gogmorgo

The year our local CFL team won the Grey Cup, after the celebration in the student lounge a few of us climbed up onto the roof of one of the more prominent buildings on campus and ran the team flag up the flagpole. Except we didn’t hang it from the rope, one of the smaller guys shimmied up the pole and zip-tied it onto the pole itself just below the Canada flag. This was the end of November, and it was still up there when classes ended in April. Again, not something I can recommend doing.

I once drove with six adult-sized people in the cab of my bucket-seat floor-shift MJ. I won’t pretend it was an intelligent idea, or particularly comfortable, and we didn’t go very far, but it did happen.

Been thinking about this again lately. I bought all the stuff to build the harness last fall/winter, but it's just been sitting in a shopping bag in the corner. Don't really know what happened there but I sorta lost interest... ADHD things I guess. At any rate, I just went out and tested the latching and unlatching voltage of a handful of relays I have sitting around, including the ones I bought, using the dash light dimmer from a headlight switch I have laying around to reduce voltage. They all switched at around 5.5-6V according to my very cheap analog multimeter. I'm not confident in the accuracy of the reading, but judging by the MJ's voltmeter the multimeter reads low, so even though it's borderline I don't anticipate the relays will switch with the DRL voltage. More of a concern is that they don't unlatch until the power is cut completely, which may be a bit problematic if the headlights are switched off with the high beams on. So hopefully the brief delay I see when doing that is actually an interruption in power and not just filaments warming up, because I don't know that I'll be able to find a resistor that knocks 5V down to <1V without also knocking 12V down below 6V. So I'm thinking I'll just go ahead and build the harness like I was planning, see what happens... if I ever get around to it. Lots going on right now, unfortunately.

I'm currently running the Rampage H4 housings can dig up a part number if you want. Looking online they're roughly the same price as the XingMang as well, and made in the USA. I'm happy enough with them that I'd recommend them to someone else. They did take modifying the metal bulb holder to fit the slightly deeper housing, but just two quick cuts with the death wheel. I'm also just running the bulbs they came with, and no relay harness for now because I still haven't got around to building one that plays nice with the DRL.. I keep meaning to get on that. In terms of "brightness", I'd say they're pretty comparable to the stock sealed beams, but that's likely mostly down to colour temperature... a halogen's a halogen. Where they really shine is the beam pattern. They get light down the road where I need it but without losing out on beam width to get into the ditches, and keep the cutoff appropriate for glare into oncoming traffic, and do so with pretty even distribution without overly intense hot spots that make it harder to see other parts of the field of vision. And unlike an e-code light they don't have that disastrous upward kick on the right side that makes driving in snow nearly impossible and every road sign a blinding reflection. Where I live and drive is one of the darker parts of the planet (world's second biggest dark-sky preserve), the highways are only two lanes, there's curves and hills, and the wildlife is abundant, and much larger than an itty bitty whitetail. And coming around the corner when someone else is running a definitely illegal light bar... well let's just say that not a single person on the road at 3am is as alert as they think they are and can't get to that switch as quick as they think they can. There's a reason they're illegal and should not be used on the road. And frankly I don't know how people can stare back into their own overly bright lights reflected off every road sign and think it's appropriate. One more point that I've made before and will make again is that you can have the best lighting system in the world and it'll be worthless if it's not aimed correctly. https://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/aim/aim.html It's cheap (effectively free) and easy, and I'd start there before throwing out money on lighting upgrades you might not actually need. They need re-aimed any time you do anything with ride height, have the front end apart, plus should be checked periodically, not to mention the manufacturer likely never did it from new on ANY vehicle. Personally I like sealed beams. Every time you replace the bulb you get a new lens, so they don't get cloudy, scratched, or chipped over time. They're definitely adequate, so long as you keep them clean, aimed properly, and won't be doing much more than 65mph in the dark. And they don't have the annoying high-colour-temp whiteness that I find very stressful to my eyes that I haven't seen an automotive LED come without. But they're definitely not the best lights out there if you do lots of regular highway driving at night.

Too hard to unscrew I guess… just like the screws on the upper panel.

Saw a post on the facepage that these will be up for sale this week?

Yeah, the screws along the base of the windshield might be an issue for some. I don’t remember it being a problem the first time I did it, but it took some screwing around the second time.

There's a decent write-up in the DIY index. Links to this: https://www.cherokeeforum.com/f51/dash-removal-35444/ It's for doing the process in an XJ, but the only difference with an MJ is the brake pedal release handle is bolted to the lower dash panel, which should be easy enough to figure out on your own.

