With less than a month to go before the Easter Jeep Safari, my quest to build an entire WWII Jeep from scratch is behind. And that’s partly a result of numerous roadblocks — many of them self-created, like the piston I broke and the timing cover I bought that was for the wrong vehicle. But not all my project’s problems are my own fault, and among the most demoralizing was a rare piston ring manufacturing defect.
The last update I wrote about my eBay WWII Jeep project ended on a bit of a cliff-hanger. I had just flown my friend Laurence from Australia to help me wrench, and after finishing rebuilding a Dana Model 18 transfer case, we set about finishing up the brand new Go-Devil engine I had purchased through eBay seller Kaiser Willys, and that my friend Brandon and I had already started assembling a few weeks prior.
As I mentioned in my story “I Just Made Two Idiotic Mistakes While Building My eBay WWII Jeep,” while trying to hammer off connecting rod end caps that had apprently been torqued on way too tight by the manufacturer, my connecting rod slipped, pulling a piston against my vice, leading to a crack:
Of course, the one piston I cracked happened to be piston #4, so all three of the other piston-rod assemblies now had to be removed from my engine block.
Luckily, I had purchased an extensive engine overhaul kit from Kaiser Willys (this, and the engine were on their website and not on their eBay page, but they gladly listed it for me), and it included a set of pistons and rings.
The piston set I had cracked had actually come with my engine; this meant I had a new set of pistons from the above overhaul kit sitting on the shelf, ready to tag in and dutifully serve inside the bores of this fine new motor.
One by one, Laurence and I replaced each piston on each rod. I installed the rings by squeezing my piston ring pliers, expanding the rings, and slipping them over the piston Laurence was holding until each ring was in its correct groove.
Then I used a piston ring compressor, squeezed the rings until they were flush with the piston ring lands, inserted the connecting rod into each bore, and hammered the piston top until it was in the cylinder. Laurence guided the connecting rods from below, ensuring they didn’t nick the crankshaft.
We installed each rod bearing cap, torquing it to spec and adding its sheetmetal lock nut, and then we got to piston four.
Almost like a sick joke being played by the wrenching-gods, with three pistons already in the block, I noticed something as I was sliding my very last ring on.
I pulled the ring back up off the piston, took the ring off my pliers, and looked carefully. Oh no.
Noooo!!!!
Why?! Why me?!
The ring has a major crater-like manufacturing defect; I checked the package and there was no sign of a small piece that would indicate damage during shipping, so I’m assuming this was a failure in the casting process. While, deep down, part of me wanted to just take a top ring off an old piston (the set that I cracked), the old piston top rings didn’t feature a chamfer, and given that I’m obsessive — especially about an engine that will probably end up costing $8,000 in the end — I couldn’t do that. I want this engine to have the same pistons and the same rings in all four cylinders.
Yes, I could have taken all the rings off the old pistons and installed them on the new pistons, but those old rings had come from the same manufacturer of those pistons — the French company that built my engine block. I didn’t want to risk those rings and those pistons somehow being a set, and the rings not being compatible with a different piston. The risk was extremely low, but like I said, this is an expensive motor; it’s gotta be done right.
So, in order to get this part ASAP, Laurence and I called up the piston ring manufacturer, Hastings — the Michigan-based world-standard when it comes to piston rings — and they guided me to a number of Hastings retailers near me. Laurence, our camera-guy Griffin, and I called a dozen shops, but I knew I had the right one when an older gentleman picked up the phone and told me to give him a minute while he looked through some books.
My experience has been that old-timers with thick parts-books are usually the best when it comes to sourcing parts, and this gentleman did not disappoint. In about 12 hours, he had a new pack of Hastings piston rings ready for me to pick up at his shop, L&R Engines. And let me just tell you: When Laurence and I stopped by this place, it blew our minds. It felt like we had stepped into a different era.
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Every school should take its kids to places like L&R engines in Santa Fe Springs, California. Shops like this are disappearing off the face of the earth, as many of the old-timers who have done so much for car culture are reaching their advanced age. Places that rebuild engines, starter motors, speedometers, leaf spring packs, radiators, and various other specialty car-parts are becoming fewer and farther between. And in this climate, L&R Engines shines like a bright star, with Laurence and me in awe at the humongous stacks of parts-books, the ancient but still-kicking specialized machinery, and above all, the folks at the helm.
Larkin Ranney Jr. started the business in 1977 after he learned to build engines when he left the service in 1962. Now in a 10,000 square-foot building and run by Larkin’s son, Derek, L&R has been family-owned since day one, with Derek’s own children now working there.
