 |
|
 |
Home >
Here are a few things that don't warrant building individual pages for but I
think are still noteworthy.
I've been itching to replace the stock 15x7 wheels for awhile and knew that someday when we put on 33x12.50 tires, we'd be using 15x8 wheels. Buying them now allowed me to check wheels of the list of parts to buy for the lift and larger tires and the 15x8's work great with our 31x10.50 tires. I was cruising the classifieds page on our local club website and noticed someone was selling some nice 15x8 American Racing 598's. These sell for $200 or more per wheel new and I picked them up for $50 per wheel. Great deal! Unfortunately American Racing discontinued them but hopefully I won't need a replacement.
 |
 |
The part of our soft top that attaches over the doors doesn't connect well anymore. Some of the snaps are missing and overall, the soft top has shrunk, making it impossible to put on properly. Over the last year, the fact that it's not connected over the doors meant that there was strong upward pressure on the soft top neat the front which led to failure in the screws that hold the windshielf channel on. I tried using larger screws both those pulled out, too. I even tried JB Weld along with the screws, to no avail. I was beginning to think I'd have to drill through the windshield frame and use bolts and nuts when someone in our local club suggested I try nutserts. Nutserts are an insert that is installed like a rivet but become like a nut so you can use a bolt to secure the channel. Harbor Freight had a nutsert kit (I think they call them threaded nut inserts) that had a rivet tool and some inserts. Some testing made me realize that the Harbor Freight aluminum inserts weren't anywhere near strong enough so I headed down to a nut and bolt store to look for stronger ones. The steel ones I purchased there fit the tool I was using and were plenty strong. I'm writing this 6 months later and after a few long highway trips and I can tell you this works like a charm! Make sure you use some blue threadlocker on the bolts when you put them in and you don't have to use large bolts. The Harbor Freight tool was $15 (I think) and the threaded inserts were around $5 for a handful. Well worth it!
One more thing. The problem in the first place was the extra pressure pulling up on the soft top. Remember how I couldn't connect the top over the door channel? Well I had a convertible top company inserts some new snaps. Then since I still couldn't snap them due to the soft top shrinkage, my wife made some extensions out of webbed nylon. I'll post a picture so you can see what I mean. Basically the nylon piece is about 2 inches long and a male snap end on one side and a female end on the other. That way the nylon strap bridges the gap and eliminated most of the extra upward pressure. Sure, it doesn't look as nice but I can now put off buying a new soft top since this one is in otherwise excellent shape.
I'll insert some pictures once I take them. I want to wait until I take the top off again.
This was pretty simple. I saw someone with an Arizona flag decal over the Jeep logo on the sides of their Jeep and just had to have it. A local guy makes them and all you need to do is peel the backing away and line the letters up. I think it looks nice. Sign Xpressions is the company I believe they have other styles as well.
 |
I had a spare RAM mount in my garage for storing my handheld GPS holder when not in use and decided to try installing it on the Jeep so I could mount an old video camera. I scoped a few spots and decided on the tire bump stop because it would allow the camera to stick out some, yet still capture tire movement over obstacles and there was enough space to securely screw the mount to. I also added some liquid blue threadlocker to help prevent the screw from coming loose from vibration. Though I don't have any digitized video to show right now, I can say it was a great location and I got some very interesting video from it! The rubberized RAM mount even dampened much of the shock so the video was fairly smooth even though we went over some rough obstacles. Note: since it sticks out some, be careful of trees and other things you might be driving near!
One further thing I would love to do is to mount a small LCD screen inside the Jeep and connect the video out port to it so I could see the video that is being captured. Did I mention I'm a gadget freak? :-)
 |
 |
 |
The RAM Mount ball |
Rear view, camera in place |
Front view, camera in place |
This is the quickest modification I've made to date. I can't usually hear my turn signal when I'm driving and on more than one occasion I've been making a "right turn around the world". Checker Auto Parts (one of my local auto parts stores) had a louder flasher relay for $10 and I decided to try it. You literally pull the old one out and put the old one in....10 seconds or less. The location is on the fuse panel underneath the drivers side dash (in a YJ). The new flasher isn't as loud as I had hoped but it does help. I can hear the flasher more than before.
 |
Louder turn signal flasher relay |
<report end>
