DirtyComanche

He wanted to see the Gladiator cab that was in my shop, so as we were walking by the other stuff the was parked out front I said "Oh, I've got a Mercedes diesel that's hopefully going to go into that one (pointing at the 89 MJ)" which was right after he'd asked how big the tires were on my XJ, and then had said looked awesome, that was parked in front of if. I don't even understand why he would have followed it up with that comment. Anywho, knock on the door. Just be nice.

Exact words were "Those aren't even rare, and they're junk." Thanks.

I get people stopping to ask about the crap in my driveway from time to time. I don't mind talking normally, as long as people are nice. Go knock on the door. (I had a FSJ enthusiast stop to talk, he insulted my MJ collection... So that's what I mean about being nice.)

Oops, didn't mean to post this in tech... But yeah. Weights 180 degrees apart on the wheel? RED FLAG!

I do all my own maintenance except for a couple specialized things. One of those is tires. Today I had some tires balanced because they had a bit of a shake last year. I just took them in loose, left while they did it, and they tossed them in the truck for me while I was paying when I came back. When I went to put them on I realized the quality of the work I paid for.

People need to stop with the "real D44" nonsense. "Real D44"s were their own tradeoff and are not really stronger than what is found in a JK or newer. The JK D44 front suffers from undersized axle tubes, which a bunch of the early D44s actually did too. The reason you don't hear about the early ones failing is because they all already did, or were never put through the abuse that a pig heavy JK with 37"+ tires subjects them to. Keep in mind JK owners will regularly run a 37" tire on the D30 front, and often will run a 40" tire on the D44 front, and defend these actions as being perfectly sensible, when they already started out with a 5000lb curb weight and then threw the entire Smittybuilt catalog at the thing. The only good D44s for axle tubes were found in 3/4 ton trucks, not that it really mattered because at that point the center section wasn't as strong as the tubes and they would regularly break the cuff off the center section if you got too sporty. The JK ring and pinion is actually stronger than any of the earlier D44s, and the center section casting is better in some key areas, not to say either is infallible, but it is the reason that you actually see them surviving for at least a period of time with 37"+ tires and significant horsepower levels (keep in mind they are throwing 100HP more at the axles than a 4.0L, and that's without a supercharger or Hemi swap, both of which are quite popular). The early D44s have less ball joint separation, yet use the same sized ball joints as the later D44 (or D30), the lack of separation meaning that they're subject to more leverage in the early axles, and meaning that you have less space for a u-joint. Also the early D44 axles used 19 spline outer shafts, which is considerably smaller than anything ever used in a JK (D30 or D44), plus unit bearing outer stub shafts tend to inherently be stronger for some reason (I believe how they're fully engaged in the hub, but not sure, failures of the outer stubs are rare on all UB axles, be it Ford, Jeep, Dodge, etc). Early D44s did tend to save themselves because most of the selectable hubs available for them are junk and would grenade before other things did, unfortunately they would also grenade and take out the outer stub and sometimes even the spindle at the same time. The main thing to take away here is that most of the old axle versus new axle "real world experience" were apples to bananas comparisons and therefore are skewing the picture. You put an old D44 front in a 3200lb trail weight CJ with 130HP and 35s, and it holds up fine. If you put that same axle in a 6200lb JK with 300HP and 35s, I can guarantee you it would break very quickly. The actual JK variant of this axle will hold up to that for some time, in fact likely for far longer than most people would guess, with lots of people not even doing the axle sleeves until they go over 35s. I don't know anything real world about JL/JT axles yet. I don't own one, don't really care too, and think they might have gone a little too far with the weight savings on them. Weight savings was the reason for the undersized axle tubes on the JK D44s, and it is the biggest drawback to those axles (which the aftermarket has fairly well addressed at this point), so I suspect the JL will have lots of issues from decisions made with that in mind.

Pop the grill off a put a piece of cardboard in, then put the grill back on... paint it black first for bonus points.

Extremely low viscosity solvents pass right through those seals and then dissolve the hydrocarbon components of the grease. Not to mention the brushes hate it too. Whatever, he did it, but I wouldn't recommend it. Contact cleaner is meant to clean connections, not rotating parts.