It was actually Larkin who had picked up my phone call and sourced me the new rings. I later chatted with him on the phone about the business he had founded nearly 50 years ago. He proudly told me he’s passed his knowledge onto his boys Derek and Brent, but that he’s watched many other shops disappear recently. “So many businesses have gone out of business because the older people retire and nobody wants to take it over,” he told me.
I told Larkin that I had moved to Detroit in 2013, during a time when Baby Boomers were retiring and getting really involved in the car scene. To me, even 15 years ago felt like a golden era for engine/suspension/electrical specialty shops, but I’ve noticed such shops have been drying up. “That era is ending,” Larkin agreed.
But L&R Engines remains. And it is the engine shop of your dreams. Just look at all these books:
And check out all these crankshafts!:
How about these blocks?!:
Here are a bunch of cylinder heads:
The most impressive thing was seeing the work being done. Here’s a honing machine:
Here are some valve guides being installed:
Here’s what appears to be a sandblasting cabinet right next to some industrial cleaning machines/hot tanks:
Some jobs don’t require precision, and you can just do them with hand tools in the driveway:
Other jobs require an engine-honing machine: 
It’s an amazing place run by genuine experts, and I’m grateful it still exists.
To tie this all back to my WWII Jeep build, which is being sponsored by eBay, I do plan on getting a refund from Kaiser Willys on those piston rings. eBay Free Returns has been easy, this seller, Kaiser Willys, has been excellent.
With my new rings in hand, it’s time to finally get this engine built.
[Ed Note: David mentioned the idea of building a brand new WWII Jeep to the team at eBay, and they loved the idea so much they said, “How can we help?” Their financial support and David’s Jeep-obsession are the fuel behind this crazy build.]
I don’t think these old-school auto repair/restoration shops will ever completely die out but they certainly will end up being few, and far between. Restoring your old ICE powered vehicle will eventually become like restoring a steam train: expensive, with lots of bespoke parts.
I’m sort-of searching for a shop that both rebuilds Ford 292’s and has a YouTube channel. How often does a shop/channel have the opportunity to rebuild a 292 engine with 350k miles on it that has never been rebuilt! There is even a hook for viewers. I remember way back in the 70s seeing the piston with a quarter-sized hole in it from detonation. The shop at the top of the LA Grapevine replaced the piston with the rest of the engine still installed. Which piston? is the hook.
The engine runs fine, but when I get around to restoration of this coach-built ’64 F100 crewcab, I would be getting the engine and Fordomatic transmission (also never reuilt) restored also.
Just don’t procrastinate on the refund or time may expire
Welcome to Santa Fe Springs and the surrounding area. We grew up out here surrounded by guys that built dragsters and Indy cars and customs. We thought it was normal.
Here’s another source for obscure parts in the area:
https://egge.com/
Moon is also in Santa Fe Springs.
Yup. Hallowed ground, saved thanks to Chico.
When these machine shops finally die off, you can say that would be the end of us messing around with ICE cars. Modern engines are so complex with so many brittle plastic parts, that I don’t see too many people rebuilding engines any more. It’s pretty much throw-away.
This inspired me to look up Bearing Service in Portland and shed a tear because they closed in 2025. This was a proper old school shop in an Art Deco building in NW Portland. I did a little business with them, but I haven’t removed a piston since the 90s.
Great shop. They reground the crank bearings in my first car, which arrived to me with a seized engine in many boxes. I’m surprised they held on as long as they did in that part of the city, but it was also part of the charm. Not sure why the Library of Congress has a photo of it, but they do.
There is an old school shop by me that does this stuff. I found it one time when I broke a bolt off in the cam caps on one of my subaru heads. I called around and found that guy. I took it to him and he said I was screwed because the extractor I had tried using broke off as well.
I ended up using acid to dissolve the steel inside the hole without destroying the aluminum (chemistry baby) then I took it back to him to have him timecert the hole. He couldn’t believe it and didn’t even charge me since I gave him the rest of the acid I had left. One of my favorite car stories. I still have a video on youtube.
I am surprised that there is a specific acid that dissolves steel without dissolving aluminum.
You mean like salt water? Granted, that isn’t an acid, and it’s pretty slow.
A low concentration of nitric acid (depends on who you ask, but 10-30%) will rapidly react with steel but have negligible effect on aluminum. The old timey advice is to build up a dam around the hole with the broken tap in it with clay, then drop in the acid solution and let it bubble and react until the tap is dissolved enough to be manipulated free.
That is exactly what I did. I used modeling clay. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6-G0ma_3SE
This is incredibly cool
And I just learned something new today!
It creates a micro layer over the aluminum where it has touched it. This protects the rest of the aluminum.
Ebay is indeed quite a good resource for hard to find parts. I’ve got a small Seadoo project going now that Ebay has been very helpful for.
