gogmorgo

I was just flipping through the Snap-on catalogue and remembered this thread. Only came up with what had already been come up with. Figured I’d post up just to complain about the lack of six-sided wrenches out there. Most of us know better than to use 12-pointed sockets on a six-sided bolt if we can avoid it, but put a wrench on it and suddenly 12-points are okay? I was dropping my ZJ’s front driveshaft earlier this week and chose to do it in my driveway instead of at work. This meant dragging out my “lesser” home tools, specifically the Mastercraft long handled wrenches to get at the bolts on the tcase yoke. It honestly looked like the shaft had never been out to change any of the ujoints, which is surprising at ~200,000miles, but there you go. The lack of clearance meant I couldn’t even get an Xtra-shallow 1/4” socket on there, at least not with the ratchets I had at home. I don’t know if I’d had a better quality 12-point set at home or not it wouldn’t have happened, but one of the bolt heads stripped out. The only six-point wrenches I have are a stubby set, and I had to put a pipe on it to get enough torque… even just 20ft-lbs is 80lbs on the end of a 3” wrench, which is difficult when there’s only room on the wrench for a couple fingers. But yeah. As far as six pointed box ends on the wrenches go in the Snap-on catalog, there’s standard length and stubby, and then the one posted above and the same wrench as a 13-15mm and I don’t even see a standard equivalent for those, just the two metrics. Otherwise the next best 6-pointers are just the flare wrenches, which I guess are better but still not ideal. I don’t have a paper Mac catalogue but they don’t hand much better options from what I can see on the website, although they do make a pretty wide range of six-pointed ratcheting wrenches, which Snap-on doesn’t outside of a handful of double-ended ones. But I’m always nervous about breaking bolts loose with a ratcheting wrench… I’ve picked up a few too many from shared toolboxes that ratchet in both directions…

I’d also recommend tossing down a piece of plywood... or something far less expensive to give a little more support for the floor. That’s a lot of weight bouncing around on pretty thin sheet metal. Or no sheet metal if the back of your XJ looks like what the two I owned did...

I have to ask what you use 2wd low for? Maybe for maneuvering trailers? I can also see it being useful in stop and go traffic. I got stuck behind a collision a few weeks back and even with 4.10’s and stock tires I couldn’t go as slowly in 1st as the line was creeping along.

It might still be salvageable even if it’s not a new product. I’d be concerned about a returned product going the way most of Amazon’s returns go... straight into the trash.

I also wonder about how it applies to the Jeep CAD, although most of the axle disconnects I’ve seen rely on a similar setup, a sliding collar on the axle shaft. The one I’d most be interested in knowing about the effects on MPG are the automatic locking hubs, like the Ford in the mid 2000’s (and probably other years, I’m just not interested enough in Ford trucks to know). Just stop everything from spinning at the spindle. Mind you, that particular system is pretty trash if you don’t want to ever have to get out of the vehicle, considering they like to seize up if you get anywhere near road salt, but at least there’s a visual indicator (assuming the auto hub also spins the dial over to the locked position) and a manual override in the event the actuation system fails. I will add that my fuel economy numbers did drop after I swapped in the one-piece shaft. It’s hardly a scientific study with actual control over driving speeds, weather conditions, fuel pump calibrations, or vehicle deterioration, etc., but with CAD unlocked I have a few fill-ups where I got between 19 and 19.3mpg, and after the one-piece swap I’ve never touched 19 again. I think I’ve seen 18.7 on a road trip that didn’t get recorded, but mostly it’s been below 18.5. Again it’s not a proper scientific study and only anecdotal, and I made no efforts to properly compare before and after or ever to achieve consistent mpg numbers at all, so take it how you will. But while the difference between 18.7 and 19.3 may seem small at only 13 miles further across a 23-gal tank, but that 3% difference does add up over time.

The craziest part about this heat wave for me is how quickly it rolled in. I was out camping just three weeks ago and it snowed enough I was concerned about my tent collapsing. Spring had been pretty slow. I also think this is the first year I’ve had to go work outside at both -42 and +42.