Oddly enough the company that rebuilds our starter-generators recommends against it. They like clean water, or if it's really bad they say a mild soap and rinse it afterwards with clean water. Their reasoning is the harder cleaners can soften or damage the brushes, and are much more likely to wash the grease out of the bearings. Our starter-generators regularly explode though.

Not gonna lie, I bought two more myself.

Good.

I don't understand the point of Twitter. It seems akin to walking into a random room in a large office building, shouting out what you had for dinner last night, and then leaving before anyone has a chance to respond, WHEN YOU DON'T EVEN WORK THERE. Oh yeah, my account got banned because I signed up and my first "Tweet" was something like "What's this, a shout box? I'M GOING TO SHOUT!!!" Literally banned me as spam.

I'd make a trailer out of it if I was local. Could really use another truck bed trailer, and one that matched the truck pulling it would be sweet.

It's got enough dents in it that it would take a very competent body man quite a while to get back to decent... Probably only good for patch panels at this point.

I wish I'd got in on that one.

Ford one. https://forums.vintage-mustang.com/general-discussion-non-vintage-mustang/575181-ford-v8-air-compressor.html Ford V8s were the most common from everything I remember, going back as far as the flathead days. Before then they often used 2 cylinders of whatever type. Like I said, it's not new, but there's lots of reasons why it isn't popular. If you explore old mines you're likely to stumble across one at some point. The kit to convert them was cheap, and used engines were cheap, and most mining of old was done on the cheap.

Old tech, used to be super common to see that style of compressor running the pneumatic hammers in mines, etc. Typically they used a V8. Yeah, there's a little more to it, but basically it was an inexpensive way to make an awful lot of air. I'd waste my time on something else personally. They didn't stop building them that way because they were awesome.

They buy out inventory from anywhere they can. One time I got a bunch of valve cover gaskets for a buck each, they all came in NAPA boxes. I'm sure they still made a pretty big profit margin selling these for $14 each.

Oh, actually I was wrong, the invoice is in USD. So they were $14.21 USD, $20~ CAD. So the price is the same. I'd still say order at your own risk, but I'm happy with what I got.

So you can believe me.

The TPS in my XJ is iffy, so I figured I'd order a couple of RockAuto. They had the SMP TH67:P listed in a private label package (typically no returns as it's wholesale stock they bought for cheap from closing stores or whatever) for $14.21 CAD, which is about $11 USD. SMP is okay as long as it's not the T-series stuff, so I figured for the price I'd grab two, and they only charged $8 to ship them by USPS. They showed up today and... They're MOPAR. Yup, they didn't feel like putting the MOPAR sensor into inventory under it's own P/N since they're last of stock and will never have them again, so they put a sticker on them saying they're a direct replacement for the SMP TH67:P and sold them as that. They show they still have more of them, but the price has gone up, so I would not guarantee they're the same.

What year and engine?

Flash is officially dead in 2020, so you don't have to worry about that. Implemented correctly, it's not a completely different view, it just moves things around a bit so they make more sense given the screen dimensions. Typically they move the user name/data/avatar (on the left on this forum) to above the body of the post, as the typical 'device' screen is narrow and tall, and they will hide or move (to either the top or bottom) some extraneous sidebar elements (if a forum is bad enough to have them,things like search boxes, announcements, etc, typically things that shouldn't have been there to begin with), and they will make the buttons larger so they're easier to click, the reply box tall/skinny, etc. They aren't always good, in fact some are so terrible they aren't worth using unless you're a masochist, but a decent forum will have it and have it set up so the bare minimum of information is lost in that mode and so it is actually easier to read. I know people that literally do not have an actual computer, just a phone and/or tablet, and have never viewed a forum in desktop mode. Those people typically want this view, as the desktop view is only useful in mobile if you're already used to it. phpBB supports this out of the box, but could use some tweaking on the default skin. vBulletin seems to do a better job of it, but not smashingly so. Haven't tried if Simple Machines can. phpBB also seems to default support attachment/image uploading with max file sizes, and it looks like you can install a plugin (ImageMagik I think) to allow automatic resizing and converting. I don't think it can do the seemless drag and drop we have here, while vBulletin can, but I'm guessing there might be a plugin to do that.