derf

You can shorten that to "politicians talking"...

I do too. Just because I can see it in others doesn't mean I'm not right there with everyone else. When I make a conscious effort to fight it, I can get along with a lot more people. But I catch myself being the old fart way more often.

Yep. From the farm town cafe to the big city coffe shop, everyone sits around in their own echo chamber. No one wants to put forward the effort to look at anything from someone else's point of view.

Some of the worst offenders there are old farts set in their ways getting their knickers in a twist when dealing with change.

I remember those email lists and Usenet groups. Waiting to get home, dial in with my 28.8K modem and waiting for 10 minutes for all of that text to download. Then I would read everything, queue up the replies, and log in again to upload them. And that was quite the improvement over the 2400 bps (not Kbps or Mbps) I had in college to dial in to the campus mainframe and the old BBS's.

It was about the same. I don't know Mopar very well at all and if it's not a Mustang, I don't really know Ford all that well either. Especially when it's between two consecutive model years.

Yup. We can choose our own opinions. But we shouldn't be attempting to choose our own facts. Trouble is, this saying is true and everyone falls into this trap to one degree or another: To the true believer, no proof is necessary. To the skeptic, no proof is possible. Even people who profess to be open minded rarely are. It does you no good to always question everything if you just reject the answers you don't like.

Skyjacker shocks get the job done well enough. They last for several years usually. There are better and there are worse.

That's just it. We as humans are all bad at agreeing to disagree. If you step away and look at things, you see that just about all of the arguing is one group trying to tell another group how to live their lives based on their personal beliefs. And yes, everyone does it. Your side, their side, that other side, those weirdos over there... I used to think it was just my ex girlfriends who thought like this but almost everyone views "compromise" as "everyone does it the way I want". The whole point of that ad was to start to change the tone of the rhetoric that invades everything these days and work towards "agreeing to disagree".

Of course

My preference is that the driveshaft ujoints are my fuse. First off, they're less likely to take out other parts when they let go (disclaimer, I've seen exceptions to that general rule). Second, they're a lot easier to fix/replace on the trail than interior axle bits. And unless you have a slip yoke, you can do without one of your two driveshafts in a pinch, Dealing with broken axle guts is more likely to put you in a "bad" situation.

The further out of center your point of view, the more everyone else looks to be "the other side". It's all a matter of perspective.

I've been to the center of the North American continent. It's in North Dakota.

61%. And I guessed right on several I didn't know.

Be sure to ask if middle is side to side or top to bottom. It's an important distinction.

I would have liked to have seen a Scrambler or CJ7 but the ad agency probably balked at the prices compared to a 5...

Swapping gears is tedious and meticulous work. It's not overly difficult though. It does require some specialty tools beyond a press. If you're going to do many axles the investment is worth it. If you're only going to do it once or twice, it's worth paying a shop to do it.

I get on an 80's kick now and again.

Chrysler has a new generation 426 Hemi. I seriously doubt that's a 60s Hemi he put in. https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a24404997/1000-horsepower-426-hemi-crate-engine-mopar/

It'll have a Dana 20. The Dana 300 didn't come out until 1980.

Probably related to abusing the motor. Low speed doesn't mean part throttle. He very well could have been WOT getting up to speed when it let go. If he had been hammering it a lot for a long time, it was bound to happen. Besides, I put "happened at low speed" and "low boost" in the same category as "ran when parked". He may be telling the truth but who can say for sure? He may have run into a rod with an unseen flaw that decided to let go. Or he may have ragged it out until it popped.

I wouldn't take a Jeep with a rotten frame. You may get your money back if you part it out but is it worth the work?

Then run a 4500. Plenty of them in full size Chevy pickups starting in around 1993 or so.

Sure it will. You can find factory parts to bolt them up easily. The 4.3 V6 came with a 3500 and uses the same bellhousing. Get a standard flywheel for the 350 (may be the same as the 4.3) and the right clutch parts and it all goes together easily.