DirtyComanche

I wish I had some (I literally have none in my possession) photos of my grandfather. He was merchant marine basically from the start of WW2. Pretty harrowing to go through despite being a non-combat position, seeing as the convoys lost ships all the time, and often lost them with all hands. Thanks to everyone who served. And since I'm Canadian it's Remembrance Day, so thank you even more to those who gave the ultimate sacrifice.

Not really. I tracked down a NV3550 and some other small parts. Still didn't purchase any axles and haven't exactly decided what I am doing with that, other than they will probably be from a JK and it's really a matter if that's a Rubicon or not. I spent a disgusting amount of money on machine tools to be able to try to fix this adapter or build a new one. Well, in reality I bought the machine tools because I wanted them and have needed them for a long time, and if I am unable to fix this I will break down and buy the Doomsday Diesel one. Currently I'm waiting on material, but then will probably still be held up on really being able to do anything because I need to source some other tooling and hardware. So realistically I won't be able to accomplish anything until after the holidays, and I may just switch gears and work on other stuff for a while again. I've done no work on the chassis either as I didn't even feel like picking away at it until I could place the engine. I should have tracked down some axles and worked out the suspension, but I had other things to do and wasn't feeling this project with the adapter in limbo. I do NOT recommend any product from Mercedes Diesel 4x4 at this point. This has been a very frustrating experience. I think the Doomsday adapter would work fine, as he now makes a Jeep specific one, although I don't like exactly how he made it.

I'd undo the springs and the hangers and roll the entire axle/suspension out of each and into the other. No disturbing the ubolts then, plus the M/T springs would go with the D44. But that's me.

The Novak mounts also explode if you look at them wrong. Really bad design.

I think tire size is always an easy opener question. I know I do it. I see a truck with big mud tars on it and if I want to see if they're a 4x4 person I always say something like "Nice tires, those Toyos, what are they, 35s?" or something like that. I could just look at the tire close enough to read it, but if I'm looking to make conversation it seems easier not to. But in this context it's weird, he was there to talk about the FSJ junk, but maybe he thought complimenting the XJ (that obviously has a ton of time and money into it) would butter me up if there was something he wanted to buy off me. If that was the case he killed any chance of it by insulting the MJ behind it, in fact he guaranteed that I didn't give an f' and was going to probably throw stuff out before selling it to him. My diesel swap bogged down pretty badly due to the adapter. Currently do not recommend it.

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.