terrawombat

When I was a grad student, the school gave me a full version (not the student edition) of Solidworks 2008 Premium and I still have it on my laptop. I fire that up about once every three months and just model a random project or two to keep from forgetting all of the functions. I love SolidWorks and every day I use the software in the office (TurboCAD) is a painful and rough day. I find it pretty hilarious that the initial cost of Fluent with a year worth of tech support was near $75,000, but out office can't dish out $20,000 to get a few seats of SolidWorks AND we get one of the cheapest CAD software money can buy (I think TurboCAD is like $170 a seat). We would get SO much more use out of SW than Fluent. I maybe run 6-10 Fluent models per year while we probably put out 50-100 drawings per year, but oh well, I'm not the boss...

I do the modeling, meshing, and simulations. I will also generate reports with the pretty pictures and key areas of each model that we want to focus on. Most of the time clients are interested in outlet temperatures of equipment or the overall composition of the gas at the exit for emission reasons. Combustion and fluid flow has never and will never be my specialty. There are certain things in engineering that I just "get" but fluid flow has never been one of them. If you asked me to design an exhaust system with optimal flow characteristics, I wouldn't really know what to do. There's another guy in my office who is pretty good with all of the combustion and fluid flow stuff that generally comes up with an idea and asks me to model it. Before Fluent was bought out by Ansys, ProE and Gambit were pretty heavily used to create and mesh the models, but not so much anymore. I took an intro class for Fluent and there were still a few old school guys in the class that preferred to use gambit over the Ansys modeling program. I took one look at that and am thankful I'll likely never have to deal with it. The Ansys modeling program is pretty primative, but it's enough to get by. It's actually pretty similar to SolidWorks in a lot of ways and that was the CAD program I went through engineering school using (but don't use it anymore in the workplace) so I don't mind it.

I need a side view. I like the 97+ header panel and grill and the front bar looks good head on, but how does it mount? And how far does it stick out?

ANSYS Fluent.

With the #1 piston at TDC, look down the hole and see where the slot is and make sure that the camshaft position sensor will slide into it. Drop it down and on the metal casing for the sensor, there will be a small little hole. Insert a toothpick into this hole and move the camshaft position sensor back and forth until the toothpick passes through the alignment hole on the inner part. If the alignment hole on the inner part is on the opposite side, pull the camshaft position sensor out and turn the shaft 180 degrees. Confused? Good. Check out Figure 7 on page 3 of this link: http://motorage.search-autoparts.com/mo ... rticle.pdf Might be a good idea to read the whole article, too. However, this is all assuming everything in there is intact :D

So THAT'S why the oil pressure needle on my GFs TJ never moves. That always bugged me, but the thing only has 60K miles on it and sounds good so I just ignore it now.

Not that anyone actually cares, but this is the something I've been doing with CFD for the last couple of days. It's not one of the most interesting simulations I've done, but is kind of neat since it models a methane gas burner that reheats a stream of exhaust gas from a multiple hearth furnace to reduce overall knock before it leaves the stack. By using a tangential inlet for the gas, it forces the exhaust gases to "swirl" in the upper chamber increases the residence time before it exits down the center choke ring. The longer residence time allows for a more complete combustion of the unburned volitales in the exhaust gas stream and tends to reduce NOx. First image is just a standard temperature profile. Black lines are the surface of the afterburner model. The pretty colors are a slice down the middle of the afterburner to show temperature profile. This is a shot above the afterburner looking down at the upper chamber. I used velocity vectors colored by pressure. Kind of looks like a toilet bowl, but gives you a fairly good idea of the amount of "swirl" we're obtaining in the upper chamber before it exits the choke ring. Pictures are always nice to look at and generally what we give to our clients, but the hard numbers are what's more important to the Engineer.

If I wanted to build an MJ that got good gas mileage, I'd put a Honda engine in it :rotf:

What year did it come out of?

That sounds like an awesome project! I take it the CRD engine (trans?), wiring, and PCM is out of a Liberty? Now, did you have to get a diesel XJ wiring harness for this? In my research, I saw that many of the connectors that mate the underhood engine harness to the interior dash harness had a lot of different configurations depending on which XJ you had - diesel or gas. Yes, Sir Sam is correct. I do something with Computational Fluid Dynamics. What that something is, I usually don't know. It's just one small aspect of my job. I work for a small company with big clients that expect we can do everything engineering-related and our boss rarely ever says, "No, we don't have the capability of doing that." So, I'm a jack of all trades, master of none. I work for an engineering consulting firm that deals with multiple heart and fluid bed furnaces. The CFD modeling that I'm currently doing is to test out some experimental designs on an afterburner to see which is the best method for mixing the unburned volitales in the exhaust gas entering the afterburner to reduce NOx. Each simulation takes a few hours to reach convergence and I have about six different designs...so the hours add up. Mortgage is something I don't have to deal with yet since I rent, but my day will come... You think your pile of bolt-on parts is big, check this out: I was going to tear into the ZJ this coming weekend and try to get a lot of it done, I keep needing to move the ZJ in and out of the shop so it needs to stay running for the time being. Maybe next week...if I don't get too caught up in the new MJ project I created for myself.

