gogmorgo

You know what I discovered I didn’t have in my daily driver the other day? A tool that fit my lug nuts. The PO had put locking lug nuts on it and fair enough the “key” socket was in the glove box, but it never occurred to me to check that the key socket that was the same size hex as the rest of the lug nuts was also the same as the factory lug nut wrench in the tire changing tools. It wasn’t. But on a more relevant note I’ve got a roll of shop towel. My EDC “emergency” kit and tools have gotten a little scattered after I started driving more than one vehicle on the regular, only getting recombined for longer trips, but there’s always a roll of shop towel somewhere, and a box of matches and pack of jerky in the glovebox.

Because no one else answered, I’ve got the ZJ CV axles in my ‘91. They’ve been in there a half-dozen years. Fit is just fine although you might want to knock the ABS tone wheels off. In regards to the later shafts with bigger ujoints, I saw a comment on the facepage not long ago about the ujoints themselves being beefier but less material in the yoke to accommodate the bigger caps means it’s easier to damage the yokes if they fail. This was actually the same justification that I used for going to CVs. I’ve had to replace more axle shafts than I have axle ujoints. It’s one thing if you catch a worn out joint with slop in the needle bearings, but the ujoints I’ve seen actually fail have cracked and blown apart, usually when a spinning wheel suddenly grabs traction, and the shaft yokes coming together usually just shred themselves when that happens. CVs are generally stronger, especially when operating at high angles (full steering lock), and are more comfortable because of smoother power delivery. The major disadvantage is the vulnerability of the rubber boot, especially if where you drive brings them into contact with things; sticks, mud, snow and ice, etc. A secondary disadvantage is they’re less serviceable once they wear out, but the more I get into things the less I care about serviceability and the more I care about performance. The CV shafts are also cheaper to replace when the whole shaft fails, unless you’ve got good access to used parts. For a daily driver or something that mostly sees road use, I would say the CV is the way to go. Off-road I still lean towards CVs, but now you’ve got more specific usage-case arguments.

I’ve tossed around the idea of getting a kilt for a while. I’d be looking at a Dewar tartan, but with the history of the clan being what it is (it hasn’t been an official clan unto itself for all too long) the “proper” tartan for you depends on your specific family history, and we simply don’t know ours any more, and I’m three generations removed from anyone actually carrying the name. I’ve mostly been settling for wearing buffalo plaid when and where I can. I’ve also been looking into the utility kilt. Seems like it would be good for ventilation while out hiking... I’m a pretty big guy and sweat a lot, and it can get a bit much “down there” after a few days in the backcountry. I just have a really hard time pulling the trigger on a piece of clothing I can’t hold in my hand and feel the material, try it on, etc., and so far I haven’t found a retailer this side of the 49th so shipping inflates prices beyond what a decent pair of hiking pants costs locally.

Not exactly the same as everyone else, but I finally re-rebuilt the carb on this thing and got it running decently. It was so nice finally being able to drive it without three-pedalling to keep it going at stop signs, roasting the clutch off to get it rolling without stalling, and simply not having it die randomly and having to roll restart while cruising at basically any speed or throttle position. It actually feels like a useful car now. Don't get me wrong it’s still an unmitigated turd, but it’s at least one that makes me smile instead of just being another nasty headache.

I own three Jeeps and two Ladas. There is ALWAYS something super important to do as an excuse.

Use some heat-resistant hose and run another vehicle’s exhaust into it for a half-hour or so. That or purge with CO2 if you’ve got some handy.

Nothing bigger than a pine marten. I’ve had friends spot the odd wolverine. There's really not much up there above tree line, just rock. In summer I’ve seen mice, pikas, a bit further down where there’s more plant life you’ll get marmots, and whatever eats the rodents must be hanging around too, birds I guess. But up above 8000 feet or so, mostly you’ve just got lichen as a food source. Any actual plants are usually only a couple inches tall. It’s a pretty harsh climate up there, scorching in the sun and getting blown apart by wind, or most of the year $#!&ty freezing weather. This photo is from the end of July, we had ice pellets blowing at us intermittently, sometimes from above, sometimes below. This is the shaded north face of the mountain that we’re standing on, (not the same mountain I’m skiing on, but I imagine it looks similar without the snow) hence the abundant lichen. The south face with the sun on it is just bare rock. This one’s the same mountain, just on a sunnier face a bit higher up, a little over a year later in the middle of August. The lower slopes of the ski hill are usually closed off in the summer because they’re prime grizzly habitat, so I imagine that means deer and elk must wander up that way if there’s grizz around. The higher valleys, 6-7000’ or so, will have extensive meadows with good grazing for the handful of caribou still surviving.

