what all should be in this forum?

[JeepcoMJ]

Doesn't this thread have more of a general tech feel?

 

Thought this subforum is more geared towards heavy/one off builds than question threads?

 

Just curious 

[Jeep Driver]

6 hours ago, JeepcoMJ said:

Doesn't this thread have more of a general tech feel?

 

Thought this subforum is more geared towards heavy/one off builds than question threads?

 

Just curious 

You people need to figure something out. 

Six guys standing in a room, real face to face conversations, conversations take twists and turns, that's real life.

 

Here, someone posts a thread, that person becomes the center of the universe, all that is, revolves around him, that's not real life. 

 

Either you are going to have an interesting forum that allows for a stream of open thought, or, you stifle everyone but a few, shutting down creative ideas and discussions. 

 

Life is not linear. 

 

Go to the 'online users' forum, most times you will find 5 pages of guests............one is left to wonder why these people do not register and participate? 

You cannot force people to think and behave just like you, you cannot shoehorn people into your idealism. 

 

Open up.

 

 

I'd actually like to comment on the V8 swap, whether you like my ideas or not. 

 

 

[Pete M]

everybody calm down a bit.  we're still feeling out what the epic tech should be.  we're starting with a mishmash of project threads and question threads to see how it goes.     maybe in the future we'll split them apart, but for right now it'll all be together.  

[DirtyComanche]

9 hours ago, JeepcoMJ said:

Doesn't this thread have more of a general tech feel?

 

Thought this subforum is more geared towards heavy/one off builds than question threads?

 

Just curious 

 

Is the original question of swapping an LS engine in on par with asking what axles a stock Jeep has?

 

Number of Jeeps here with one or more stock axles >95%.  Number with LS engines <1%.

 

And I am posting this calmly.

[Pete M]

the "guest" issue is... complicated for sure.  there's no doubt our forum suffers from aspects of what I'm going to call, niche-ness.  We're so focused on one thing that it tends to only attract the diehards for daily conversation.  There is a huge chunk of the traffic that is only here to search for an answer to their problem and then they are gone.  I'm guilty of that for things like my friends/family's rides (I'm sure there are lots of nice people to chat with at the Ford forum, but I don't because there's not much I know about fords so I don't feel I can contribute).   And when there's only a few daily posters, there can definitely be some group-think issues too.  Or we can turn off some members with negativity or if they feel they are being ganged up on about a thing (cutting up a clean MJ for example).   on the plus side there are a lot of problems we don't have that the big forums are struggling with so it's not all tiny-forum doom and gloom.  We've modernized our software and opened up a new forum dedicated to the hardcore topics so hopefully this will spur some excitement and energy and get us on the right path to remain relevant and worthwhile in a world where forums themselves are fading.  

 

 

while we're on this topic, I'm starting a new experiment.  Guest access is now limited to just a couple of the forums.  I also opened up the "problems" forum to guest posting just in case someone is having trouble signing in.  we'll see what happens.  

[DirtyComanche]

2 minutes ago, Pete M said:

while we're on this topic, I'm starting a new experiment.  Guest access is now limited to just a couple of the forums.  I also opened up the "problems" forum to guest posting just in case someone is having trouble signing in.  we'll see what happens.  

 

This absolutely is a niche forum.  Probably half the random guest traffic it gets is from people with Renix XJs Googling running issues and being directed here because there is per capita far more Renix MJs than XJs, and thus many more of the threads are about them, compared with an XJ tailored site like NAXJA or Cherokeetalk.

 

Limiting guest access to reading the forum will not be a good thing long term, as it limits search engines from indexing it and directing people here.  If I owned a MJ and was looking for something specific like fitting seats out of a Ford Explorer, (I have no idea if that would work, but whatever) because my 99% stock non-project truck has a bad seat and the junkyard doesn't even know what a Comanche is, so I Google "Explorer seat swap Jeep Comanche" and since whatever subforum has the one post about doing this not open to guest access instead Google will return a bunch of Explorer websites, some random unrelated Jeep sites, and a site about early explorers attempting to gain a seat on the tribal council of the Comanche people (or something like that), and maybe one irrelevant thread from here about somebody buying an Explorer (or axle) that just by reading the search engine preview is obviously irrelevant.  This person then never learns of this place, and never reads any of the rest of it, and winds up turning the truck in for scrap money because the seat was so uncomfortable (extreme example, but it does happen).

 

I'm on a local (BC/Western Canada wide) forum for rockcrawling/more hardcore wheeling, and the only subforum visible to guests is the introduction/begging for access subforum.  Thus Google has indexed none of the relevant content of the forum, and nobody is directed there unless they search for the very specific name of the site or are told about it by somebody else.  Membership has basically died, despite the fact it has some older tech content that would rival a lot of larger sites AND it even was one of the larger sites at one point in time.  Plus you have to use the useless native search engine when looking for old content, so a lot of the tech is much harder to find...