Thinking from an economy standpoint, fuel savings are a thing, but not so significant unless you’re doing a bunch of miles. I just drove the above little turd about 250km into the city, normally I’d take the ZJ but the weather was nice and I didn’t need to maybe sleep in the car this time, and it uses slightly less than half the fuel as the ZJ. On a roughly 650mile drive and $3/gal gas I might save $50 fuel. $100 in savings every time you go home, depending on the cost of fuel. That’s a lot when you look at it that way, but compared to the costs of purchasing, insuring, and maintaning a third vehicle? It’s less of a concern if two vehicles are sitting at home uninsured and not moving, but then you’re contending with the vehicles you care about sitting. If you’re not using a vehicle, does it make a difference if it’s sitting at home or at school? My experience on a college campus wasn’t one of vandalism or parking damage. The few vehicles I knew of that were broken into had been street parked instead of in the dorm parking lots. In terms of people hitting cars? It never happened to my MJ, or anyone else I knew. If you parked at the back of the lot like I did instead of right next to the doors, it wasn’t a concern, and there were quite a few students who only used their cars to get between home and campus, and just bussed or walked everywhere while at school and who left their cars at the back of the dorm lots. The day-use lots on campus were maybe a different story, but I had no issues there either when I was living off-campus and commuting, even leaving the truck parked there until well after midnight on occasion. The few places things did occasionally happen were like, outside the campus pub (like any bar) and directly between the football stadium and the dorms, but it was still pretty rare to ever see anything happen. Any college campus I’ve been on has had a very present security force, and everything is patrolled very regularly around the clock. They know the trouble spots, and it’s tough to get away with anything suspicious-looking. The administration wants everyone on campus to be comfortable and feel safe so it’s usually a pretty big deal.

Yeah. I still see them popping up in searches from time to time, but not as often as they used to. It’s also not much better than a Walmart grade bike, so not the best option if you want lots of good use out of it. A couple years ago I picked up an older Kona for $400 at a garage sale, and have only invested about $100 in parts to make it rideable. It’s been great ever since, and I’m a bigger guy riding in rough places so I’m pretty hard on it. Spending the same money on a Walmart-grade bike won’t get you that far… they usually start falling apart on me instantly. I’m not even sure I’d want one if I saw it for sale locally. It would be kinda cool to own a Jeep bike, but these ones also kinda feel they’re selling out the name just to slap it on cheap bikes, not on a quality product to take anywhere.

I don’t know if the newer ones are any different, but we have a couple 2012ish at work, and they’re not great. It’s all Focus running gear and hardware so we’ve never had issues sourcing parts, but Focus hardware isn’t entirely up to the task of being a work truck. They do okay, maintenance wise they’re not that much worse than anything else, but if you’re crewed by ham-fisted 200lb gorillas, the parts drivers touch will fall apart. We “upgraded” one of our plumbers to a 2006 Uplander from another department once the Transit got too rough, at around 130,000 miles, and he’ll also tell you it was a nice upgrade. If you find yourself sourcing tires, make sure you double check load and pressure ratings, don’t just go by size. There are lots of options in Focus sizes, but again, not all Focus things are rated for truck life.

As do I on everything I own, but sadly it doesn’t seem to catch everything, especially on my phone.

I dunno. I did alright with an MJ at college. I only once was asked to help someone move something, but the flip side is with only having one passenger seat I never got asked to DD. I will say though that once I moved off campus it would’ve been nice to have something a little more economical. There was also that one time I blew a heater hose on the way to class, and by the time I had it patched up I was so late I nearly skipped the class, until I remembered I had a midterm and then I showed up with about twenty minutes left to go, the prof accepted my excuse and let me sit down and write it… it took me 15 minutes to rush through exam, and I managed a 90%. But not all profs would’ve been that generous to let me write at all, and not all of the classes I took would’ve been feasible to write the whole exam in 15 minutes. That was just a French class, and I was already fluent.

I did a thing recently that I feel is important to share. I hacked the Facebook advertising algorithm. Not sure why it popped up at all, but about a month ago I got an ad for lingerie. So I clicked it. Then subsequently for about a week I clicked on every single lingerie ad. Now roughly 75% of the ads I see on Facebook are for things I don’t mind observing but that I’m very unlikely to impulse buy.

Quite a few of them running around this side of the border, a lot of them came over in the mid to late 2000’s. Cool little trucks, very popular among hobby farmers and “homesteaders” (for lack of a better word). Basically anywhere you’d want something akin to a comfortable ATV that you can take down the highway, or a little truck you can park anywhere.

Yeah it’s pretty dumb. I went car shopping with a roommate not long ago, and all the 2-3 year old cars on dealer lots were barely marked down from new prices, and the condition most of them were in, looked like 20-year-old work trucks. frankly I’d be embarrassed to be showing cars like that for sale… but people are still buying them. Almost no used trucks at the city dealers either, one of the salesmen said they were all getting scooped as soon as they hit the lots, to be hauled south and resold in the States. It boggles the mind.

The mountains have been getting their first dusting of the season this weekend, and it was finally clear enough to see them yesterday. It’s been so smokey for so long you’d almost forget there were giant piles of rock scattered around. Got our first frost this morning, too.

X2. Snow level was only 4600’ this morning. My bed’s about to get covered in salt.

Scrolling through the belt selection on Rockauto for an ‘86 2.5L, they show v-belts for non-a/c and serp belts for with a/c, although to add to the confusion they also have v-belts for dealer-installed a/c. They only list v-belts for the 2.8. You may need to move your old alternator pulley onto a new alternator.

I would suspect inventory control as well. One of the yards I used to go to spray bombed their own inventory numbers on the side, and wanted you to keep track, although if you came back with a bunch of stuff from different vehicles they would just put it all under one number, unless it was a big part.