Another obstacle to celebrating at least for me is this crazy heat wave. I don’t know what things are like out east where PCO6 is, but today was the first day this week we didn’t break 40°C. That’s just shy of 110°F, almost unheard of around here. One small town about 200 miles from here, Lytton BC, broke not just the highest Canadian temp record but also the highest temperature ever recorded north of the 50th parallel not just once but three days in a row this week, 46.6, 47.9, then 49.6°C... 121.3°F before getting burnt to the ground by a wildfire that gave residents maybe 15 minutes notice to evacuate. Then last night we had a thunderstorm roll through that dropped almost no rain, and once again has me seriously concerned about this forest of standing dead pine trees surrounding my town. I am not built for this kind of heat and neither is our local wildlife. We’ve had mass fish die-offs due to seriously elevated water temps. The alpine also melted out so suddenly and quickly that ironically we’re also facing flooding problems despite everything being so dry, which also means river levels are going to be seriously low for the fall spawn unless glacier melt really kicks off this summer, which is not great for other reasons. Last summer it was cold and wet and a lot of our taller mountains never lost their snow caps. They’ve almost all melted off this week, two seasons worth of snow.

Well there is this:

The more I’ve been hanging out with “normies” lately the more I realize most people don’t actually notice much about what other people are driving. We had an incident reported over our staff radio the other day with intent to be passed along to law enforcement, and the only information eyewitness had about the offending vehicle was that it was a white SUV. Older trucks, especially smaller ones, don’t attract a ton of attention unless someone knows what they’re looking at, and older vehicles in general don’t necessarily reflect demographics everyone buying new vehicles wants to associate unless the vehicle is old enough to be valuable.

I paid $1.37 yesterday. Per litre. Do your own math.

I’ll throw money at this for two sets. Are we looking at brackets as well?

My dad has a story about this. They used to do it all the time when he was a kid. Then one day as a young teenager he was driving with his much younger brother up front and his sister and mom in the canopy, and was just coming off the highway into town when the throttle linkage came apart and stuck it wide open. It was a home built camper with no windows, and needless to say my grandma was less than impressed with him when he finally found somewhere safe to stop after weaving around through town at full throttle for a few minutes. But the story was more about how he diagnosed the issue on his own and found a rusty nail sitting in the pullout and used it to fix the throttle linkage. 10 years later when my grandpa sold the old farm truck it still had the nail in place.

Mmm... potash.

Here’s a couple more for you. I went solo canoe camping this weekend. Um... yeah. The pictures kinda speak for themselves. It was definitely an adventure.

I’ve got the Napa version, in 1/4, 3/8, and 1/2”. Snap-on also has their brand name on one that looks identical other than the soft part of the handle and the fact it costs double. I’ve seen a couple other brands as well, it might be a GearWrench product but I’m not sure. I have managed to kill the 1/4” (and warrantied it), lost teeth off the ratchet when putting far too much torque into it, but I use the 1/2” for almost everything at work and haven’t had an issue with it.

Were they similar amp-hour batteries to the 18V? With the Milwaukee M18 batteries there’s a very noticeable difference between the 3 and 5Ah batteries. The 3’s really don’t last, to the point I don’t even bother with them unless it was in the tool I picked up, or I only had to drill like, two holes or something. They also seem to put out more current, like the drill seems a bit torquier with the 5 in it than the 3. They also don’t give much warning before quitting, like you might notice like 5-10 seconds of slower drilling and then that’s it. I think that’s just a function of a lithium battery. They’re a lot more finicky about charging and minimum voltages than for example a ni-cad, so once they hit a certain voltage threshold, they just quit, not like a ni-cad that will let you run most of the way down to no charge at all. The Makita batteries I’ve used were the same. We had a cordless circ saw we had to quit using because it would stop so quit it would transfer all the inertia from the blade into the tool body and rip it right out of your hands. I’m not trying to defend Dewalt here or anything. I don’t have a ton of experience with them. I’m just thinking some of what you’re complaining about might be consistant across any tool company. I’m also a bit curious about the adapter now. I assumed it would step the voltage down with fancy electronics, but if it’s just a resistor pack then yeah it’ll be burning power way faster than you’d want.

This got shared in one of my Facebook groups. Guy claimed to have just done 2200km, ~1300 miles, like that. For reference, the Niva in the back weighs about 2600lbs in stock form, and is roughly the same height/width/length dimensions as an XJ that got chopped off around the back seat.

Not necessarily the worst thing in the world. I snapped a 1/2” bolt off with the Milwaukee last week.