1000% agreed. My dad and I are restoring a 1974 Plymouth Road Runner together and eBay has been an absolute godsend. I have four different order confirmation emails sitting in my inbox right now.
Hasn’t this ALWAYS been eBay’s cachet?
I restored a 1982 Yamaha XS400R Seca in the late 90s and the ONLY place I could find ANYTHING for that bike (that wasn’t a consumable) was eBay…
Good luck even finding a 1982 XS400R, let alone parts for it today, even on eBay.
Living in Littleton Colorado I was blessed to be near G&S Auto Parts and Machining. Pete Grabber, his wife Peg, son Carl along with super counter and shop staff were just fantastic. Gone now. They were the last independent auto parts store on the south side of Metro Denver.
It’s always nice when you can find a ring at the first shop you go to instead of having to go to 20 different shops and trying on 40 different rings, only to end up buying the one from the first shop because your piston felt like she had to see every one of those rings before she could decide on the best one.
Our local NAPA had a machine shop attached that looked similar. They did all the machining on my Chevy 250 six when I rebuilt it. Sadly when the master machinist retired, they shut down that part of the operation.
reminds me of my grandfather’s tractor repair shop: various parts laying everywhere, multiple tractors in various states of assembly, paper parts books covered in oil and grease smudges. I can smell the place now.
This place looks just like the only garage I let work on my old, modified 350z. It was dim, dirty, and not a trace of carpet anywhere even in the waiting room. Smelled like oil and gas at all times. The same old owner behind the desk every time I came in, the same son coming in to get the keys and pull it inside. You could walk back there and see various things from drag builds, to muscle cars in restoration, to Subies getting their valves replaced. It was amazing and I miss not having one like that near me now!
Can I ask why you prefer to order over E-bay than the site directly? That little detail caught my attention.
Your instagram video was great. It looked like the Larkin sent you loose without telling anyone and all those guys were looking at you like you just escaped the asylum.
The deal for the story is he is buying EVERTHING possible through E-bay. They are sponsoring the build.
Okay, I knew ebay was heavily involved, I didn’t know it was all through them. Thanks.
Good; We don’t want this to feel too sponsored. Because the truth is: This is all just an excuse for me to wrench on a WWII Jeep. That it’s paid for by a brand I love is a huge perk, of course!
eBay is the best! There are sooo many parts that I can’t get anywhere else. So when eBay said they wanted to sponsor this build — a build whose goal is to assemble an entire WWII Jeep from scratch using primary eBay parts — it was a no-brainer. eBay is such a huge benefit for car culture it just feels like a perfect fit here at the Autopian.
Thanks for the explainer, makes sense to me, I’ve ordered there myself quite a bit.
That is the objective truth. Ebay is basically the junk yards and the old JC Whitney all mixed into one.
Yup, eBay is a treasure trove for all sorts of used and NOS parts for older vehicles. I’ve found some seriously hard to source stuff for my P38s on US and UK eBay.
Same for my ’88 XJ6 (XJ40 code)
I love shops like this. In San Diego there’s a machine shop that specializes in cylinder heads and walking inside is like stepping back in time.
Sadly the shop I used to go to for electrical component and hydraulic part rebuilds closed a couple of years ago.
Seems like the gentleman did not disappoint.
I know exactly what it smells like in there just by looking at the pictures
Grinding/drilling steel creates a smell unlike any other.
I’ve heard outer space smells similar.
Might be the radiation.
I assumed dust from trillions of metallic asteroid collisions. Several reports from astronauts, after a spacewalk,airlock,smell a machine shop upon removing helmet.
Radiation can also causes metallic smells and tastes even without actual metals present in the air. Something about stimulating the nerves directly
Forgot about that! But that should smell strongest while out there, maybe?
One would think.
It’s so good. I love working metal. There have definitely been weeks where I smelled like Oateys Dark Thread Cutting oil more than any soap I’d cleaned up with.
The machining departments of our aircraft landing gear overhaul vendors are my favorite. In the Miami area there’s usually a guy in the shop brewing Cuban coffee too. Machined steel and Cuban coffee smells…
Is anybody else freaking out a little about all the stuff in that amazing shop that looks like it would fall over during a pretty minor earthquake and be damaged, given that part of the country has minor earthquakes frequently, and major ones a decent amount too? I guess they have been there plenty long enough to know what they are doing, but still…
no, we are enjoying it, not being worry warts.
Guilty as charged. Somebody has to do all the worrying so the rest of you don’t have to right? Right!?
It’s sad seeing these places disappear. Local auto shop in town used to do basic machining work, resurfacing rotors and drums, etc…. When he retired and closed down, he recommended an ancient machine shop/auto parts store next town over to cut the flywheel on my F-250. Based on the dust covering everything and small stock, it didn’t appear they sold any auto parts in awhile and were living off the machine shop business. Closed down shortly after that.
