derf

You would think, wouldn't you?

I've been having fun with the old broken gas tank strap. But the rear wiring has been done for a bit. I'm running new hoses (vent, supply, and return) as long as it's all apart. The Genright tank skid os quite a bit beefier than the stock. So I feel good about installing it. I've mostly been poking at a few odds and ends. Got the front bumper and fog lights installed so it looks more like a CJ now.

Yep. Prices got stupid when Covid hit and they never came back down.

That was a JK. That had the NSG370 transmission and a much better clutch. And a Rubicon comes with 4.10s which are decent for stock 32" tires. The JL (and JT) have a completely different transmission and clutch that are basically junk. And if you don't get a Rubicon, you get 3.45 gears which are not adequate for even stock tires.

I'd avoid the pentastar and manual. The engine lacks low end torque and needs short (high number) gears to really be usable. And the manual has really bad history, especially with the shoddy clutch design. If they put a better engine and transmission, with a decent clutch in it, I would absolutely love a 2 door Gladiator.

One more to consider. The Rimrocker trail. It goes from Montrose, CO to Moab. https://rimrockertrail.org/

I have had fun on myddy trails but the cleaning after is very low on my "enjoy doing" list. I'll stick with the dry trails out west.

A week in Moab should be on your list for sure. Several great trails there. Ouray and Silverton in SW Colorado has some really great trails too, beyond the Alpine loop.

Yep, West Kansas (east of the front range) is definitely a shift in the demographic.

I wish they would enforce the laws about this a little better around here. It's not common but there are enough to be annoying. Now, if you have a performance tune that burns clean-ish, I'm okay with that. Especially if you live in the middle of nowhere. But around Denver, with poor air quality, I'd like to see the brodozers dialed back.

There are people working on it. Biggest issues were performance at high RPM, durability, and cost.

The El Camino beds were over 6 feet long. Biggest problem though is that they couldn't even handle as much weight as our base Comanches, nevermind the metric ton models. I bet it would ride on the bump stops with only one yard of gravel.

People will get an 8 year loan on a car just to buy new. And then in 3 years they want to trade it in and they're upside down but they roll it all into the next loan, paying stupid interest rates. They also lease, which can lower your monthly payment but you don't actually own the car so you're stuck with a payment every month for the rest of your life. My folks would buy new with a 3 year loan. When they paid it off they'd keep setting aside the payment money into savings. After about 8 years and 100K miles the car was done (60s and 70s cars, into the 80s). But they had a bundle to put down on their next car. So they could have a nice car with a low payment for only 3 years. These days, cars last longer. It's not hard to get 200K miles out of a car. So it's easier to bank some money after it's paid off and have a good down payment. But that's 15 years or so and you have to accept having an old car for years.

Also, 90% of the people who own pickup trucks don't need or use them as trucks. At all. Everything they claim they need a truck for they can do in a station wagon or crossover. Or a minivan for that matter

I definitely like the 3.0 EcoDiesel in my Wrangler. And, while the 4.0 is a couple of generations old at this point and it needed a complete overhaul, it is way better than the 3.8 and 3.6. Want to talk about no low end torque. You'd call the 4.0 a beast after driving those engines.

Keep in mind that there are number ranges cast into the mount for the gear. Those tell you how to rotate the mount by how many teeth are on the gear you're installing. Different gears are bigger (more teeth) or smaller (fewer teeth). The gear mount piece is offset. You need to rotate it to the right number setting after swapping out the gear. That gets the new gear the right distance away from the other gear. There are 4 slots. The retainer has two tabs that lock it in place in 2 of the slots. You have 4 choices for rotation, at 90 degrees. Pay attention to how it comes out. It'll probably be covered in gunk but when you clean it, you should be able to find the numbers.

I only replace the driven gear attached to the sender. They're not matched. Getting to the other one is always a bit involved.

Basic equation is straightforward: Tire revs per mile × axle ratio × 13 ÷ 1000 = teeth. Drop the fractional part. I looked up the tire size and got 832 revs per mile. I'm assuming a 4 cylinder runs 4.10 axle gears. That gives me 832 × 4.1 × 13 ÷ 1000 = 44.3456 Drop the fraction and you get 44 teeth. By dropping the fraction, the speedo will stay just a hair above actual speed. If you round, you can be running faster than the speedometer reads. But only by a hair. For 215/75R15 it's 751 revs per mile. That's 40.0283, or 40 teeth 235/75R15 is 721 revs per mile and 38.4293, or 38 teeth. A 31x10.5/15 tire is around 685 revs per mile giving you 36.5105, or 36 teeth. I believe that the Km/H speedometers are calibrated the same. They just have a different number scale painted on them. But I would double check.

Just had to throw this one in here...

This forum is pretty good compared to several others. I wasn't here in the early days to know if it was bad back then. But I've been on forums since the late 90s. A lot of it has to do with the regular forum members and their tolerance for shenanigans. Also, the members here have solid technical knowledge and the advice here is pretty solid most of the time. I'm active on some other forums and they're a lot more "fun" but the technical advice isn't always reliable.

I've ruined a couple of rear main seals installing them while swapping them out. It's easy to make a mistake, even when you've done a few. If you can loosen all the main caps so you can wiggle the crank away from the upper half, it's a little easier. But then you have a lot more bolts to retorque.

Yeah, given a once in 200K maintenance on the adapter O-rings, I'll keep the adapter. I'd throw that in with a rear main seal, oil pan gasket, and valve cover gasket on a Saturday.

I should have said that applies when doing a filter change. Being up on the block, oil will run down the side as soon as you start to pull the filter.

Depending on what's in the way and the size of the filter, you may not have room for it on the side of the block. It may hit what is in the engine bay. The filters aren't exactly short. And, with it on the side of the block, you get oil dripping down the side that you have to clean up. Of course, you have to deal with whatever is under the filter getting dripped on anyway (usually the axle).