Eagle

Yes, that would work. One path to ground is as good as another -- as long as it doesn't run through you (or your wife). Just remember that there's no way (that I can think of) to make this work-around have ground fault protection. It's not required unless you're using the welder on an outdoor receptacle, but it's never a bad idea. That said, I have a 120-volt (note: 110-volt and 120-volt get used interchangeably. It was 110 volts when I was a kid, but I think if you put a voltmeter on one of your circuits today it would show 120 volts) hobby welder that I run on a garage outlet. The house was built in 1950, so about 50 years before the advent of GFI protection. It works. Solid wire or stranded -- it doesn't really matter. Romex is solid. Stranded will be much more flexible and easier to handle and to coil up when the welder isn't being used.

Check pressure at the fuel rail. If the pump doesn't build pressure, it won't shut off because the regulator won't tell it to shut off.

I've had a shimmy in the front of the 2000 XJ Sport. Now that the weather has broken, by playing musical wheels I have narrowed the culprit down to the left front. Next step is to check the balance, but my friend who has been my go-to guy for tire balance recently left the VW dealership and switched to a different profession. So I no longer have someone who has free access to a Hunter machine and, more importantly, knows how to use it. So I decided to start by checking it with a bubble balancer. I've had one for close to 60 years, but I haven't used it for at least 40 years -- if not more. It took awhile, but I found it this afternoon. Only to discover that the new alloy wheels are laid out differently than the old steel wheels I used to work with. My balancer has a small platform with three cone-shaped protrusions for the lug holes in the wheel. Problem -- if I try to set the wheel on the balancer good side up, the tire rests on the floor long before the wheel mounting surface can contact the little cones. If I try to put the wheel on back side up -- the raised spokes hit the platform before the wheel can rest on the cones. So I guess my trusty old wheel balancer is getting retired. I have one of these on order from Amazon: It'll be interesting when it gets here and I try it out.

Hmmm ... looks like a hybrid between the "skinny" and "fat" ones above.

The "skinny" stalk is the correct one.

As 1989commanche and Manche757 have commented, you have a 30-amp, 125/250 volt receptacle, wired for 250 volts. You can make up a patch cord and put a standard 120-volt receptacle on the other end. 1989comanche suggests buying a 30-amp dryer cord and just putting a receptacle end on that. That will work, BUT ... you will then have a cord that has two hot wires running the full length, and you'll only be using one of them. You will have to isolate the unconnected end of that unused hot wire very well, and be sure that it can never come in contact with anything. The other issue is that the receptacle you have isn't grounded, and the plug for your welder is probably a grounding (3-wire) plug. You need to come up with some way of making a connection for the grounding electrode in the welder plug. For this reason, I would go in an opposite direction for the patch cord. I would make up my own. You will need the correct plug -- it's called a NEMA 10-30 plug (and the corresponding receptacle is the same -- https://www.stayonline.com/product-resources/nema-straight-blade-reference-chart.asp ). Your new 120-volt cord will have three wires -- black, white, and either green or bare. Black is hot -- connect that to either of the slanted contacts in the NEMA 10-30 plug. White is neutral -- connect that to the L-shaped contact in the NEMA 10-30 plug. Do not connect anything to the second slanted contact. That completes the electrical power to your patch cord. But you still have to worry about completing the ground. If you use 12-gauge, 12-2 Romex cable or 10-gauge, 10-2 Romex cable for your patch, it should be yellow. Inside the yellow outer jacket it will have an insulated black wire, an insulated white wire, and a bare ground wire. That's fine as long as the bare ground stays in the jacketed cable, since normally the ground wire doesn't carry any current. However, if you have to split that off to make a ground connection, you probably don't want a length of bare wire running to who knows where, since in the event of a short circuit at the welder that bare wire will become energized. If it contacts anything between the welder and the ground connection -- the stray current will try to ground through whatever that bare conductor touches. You need to identify where you can make a connection to ground, then connect from that bare conductor in the Romex to the ground. I would do that by buying a sufficient length of 12-gauge or 10-gauge green-insulated wire (green is for ground -- black is for hot, white is for neutral) and splicing that to the bare conductor at the NEMA 10-30 plug and then running it to wherever you can make a connection to ground. I doubt that your hobby welder is a 30-amp unit. It's probably designed for a 20-amp circuit, in which case 12-gauge wire is all you need for the draw. BUT -- if the dryer circuit has a 30-amp fuse, then you should use 10-gauge wire for your patch cable because 30-amp circuits should be wired with 10-gauge wire.

