BigTuna117

Well, the "new" 247J is in, it's just a matter of getting a new front driveshaft. No picture sadly, since my driveway is still pretty well soaked in dirt and TC fluids, I can't get down there unless I expect to scrub up afterwards. Almost back on the road!

I'm certainly hoping to make it this year. Throw me in as tentative for the time being. As long as the Jeep decides not to act up I'll hopefully get er' up there.

Yeah, I only plan to run this "New Used" 247j for a few months, while I save up for a 242 swap. I already have all the parts I need on order to get 'er back on the road!

Well, I guess there's always a bright side:

Driving home from vegas the other day and I was greeted with a pretty sudden loud and shaky vibe, followed by a pretty big bang. I thought "damn, I blew a driveshaft". Turns out, I uh, didn't blow a driveshaft: Soooo, yeah. The 247J decided to blow up. I think it's the TC that went and not the driveshaft because the diff yoke is messed up pretty badly, too. It feels to me like something happened with the TC, which caused the the ujoint on the front driveshaft to snap, or the yoke to snap. Dropping the skid plate gives out a whooooooole lotta metal shavings. I go to Flagstaff to grab another 247J for the time being later this week. In the not-too-distant future, I'll make for a 242 swap.

Moab is one of those places where you can wheel it every year because every time you go it's different. The scenery and the food is great. Great place to go with friends.

And another short picture/ videodump: Baby Lionsback: And on Golden Spike, with my good friend Dan using my shovel as an upper coil retainer: And the Golden Staircase: Baby Lionsback Sevenmile Rim A couple more shots of Hell's Revenge A glamor shot, in the same place as last years, right before the Golden Crack. Just at a different angle. Grand County? Yeah, this place is pretty grand.

He burnt up his clutch! I felt like the hazards were a good idea since people were blasting by us the entire trip back, even with part of the group up front, warning people of the tow going on. So far I really enjoy it. It only had to be removed once, and that's to tow the TJ. It holds the big heavy Trail Hogs without much complaint, but with a slight wobble, which we've come to call "Hitch wobble" from being held in by the hitch pin. However, it has pretty good clearance, and didn't get dragged around as much as the hitch d-shackle did last year.

MOOOOOAAAABBB! Had another excellent time, and the Jeep performed much better this year. No major damage to report, but I still have a tendency to drop coils. Gettin' flexxxy Also, the LED array was super bright, and somewhat flexible since you can just turn off one of the bulb sets to change the brightness. Also, towed for the first time, too! I'll probably add more in later. another post perhaps.

Excellent article, D!

Same way I did mine. How many are you putting in each wheelwell? Also, I ran the front sets into a junction, that way if one of them goes it, I can disconnect it at the junction and replace it, instead of a full run of wire. There is also a rear junction that the rear lights connect into, and that is also where the front Junction merges into the circuit.

In my case, my High and Low beam bulbs are also LED. I believe that just turning on the primary lights should be sufficient for most trips. However, there comes a time where the extra lumens do come in handy. I ended up picking this lil' guy up to compliment the bulbs I already have. The 5000K LED (3900 Lumens, I'm not sure if this is total or "per bulb") low beams throw mainly towards the road, the 6000K LED bulb I have in the hi- beam socket (1100 Lumens per bulb) fills in the space that the low doesn't throw to, and the light bar augments both. Total with all three on should be around 14K lumens, depending on how you add them all up.

Not much been happening lately, since I am currently prepping for my trip to Moab next week. I did happen to get a few issues resolved and some experimenting with the 12v cooler. After watching it for a few weeks, I noticed that the filter housing was having issues staying attached to the connector on the lower side. Since this connector will likely stay here, I epoxied the two together: Hopefully this makes it watertight here. it certainly is stronger and should not come off without some serious force now. Another thing I have been messing with is the 12 volt cooler I have dropped into the back of the Jeep. It uses the standard thermoelectric Peltier type cooling solution that most cheap coolers use, and has the same downfalls as they do. In particular, poor cooling. The cooler's ability to cool depends entirely on how efficiently you can remove the heat from the hot side, so I epoxied this 80mm fan in front of the exhaust heatsink to pull hot air away from the unit. This actually has increased the rate of cooling for the interior, where it could drop the temperature from 80F to 40F in about an hour and 15 minutes, It can drop from 80F to 40F in about 20 minutes flat. I tested the drop using a fridge thermometer, while the Jeep was shut off and sitting without any windows open in the midday sun. If I add a faster fan to the inside transfer, I may even make it more efficient, now that the Peltier thermoelectric transfer isn't hitting it's maximum temperature. Not too shabby for drinks and snacks on the trail! (I know, I know. It's dirty on the outside. I need to take a damp paper towel and clean the outside off. Still, not bad for years in the garage!) So that's it for now. I'll report in later!

I said I wasn't going to buy any more parts until after this year's trip to Moab, but I couldn't resist. I bought this little bugger to better illuminate the trail on trips that end up becoming night runs. It complements the other LEDs pretty well. I bought a set of rocker switches from MICTUNING on Amazon. Excellent quality switches which come with a pre-made wiring piggyback so that you just have 3 wires to run. Nifty. While I was at it, I went ahead and replaced the rock light "bomber" style switch so that these two match. They look good, they are very good quality switches with a satisfying *click* when you push them back and forth. I also bought a "fridge" switch for the back. Although I don't have a 12v fridge, per se, I do have a 12v Igloo cooler wired into a relay back there. It's ancient, but apparently one of the few models made by anyone ever that actually hit refrigerating temperatures, and can actually cool itself down to operating temperature without help. It's nice to see the rear battery finally gettin' some love after this last year of mostly nothingness. *Oh!* And I completed the MK I Prototype of my camp shower setup. Should be really nice for those long hot dusty trips where all you want is a shower!

