theksmith

A mod a did a long time ago but never wrote about... notice the red button: i had just upgraded all of my interior lights to LED, and though they made a super bright and very evenly lit interior... on night runs they now destroyed your night vision whenever you needed to just turn on the overhead lamp for a second. so i wired up the main overhead lamps with a switch that turns on night-vision-friendly red LEDs when pushed: as you can see from the first pic, the regular white LEDs still work on the normal switches, but you just have the option now of turning on the red ones instead. unfortunately, the light isn't quite bright enough to read by, but it's plenty bright enough to see around the interior and find that french fry you just dropped. i got most of the interior LED upgrades, including the red ones from http://www.superlumination.com the red ones are the "12 Volt Stainless Steel Led Accent Lights" from this page: http://superlumination.com/indicator.htm

Ok so yesterday I saw the new "District 9" movie by Peter Jackson (Lord of The Rings)... first it was the best scifi i've seen in forever! It starts out wicked slow, but stick with it and in the end you'll be like "that was a dam well done movie!" but another kewl thing for our crowd was all the great military and expedition style vehicles it had... really neat giant troop carrier stuff and some smaller decked out armored trucks as well... i couldn't find much info on the net about what the vehicles are, but check out a few of the images I was able to find: UPDATE: a friend of mine found that most of the vehicles are in fact actual south-african military stuff built by Land Systems OMC: http://www.baesystems.com/WorldwideLocations/SouthAfrica/LandSystemsSouthAfricaLSSA/LandSystemsOMC/index.htm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casspir http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G6_Howitzer

Offroad passport now has official schwag for sale! We have opened a Cafe Press store. Nearly anything you can slap a logo on is for sale. Now you can support Offroad Passport and look stylish doing it! So go get your shirts, jackets, stickers, mousepads and pet clothes here: http://www.cafepress.com/offroadpassport

i'm still dying to do this one, i was too sick to make it last time, though i tried!

thanks man, i'll definitely take you up on that when i'm not working so much, maybe in september!

so over the last couple of months i developed a shimmy at around 45 mph... then suddenly over the past couple weeks it turned into full-blown rip-the-steering-wheel-out-of-your-hands death wobble! i did the easy things, check tightness on all the botls, tire rotations and balance - actually, i run the Dynabeads dynamic balancing media, so i should always be in balance, but i put few more ounces in just in case i wasn't running enough perhaps... nothing ez helped. i've been working lots of hours so no time to get under the jeep and really try to find the problem, so i left it with Joe at Absolute Offroad in west Phoenix on Wednesday to make it his problem! fortunately it turned out to just be the track bar bushings... they were completely shot he said. he replaced them with some of Kevin's super-hard durometer bushings and charged me a half hour of labor and his cost on the bushings... can't beat that deal. and now everything is back to normal, no shimmy, no death wobble!

OK, the build thread is up-to-date as of now, so no more copying an pasting from my old thread over on JeepForum... everything from here on out has accurate date/time stamps.

went camping over the 4th of july up near Flagstaff. it rained pretty hard one time and consequently... MUD! little splash video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJCWTgILvsA it was a healthy weekend the first bottle was nearly empty long before dark on the first day...

crappy cell phone pic, but it's always nice to compare to a stocker to appreciate all the work and money we put into these toys...

on my last real wheeling trim (mud springs) i managed to get mud and rocks embedded in my wheel bead area and couldn't get it out good enough on the trail to hold air... so i swapped to my spare. (yeah, same trip i broke a valve stem on, but different wheel). well i finally got off my *** and broke the bead and cleaned it out and put it all back together so i have a spare again.. woo hoo! you can kinda see down in there in this pic: breaking the bead: cleaning it out:

bumper is getting beat up pretty bad lately, lost one of the grille inserts for the fog light holes that i made, mangled another... definitely need a new bumper soon. however, in the mean-time, i trimmed it up to get rid of the worst parts and improve approach: looks pretty good, should have just done that a long time ago! i used a combination of a hook-end blade in a utility knife, a pair of metal snips, and then a Dremel with a sanding drum to clean things up and round the inside corner. took about 30 minutes including time to remove and replace the bumper.

So i forgot to mention i won grand cherokee of the month over on http://www.jeepforum.com back in march! Ya! sometimes the best presents are ones you aren't expecting! got the mail saturday and was suprised with a package: thanks to the amsoil dude (forgot his screen-name) for sending my shirt from the March rig of the month contest... very nice!

so i've been neglecting my jeep lately because of a new on/off-road toy: plus the jeep was in the body shop for a couple weeks getting several things repaired.. but should have a couple minor mods coming soon... stay tuned!

wooo hoo, headed out in a few hours for a great weekend i think.. camping all weekend near Mingus Mountian, AZ: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=34+42.991,+-112+09.999&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=36.863178,78.75&ie=UTF8&ll=34.713502,-112.161913&spn=0.018697,0.038452&t=h&z=15 then saturday doing a trail run called Smiley Rock up in the same area: http://arizonatrailways.com/cs/blogs/trails/archive/2008/06/26/Smiley-Rock-Trail-and-Martin-Canyon-Trail-Jerome.aspx then on sunday, attending the Overland Expo in Prescott, AZ! http://www.ovexpo.com

and i grabbed a picture of my one other carnage item from that last Mud Springs trip: found that when i went to air up, couldn't believe it was holding air still! unfortunately, the valvestem is part of the TPMS and so i ordered a used replacment sensor/valvestem from ebay for $26 including shipping... waiting for it to get here. i'll only do that once though, the next time i slice off a valve stem, i'll probably remove all the TPMS and just put in regular valve stems.