Please post the picture. It'll help.

Check. Check. Check. Check. My house was built in 1950 and it satisfies all those requirements -- and a lot more. The original setup was a fuse panel such as Knucklehead described. It finally started creating brownouts, so I replaced it with a Seimans breaker panel, then a few years later I added a subpanel to get a few more spaces for things like a generator tie-in and a welder outlet. All work done by me, to code. I found a questionable connection to ground when the satellite TV guys were doing their install. And the way they wanted to do it wasn't to code. So I kicked them out, prewired the house with coax to have it done right, and installed new grounding rods to ensure that the service was properly grounded, and then that the satellite dish was grounded and that ground was properly bonded to the primary grounding electrode system. In general (unless local rules dictate otherwise) a homeowner who lives in the house can perform his/her own wiring, but it still requires a permit and an inspection. Knucklehead isn't the owner, so he can't [legally] do it himself. And, since the owner doesn't live in the house, the owner can't do it, either (unless he's a licensed electrician). I like the suggestion of the patch cord from the 220 outlet to provide a 110 outlet for the small welder. But I have a concern: electrically, that works. 220 volt circuits have two "hot" wires, and the circuit is 220 hot-to-hot and 110 from either hot to neutral. All the 110 volt circuits in a house are 110 from one side or the other of the 220 volt input from the street to neutral. The concern is that with a patch cable like that you're running a single pole circuit off a 2-pole fuse or breaker. I would say go ahead and make up the cable, but test it by intentionally shorting it or overloading it to verify that it trips properly. Making an extension cord doesn't require an electrician or a permit, but replacing or adding an outlet does. Also: The electrical code is not retroactive. A house built in 1950 does not have to meet the 2019 electrical code to be legal, it only has to conform to whatever code was current at the time the house was built. Any repairs or replacements must meet the 1950 code. Any new work (added circuits or additional outlets on an existing circuit) have to meet the new code.

I would be very worried about 30-amp fuses for the domestic circuits, because I've never EVER seen or heard of a house wired for 30-amp circuits. 30-amp circuits require 10-gauge wire. Most houses are wired with 14-gauge wire (15-amp circuits). In newer houses, the electrical code requires a 20-amp circuit in the kitchen, and a 20-amp circuit for the washer (IIRC). One of the problems with fuses is that when somebody frequently overloads a circuit and blows the fuse (which is what's supposed to happen), the occupants too often just stick in a larger fuse and think they've "solved" the problem. They haven't solved it. The fuse is to protect the wiring. Put in too large a fuse, and now the wires can overheat and cause a fire. Post a photo of the 220-volt outlet you have, and the 220-volt welder you're looking at. BTW -- congratulations on the wedding.

I've been told that it's illegal to install used seatbelts in a vehicle used on public highways. I don't know if that's federal law or state law, but I do know that no junkyard in Connecticut will sell a seatbelt.

The difference in diameter doesn't put any more stress on the differential than going around a corner. In fact, that's the whole point of a differential -- to allow one wheel on an axle to rotate at a different speed than the opposing wheel. I used to be in the school of thought that preserved the spare so I would only have to buy four tires instead of five. But that was when you could count on the same tire still being available when you bought a new set. Today that's generally not the case. The six-tire rotation I'll be using won't have any tire sit out two rotations. I'm altering the recommended pattern so the left front doesn't go to the spare, it goes to the garage. The one that's in the garage goes to the spare in the vehicle. Well, okay ... I guess you could call that sitting out two rotations but I don't see it as making a major difference. On my wife's 2000 XJ Classic, the factory tires went something like 80,000 miles using a 5-tire rotation. I rotated every 10,000 miles, so without doing any mental gymnastics for precision I'd say each tire probably saw 65,000 or 70,000 miles. If there had been a 6th tire in the rotation pattern, I probably would have gone 100,000 before needing new tires.

