With and without

Well, drove around in my Jeep. Worked reasonably well in the unzipped position, though I had to put small bungees around the rear sail panels to keep them from flapping annoyingly. But once I did that, no flap, and just a nice draft in the front cabin when the front windows were rolled up. Rolled down, of course, was plenty of breeze.

Clouds rolled in, so I decided to zip the windows in rather than risk needing to pull the drain plugs on the bottom of the Jeep. After I did that, it of course turned sunny again. Of course.

-- Badtux the Jeeping Penguin

Mission accomplished

Today was frustrating. It was a beautiful Jeeping day, temperature in the mid 70's, clear, sunny, but... that bleepin' HARD TOP was harshing my mellow, man. I took off the "Freedom Panels" (the front removable panels of the hard top) to get more air and sunshine but the air just buffets around the back of the Jeep when I do that, because that *hard top* was back there still.

I gave up on lowering the hard top to the ground and decided to just leave it up on the ceiling, which means the ratchet straps had plenty of working distance, at the expense of having a hard top hanging in the middle of my garage:

I can walk under it, so (shrug). It's not as if I use the garage as anything other than a workshop anyhow, I never park the Jeep in it because it's too much a PITA opening and closing the old-school garage door and besides it's too cramped.

Oh yeah, the extra yellow strap running down the middle is just a safety strap in case one of the ratchet straps decide to let go. Not that I expect that to happen, this plastic hard top isn't all that heavy and those eye bolts go all the way through those 2x4's, which in turn are part of a boxed structure that is fairly strong.

Tomorrow I show you pics of the Jeep with the soft top on, it was too dark by the time I finished putting the soft top on it tonite...

-- Badtux the Jeepin' Penguin

Didn't work

Got out the ratchet straps and discovered they really have only about 2 feet of total working length. That doesn't usually matter because typically you're only using them to cinch a load, but clearly not going to work for slowly lowering a Jeep hard top four feet to the ground. Looks like I'll need to do it the old fashioned way, getting a friend over to help. Oh well :).

- Badtux the Bad Idea Penguin

Think this'll work?

I want to take the hard top off my Jeep and put on the convertible top, because spring is coming and thus a desire for open air. I want to save money on beer and pizzas by doing it myself. So here's the plan...

Two 2x6's -- lift hard top up (I can do that myself), slide 2x6's sideways across Jeep to under the hold-down holes, drive some wood screws thru those holes to keep the hard top from sliding off the 2x6's. Two 2x6's, one at front of the top, one at back of the top.

Four eye bolts -- one on each end of the 2x6's (which stick out from the sides of the Jeep).

Four eye bolts -- thru 2x4's on top of rafters in garage. (My ceiling is unfinished in my garage).

Four ratchet straps -- one on each corner. Ratchet the hard top up, drive the Jeep out of the garage, ratchet the hard top down and set it on the garage floor, at which point it can be tilted up and put on a cart and the 2x6's removed.

This seems workable, albeit a bit tedious (can only ratchet one corner up or down an inch or so before moving on to the next one, so I'd be going in a circle for a while.

Is there something I'm missing here?

-- Badtux the Convertible Penguin

Little Kim and the Jeep

I spent most of today getting my ham radio installed in my new Jeep, which involved pulling the antenna wire from the back of the Jeep to the front of the Jeep, finding a place to mount the amp unit, then getting power to it. Then I spent most of the evening rearranging my garage because doing the electrical work showed that my electrical tool/supply box was completely out of control (as in, it ended up all over my garage because I had the stuff to do the work but it was buried in this box full of *stuff*), only to come in and find that Dear Leader has died. Not to be confused with Hopey Changey.

One wonders what the new leader of North Korea is going to do. The only long term hope for North Korea is reunification with South Korea, but the South Koreans are scared to death of such a thing... it took a decade for Germany's economy to recover from the reunification with East Germany, and East Germany was in far better shape than North Korea, which is a complete and utter basket case.

-- Badtux the Busy Penguin

Quote of the day

"The H13 is quite possibly the stupidest design for a bulb ever foisted on the public. The terminals are so small that they overheat, even at stock wattages, and melt the plastic housing of the connectors."