and new blend/recirc doors were installed while i had the wheel/column out... to pull the steering wheel, this was the loan-a-tool i got from autozone, a 2/3 jaw puller: this is what i looks like when you're entire dash is on the floor (plus an extra steering column): i already had new blend/recirc doors and housing that i got from a guy on ebay who ended up selling his GC before ever installing them.... turns out my recirc door wasn't broken, but instead the actuall actuator was busted: pondered fixing it with a hose clamp like such: but opted to just get a new one from the dealer since they had it in stock, with jeep club discount came to $65. i went ahead an put a hose clamp on each actuator as insurance against that kind of break. overall the whole swapping steering columns, removing dash, removing a/c box, and replacing stuff and putting it all back only took like 10 hours total... i don't see how dealership can justify a trained mechanic charging 12 hours, should be more like 8 for a trained mechanic at most. the hardest part by far was disconnecting/reconnecting the heater hoses at the firewall... there's just no good way to get your hand in there, total PITA. other than that, not a bad project, just time consuming!

while wheeling sunday, suddenly there was pop/crack sound from my steering wheel column and then the steering wheel was loose. by loose i mean you can wobble it forward and backward. it is NOT loose when turning left/right, just you can wobble the whole wheel as if it was barely attached to the column. this is a tilt column, and i can still tilt it and lock the tilt just as always. it's like something is broken between around the key area and the wheel itself. i removed the airbag and can see the main nut that attaches the wheel to the colum is still firmly seated. i will have to get a puller tomorrow to remove the wheel and further inspect the column inside of where the clockspring and switch stalks go. ------------- well i took off the wheel this weekend and found that something inside the column housing was broken (seemed to be inside the tilt area). ooked like you could maybe take a snap ring off the end of the column and maybe remove the shaft from the housing... but i opted to just grab a new entire steering column from an 04 with low miles at the salvage yard. cost me $150, but that included a new wheel/airbag that i can probably sell on ebay, and clockspring and switches that i will keep for backups since i hear that the clockspring is a common failure. video showing the play in the column: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEdm1nNdbow

Video - jump to like 7 minutes in to watch the last 2 of us go up: and yes, i was driving a bit fast, but without any lockers, sometimes you need a little momentum. (and of course, it was steeper than it ever looks in video) it was a solid 3.5 trail, loose terrain, lots of off-camber, very fun! Other than the video, none of us really captured any of the roughest areas in a pic, too busy driving i guess!: http://rides.webshots.com/album/571016576qbqtrL http://picasaweb.google.com/kristoffersmith/20090412MudSprings http://s187.photobucket.com/albums/x165/sprinksbeme/Mud%20Springs%204%2012%2009/

2 runs ago (Crown King), i started hearing a thunking noise coming from what seemed like the center of the vehicle. i thought it was my exhaust hitting my skid-plate mounting tube as the clearance is very close and the sound just seemed sorta holow like a muffler body hitting something solid. so when i got home, i bent the exhaust hanger a little to move the exhaust up and thought i had it all fixed up. then on a little scenic run last saturday, i started hearing it again, but it got worse and worse as the trail went one. when i got home, it took forever to find the real problem because i had it in my head that it was in the center of the vehicle... well lesson learned - always question your assumptions! here was the final problem: i don't know if i nailed a rock and did this, or if the mounting straps are just weak and tore apart. i think the straps just can't handle trying to hold down the beefy addco while the rest of the jeep is pulling it 2 different directions in extreme flex situations. i'm a big fan of the rear addco, but i don't have time right now to work up a good rear disconnect option (though i have some ideas for one eventually). so i guess i'll be running without the swaybar for right now.

a picture with my good buddies' jeep (Number 7), from the Anza Borrego trip, this is just south of Truck Haven on the way to the Pumpkin Patch: and some better pictures from my friend's camera of my ineptness at navigating The Squeeze...

did the popular Back Road to Crown King trail again, here's a few pics from the trip... sweet new mog we saw on the trail: the small group, we had a liberty with us that was slightly lifted... the driver did a great job pushing it through all the obstacles with a tire in the air all the time

i'm still running the rear Addco sway bar because i love how it handles on the street.. but for those that wonder how bad i affects flex: here is back when i was running the stock rear bar: compared to with the addco rear again: not exactly from the same angle, but you can see how much farther down in the wheel-well the rear tire is in the first shot, and the tire is puckering a little as it still has some weight on it. in the second shot, the tire is off the ground about 9" and is a fair amount further up in the wheel-well. i think if i didn't have a rear bar at all, then in the second shot i would just barely still have the rear on the ground.

Heart Attack Hill! the pucker factor: i was very nervous after watching others go down... however, my spotter put me in a perfect line, and as i inched down extremely slowly the suspension flexed well... ended up not being a big deal; A few more shots from Anza-Borrego, the full album is here: http://picasaweb.google.com/kristoffersmith/20090226AnzaBorrego# Parked at the end of the road for The Slot: Poser shot near Sandstone Canyon: Addco rear swaybar limiting flex: Night Run at Blow Sand Hill: Sunrise at camp: misc: