Dzimm

What in the world, have never seen that.

My high school offered a few electronics classes and I had some in college as well when I was going for Mechanical Engineering but I never finished it. I got the basics in school and continued my education on my own as I frequently dabble in electronics, specifically low voltage DC stuff. I have scratch built many small circuits for projects, most notably the electronics for Ghostbusters proton packs and proton wands with all the actual light functions from the first movie just for fun. I enjoy electronics and have thought about making it a career multiple times but just couldn't bring myself to pursue it any further than a hobby. The best resource for information is Google and YouTube. You can find the answer to any question you have, just start looking into a topic that interests you or you have a question on and soon you'll be absorbing all kinds of information and start piecing things together into a larger understanding of the topic. I'm not an expert on any topic, I just have spent so much time absorbing information in all kinds of topics that I have a good base of information and will seek out information on anything I want or need to know that I don't.

Internally those are just a piece of hard plastic, it's entirely possible that is what you are feeling. Try tapping your knuckle on it in different spots to determine and difference in feel or sound. The mirrors have a raised plastic ring around them and if that's what you feel, then I'd cut it open just to see.

LEDs run on DC and are low voltage. The driver will step down the voltage, stabilize it, and to get the power within the specs of the LED. If the main power supply was AC, the driver would also convert it to DC for the LED.

In reality, they don't need them as much as you'd think but they sure do make the housings look cool! With that many LEDs in a small case you will have some heat produced from the circuitry and some designs may need some form of heat sink for the LED driver circuitry.

Yes and no. How resistance affects the current and voltage of a circuit is one of the most difficult things to understand about electricity and something I cannot explain in any short way, something youd have to read into to understand fully. I know it goes against what the math would tell you but for simplicity's sake, think of it as the current will remain unchanged and the voltage will drop across the resistor because the draw from the LED doesn't change, the battery doesn't push current, the device pulls it, and the resistor only cares about bringing down the voltage on its way. Think of it as a speed bump, the speed bump is a resistor, your car is the amperage, and your speed is the voltage. Your car remains unchanged on the other side but the speed bump caused you to slow to down. In a single LED circuit one could use an improperly sized resistor. Too much resistance increases waste and causes a dimmer light, too little resistance reduces the lifespan of an LED. It's a balancing act and the more devices added to the circuit, the more chances someone has to make poor choices for the design. You'd be surprised at how much you can change on a low voltage circuit or how many ways you could build it to accomplish a single task, but there are definitely wrong ways to do it. The device itself pulls the amount of amps it needs, this is the "draw". The voltage is what kills electronics. The amps is what will kill a human.

Well as far as the LED question, the device will only use the amount of energy it requires, this is often called "Draw". This draw will be in reference to how many amps the device pulls to be used. It is the amperage of the device that drains the battery/uses the power, not the voltage. You are referring to voltage in your question. A single LED bulb is usually rated between 1-3volts depending on color and other factors. They have a safe range depending on the LED and as you experienced with your trolling motor, higher voltage just makes the LED brighter (motor spin faster). All the resistors in the circuit are doing is knocking down the voltage to a safe level for the LEDs, the amount of "waste" created in this process is incredibly small and has little to no effect on power consumption. This all assumes a well designed circuit, in a poorly designed circuit it could cause all kinds of problems with power consumption. This is why LEDs are so much more efficient, they have very little to no waste of power, and they have such a small amperage draw. A typical incandescent bulb draws more amperage and creates a lot of heat, which means it creates a lot of waste.

That would be great if you could find someone to make the molds off of them. I finally got myself an airdam and intended to make at least a few duplicates of it but I think mine is just not good enough to make a decent mold from. Had to do too much repair work to it. After doing research on making molds and looking at the inside of the airdam, it appears it would be at least a 4 piece mold to make the airdam. Also if you happen across another one of those rear bumpers, please let me know!

How quickly is it using coolant? Like you can watch it drop or it takes it a few weeks/month? Freeze plug in the back of the head leaking and dripping onto the exhaust causing it to evaporate? I'm just throwing ideas out at this point.

My 95XJ head cracked between cylinder 3 and 4 and it used a little coolant. Ran like crap though so I knew it was a problem. After almost 2 years of driving it this way it finally started to put coolant into the oil and create chocolate milk so I knew it was time. Replaced with a junkyard head and solved all issues. I'd say just pull the head and get it magnafluxed.

New cooling parts and flushing won't do anything for your problem if it's not leaking on the ground. This is definitely strange... I'm wondering if the head is cracked or the head gasket is blown between a cylinder and water jacket. It may only open up enough to leak when the engine is at operating temp, it would then be burning the coolant. This would be more likely with a cracked head. I'd get it up to operating temp and then do compression test quickly to see what it is warm. Does the oil level go up on the dipstick at all? Another thing to check is the passenger floorboard. I'm not sure how the heater box is setup on the Grand Cherokee but on the XJ/MJ it would leak onto the floor on the passenger side.

What are you going with for a short throw shifter?

It's not bad at all. If the road isn't in good shape it bounces around a bit.

Got the new speedo gear installed yesterday. I should have gotten a 40 tooth, the 39 tooth is still off by about 3mph. Much better than off by 20mph though. Also set the painted airdam on the truck to see what it looks like and I like it! Definitely need to get the flares and bumper painted to match so I can get it installed.

Airdam has paint on it. Should be mounted on the truck this week. Will need to paint the flares to match and eventually the bumper.

Rock Auto has them. It's not a rack and pinion, it's a pump up top that feeds the steering gear which is bolted to the frame (I'm assuming you are looking for this part). The pitman arm bolts to this and attaches to the tie rods.

Can't wait to see this thing back up and running!

Ordered a 39 tooth speedo gear and it should be here late next week!

Got the new bump stops put in up front. They sit about 3/4" from the spring pads but they are so soft that when it does bottom out you can't tell because its so soft. Took it for a long test drive today. The scraping sound is almost entirely gone, only sometimes happens when turning left. Needs another drive or two and last little high spot will be gone. Truck drives really good. 1st gear is useless, 2nd gear is ok but short, 3rd and 4th gear have a TON of torque and are real fast, 5th is just a cruising gear as usual. Speedometer is 20mph off with the small tires so I need to get a new speedo gear. Not sure which one I'll need yet, haven't looked. Also really wanting to get the truck up in the air and clean the undercarriage up and get it painted so it looks better. Surface rust everywhere is not the best look.

I actually would say it's more stable with weight in it. With the lift it gets the weight up in the air and is more prone to swaying. With it loaded down its actually pretty smooth out back. If you won't be doing any crazy offroading, you could put a rear sway bar in it and it would be extremely stable. It's amazing how much of a difference it makes.

They definitely lifted the truck and the ride is good, no sagging after 3 years and multiple heavy loads. The weight capacity doesn't seem to be as good as stock. I've hauled a lot with it and it can still hold a decent amount of weight but not quite as much as before.

HO for sure! It's subjective really, as long as it's got a 4.0L in it, you'll love it.

yes!

Yard art!!

If the issue isn't obvious, it would probably be easiest to jack up the front end and put jack stands under the frame so you can have some turn the steering back and forth and you can watch everything move and listen more closely.