Keying aluminum Fords you say?

Not quite bottomless powder, I could still feel the base underneath, but yes, a foot or so of snow fell over the last couple days, and as you can tell from the small cornice up top there in the track photo, the wind pretty consistently blows it all off the top and dumps it down into that bowl. It was decent skiing for sure.

Hiked to the peak on the ski hill today. 200m or so, roughly 650’ of ascent above the highest lift. Roughly a half-hour hike, not much fun in ski boots carry 20lbs of ski, but so worth it. Some of those tracks are mine but I couldn’t tell you which.

It’s a CV driveshaft. Yes, sure, it is specifically a Rzeppa-style CV joint, but just call it a CV. And yes, the concern is the operating angle of the CV joints on the driveshaft, but 2” isn’t a huge change, so isn’t that big a concern. The new position of the CV joint is going to change the wear patterns in it, which if it’s already worn out could accelerate failure, but the risk is pretty minimal, especially if you’re already using most of your suspension travel without issue.

I wasn’t planning on it, although it’s not the worst idea... hm.

I’m not always excited to let them loose on the world, but this has been ricocheting around my brain case for the last few days... weeks... however long it’s been.

All I know is I once managed to put 25 gallons into it. 95 litres per the pump. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Interesting. My build sheet said mine came with the 23gallon tank, but it always seemed like I was forcing fuel into it to fill it all the way. Makes me wonder if it didn’t have a 16gal swapped in at some point. It was confusing to me given how hard it should be to plug up such a big vent tube. Unfortunately I can’t really investigate this because that tank was swapped out a few years ago after an incident with a deer, and the shop that did it tossed the old tank. I also haven’t been to a gas station with it yet due to it being mostly parked awaiting rust repairs to pass an inspection after an interprovincial move so I don’t know if anything changed.

Pizza eggs for breakfast this morning, figured I’d do something fancier than just last night’s cold counter pizza. Better than I expected, although I’m a little iffy on the eggy crust bits. Should be good if you had kids around though, quick and easy without just being pizza for breakfast.

A manual transmission you’re physically pushing the gears back and forth to engage and disengage them. An automatic is also pretty simple, it just looks very different because planetary gears. You hold onto a couple different parts of the planetary assemblies to change the ratio. The valve body looks complicated, but it’s mostly just because there’s a lot of repetition of the same valves for every band.

So I cleaned out my Lada’s carb a little over a year ago, while getting it running after it sat for 10+ years. I did my best to clean out all the jets, etc., because the carb kit I got semi-locally didn’t come with new, but the thing wouldn’t idle for poop once warmed up. I figured there must have been some junk in the fuel pump or something else post-filter that got stuck somewhere. So I ordered a legit carb kit out Ukraine for it, and only just got around to getting it pulled apart again last night. All the jets looked super clean as I was changing them still, not really any junk except a little bit of scuzz in the bottom of the bowls, so I was kinda wondering if I was actually accomplishing anything. Then I was looking at the throttle plates and noticed there wasn’t really any idle bypass circuit, which seemed odd, and that got me looking at the throttle stop. The idle adjustment screw was all the way out, probably my fault from the last rebuild. The fast-idle is just a fancy thermo-mechanical way to hold the throttle open as it warms up, with a couple different positions, and the coldest position actually locks out the mechanical secondary as well, so it’s never going past half-throttle cold, and then once it’s warm it’s got basically zero air going past the throttle plate. No wonder it doesn’t behave nicely cold and won’t idle hot... Its not back together yet because I need to replace the air cleaner hold-down studs, so I don’t know if I’ve solved it yet, but knowing what I’m working with is at least a step in the correct direction. Carburetors are annoying.

Yeah, the local courriers have definitely proven to be more reliable for us. But at the same time, COVID is really hitting courriers hard. Not only are they hitting new health and safety requirements that get in their way, there’s also significantly more things for them to deliver, as people are shopping online more to avoid going out to buy things. One of our courriers used to get to us at 10:00 like clockwork every day, but they’ve had so much stuff to deliver now we don’t usually see them until 1pm, Tuesdays and Wednesdays are worse because there’s a couple meal boxes that go out those days so it takes them a couple extra hours, usually we won’t see them until 3 or 3:30. It’s pretty nuts.