 

Modern social media is largely centered around instant gratification and content being pushed on you instead of having to dig for it.  Adding any layers to digging for it, such as forcing somebody to sign up, will easily turn them away and back to Facebook/Instagram/Youtube where all of the content can be viewed without creating a unique username/password, and content relevant (or close) to what they previously have looked at will automatically be pushed to them.  With a forum in this day and age all you can hope is that there is enough interesting content being indexed by search engines, or linked to through other social media, that enough people pass through and find it interesting/well laid out/friendly that SOME of them actually sign up and SOME of them actually start to contribute from that point.

 

That's just my opinion, but I'm a member of enough forums that are struggling or dying that I've seen a lot of things that I think are mistakes.

[89eliminator]

43 minutes ago, Pete M said:

 

while we're on this topic, I'm starting a new experiment.  Guest access is now limited to just a couple of the forums.  I also opened up the "problems" forum to guest posting just in case someone is having trouble signing in.  we'll see what happens.  

 

what do they have access to?  cause i just linked a thread on cherokeeforum and the OP can't view it cause he isnt a member.  

 

oh yeah, to keep on subject, rabble rabble rabble LS swap all the things rabble rabble rabble

[DesertRat1991]

3 hours ago, Jeep Driver said:

Go to the 'online users' forum, most times you will find 5 pages of guests............one is left to wonder why these people do not register and participate? 

 

 

38 minutes ago, Pete M said:

the "guest" issue is... complicated for sure.  there's no doubt our forum suffers from aspects of what I'm going to call, niche-ness.  We're so focused on one thing that it tends to only attract the diehards for daily conversation.  There is a huge chunk of the traffic that is only here to search for an answer to their problem and then they are gone.  I'm guilty of that for things like my friends/family's rides (I'm sure there are lots of nice people to chat with at the Ford forum, but I don't because there's not much I know about fords so I don't feel I can contribute).   And when there's only a few daily posters, there can definitely be some group-think issues too.  Or we can turn off some members with negativity or if they feel they are being ganged up on about a thing (cutting up a clean MJ for example).   on the plus side there are a lot of problems we don't have that the big forums are struggling with so it's not all tiny-forum doom and gloom.  We've modernized our software and opened up a new forum dedicated to the hardcore topics so hopefully this will spur some excitement and energy and get us on the right path to remain relevant and worthwhile in a world where forums themselves are fading.  

 

 

while we're on this topic, I'm starting a new experiment.  Guest access is now limited to just a couple of the forums.  I also opened up the "problems" forum to guest posting just in case someone is having trouble signing in.  we'll see what happens.  

 

Guys.  Those guests aren't real people.  The majority are search engine bots/web crawlers scouring the site for indexing purposes.  

 

A lot of the traffic on this site is artificial.  Take the metrics with a grain of salt.

[DirtyComanche]

1 minute ago, DesertRat1991 said:

A lot of the traffic on this site is artificial.  Take the metrics with a grain of salt.

 

Any traffic is good traffic.  And yes, lots of them are bots/spiders/indexers/whatever you want to call them.

[HOrnbrod]

"LS swap questions- yes, another one."

 

RustyRodder, shame on you. See what you started??   

[johnj92131]

Suspect the "guest" stats are a bit deceptive.

I simply don't sign in when I am just reading the forum. So I show up as a "guest".  Doubt I am the only one who does it that way.

 

For me the key number is how much traffic does the club get.

 

Also, I like the recent changes here.

[JeepcoMJ]

13 hours ago, Jeep Driver said:

You people need to figure something out. 

Six guys standing in a room, real face to face conversations, conversations take twists and turns, that's real life.

 

Here, someone posts a thread, that person becomes the center of the universe, all that is, revolves around him, that's not real life. 

 

Either you are going to have an interesting forum that allows for a stream of open thought, or, you stifle everyone but a few, shutting down creative ideas and discussions. 

 

Life is not linear. 

 

Go to the 'online users' forum, most times you will find 5 pages of guests............one is left to wonder why these people do not register and participate? 

You cannot force people to think and behave just like you, you cannot shoehorn people into your idealism. 

 

Open up.

 

 

I'd actually like to comment on the V8 swap, whether you like my ideas or not. 

 

 

 

In all seriousness, I just was under the impression that this forum was more to be along the lines of an index of heavy modification, rather than a cesspool of continuous ever-present and beaten with a dead horse questions, such as a Chevy ls swap.  A subforum to end the need for such questions, if you will.

 

Anyways, let's continue to discuss the most common, most researched, most generic, and most bolt in ready swap for any vehicle on earth.

 

Gonna follow wade on this one.  Babble babble unoriginal LS babble

[JeepcoMJ]

11 hours ago, DirtyComanche said:

 

Is the original question of swapping an LS engine in on par with asking what axles a stock Jeep has?

 

Number of Jeeps here with one or more stock axles >95%.  Number with LS engines <1%.

 

And I am posting this calmly.

 

I'm not sure why the need to "keep calm".  It was a simple question, regarding yet another 350 swap and whether this is the right subforum for questions, or whether this subforum is meant to be more directly informative with crazy one off items (i.e., not question threads, but information threads).

 

This forum isn't mine.  I don't make decisions here.  My question was based on impressions I gleamed from talking to the people who do make decisions.  So, I was curious.

 

This is a "go with the flow" sub forum, it seems.  That's fine by me.  It's all good from here.

