Getting the upper bearing half out is where this gets a little bit tricky. So, the locating tab is on this other side. So, I should be able to push up here hopefully and have it come out. Oh, it's tight though. Okay, I'm going to need something a little bit harder than this. I don't want to use metal if I can help it, but I may not have a choice. old flathead screwdriver where the edges are all worn out and rounded so it's not very sharp. Oh, it's not moving. I wonder maybe if I have to undo the other bearing caps if that might help. Well, let's do that then. Okay, there is a trick to this and it's been so long since I've done it that I kind of forgot what it is. But this right here is a screw and I've bent the head a little bit. So, what we do is we stick this into this oil passage. And the reason why the head is bent is because the oil passage is drilled at an angle because it has to go to that connecting rod bearing. That head sticks out just enough so that I can rotate this around and it'll push the bearing out. Okay, there it is. We've made contact and it started to push it out. Yeah, look at that. What a nice fit. And on the other side, you can see it starting to come out. And there we have it. Removed nice and easily on this engine. And the smooth bearings go on the bottom and the ones with the oil groove and the oil holes go on the top. Don't mess that up. If you do, you will destroy your engine. All right, I've got assembly lube on both sides of the bearing. So, we stick it up here and then try to slide it in. Get it in as far as we can. I don't know if I can get away with pushing on this end quite yet. I rotated the crankshaft until I can see this oil passage through this oil hole. And I should be able to stick this screw in here and see if we can use the screw to push in the bearing. Like so. Now we'll use the oil hole to push this bearing in. Okay. Yep, that's working pretty well. New bearing on the lower half and plenty of lube on it. Make sure that little arrow is pointing towards the front of the engine. Okay, I'm going to leave these snug for now and then I'm going to torque them with all the other bolts at the same time, which is what the manual says to do. So, I've got all of the bearings installed. All of the bearing caps installed. And now it's time to torque all of these. And notice that all of the inner bearing cap bolts are 12 mm. Bearing caps 1, and five have 12 mm bolts like this, but 2, three, and four have these 10 mm bolts, and therefore they have a different torque spec. I should note that my Chilton manual for GM trucks that have this engine, they don't specify a different torque spec for the two different size outer bolts, they just specify 135 foot-pounds, which is appropriate for these 12 mm, but that'll break a 10 mm bolt. We're going to start with these inner bearing cap bolts. And the first stage is going to be 75 Newton me. And now stage two for the inner bolts is 150 Nm. This is really tight and it is difficult to do with this torque wrench. Now the outer bearing caps on one and five get 65 newton meters as the first stage and stage two is 135 Newton me. Now all the 10 mm outers get 40 foot-lbs and we are done. These should be good to go. All right, I got this stuff all wrapped up. And before we start it up, there's more maintenance I want to do. And namely, I'd like to drain the coolant. This right here is the lower radiator hose. And there's a petcock right here so I can drain the coolant. Should be pretty easy to do. If the coolant reservoir is any indication, 2018 may be the last time this was done. So, it is due, I would say. I am gonna remove this cap so that it drains out faster. And I guess we'll uh wait patiently while this drains. All right, it is the next day. I let this drain overnight and look how much coolant came out. That is almost 5 gall. That's like almost the entire capacity of the cooling system. In my experience, it's not common for this much to drain out. This Humvey just takes regular ethylene glycol coolant. And it's not water I'm adding. This is 50/50 premixed coolant that simply doesn't have any dye added. Well, it's at the full line now, but once I run it, it'll probably take more coolant. I think we're ready to start it up. And I am most interested in the oil pressure here with the new bearings. We have oil pressure and it sounds good. We're missing one of the shackles here on the front bumper. And it turns out eBay is a pretty good place to buy used Humvey parts. So, I got this thing here. Got some new hardware. Let's get this thing installed. That's not going anywhere. I would like to have a passenger seat and also a battery box cover. So, I pulled this out of the marine Humvey and let's get some new seat covers installed on it. Got a little dirty. Oh, there it is. Well, there we go. It's quite a bit nicer than the driver's seat. I've got a couple issues left to deal with on this. And the first of which is that it's been starting hard and smoking white. Look at that. Woo. and it smells like unburnt fuel. So, I'm thinking we have some bad injectors. I also wonder if the glow plugs are working. Even though the weight to start light comes on, that does not mean that the glow plugs are working. And then the other thing I finally figured out what the deal is with this speedometer. I'm sensing a little bit of a theme here because all the manuals I have for these Humvees are for the older Humvees. And while this is an older Humvey, it's a 1987 model year. This thing was fully refurbished in 2012. It had a new engine, new transmission, new transfer case, and it was upgraded to a heavy duty variant at that time, too. So, I think it got all new suspension, a new frame. It was painted. It probably got a new soft top. I mean, this thing was basically a brand new Humvey in 2012, which is probably why it's in such good condition now. Anyway, at that time, this was converted from the older and much more common mechanical speedometer over to the newer electronic speedometer. And the parts manual that I have says nothing about these electronic speedometers. And that's why I was having a hard time figuring out what was going on here and figuring out which part I needed. I have figured it out though and the part that I need is on its way here. At the beginning of this video, I asked a question, will I be able to