Jay’s dumpspace

When I got back from Rausch Creek this weekend, I realized that a few things on my Jeep needed some TLC.

• front left brake line started to leak from where the banjo is crimped to the braided hose (4WD.com is replacing them for free, should be here in a few days)
• the bolt that attaches my track arm relocation bracket to the axle came loose; I squirted some red locktite on it for now, but I think I need a longer bolt for the nylock to get a good bite
• I broke two exhaust hangers and possibly beat up my muffler (coat hangers rule)
• both ends of my front bumper are bunged up as is my passenger rear bumperette
• on board air mounting plate came loose once (need to put some light-duty locktite on that…)
• lower steering column bearing has some new wiggles (ordered new bearing for ~$10)

I haven’t yet looked at my diff fluid (to make sure it is still there, really), but I think my axle disco housing is leaking a bit up front.  It’s only been about a thousand miles since my last oil change, but I have new dino juice ready to go when I have a few minutes.  It just feels good to change the oil early every once in a while, especially after driving her hard.  I put a new air filter in a few nights ago.  Mileage hasn’t hit 140k yet.

Since my last post, I almost finished installing my Brown Dog motor mount lift, but I didn’t have time to finish before Rausch so I went back to the stock mounts for now.  I’ll work on the MML some weekend in the future, no rush.  I also added cheap Costco OBA, under-the-hood lighting, a 36-tooth speedo gear (to compensate for larger tires), and a Borgeson steering shaft.  The steering shaft was a necessary upgrade because the slip joint in my stock shaft was 100% rusted solid.  After the JKS BL a few weeks ago, the shaft needed to get about 0.25″ longer to accomodate the new steering angles.  Rust is stonger than welding sometimes, I’ll tell ya’…  Oh, and I added a new 90amp alternator after I broke one of the ears off of mine when removing it for the MML.

Jeep is probably on jack stands until mid-next week.  Meh.

I welded a piece of flat steel across the spare tire stopper for an antenna mount.  I haven’t run the coax yet, but here’s my 3′ Firestick with a Firestik K4-A stud mount.

Last weekend I installed a JKS 1.25″ body lift.  The install was relatively easy except for breaking a few bolts (to be expected).  This weekend I’ll tackle my new Brown Dog Offroad motor mount lift and get rid of my TC drop.

After the BL I realized that the slip joint in my steering shaft is rusted solid.  The body lift moved the steering geometry such that the shaft needs to be about 1/4″ longer.  I’ll buy a new shaft.  Steering is important…

I changed my oil and installed a new idler pulley last weekend, too.  Odometer read about 139,100 miles.  I used 5W30 for the first time due to the recent super-cold weather.  No ill effects thus far.  Idler pulley was likely fine, but I’m trying to get rid of squeaking noises.  No luck yet.

A few thoughts:

I measured just over 3.5 inches of lift over factory this weekend. I plan on adding 1.25″ of body lift and a 1″ motor mount lift before March (JKS and Brown Dog). That should put me at over 4.75 inches total lift and I should be able to trash my TC drop.

I installed some Goodridge stainless brake hoses last night.  With some key coupon codes I got the pair for $42.  Here are some pics of the before (far left) and after.

I’m not too psyched about the p-clip attachment to the frame.  The rubber grippy on the p-clip doesn’t hold the brake line super firmly.  I think I’ll start to hunt for a few of the clips like the ones in these JK brake lines.  The same right-angle bracket came with my rear stainless hose in the RE 2.5″ lift kit.  Bonus: the brake hoses came with new copper banjo washers.  As you can see clearly in the third picture, I made some small hard line extensions to make sure that everything would clear the frame and not rub anything.

