gogmorgo

Good bikes are good bikes. That one should serve you well. I may be looking at getting myself another as well. The fattie is nice for doing fattie things, but going up hills with it is just dumb. High rolling resistance and so much rolling inertia don’t help. But it’s going to be a little while before I get something. I’m hoping that once Covid starts working it’s way back out of the system and gyms and stuff start opening back up there’ll be a bit of a surge of newer used bikes on the market.

So for those of you who gave up wondering about this, the dealer was stumped. They had no idea what could’ve done it. I’m thinking a freak focused reflection off something is probably the best explanation.

You’ve hopefully got something figured out by now, but it would be worth looking into if an Altima or some other Nissan trans would work if you can’t find one in a Murano.

Saw these guys a few years back when they opened for the Real Mckenzies. It’s a somewhat unique sound, somewhat 50’s inspired physcobilly, with generous use of ska horns. They pull it off.

Most importantly to no one ever guessing what’s inside, it’s hitched to a Ridgeline.

Another point about gear is that more stuff means you’re carrying more weight, and weight is usually not to your advantage. But there are also advantages to carefully choosing what gear you bring. As an example, the sleeping bag in the upper right here is pretty bulky: My entire camping setup, sleeping bag, pad, pillow, and tent would fit in the space that sleeping bag is occupying, and together weighs under 10lbs. That wasn’t deliberate for car camping because I bought it for backpacking trips, and I’ll admit the mid-level backpacking gear is still pretty spendy compared to Walmart gear, but it’s pretty nice to have all my “shelter” gear fit into a typical school bag. It’s definitely nice to have more “normal” kitchen gear and food storage than the hiking gear, but the backpacking kitchen also occupies so little space it’s convenient to toss in if I don’t know I’ll be spending the night camping, or even just as emergency gear on a road trip. In brief, backpacking gear is light, durable, and compact. It saves a ton of space in the vehicle.

Way too hot out to be wrenching today. It’s been breaching 30° every day this week.

Meh. I wasn’t super excited about the lack of kickstand at first, but I got over it. If I leave my bike unattended, it’s locked to something, not free standing. Out on the trail, 99% of the time the ground isn’t stable or level enough for a kickstand. It’s just more weight to haul around and something else to catch on things. My bike is for riding, not sitting parked. But I guess if it’s that critical to you, spend the $25 and get one.

You might find that. There’s lots of people trying to get outside and active now thanks to Covid. I was in one of the local shops a month or so back and overheard a guy saying he was surprised we still had inventory in town because the city was close to sold out already.

^^^ that’s exactly what went wrong with my Schwinn. I blew one of the sprockets apart halfway around the block on my first ride. That was the first trip back for warranty, they changed out the whole rear cassette. Second trip out I was 5km down the trail and lost a bunch of teeth. That was cassette #2, and a new chain. I think it was ride #5 when I lost sprocket teeth again, and the brakes misadjusted themselves to the point of not doing anything. I got a shifter for a 4-speed from the bike pile at the dump and just quit using the three smallest sprockets with not many teeth. The brake adjustments never lasted more than 5-10k so I mostly quit using them. I still rode it most of the summer but it was just a constant game of screwing with things to make it work properly. But yes, hooked. That bike was still better than the supercycle it replaced from the season before.

Leaning my body into turns instead of shifting my weight out to balance the bike. I caught a small patch of gravel and slid back onto clean pavement, but didn’t have enough weight over the front tire at that point to catch and correct the slide. Laid the bike over and went face first into the asphalt. I’m usually better about that sort of thing when I’m on a trail, but everything kinda goes out the window when I’m riding on pavement.

I missed out on Corb Lund coming to town back in May.

I’m around your size/weight. 6’2/260, 32” inseam. I’d recommend looking into the manufacturer’s recommended max weight on the bike. It’s not as big a deal on a hardtail, but it really does factor with suspension. I found that a lot of bikes top out around 250lbs, and bottoming out suspension when you’re not expecting it sucks. I’m also mostly riding a fat bike. Older Kona Wo, garage sale find. XL frame, 21”. I tried a couple large frame bikes (~19”) and they’re rideable, but the 21” is more comfortable for me. It’s a bit of a knee vs handlebar thing. I’d definitely take an 18” for a spin before buying, try some tighter manoeuvres to make sure you’ve got clearance. I’ve also got a full-suspension 29er that has roughly the same dimensions as the Wo, but I mostly ride it around town any more. Super confortable ride that’s great on mixed surfaces, but even with the preload on the shock dialed all the way up it still will bottom out under me out on the trails, and frequently I’ll lose purchase on the pedals when it happens. Bottoming the forks is also pretty brutal on the wrists, although it doesn’t happen as often. The Wo also is more responsive in general, doesn’t need the suspension to catch up to my inputs before acting on them. I also would advise getting some riding tips from someone who knows what they’re doing if you’re only just getting into more serious biking. One of my bad habits lead to six stitches in my chin on Sunday night, while riding on asphalt. Even if a shop doesn’t have something inside your budget, they’ll still have good advice for looking for a bike that fits you, and hopefully they’d let you get a little familiar with different types of bikes, different size frames and tires, etc, which should at least help in your search for something used. This is assuming we’re talking an actual bike shop... the kid at Walmart is unlikely to know much more about the bikes than where they are in the store. I’d also steer clear of the Walmart, etc., bikes in general. I’ve been through a couple, none of them wanted to live much longer than a season. You’ll be much happier with a better brand used bike around the same price point. Not to be elitist, but my Kona cost me roughly what YXMJ’s Schwinn cost him, and I’ve put well over 500km on it so far with a few hard crashes, still rides the same as when I got it. The one Schwinn I got at Canadian tire retailed at $750 (I got it on sale for half-price) and only lasted about 30km of trails before I got sick of taking it back for free warranty repairs. I’m glad he’s had better luck with his.