register these and drive them on the road? And the answer is actually yes. At least where I live in the state of New Hampshire with an older vehicle like this. It's extremely easy to register them on the road. Apparently, you don't even need a title. You just bring in a bill of sale or whatever you have and you're kind of good to go. Now, if you live in a different state, your mileage may vary. I'm pretty sure there are some states in the US where you're not allowed to register Humvees and drive them on the road. Let's talk about parts availability. So, parts availability for these has been pretty good from what I've seen so far. A lot of parts are available for very reasonable prices, but there are some exceptions. Some things are very expensive. And one thing comes to mind is the doors on these, which all of them come without doors. You're looking at spending $4,000ish to get a set of four doors. So, that's something to keep in mind. The tires are really expensive for these, too. It's 800 bucks per tire if you buy them new. And the wheel size is weird. It's a 16 1/2 in rim. And the military tire is your only option unless you opt for some aftermarket wheels. Alternators are also expensive on these. And I noticed because the Marine Humvey is missing one. We'll talk about my plans for that later, but it's a weird dual voltage 12 and 24vt alternator and they cost about 2500 bucks. Let's talk about how much I paid for these and how I unintentionally bought two of them. Both of these Humvees were up for auction on the same day. And it's an online only auction. And how it works is they have batches of lots that go up for auction at the same time. And these batches are spaced apart by 5 minutes. The Marine Humvey was up for auction first, and then the Army Humvey was in the batch 5 minutes after that. I was in a bit of a bidding war with someone for the Marine Humvey, and they were being really annoying about it. They would wait until the last possible second to place a bid to try to out bid me. And I don't know, perhaps they were thinking that the auction would end and I wouldn't have a chance to place another bid, but that's not how it works. When that happens, it extends the auction by at least 2 minutes so that the other person has a chance to bid again. And so what happened was the marine Humvey sort of went into like overtime, you might call it, and both of these Humvees were up for auction at the same time. Now, when this Army Humvey came up for auction, at that time, I was the high bidder on the marine Humvey, but I figured, you know, that other person's probably going to come in and place another bid in a couple minutes. So, I went ahead and placed a low bid on this because, let's be honest, this is the Humvey that I wanted more. It was closer to me. It's a four-door. It's just kind of nicer. But then it turned out nobody else placed any bids on either of these Humvees. So, that's how I won both of them. Now, how much did I pay for them? This Army Humvey that I'm sitting in now, I paid $3,600 for, which was a really good deal. The Marine Humvey, I believe, was $4,500, which is probably a fair price. I should say that of all the Humvees that were auctioned off that day, any Humvey that was listed as running condition, sold for about $10,000. And so, the fact that I got this Humvey, which is now in running condition and is in amazing shape. Plus, I have a parts Humvey over there. And I paid less than $10,000 for the two of them, is a heck of a deal. Now, let's talk about my plans for the marine Humvey. And we'll start with the cost of making it sort of functionally complete so that it at least has a chance of running and driving. I ended up harvesting the transmission control module and the protective control box from it. Plus, it's missing the power steering pump, the alternator, and it also needs a new ignition switch. I'd estimate the cost of all those parts is going to be about $5,000, so pretty pricey. And then on top of that, this marine Humvey engine has no oil in it, remember, and it's in totally unknown condition. So, what I was thinking was maybe, and it depends on how popular these Humvey videos are, but maybe I do an engine and transmission swap in it so that I don't need any of those components. Shortly after I bought these Humvees, I found this at the salvage auction. It's a Mercedes E320 CDI, and it has the very well- reggarded OM 648, which is a 3.2 L straight 6 diesel engine. Despite having half the displacement of the Humvey engine, this has more power, it's quieter, more efficient, and lighter. This car makes the perfect donor vehicle because it runs and drives and because it was in a little fender bender. I picked it up for only $550. Let's see if we can start it up. Come on. Battery's a little low. Uh, not quite. Hey, there it is. Yeah, it runs great. I think this thing would make a great powertrain swap into the marine Humvey, but it is a large project. So, let me know down in the comments if it's something that you'd like to see. As for my plans for this Army Humvey, I'd like to keep this fairly close to milspec as a military collector vehicle. And so, I was thinking about getting some new doors for it. They usually come unpainted, so I have to paint those. And then, I might as well paint the whole vehicle while I'm at it because the paint on this is kind of faded. I do want to keep this military camouflage paint job, though, to keep this as original as possible. Unfortunately, this late in the year in New Hampshire, it is way too cold to be doing any painting. So, that's going to have to wait until next year. But, if you guys are liking these Humvey videos, maybe I could do a part two before Christmas where I fix the fuel system and any other issues this thing has. So, let me know what you guys think. And thank you guys so much for watching.

I sort of accidentally bought two government surplus Humvees at auction. Can I get them running and fix them up? Motive fluid transfer pump: https://amzn.to/3J8Ad8C QUALITY torque wrench: https://amzn.to/3OHpFMV Oil pressure gauge: https://amzn.to/48LRM8O Oil filter wrench: https://amzn.to/31JdsC5 My Instagram: https://instagram.com/waldowelds/ Any purchases you make using the links provided help to support the channel at no extra cost to you! As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.