I can definitely feel a difference in brake pedal pressure.  It’s actually pretty substantial.  It probably isn’t just because I bled the brakes last night because I bled the front brakes two weeks ago.  The stainless hoses expand less under pressure.  Is it necessary to have that extra pressure?  Probably not.  I could lock up my brakes just fine with the rubber hoses, thus they were supplying adequate pressure.  With that said, the stainless hoses are damn sexy.  =)

Most importantly, however, is that my hoses are long enough for spring flex and the hard lines won’t get tweaked if something (axle or hunk of mud) tugs on the stainless hose.  Again, I’m not too keen on the strength of the p-clip, but it is waaaay better than what I had securing the hard lines before:  nothing.

At the same time I also replaced the rubber pads on my brake and clutch pedals.  Sticky rubber pedals mean my foot won’t slip off of the clutch anymore.

FYI, 1.5 doesn’t crash!  It’s actually fast and stable.  I can read the Times in any bathroom in the world now, especially my own!

NYTimes, FTW!

I had this idea to start a Jeep diary.  I want to keep track of historical changes like when I rotate tires, driveline angles, etc..  Here goes:

Installed trXus MT tires (33×12.5) in November of 2008.  I’ve put about 1k miles on them so far.  The odometer read about 139k when they were installed.  I’ll probably try to rotate them in 2k miles (~141k), which will actually be inflated by 15% because my speedo is off.

I just had the slip-joint replaced in my front driveshaft in early January of 2009.  It was $143 at Fleet Pride for parts and labour.  Odometer reads 139k.  

shiny new slip joint

I measured some driveline angles a few days ago.  The rear of the TC was 8 degrees from vertical; rear diff at vertical machined surface was 10 degrees.  The rear driveshaft was at 19 degrees relative to the ground.  Net DS angle is 8 or 10 degrees depending on which end you are looking at.  I want to try to remove the TC drop to see if I can get the TC angle closer to 10 degrees without increasing the net DS angle (too much).  Tom Woods says that 15 degrees for a single cardon is the limit before certain failure.  U-joints are rated for like 5k hours at 6 degrees, IIRC.  Increasing the angle decreases life, duh.

I installed a fence clamp Hi-Lift mount on the roll bar the other night.  I don’t like it.  I don’t know where I want to put my Hi-Lift.  I had to move it from the bumper when I installed a pair of KC Daylighters:

Tonight I should take delivery of some new stainless front brake hoses (Goodridge).  Pics and stuff later.

I’m all up to date with iPhone firmware 2.1 and I even just did a complete wipe of my phone (factory reset, not restore from backup).  The NYTimes app crashes after a few minutes of use.  Right in the middle of reading an article.  Annoying.

The thing is, there are a plethora of news readers for the iPhone.  The AP new app “Mobile News” and Bloomberg are both really very nice.  The update quickly, don’t crash, and have intuitive navigation that doesn’t feel really sluggish.  The NYTimes app is slow, crashes a lot, and never seems to finish updating.  What is so hard?

This wouldn’t even be an issue if it wasn’t The New York Times.  The NYT content is far superior to the AP news wire or Bloomberg.  David Pogue.  Tons of great op-ed writers.  Great snips of local news from NYC and sometimes even from upstate.  Complete sentences.

I hope they fix it soon…  It seems to get worse with every update to the iPhone and NYTimes.  This is the only app I have problems with (besides the ones that I want that I can’t justify paying for…yet).

Quick post about recent stuffs.  Work’s been busy…

VirtualBox rocks my socks.  The end.  No raw disk support (a la boot camp) yet, but it is coming.  I only boot camp for games anyways.

I have been working with Sassafras to track down a KeyAccess audit bug that happens during audits with Altiris SVS running.  I’m not sure if KeyAccess, Software Virtualization Services, or a corrupt chunk of crap in my newest Windows image’s registry is to blame.  I should have some time to troubleshoot and grep through debug files this week.  Turning off auditing (setting the license from Full to Basic) seems to have given me reprieve for now.

FYI, the largest LUN you can do anything with in VMWare is 2TB. Even if you use raw LUN mapping. LVM is your friend.