Good series on diff covers.

Yeah, it’s not always easy soldering to old corroded wire, either. The point I was trying to make was that while no single component is irreplaceable, together it is a unique harness to the MJ, and there are probably more than a few of us who would want a complete one over trying to piece one back together. Post up in the classifieds, see if anyone wants it. It’s only a complete original harness once. Building new harnesses to suit the purpose you intend is always better than to modify an old one from some other application. If you’ve got the skill to modify the old, then you’ve got what it takes to build new.

This big: The truck in question is the sister to the one in the photo, same truck but with a wing plow on the ditch side, which may have been part of why the driver didn’t notice anything. The wing makes some noise bouncing around, and obstructs the driver’s view down that side of the truck somewhat. That truck has had a pretty crazy streak of luck. In its four years of service, it’s been involved in four collisions with other vehicles that were the other driver’s fault (four more than any of our other trucks in the same time period) and needed to have the frame straightened twice. It’s gone partway down a 200’ near-cliff after the wing caught something and steered it over the edge, and needed a crane to go fishing for it. It’s also been struck by lightning. But it had been behaving itself pretty well this winter up until that happened. One of the more catastrophic failures I’ve seen in the shop in terms of broken metal.

Here’s another interesting one for you. Happened late this winter. We’re not 100% on what happened, but it looks like a couple studs may have broken off, or the nuts came loose and spun themselves off, then the wobbling wheels snapped studs or ripped the remaining studs out of the hub, landed on the hub, and sliced it in half. That or the sequence of events was started by the brake drum exploding, it’s tough to say because everything was so mangled... but we never did find the flange that broke off the drum. The driver didn’t notice anything was wrong until he saw smoke, then as he was pulling over the axle shaft started sliding out, probably due to the brakes grabbing what was left of the drum and taking weight off the end of the shaft. He emptied his extinguisher on the puddle of burning gear oil.

The harness can usually be repaired if it’s damaged. Most of the components can be found easily enough. But for someone who isn’t so well-versed on wiring repairs, or with a badly hacked apart harness, a clean harness might be valuable. I swapped out a complete harness a few years ago because I knew where I could find another, and between incompetent trailer wiring and the squirrels in my back yard, there just wasn’t much left of the original, so it was either that or build new from scratch. Even though I could have built it from scratch, changing it was just easier. In your case, for the amount of modifying to make it work, I think I would prefer just to have all new wires with minimal splicing.

I actually think I saw it on an end display in the automotive section. But the Hinton store is one of those smaller ones where everything is organized more for fitting lots of stuff in not much room than it is for easy finding. Not quite on the level of Dauphin, but getting there. So maybe in other places it’s in the marine section? The SKU is 28-3050-8. $12.99. The reviews suggest it’s garbage for doing what it’s actually supposed to, but so far it’s been great for filling diffs.

I don’t know about that. It could be part of it, but my floors are pretty well ventilated for the most part and spend a good chunk of the year well below freezing. And my long bed that hasn’t had carpet or much of the interior trim in it for going on a year now still reeked of “the smell” in the cab when I checked on it just now. Much stronger in the cab still than under the canopy where the interior is sitting.

XJs and MJs do seem to have a distinctive smell. I don’t really notice it in my own other than on a hot day if I left the windows up, but it’s something that I notice in other Jeeps. My ZJ is much more scent-neutral.

Wasn’t registered yet at the time of my comment.

A standard automotive relay can function as either or both a normally open and normally closed switch. It doesn’t only “turn on” current between pins 30 and 87 when it’s energized. It swaps pins 87 and 87a. When the relay isn’t energized, pins 30 and 87a are connected. Its not entirely common to run a circuit off 87a because you typically want things to turn off when the key shuts off, so this means adding another switch into the circuit to control b+ to pin 30. More commonly the function is used to alternate between two accessories off the same power source – imagine a high beam/low beam switch where power comes from the headlight switch and is directed at the low beam until you hit the high beam switch, energize the relay, and power swaps over to the high beam circuit. Your fan is the “low beam” in this context, and you don’t have a “high beam”. You can take advantage of this if you’re running dual-speed fans, it will run low speed until it hits a certain temperature and then switch over to high speed. I’ve also been thinking about incorporating it into a headlight relay harness to allow for “normal” DRL function.