DirtyComanche

I think I'm going to get craftsman for what I can and snap-on for the rest. Seems easy enough. The craftsman is about 10% the price of the snap-on. And it turns out there is actually a sears here that stocks tools (I had no idea, it's new).

There's no lowes here.

Here's my problem... I have to buy another set of tools for work. Luckily I don't need a stupid amount. I 'need' a whole set of SAE sockets in 12-point 1/4 drive through 3/8, plus u-joints/exentions/adapters, and a 1/2" drive ratchet. Standard SAE combination wrenches. A ratcheting screwdriver, and 1/4 drive ratcheting screwdriver, ratcheting box ends, and off-set open ends. Plus a new dead-blow, ball peen, punches, picks, drifts, short pry bar, and a bunch of other stuff that I haven't thought about. The question is who should I buy from? Some of it will basically have to be snap-on, as Mac doesn't have many dealers here... There's also craftsman (sears) which is what I mostly use at home. But the sears are rather scarce if I must return a tool. And there's other brands too. So, should I just go all snap-on? Or buy only what I must from them and get craftsman for the rest?

The shipping will kill you...

They work. Apparently they don't like side pulls. Ohwell. I smashed my tow hooks on everything when I had them like that. I also smashed my head on them a couple times. One of which left me bleeding pretty good.

I can tell you I'm right to a reasonable amount of accuracy.

500~ bare engine, or about 525 mostly there. Or in that area. Apparently.

ghey sauce.

Instead of a more typical ball-joints to hold the knuckle on to the axle, king pins are used... They're basically a pin and a set of tapered roller bearings (like wheel bearings) that allow piviting movement, but nothing else. Horrible explaination. But they're often said to be stronger. Which is fair enough, but a big ball joint is strong too (seen on newer D60s).

Make friends with somebody with a welder... I know, it sounds rather shallow, but there's lots of nice people out there with welders.

As a highly temporary (read, to get you through a VI) repair it'd work great. Longer term? Hell no. There's lots of bad things you can do, and that's right up there... A lot of expanding foams are hydroscopic and cause rust. And you CAN'T bond fiberglass to metal. EVER! A thin applcation of body filler is one thing (guys argue what 'thin' is all the time, but let's say 1/16 - 1/8") as the dissimilar expansion rate does not pose much of a problem as the final product will remain flexible enough. But fiberglass is a whole new animal - it expands very little when heated, and is very rigid even in a thin application. The end result is it will de-bond from ANY metal over time.

Decent deal. Any axle that old should be rebuilt anyways.

The body would seperate from the frame before it'd break like that.

I don't have an odometer.

I bet you're right on the hydrogen production, I had assumed it was produced by electrolysis but it makes more sense that it isn't (I'm thinking acid donors would be far cheaper, just not sustainable.)

That car did make the hydrogen on board right? That in its self would make it a bit more efficient than pumping stations filling storage tanks.. NO! NO! NO! The busses I spoke of run on liquid hydrogen that is pumped out of a filling station. It is made in a facility that consumes MASSIVE amounts of electricity to make it. The hydrogen is essentially a battery, as electrical energy is used to make it from the water, and then re-released either as heat in combustion or as electricity in a fuel cell. My point is if you make hydrogen on-board (which is what that math exercise is) you will ALWAYS be opperating at a loss. Hence it is NOT WORTHWHILE. In that example we started with a given amount of energy (100%) and through the process of converting it whittled it down to only 13.5% of what it was. 86.5% of it was wasted in the form of losses, IE it did not do any useful work for us.

There's LOTS of hydrogen powered vehicles out there. I do believe that a large portion of vancouver's bus fleet is hydrogen. There's large carbon fiber tanks mounted on the roof to store it... However, they are not breaking physical laws. That hydrogen was made from water, at the expense of a GREAT deal of energy. In fact, quite a bit MORE than they see as a final production (motion). It's all parasitic loss, it happens EVERY time you convert one form of energy to another. But don't worry, we didn't break the laws of physics there - that energy didn't simply vanish - it just became something usless to us (heat normally). When you use an alternator driven by the engine to elctrolize water into hydrogen and oxygen, you're doing exactly what was done to produce the hydrogen for the above busses. However, again it is done AT A LOSS. An alternator is actually fairly efficent (in the range of over 90% IIRC), however the internal combustion engine isn't. It's maybe 30%. Electrolizing water is also not very efficent - it varies greatly on how good the design is. So, what we've done is taken energy from gasoline to drive the engine at a 30% efficenty, which then drives the alternator (the belt drive has a friction loss too) at a 90% efficentcy, and electrolizes water at say a 50% efficentcy. Combined this is .30x.90x.50 = .135 or 13.5% efficentcy. So, for all that gasoline we burned to make this system work we only got 13.5% of that energy back. This is not a gain, it is a LOSS. And if you aren't willing to believe that, too bad.

Wow, what a bunch of BS. Pretty much like EVERY other fuel saving device that you DON'T see implemented on modern vehicles.

They're all 2.5s, so they don't have as many clearance problems. With a 4.0L the oil pan is lower... Also the UCA towers on the axle hit the oil pan flange. Again, that can be fixed. Notching an oil pan for clearance is nothing new though. Look at the oil pan in a 6cyl IFS toyota truck if you want a really good example!

Vista is garbage. Do not buy anything with it. Eventually they might fix some of the glaring bugs and make it a little more stable, but I do not have enough faith in micro$oft to expect them to get around to that for a couple years. That's all the advice I can give.

Which guy? And I THINK you'll be at about a 3" drop with ZJ rears? The ZJ guys put their stock fronts in the rear to give them about 3" of lift, IIRC. Clearances with the oil pan get bad at about 3" low in the front, I think. I'm sure it can be fixed, but everyone I've ever talked to about it seemed to think it was a 'major' problem. :nuts: I think they just aren't willing to use a sawzall.

You know, after just hitting momma bear's cub I'd NOT be thinking about going back to 'try to help'.

There's an IFS MJ on here, JBhill's truck... Those are SFA though. The use a 2wd beam. I think they used adjustable ball joints. The SCCA rules didn't allow major modifications to the trucks AFAIK.

Some might be interested, just a short little clip. I don't think it's a repost. http://www.brightcove.tv/title.jsp?titl ... =140859702

I took out a flock (er, heard?) of quail with it too. Stupid things. It's really nice when you have to wash the blood and feathers off your car.