“Other jobs require an engine-boring machine: “
The pictured machine is a HONING machine. I operated one of these for 2 years in college.
Right! Thank you Jdoubledub!
Obviously! An engine-boring machine is a modern four-cylinder Nissan or Subaru, especially one mated to a CVT.
When fresh out of college, I felt everything should be CNC and 3D printing. Now I’m 40 and after this long I appreciate how good it is to have someone who knows how to run manual machining. Every professor and industrial pundit focuses on the AI-powered gigafactories of the world, but it’s the little places doing the work the big guys find unprofitable where you find the most amazing stuff. You would be surprised how old the machines are that make parts for some of the most cutting edge prototypes. And keep high tech equipment running.
It’s great you found a place like this. A shame they’re slowly disappearing.
Manual machining will always have it’s place for prototyping and one-offs/extremely small batches that you probably won’t ever make again. That is if you can find someone to run them.
Manual machines are a good fit for an engine shop because it is by definition a job shop and you are never sure what you are going to be working on which makes fixturing/programming complex and expensive.
Definitely old school since none of his machining equipment is CNC.
My experience has been that old-timers with thick parts-books are usually the best when it comes to sourcing parts, and this gentleman did disappoint.
Sorry to read he disappoint.
Funny thing is If I read that sentence that way, my brain automatically corrected for it bc.Incertainly didn’t catch that when I read the post.
I think we all know how excited DT was in both finding this place and getting to visit it and we understand his positive intent!
From those fantastic photos, I can just nostalgically know what that place smelled like.
Me too!
The guy that always did our inspection and anything we couldn’t handle at home had a shop that had a smell I just loved as a kid. I imagine that place smelled much the same. That mix of machine oil and decades of real work being done is magic. Add in the aroma of all those old books. Man, that’s heaven to my nose.
You do realize you are taking roughly 10000X more care assembling this thing than the dudes in Toledo (and various other places) who slapped them together originally? It’s a super-low compression, low revving, 1930s design, not a Ferrari. Just send it, it will be fine. Hell that cracked piston probably would have run fine for as long as it takes one of these things to wear out.
That is an awesome shop. I had a place like that in Ohio rebuild my Spitfire motor after the crankshaft broke. Super fun to visit. After the rebuild, it didn’t leak oil for a whole month! The amount of time it takes the wooden parts of what passes for a front main seal to saturate with oil and start to drip. Again, 1930s tech at it’s finest!
I don’t know DT, but I’ve been reading him for years, and did meet him in person once. I’m pretty sure he is incapable of just sending it in this particular case. Had this been POSTal, or most of his other projects, yeah sure. But he has WWII Jeeps in his bone marrow, and he HAS to do it right.
Certainly true. Is he as fun in person as I imagine him to be?
This will certainly be the nicest “new” one ever made.
He’s genuinely a nice person, and his enthusiasm for cars and car culture comes through. Before he left Detroit, a bunch of us met up with him at his favorite pick and pull and looked like the weirdest gang ever but we had a great time finding treasures together.
I bet that was fun! I miss the days of having both a local pick ‘n pull and having cars where there was bounty to be had there. Kept my Volvos, VWs and Saabs alive that way for years.
Sadly, I went to the one near me here in FL and it was a waste of time. Only a handful of European cars, and every one completely picked over by the Ebayers the moment it arrived.
Hauling that tailgate to the front was a lot of fun! It was a cold but enjoyable Saturday.
And yes David is genuine, affable, and incredibly knowledgeable.
I hope he still has it! It was epic.
I remember that, I was there! Good times. David is a gem.
Agreed, and I also think it’s a nice new direction for his projects. Will he make the Jeep safari? I have no idea. But it’s somewhat more satisfying reading about the focus on details and getting things just so. Just like the shop featured here, it seems like genuine craftsmanship with an eye for detail rather than the cheapest, quickest, most profitable hack job is more and more of an endangered species.
It’s a breath of fresh air, even if the concept started as “let’s build a jeep from Ebay parts in a driveway.”
He really has “Gone California” I mean that in the best possible way.
He wants this one to be PERFECT, not just good enough.
Thank you all for the kind words!
I really do want this one to be perfect. So far I have made zero significant compromises, though I’m about to have to use an old brake pedal because the new one is missing a bend. The old one is a bit worn, so it wiggles a bit and scrapes against the steering column when I touch the brake. After Moab, I’ll have that pedal machined and sleeved so it’ll fight tightly onto the shaft. I gotta take the body off after Moab, anyway, to paint the whole thing, so that’s the time to do it.
Of course, I have to make Moab, and that’s going to be a tall task [looks outside; sees frame with no body…]
-DT