We had a game when I was a kid, I think it was called “Are we there yet?” That was essentially the same. Instead of bingo cards, you just had a box of cards, each with something on it. You har a hand of a half dozen or so and collected the cards as you spotted them (and then drew another card) and the winner was the person with the most cards when you got to the destination. There were a couple hundred cards, all with a different thing to look for. Some of the ones I remember were farm animals, wildlife, wildlife crossing sign, broken down car, police car with its lights on, piece of litter larger than a breadbox (this was a gimme cause none of us knew how big a breadbox is), roadkill, driver in sunglasses, someone in another car picking their nose... and there were “detour” cards that let you swap one out if you didn’t think you would find it. Edit: a quick google and this is it: https://thenewswheel.com/review-are-we-there-yet-1994-travel-card-game/ There’s a handful of them on eBay: https://www.ebay.ca/itm/Are-We-There-Yet-Travel-Card-Game-NIB-Retired-Car-Plane-Train-Game-Kids-Adults/383307093784?

If you’re looking for winter performance I’d steer clear of any AT, all-weather or not. I swapped back to my Grabber ATX a week ago after three bare and dry runs up to the ski hill and the last couple days up there with fresh snow on the road I was missing my Hakkas pretty bad. The KO2 especially is an older design with almost no sipes and has near-zero grip on ice or hardpack. I had them on my daily a few years ago and they were trash in the winter. They upgraded the compound at some point for some improvement, but it mostly just means they burn the tread off faster. We used to run them on our work fleet and I haven’t seen them last more than 20,000 miles yet. I’m pretty skeptical about online reviews on tires. Like lots of other online reviews, most or the people doing the reviewing have little to no experience with the sort of product they’re using, and hand out five stars so long as it doesn’t explode. Some of the larger distributors and the ocaisonal journalist have tires rated on their performance, and they’re at least a bit more consistent in terms of vehicle and people writing the review than most of the typical Joe Blow reviews. We Duratrac most of the trucks at work because we can get them dirt cheap, some deal the agency negotiate with a bigger chain. They last longer than the KO2 and are way better in winter, but they really start to make noise as they wear down, and the reputation for sidewall damage is not unfounded. I’m running the Grabber ATX on my daily as I mentioned, because they met my needs and I could get a pretty good price through one of the wholesalers we use. They’ve never let me down off-road, even at street pressure, and have got me to wherever I needed to go the one winter I ran them, but they pale in comparison to my Hakkas in winter. Definitely a better experience than the KO2. I have no experience with them yet, but for a milder road-going AT I like the look/pro reviews of the Firestone Destination AT/2 and Cooper Discoverer AT3. I’ll be giving them a long hard look next time it comes to new tires. Tires are pretty important. Those four patches of rubber are the only things keeping you on the road or trail, and it really does pay to research and get the best you can afford.

I honestly prefer the mountains from further away. It’s been four years, and sure it’s cool to be on top, but I still get claustrophobic in between with them blocking out the sky. I guess I’m just a bred and born flatlander through and through. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Rare powder day up at the hill today. Skiing in the clouds meant visibility was all over the map, but there was still some decent sky to be seen.

Do the internal slave lines hook up with the same system as external, where you push the line in and secure it with a spring pin? There’s some o-rings in there that could’ve been lost I think. I’ve seen more than a few references to people not being able to get the connection to seal without also changing the line and o-rings.

My dad grew up in the Twin Falls area, and I’ve got a fair bit of family down that way still. It’s very scenic land, you’ve got the sawtooth mountains right there, and the desert is amazing. The BLM land around there is sagebrush desert, with crazy lava flows everywhere. Lots of long-ago volcanic activity makes for very interesting geology that was really cool to explore. I got let loose with my parents’ Envoy the one day to explore a bit, and my dad expressly told me not to take the desert track across to craters of the moon, knowing that would guarantee that’s how I’d get there. This is Shoshone falls with probably more water flowing over it than anyone’s seen in a long time: I was down that way to see family a couple summers ago. I don’t know that it was somewhere I could see myself settling down, but it’s pretty cool to visit.