I live comfortably :D Although the biggest expense on the 5.9L Magnum-powered MJ project will not be in the form of money, but time. The amount of time I've already spent researching and mapping out what wires need to go where to mate a '99XJ interior harness to a '98ZJ engine harness is pretty ridiculous. Luckily I'm able to do a lot of it at work when I'm talking to clients on the phone or in conference calls where I'm not expected to participate - just be there because I was at one time involved in what the others are talking about. But my favorite is running CFD simulations that take hours and hours, but I gotta watch them and steer them in the right direction - toward convergence! Divergence is a bad thing in the CFD world :D

How about an MJ with a 5.9L under the hood? That's my next project.

The project goals changed some. The build will continue here: http://thespeedfreaks.net/showthread.php?t=5590 I will post updates of major milestones here :D

I need to subscribe to this as I may be doing something similar in the near future...except with the Jeep 5.9L :brows: Could you show some closeup shots of the engine mounts you fabbed up? Are they in the stock MJ location or did you move them?

Spare fuses in the glove box. I'm going to try and replicate the problem when I get a chance. I agree, it's only a band aid to get me by. It happened the second I hit a large pothole in the road, so a hot wire hit ground somewhere on my vehicle. This is why I suspect it was the two relays that were just hanging down. There are exposed metal crimp connectors on the plugs for the relays and I think the bump may have moved one of the hot leads on the relay to something grounded. With the zip-tie firmly holding those relays, if the fuse pops again, I'll know to look elsewhere. I also found some exposed wires at the back of the truck where a PO attached trailer lighting. I'm going to need to revisit that and make sure it's taped up better than it currently is.

:hmm: Any chance you could grab a pic of your fuse box? I'm lost. The initial fuse that I noticed that was blown was the top right 5A fuse labeled "INST LPS.' Replaced it and it blew right away so I just said fug it and just drove to where I needed to go with no cluster lights on and used a GPS speedo app on my phone to let me know how fast I was going. The next morning I started fidgeting with the wiring under the steering column and noticed a pair of relays on a metal bracket that were loosely hanging underneath that may or may not have been causing a short. Bracket was zip-tied so that it can't bounce around anymore, but the instrument lights still didn't work. Took a look at the FSM and realized that the 15A fuse labeled 'PARK LPS' ALSO includes the instrument lamps. It was then that I realized my tail lights were out and my front parking lights were dead. That fuse was also blown so I replaced it and all is well now.

You looking at using the tailgate on the white one? Any of the others have good, usable tailgates with working internal mechanisms and no rust?

Yea, I don't get why everyone on here doesn't have at least one short and long bed MJ? :D

Could be. If I remember correctly from when I swapped my chrome front end on the turn signal sockets were different than the ones on my 88 MJs that always have problems.

:hmm: Any chance you could grab a pic of your fuse box? I'm lost. Yea, I tried, but the darkness + crappy flash from my cell phone made it come out extremely blurry. I'll snap a picture in the morning.

Fixed it. So there are two fuses for the instrument cluster lamps...dunno why. I was replacing the 5A one, but there is also a 15A one that was blown - labeled PARK on the fuse block. It was pretty blown...replaced it and all is well. Now I need to figure out why it blew...

Yea it definitely has a 5 stamped right into the plastic fuse holder panel. Top right fuse under one of the turn signal relays.

I'm pretty sure mine has a 5 stamped in the plastic casing. Regardless, it's no longer an issue of the fuse continually blowing. All that means is that someone could have put an incorrect fuse in it. I'm not saying that's definitely the problem, just suggesting that someone (I can't because I don't have a user manual handy) should check and see what fuse should be in there. Last time I dealt with it, I remember it being a 10A, just sayin'. Sorry - I meant the plastic casing of the black fuse holder under the dash.

I'm pretty sure mine has a 5 stamped in the plastic casing. Regardless, it's no longer an issue of the fuse continually blowing. Actually, the FSM says it's supposed to be a 15A fuse. I'm going to go check this after the halftime show...

It's not shorting out anymore. Put a new fuse in this morning and it hasn't blown yet, but none of the instrument lights work or taillights or the license plate lights. I did crawl under the truck and check the connection at the rear of the bed and it looked fine. I did see some questionable wire splices from what looks like old trailer wiring, however, none of the wires seemed to be shorted.