Sir Sam

Got the paint buffed down to my satisfaction, gotta spray some more clear on the one missing flare. Put bumper end caps on, drivers side splash guard, clean interior.......getting close.

Body is ok, some dings on the passenger side. Will replace the engine with the 48k mile engine I have here. Paint is showing its age, very oxidized and micro cracked. Should buff down nice though. Gotta wrap up with the green jeep first, get it up for sale.

Delivered today. "engine knocks" written on the drivers rear window. We will see what that means after I let it sit on the battery charger for a few hours. Got the 2000 buffing done, need to throw on the bumper end caps and button up a few details, but overall its looking good. And the update: Well, got the battery charger on it and sure enough, the battery is junk, I swear I have to replace so many damm batteries that I should invest in johnson controls. Put the jumper on it and started it up, sure enough, rod knocking like the census guy in a low income neighborhood.

that cupholder looks like someone took the foglight cover and cut a hole in it.

I seen this already on jeepin. :clapping:

You mean copy and pasting chain emails?

Needs more 4BT.

walmarts here do Its the state laws that vary.

Have you been posting on Jeep Forum?

No bought from them lots of times. But each auction is different so I doubt I will have much relevant information for your auction.

They don't sell alcohol in the walmarts here.

Oh and I bought it for $750.

Every donated vehicle shows mechanical damage. My MJ was a donate, showed mechanical damage, after I put in a new battery it ran fine(leaked oil like a sieve because it was way overfilled). Right after tax season you see quite a few donates, 2000ish XJs and WJ running just fine show mechanical. Though with this one there may be something mechanically wrong with it, it was not in the drivers. worst case it needs a new engine, which I have one here with 48k miles on it.

http://ww4.traauctions.com/kws/napplica ... kID=963412 BBV on it is only $2000. I won the bid at $600, turns out they needed $900 to sell it. At $600 theres about $1000 in profit there. At $900 theres only about $600 profit(taxes and such are higher). At the end of the day if the numbers don't work out then they don't work out. I told them I could do $750, we will see if I hear back.

Nope never done that, also never been a problem before.

Got the paint on it today. First time using base/clear. Learning curve for sure. Ended up getting some "stripes" between passes on the base. Oh well, nothing I can do about it now. I also found out that the clear likes to run more than I am used to. Oh well, guess I will try to buff those out. Plus the usual of lots of dust, should buff down nicely, overall though I am impressed with the base clear combo, definitely will be the way I will go from now on. A little bit of wetsand and buff and it will look nice, to quote a phrase "it'll buff out."

Agreed. Like I said above, NASA's budget is about 17 billion, or 3% of the DOD's annual budget. It's pennies compared to what we spend elsewhere.

I wish they'd launch the Compass and Patriot into space... Permanently!!!! So on that topic, how 'bout this as a Mars rover? British made, even worse.

that lake is about 20 miles from my house and in the 45 yrs that i've lived here i've never met ANYONE who has ever made it into that lake. Yup, and on top of that there are likely no fish in that lake either. I always laugh when I see tourists trying to fish a lake at 13,000 feet. Ya buddy, cause there's fish in there that can survive 9 months of being iced over in a olympic sized pool.

ME here, what's your discipline?

Ok, so after taking a little bit of a break this week working on it I got back at it today. Got my paint, base/clear. Got the LCA mount fixed. Spent the rest of the evening getting the body panels on and alignment dialed in. Lots of on and off of the body panels, you can tell the aftermarket fender is of lower quality for fitment, never goes on as nice as the OEM fenders do. Too bad OEM 97+ fenders are so hard to come by in the junkyard. But after all of that the fitment is pretty much spot on. No wierd gaps or cracks, all nice and even, tomorrow morning I will throw the new bumper on and check alingment, then move onto the paint prep. either tomorrow evening once it cools off or sunday morning while its still cool I will be shooting paint. The plan is to shoot the fenders header bumper in place, and the hood separate starting with the underside. Got the few odds and ends to paint as well, RR flare, grill/headlight bezels. Not sure when I spray those. As you can see, the fitment is perfect, got all my gaps dailed in exactly.

Los Alamos huh? I lived there back in the early 90's my father worked for DOE there in town. Man talk about a weird little place, that town was the oddest microcosm of $200k+ incomes, let alone if you had dual incomes...... You ever make it up to Jemez springs? There was a little resturant there that had the best prime rib and chicken fried steak.....(los ojos maybe?) Lots of cross country skiing in that area, plus all the indian artifacts all over. I remember playing at the playground of the middle school and then just finding all sorts of pottery shards. Got a few arrowheads still, including a nice obsidian one. Plus a big cup full of different shards.

By that logic NASA wastes peanuts compared to what the US socialized industrial military complex wastes. Yet if you were to say that the DOD's budget was one big waste of socialized tax dollars you might find yourself quickly hanging from a noose. NASA's budget is about 3% of what the DOD's budget is. DOE's budget is about $60 billion a year, other institutions like the NSA and NRO.....your guess is as good as mine. However, for the peanuts we spend on NASA we reap all sorts of economic benefits, same goes for military R&D. It was massive government spending during WWII that spurred all sorts of new inventions, not just a new gadget, but chemical and metallurgical engineering, the birth of the polymer industry, the nuclear age, etc. Now it was private business that pushed forward with those things, but for so much of it the catalyst came from government funding research. A classic example(though not related to research), is the interstate highway system. Eisenhower sold it saying it was for defense, but look at how indispensable it is to our current economic structure. China even went as far as to copy our system nearly verbatim with the exception of slightly wider lanes(to accommodate shipping traffic better). The DOD spent metric-$#!& tons of money on the GPS system, but look how important the GPS system is world-wide? Ever watch star trek? Did you know that all of the windows on the ships are supposed to be made of "transparent aluminum"? Guess what? Nasa invented that, the transparent aluminum is now used in the HMMWV armored windows.(polycrystalline alumina that is). Infared thermometers that have been used for abotu 20 years now were developed by NASA, kodiak film, ya, that 35mm film you used for decades untill you got that shiney new digital camera, was developed by NASA for use on the moon. Regular film wasn't good enough, so NASA worked with kodiak to develop a film suitable for use in outer space. The film turned out to be so good that kodiak pushed for its use in all consumer camera's. There are something like 6500 patents registered by NASA, if you cannot see the intrinsic value in that then let me leave you with one last argument. China and Japan turn out 60 engineers to every 1 of ours. Japan has 130 million people China has 1.3 billion The US has about 310 million(we will wait for the new census results to be sure). We as a nation cannot hope to maintain our technological edge and risk sliding into third world status without the research programs that go on with NASA, DOD, and DOE. You may call it a waste, I call it investing in America's technological future. I know I sure don't want to compete with a chinese guy getting paid 39 cents an hour to assemble iPhones.

Dad sent me this pic today from work today, its the next mars rover in the clean room at JPL. They also have various rock and obstacle courses setup for it, kinda like a minioffroad park for kids powerwheels jeeps. I'm guessing it does not have the nuclear battery installed at this point. This is probably also a test mule, not the actual unit going to be sent.