So, today I popped the headlight assemblies off for the fifth time this year, to finish the LED swap. Everyone interested in swapping to LEDS, I reccomend checking out superbrightleds.com , their quality is excellent, and usually their prices (although they charge per bulb) are generally much cheaper than buying LEDs in pairs from big box stores. The only exterior bulbs that aren't LED yet are the original headlight illuminator bulbs, but they aren't really a functional asset anymore, so I'm not too worried about it. I mean, they will get replaced eventually, but all of the "functional" bulbs are now LED. What functional purpose does it serve? Well, I'm hoping that they'll last longer than conventional bulbs, given the fact that the rattling of OHV use tends to diminish their overall life. We'll see!

I'm surprised it never struck me to investigate those 3 wires. they were always there, I just figured they were part of the trailer harness, I never realized that they threw a whole 'nother set of bulbs in there! All I had to do luckily is splice those into the tail circuit. Looks good!

Well, curiosity got the better of me. Today I picked up a pair of red LED bulbs and set out on wiring the "dead space" bulbs into the brake lights. I used red since that spot isn't filtered red as much as the actual brake light is. I just used T-splicers to join the wires to their respective circuits. I'm gonna repeat them here because it too me way to long to find them online, even with the power of Google. Stop/brake- White/Tan wire Tail light- Black Yellow Left Turn Signal- Dark Green/Red Right Turn Signal-Brown/Red Negative- Black You'll be left with 1 wire, which is your backup lights. The socket wires simply got cut off of the towing harness (the towing harness is a set of 4 wires that just run to the front of the vehicle... it'll get removed entirely soon) Wired up! Now, in the housing... And with the brake pedal pressed: Looks pretty good actually. It's funny, I'ts like it's a bulb spot that DaimlerChrysler decided against using. The hole is just a 1" hole drilled out, but looking inside the housing, it appears to have the reflector and everything just like any of the "used" sockets. It's like they went through all the trouble of engineering it, and just decided "Meh, nevermind."

All right, I forgot that back before I bought this rig, it was a tow vehicle. Because it was, the previous owner installed a Blue Ox bulb and socket wiring kit (BX8869). What this means is that the "dead space" below the backup light has a 2357 size bulb in it. When illuminated, it looks something like this: This is a dual filament bulb, so I could piggyback it onto the brake lights and have a different styling to the taillights. I'm also curious as to what it'd look like just wired into the brake light, so that it only comes on when you push the brakes. I only discovered this today when I pulled my tail lights off to convert my tail lights to LED bulbs. Of course, I'd have to put LEDs in these spots, but its only a thought for now...

Today I modified a doorman Coolant tank (Doorman 603-001) to fit as a washer fluid bottle. It's a small little bottle, but it does the job. In fact, its a perfect snug fit. I should still be able to service the air filter without fiddling with this too much. Not too shabby for $7 and some epoxy.

The adapter going from the grille "snorkel" piece to the canister is a 4" to 3" paired with a 60 degree elbow. The 4" side is tightened all the way down, and grips that piece pretty well.

Today I got the rest of the parts together for the preliminary install of the canister filter. I wasn't gonna order it for a while, but when DAvy pointed out that it was on sale, I went for it. I sourced other parts from ebay, and from Spectre as well. I also ended up making a final trip to both Oreilly and Autozone for small parts. I ended up buying "cheap" silicon 90 degree pieces because I wanted to stretch the end over the throttle body rather than just throw a 4" to 3" adapter on, especially since the TB is only like 3.3". I wanted it to be snug and (hopefully) watertight, although it'll probably never see that extreme of water. On the spectre vacuum adapter, I went through and epoxy'd all the plugs. I also went ahead and used Spectre's shiny "Modular" components instead of pvc pipe because their components have a ridge the goes around the edge, which makes it a rather tight fit in the connectors, even without the clamps. I also ran it down and into the stock "snorkel" for the time being. This should give it a tiny bit more protection from rain that just sticking it through. I know that this will likely not give me much of an economy boost, well maybe going 65-70MPH or so, in the high RPMs, but not on street or highway driving. I doubt I'll get better fuel economy either. I didn't do this because of the so called "gains" associated with modified air intakes. I did it to make the original design a bit more compact. My next project well make use of the newly found space.

Eventually I'd like to snorkel Pegasus, mostly because it gets your intake up and out of the sand, which is my biggest problem out here. As it sits, this filter will replace a VERY sandy stock filter.

Same here! Now I have spacers and new bushings on order for the rear sway bar, and I also snagged the spectre canister filter while it is on sale! I was considering getting it anyways so I can relocate my washer fluid bottle. When you said it was on sale, well... that kind of made my mind up. I guess great minds think alike, haha

Yesterday the d44a skid arrived, and I painted it up. I got cheeky and stenciled out "YOU JUST GOT OWNED BY A WJ" on it. Why? "Why would you do something so cheeky, Mike?" It's actually is a little bit of a Joke I'm gonna play on NAU 4x4. Every year we do an annual trip to Moab, UT, and on Poison Spider Mesa, in "The Wedgie" someone usually sticks a gopro in the crack, and you get a shot like this: http://gfycat.com/MarvelousFlawedIguana So this year someone's gonna get a good laugh when they review the footage. The 44a skid is strapped up and ready to go. I just need a spacer to use the sway bar, so for now it has been pulled off again.

It takes a little bit longer, but I think it was worth it. Get yourself a vise grip sheet metal tool and a alligator style vice grip, and it'll be done in no time. I used the angle grinder with a metal cutting disc to take off the first inch or so, and then used tin snips to cut the relief cuts. I used all angle grinder (with a little sawzall) on the rears, since the inner and outer fenders merge together back there. I went through almost 3 cutting discs back there.