You're right. I didn't even pick up on that.

If you were trying to live on social security and put a daughter through college you might believe. Now ... I didn't ask about tire age, I asked if anyone had any thoughts about the 6-tire rotation. Please address the question and leave the extraneous comments for the peanut gallery.

These two "spare spares" don't seem to have ever been exposed to sunlight. Sidewalls and treads show zero cracking of any kind. I keep them in the garage, and spray them occasionally with Tire Foam, which leaves a light film of silicone on the surface. I trust them for daily driving. I don't think I would want them for a cross-country trip in the middle of summer and a full payload.

For a great many years I always did 4-tire rotations, preferring to keep my spare new so when it was time to buy new tires I only had to buy four. In recent years, though, tires last longer, and the manufacturers drop tire models. For example, the Goodyear tires that came on my 2000 XJ Sport were Wrangler RT/S (I think). Whatever tire it was -- it's no longer available. So on the new XJs I have been doing 5-tire rotations. However, through a combination of blunders (some on my part, some on the part of the local Walmart auto shop) I recently came into possession of a set of five additional, matching alloy wheels and two more of the same tire -- both previously only used as spares, never been on the road. These tires are now twenty years old, but in good (perfect) shape. Most local tire shops won't even touch a tire that's more than ten years old, for liability reasons. Since I can't match them, there's no point in trying to keep the two "new" spares unused, so I'm thinking of going into a 6-tire rotation rather than 5. The 5-tire rotation pattern is as shown here; [/img] Since the XJ is a rear-wheel /4-wheel drive, I have been using the rearward cross pattern, on the right. My proposed new plan is to bring one of the spare spares into the rotation (the other is on a steel rim, so that will remain out of the pattern) by moving it into the spare, then following the diagram except that the left front will go to the garage rather than to the spare in the vehicle. That will allow me to clean up that tire and wheel at my leisure before the next rotation. Has anyone else ever used a 6-tire rotation pattern? Make sense?

I want this one: If Halle Berry is included. (Monster's Ball)

I was thinking the same thing.

And less lift ... and a different nose clip ... and if it didn't have that fugly show bar. It could cost 5 or 10 grand to get that thing back to looking like a self-respecting Comanche.

Must be that the extra two letters are too burdensome to type ... or something. I agree with you.

Find an '87 thru '90 Cherokee 4.0L with a 5-speed. Use the steering column, transmission, bellhousing, and transfer case from that. The driveshaft won't be right, because the Cherokee wheelbase is shorter than either a longbed or shortbed Comanche. You'll have to have a driveshaft made, or modified. You'll also need the interior boots for the shifter (there are two, an upper and a lower).

He asked about rear shocks. The XJ used bar pins on the upper end of the rear shocks, the MJ didn't. And his custom lower mounts don't. No bar pin eliminators needed.

It has been said that "Necessity is the mother of invention." Good improv use of materials at hand. "Adapt, improvise, overcome." Ooh rah. I'd be very interested in seeing a couple of closer/better photos.

Why not just buy shocks that are the right length for your suspension? That's why they make shocks in different lengths. You put the shock mounts where they are for a reason.

Go for not more than 2 inches, and add a rear sway bar such as Hornbrod had on his. Find a front sway bar for a ZJ V8.

Good call on the bastard packs. Dearching is a crap shoot -- no matter what a shop tells you, you'll end up with either too much drop, or not enough. The do-it-yourself route allows you to mix and match to get where you want to be. Which brings up the question of where you want to be. I'm going to recommend that you do the front first, and I'm also going to suggest that you crawl underneath and examine very carefully the relationship between the oil pan and the front axle. One of my friends in NAXJA NAC, from Pennsylvania, lowered either an XJ or an MJ many years ago, and I distinctly remember his telling me that he was limited in how low he could take it by the problem of the oil pan hitting the front axle. Don't forget to allow for suspension movement. The closer you get the oil pan to the axle, the less suspension compression you can allow. You'll have to pay careful attention to bump stops.