The H13 is what my new Jeep has in it for its headlight bulb. I think Chiseler chose the H13 because the bulb has a seal around it, thereby keeping water out of the headlight proper. Sealing water out of headlights that use H4 bulbs is somewhat difficult due to the design of the H4 bulb, usually there is some cumbersome rubber shielding involved to attempt to seal around the socket to keep water out, and it's rarely 100% effective. So given that one requirement was that the Jeep Wrangler be able to fjord water that was up to the battery terminals (which in turn are higher than the headlight bulbs), this must have seemed something reasonable to the Jeep engineers. Too bad that the bulb itself sucks, for the reason mentioned above. And Chiseler deciding to make this a reflector-centric design rather than a lens-centric design didn't help, it looks cool but the light pattern sucks donkey dicks (I was outside trying to adjust these things to get a good light pattern for the past hour or so and it just cannot be done).

So it goes. The good thing is that a Jeep. What that means is that someone's already come up with a kit to put decent H4-based headlights in the thing :).

-- Badtux the Wrenchin' Penguin

Wrenchin' Penguin

I decided to change fender flares on my old Jeep because one of them was crumpled a bit. So I had three fender flares in storage, and needed to order a fourth, which I did. Then I headed out to storage and about halfway there, noticed that my speedometer wasn't working. Then about halfway home, my check engine light came on. Siiiigh!

Okay, so I got home, plugged in my code scanner, and it was a 501 -- "Speed sensor not working". Duh. So the next thing I did was notice that it was friggin' *cold* outside, so it was time to move the Jeep into the garage where it was significantly warmer. Well, easier said than done, so I spent about an hour cleaning out the garage to the point where there was enough room for a Jeep (eep!).

So anyhow, got the Jeep into the garage, rolled under the Jeep on my creeper, popped the speed sensor off, and... err... nothing wrong? So I revisited the installation directions and realized that when I'd replaced the O-ring on the speed sensor to deal with a transmission fluid leak last week, I'd installed it with the wrong rotation and it wasn't engaging the pinion in the transfer case tail. Sigh!

So now it's installed correctly. And how I managed to go a whole week without noticing that I didn't have a speedometer *still* confuses me. I guess I'm just so familiar with the sound of the engine in that old thing that I never bother actually looking at the speedometer!

-- Badtux the Wrenchin' Penguin

Back in town

Was out exercising the new Jeep in its natural environment -- remote areas of the Inyo Mountains and northern Mojave desert. More later.

UPDATE:

A dirty Jeep is a happy Jeep. This is a happy Jeep:

Once we got above the treeline, there were awesome views of the Owens Valley and Saline Valley:

That is all for now...

-- Badtux the Tired Penguin

No cat picture for you today

Here, have a Jeep.

Nothing like that new car smell, heh :). And yeah, that 285 horsepower engine fucking rocks in that little thing. The CJ folks always sneered at us YJ and TJ folks 'cause we were stuck with the straight 6 engine instead of having a manly V8 like them. Well, this little 3.6L V6 makes their manly AMC V8 engines look like 98 pound weaklings, yo. Makes a nice GRrrrrrowl when you lay into the gas pedal too, heh.

-- Badtux the Now-poorer Penguin

Too damned late

Crap.

-- Badtux the Multi-Jeep (temporarily!) Penguin

Oh crap

Just changed the rear diff fluid in my Jeep. Managed to slice my finger open in the process. Fuck.

-- Badtux the Bloody Penguin

A drive through the woods

Highlights of Saturday's excursion into the Sierras, with emphasis upon the obstacles that are enough to keep the idiot tourons from getting back there and trashing the place, but not hard enough to tempt the idiot hardcore 4x4 types to drive back there and trash the place. By and large it's just a nice drive through the woods with a pleasant picnic and camping area at the end.

-- Badtux the Jeepin' Penguin

Back in town

Took a nice little Jeep expedition. Managed to drag a tow hook and bring home a big glop of mud, found that my tailpipe is hanging too low and is too long with the new gas tank tuck (it got a divot on its top from my *other* tow hook), managed to hit a tree with one of my front fender flares when I didn't compute my cut just right and put a wrinkle into it as well as popped out one of the screws holding it. I found out that my tow hooks are now what limits my departure angle since the gas tank is no longer hanging down. Nothing not fixable with a sawzall, a heat gun, and removing those stupid tow hooks, which really aren't necessary because I have a receiver hitch D-ring...