[DirtyComanche]

5 minutes ago, JeepcoMJ said:

 

I'm not sure why the need to "keep calm".  It was a simple question, regarding yet another 350 swap and whether this is the right subforum for questions, or whether this subforum is meant to be more directly informative with crazy one off items (i.e., not question threads, but information threads).

 

This forum isn't mine.  I don't make decisions here.  My question was based on impressions I gleamed from talking to the people who do make decisions.  So, I was curious.

 

This is a "go with the flow" sub forum, it seems.  That's fine by me.  It's all good from here.

 

I don't really want to argue about it, but the "LS Swap" (which rarely is actually swapping just another 350 Chebby, since most people use the 5.3 or the 6.0 variants rather than the original 5.7L LS1, and either way none of these engines have much in common with the standard 350 Chebby, and there is several generations of these engines themselves with different caveats regarding installing and tuning them) is anywhere near as common in the XJ/MJ chassis or as easy as you would like to imply.

 

And, of most of the ones done, they could probably have either been done better or cheaper, or a combination thereof.  Most people who order up the Novak package of crap wind up with less than awesome results and they wind up paying way too much for it.  Some of the things tried from the total DIY aspect have worked less than perfect too.  And there's a ton of bad info out there, which I certainly was fed a ton of when I started researching it (such as being told by many MANY people that I wouldn't need a VSS since I was running a NV4500).

 

[Pete M]

I split off this discussion and gave it a title to clean up the original topic.

 

anywho, back to v8s.  yes LS swaps have been done before, but it is still pretty dang hardcore for the vast majority of owners.  the way I see it, if we hold the bar too high there would only ever be a handful of entries.  an 8.8 swap would definitely be regular tech.  a 6bt diesel swap would definitely be hardcore.  the line between is... fuzzy at best. 

[JeepcoMJ]

Good idea.  It's extremely fuzzy

 

The reality is that we need to look at it as "non generic", and aim it towards instructional, DIY, or just darn cool.

 

I'd love to see it be more of a how to, hardcore edition.

 

But, if we do that, then we certainly need a "non stock" tech subforum, which would/could include anything from 8.8 swaps to 350 swaps and more.

 

It is a matter of needle in a hay stack, for me.  Most of the non stock questions are the hay.  It would be nice to see this subforum be the needle.

 

We appreciate all the things that you do!

[DirtyComanche]

There was debate about the stock vs non-stock tech.

 

I think the conclusion was that nobody was going to post in the right section anyways, so why bother?  Plus if you make too many subs, nobody reads all of them.  I'd probably never read stock tech if there was a specific sub for it, I just don't care enough.

[JeepcoMJ]

5 minutes ago, DirtyComanche said:

There was debate about the stock vs non-stock tech.

 

I think the conclusion was that nobody was going to post in the right section anyways, so why bother?  Plus if you make too many subs, nobody reads all of them.  I'd probably never read stock tech if there was a specific sub for it, I just don't care enough.

Agreed.

 

I skim, don't see anything that interests me, move on, and at the end of every session, I mark the forum read.

 

But then, I'm the guy who will delete an app off my phone for having persistent notification icons up.

 

Problem is, for someone such as you or anyone else in this subforum, there isn't much left stock wise that we need to deal with or know, if it'son the subject of oem.

 

Heck, even worse, I'd rip apart a perfect running full optioned renix mj just to at least put 96 wiring and my own personal blend of h.o. drivetrain in simply because I prefer to rely on a scan tool than good old fashioned diagnosis.  But then, you could also give me the most cherry pristine 60s or 70s muscle car, and I'd not stop tinkering with it until it'sfuel injected for that very same reason.

[Pete M]

guest permissions have all been returned to normal so the spiders can feast on our tech.   

 

as a side note, over 20 people signed up in the last 24 hours as compared to less than 10 for the entire week previous.  

[johnj92131]

45 minutes ago, Pete M said:

guest permissions have all been returned to normal so the spiders can feast on our tech.   

 

as a side note, over 20 people signed up in the last 24 hours as compared to less than 10 for the entire week previous.  

 

Now, it will be very interesting to see how many of the "over 20 people" actually stick around and make more than 10 posts.

 

Pete, I am guessing that you may be tracking this over the next month or so??

[Pete M]

nope.  but the way the database is set up, it's not hard to see all 20 in a row with posts counts.

[Jeep Driver]

There is/was an ebb and flow to the guests viewing. 

 

Bots and spiders...........I doubt many of them are. 

 

5 pages around dinner time,  1.5 pages at 1AM. 

 

People searching. 

[Pete M]

What are peoples' thoughts on including some nut-n-bolt restorations?  I mean, if they're going to the extent of painting the body inside and out, that's a pretty intense project.  

[DirtyComanche]

1 hour ago, Pete M said:

What are peoples' thoughts on including some nut-n-bolt restorations?  I mean, if they're going to the extent of painting the body inside and out, that's a pretty intense project.  

 

I guess.  As long as they're good at explaining what they did and how...  Because there is a lot of good info in that for everyone.

 

The FSJ forums have a "Priss" section for that type of stuff, since they tend to be their own little cult.