You guys are goona love this. Due to time restraints I had to use this for the coolant recovery bottle (mountain dew of course )



When it comes back to be finished hopefully we can put something a little better in its place

And here we go, doing hot laps(In my area I can pretty much drive anything I want,lol)





Dale was on his way tonight to take the rig for a couple weeks while I am gone to the hammers. And the only thing left to do was get a coolant fan, and 1 hour before he was to show, mr. UPS dropped it off, so it was a mad rush to get it ready.

And here is dale playing a little before he left

 

 

where do you buy the Black hamerite? just at like schmucks or something? it looks like that would be some good stuff to use on my skid plate

 

I've seen it at Home Depot.

 

Wow, I'm shocked ... that coolant recovery bottle looks so bootyfab!



J/K Great work. Looks like you have done some nice work.

 

Turned out very sweet!!!

I'm just wondering how many time he is goin to forget its an auto and get to hit the clutch and nail the brake pedal. i've done it in my suburban and its quite a rude jerk.

 

Good luck gibby with the rig for the next couple weekends. I am headin out to load my rig onto the trailer, and get to leavin for the hammers....

And if you have any questions, leave a voice mail and I will try to get back to ya(cell service is sketchy down there)

 

Wow! All I've got to say, been watching this build up progress and its turned out damn nice...Looks like you're goin to enjoy that. Nice work Crash

 

Had the first day playing with it today. Crash is going to kill me. I promised that I'd not take it in any deep mud before he got back to finish some remaining details. Well Markus took a shot behind the wheel and BURIED it. I couldn't even winch out. We had an excavator nearby and used that to get me out. My 40" tires were below the ground level, and barely visible. I get to spend a few hours with Mr Pressure washer tomorrow.

 

Well?

 

BTW, the RAM assist is AWESOME!. now that my lockers are engaging properly I use the front locker more. I can tell only the slightest difference when the front is locked vs unlocked. Before the RAM, I could hardly turn if the front was locked.

 

I'm waiting for pics to come in. Trust me, when I get pulled out of the mud with an excavator because the winch won't get me out, pictures are being taken!

 

After Markus buried it in the mud yesterday I was pretty happy. No breakage. Well, that changed today. He finished another one of the hill climbs that we're working on so I decided to give it a try. After about 6 attempts I was almost up but when I put on the brakes to back down and give it another try, the front driveline pulled apart. I guess my high travel driveline wasn't high enough.

It was back to the excavator to pull my up and reassemble the driveline. No damage really, but I was surprised that it pulled apart. One of the cool things is that even at that extreme angle, it started right back up and ran great. I don't think I'm going to have any trouble on the trails. I've not seen anythings as steep as what I was on, on the trails that I've run so that's a good thing!

Still having lots of overheating troubles. I replaced the thermal switch today, but that didn't help - the fan was still not turning on when it should. I'll have to replace the relay next. For the time being, I jury rigged and direct connection to the battery with a little toggle switch and I just let it run the entire time. Perfect temp control. So the fan pulls enough air, but the relay has to turn it on when it's supposed to go on.

Now it's back to the pressure washer so Crash doesn't yell too much at me!

 

You might wanna take a look at this as a new controller. The adjustable version will be my next fan controller. It's electronic (not mechanical!), accurate to +/- 1*, completely adjustable and self-contained (no need for an external relay).

It comes in a probe (insert it in-between the vanes) or threaded model.

 

All I can say Is I pity you when Crash gets home. He's going to tweak. I hope he has an extra extra good time at the hammers.

 

The pressure washer got some heavy use right after I got back. But I've still got 2 (maybe 3) more wheeling trips planned before he gets back.

 

On the second trip out, I discovered some more issues.
First, the coolant recovery system needs to get finished. I hard wired a little switch to run the cooling fan manually. Even after swapping out a new temp switch the fan wouldn't turn on properly. Also the Mountain Dew coolant recovery system isn't quite holding up. I have the parts, just need to get them in.
Second, when running with the lockers on in the front, the Power Steering pump was overheating if I left the lockers on for several minutes. The RAM Assist works awesome but even with a cooler for the power steering it wasn't enough. Maybe a little fan on the cooler??
I had the carb tuned and it worked great on the uphill and sidehill but downhill it died, acting like and smelling like it was flooded. Also, the choke isn't working???
When I stomp on the gas under heavy load, I got a loud noise that may have been a ping but not recognizing the noise, I quickly jump off the throttle and will have to look into this more later.
I shimmed the rear pinion up 3 degrees and seem to have resolved most of the driveline vibration on the road.
The rear output flange on the transfer case appears to be sloppy. Not knowing how it should be or what the tolerances are, it'll be a question for Mike. This may be the cause of the transfer case rattle that I hear.
The rear output seal in the transmission is leaking ATF back into the t-cases. The doubler itself has a leak that we knew about.
The S&N antiwrap had to go. It was somehow preloading so much that it not only shifted the weight to the right side whenever I stepped on the gas, but the rig didn't return to center and it was really messing with the right rear spring when getting twisted up. I took this off and the problem was resolved. This is going to be going back to the drawing board on the anti-wrap.
I found a great deal on a Warn 12K winch and 2 different WARN mounts. Since Mike is going to work on redoing the winch portion of the front bumper I'll see if he can use one of these mounting system and secure it lower than it was previously. If he's willing, I'll have him find a way to mount my 8k winch in the rear.
My son Jackson was playing monkey bars with the tire carrier when I wasn't looking and ripped this off the rear bumper. I'll have to see if Mike can find a better way of mounting this as well.
The Hella and PIAA lights will be going on the front once the winch is relocated and I busted the right signal light mount - whoops.

I was VERY pleased with the torque of the bigger motor on the trail. I'm still not sure that I like the auto transmission. I can agree that it makes wheeling easier, but not necessarily more fun. I miss shifting. I found that when I needed to crawl, running in double low allowed me to keep RPMs up enough that I wasn't relying on the torque converter slipping to go slow. I ran every trail at Evan's Creek on Saturday except for 102 and didn't find anything there that would've required lower gearing.

On the road, I'm still not happy with my 4.10 gears in the diffs. Despite have the auto tranny and more HP, I don't have the acceleration and hill climbing power I'm was expecting or hoping to have. Offroad, the gearing was fine so I'll have to weigh the cost of regearing...

The residual valve still needs to installed for the rear brakes and the line locks are holding as long as the hill's not to steep and I can't get a single brake to lock up. This will need a little more tweaking.

 

 

Shocked at what??

 

Honest Crash,
He only took it for a short spin around the block while you were at the hammers.