I see I got a Libertarian invasion while I was out of town. Like rats, those Libertarians are, constantly moving in and trashing lesser blogs with their incessant prattling about how the solution to all problems is Santa Claus (oops, "Free market", same thing), how pink unicorns shitting rainbows will solve the problems that Santa doesn't solve (oops, "charity", my bad), and their whining about how paying their share of what it takes to keep a civilization running is "slavery" (a whining that they do using a network originally created by tax money, astoundingly enough). I guess I'll need to dust out the place and spray a little of the insecticide of reality and facts around here, that usually keeps the infestation down to the point of reasonableness. I swear, you spend a day enjoying yourself with a bunch of fellow Jeepers and come back and the children have trashed the place. Siiiigh!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Busy day

Changed my oil, lubed my Jeep, then bought a SSD for my travel laptop and am currently installing Windows on it (yeah, yeah, I know, but I need it for talking to my ham radios and GPS's and such and all that software is Windows-based, not Linux or Mac based). I was going to change the fluid in my front differential too, but I discovered that my tube of black silicone had burst at the bottom of my toolbox (too much slamming heavy hammers around in there I guess), meaning I had a sticky gooey mess but nothing to seal the differential cover with. By the time I got more goo, it was dark outside and I'm not interested in working on my Jeep in the dark. (Excuses, excuses ;).

Talking about which, the TuxJeep is 5 years old now. So I'm in the process of doing the 5 year maintenance. Next up is going to be to change the radiator fluid, I got some of that very pricey Chrysler-certified Zerex HOAT coolant (same stuff that Mercedes Benz cars use, i.e., not your run-of-the-mill green crap from the discount store) to do the job. Then comes the transmission and transfer case fluids. I figure changing them every 5 years is a good policy regardless of what the official service manual says...

-- Badtux the Busy Penguin

My last Jeep expedition

Over at Moto-Tux I take the Tuxjeep for a spin in the desert. I already have way too many videos embedded here to embed four more...

-- Badtux the Jeepin' Penguin

The Six Million err Thousand Dollar Jeep

Over at Moto-Tux, a lengthy discourse upon my Jeep -- yes, I got her back Thursday and have been busily making her better. No more Ford Taurus rent-a-car, yay!

-- Badtux the Jeepin' Penguin

Oops, my bad!

I've been neglecting my updates on Moto-Tux... so here's a long update on what's up with wrenching my Jeep. Remember, I sold all my motorcycles :(.

-- Badtux the Wrenching Penguin

Jeep Repair

This is in the parking lot of a Wal-Mart in Ohio, shortly after the owner of this Jeep was told that his headlight wasn't working. He had to make a quick Wal-Mart run to get a new battery for it.

-- Badtux the Appreciative Penguin

iTunes radio accomplished

It was a couple of weeks ago, but just now actually documented the install, with purty pictures. So if you're interested in that sorta thing, go take a look.

-- Badtux the Wrenchin' Penguin

Been a busy day...

Sold my KLR today, and now I'm putting some wider fender flares onto my Jeep. I was afraid that I'd gotten flares that were too wide, but they seem to be just right. The only real pain is the rear flares, since you have to remove the plastic fender liners and the fender liners have those %!@# one-time use plastic button fasteners that Detroit loves so much (as vs. the reusable ones that are used to hold the plastics onto my Suzuki). So I'm just ripping those guys out and replacing them with zip-ties or with nut/bolt/fender washers depending upon how accessible the holes are. It's not as if the plastic fender liners are a structural part of the Jeep anyhow, they're just intended to keep mud out of the area behind the wheels where the wiring for the lights and the emissions gear all live...

Earlier today, The Mighty Fang let out a horrific howl as if in agonizing pain. I was, like, "What? What?!" but he refused to answer me. Finally he puked up two different balls of... chewed-up rubber bands.

Yes, rubber bands! Apparently, after mugging the guy who came in to buy my bike (poor guy was trying to fill out the transfer papers, TMF kept rubbing against his hand to get petted, which sort of interfered with things!), he decided to eat the rubber bands off of the Saturday paper. Blasted cat has a fetish for rubber, sigh... he ate part of my spare inner tube for my bicycle, too.

-- Badtux the Wrenchin' Penguin