So we bought a Jeep—2006 LJR

Wildman said:
Wow đź‘Ś awesome job.

Now to give the Jeep some love.
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Sadly, as bad as I am at home improvement (we just made it up as we went, I'm sure others could do way better)... I'm better at that than Jeep stuff... but I like learning! No way I'd have the guts to tear into your project!
 
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DaveF said:
Sadly, as bad as I am at home improvement (we just made it up as we went, I'm sure others could do way better)... I'm better at that than Jeep stuff... but I like learning! No way I'd have the guts to tear into your project!
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Well you don't want to see my home improvement ability. I'm not a carpenter by any stretch.
 
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Apparition said:
Tears of joy from his first use of his PSC steering
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LOL
NashvilleTJ said:
What caused the flood, Dave?
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Hot water tank burst... but we got lucky. It happened in the 5 days we had at home between two week long Jeep trips... had it been while we were away, it would have been much, much worse.
 
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Great day today at Walker with @B00mb00m and his kids... Finally got over a rock obsticle I've never managed before, and just before that watched him come as close to rolling without actually rolling as I think was possible! (both passenger tires were nearly a foot in the air for seconds...)

Fun started though by noticing a bolt missing from the front of my engine skid... easy enough fix and glad I saw it on the trailer, nice dry/flat spot to lay under the Jeep and fix it with a new bolt :)

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Had a fun time at Reiter ORV yesterday...

Took the new Skydio 2+ drone that I just received the day before out for a first try... This thing is cool... I mean being able to have the drone auto follow the Jeep without hitting anything while I drive is awesome. Got some footage we've never been able to get before (angles etc.). With more practice I think we can do better.


This video I threw together to show the footage... it looked better quality before uploading to Youtube... seems to be stuck on the 4k conversion there.

 
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DaveF said:
Had a fun time at Reiter ORV yesterday...

Took the new Skydio 2+ drone that I just received the day before out for a first try... This thing is cool... I mean being able to have the drone auto follow the Jeep without hitting anything while I drive is awesome. Got some footage we've never been able to get before (angles etc.). With more practice I think we can do better.


This video I threw together to show the footage... it looked better quality before uploading to Youtube... seems to be stuck on the 4k conversion there.

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It’s really cool that it can follow you through the trees.
 
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DaveF said:
Had a fun time at Reiter ORV yesterday...

Took the new Skydio 2+ drone that I just received the day before out for a first try... This thing is cool... I mean being able to have the drone auto follow the Jeep without hitting anything while I drive is awesome. Got some footage we've never been able to get before (angles etc.). With more practice I think we can do better.


This video I threw together to show the footage... it looked better quality before uploading to Youtube... seems to be stuck on the 4k conversion there.

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Very cool footage, beautiful forest too.
 
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That's cool footage. What all can you control? Like percentage of frame to keep the motion? I liked the ones closer to roof level leading you down trail.
 
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B00mb00m said:
That's cool footage. What all can you control? Like percentage of frame to keep the motion? I liked the ones closer to roof level leading you down trail.
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you can control the type of tracking/follow/hover, the height, distance etc. you can fly manually if you want... as to tracking, it depends on if you're using your phone to control or the 'beacon'... phone you can see what the camera sees, and if it see's people or vehicles a person or vehicle icon shows over the top and you select one of them to track, it centers on the center of that person or vehicle.


It struggled a bit when 'leading' me from the front, mostly because of the tree's and narrow path... if it had to dodge a tree at a bend in the path for example it might dodge the 'wrong' way away from the path and out into the tree's, which with the density of tree's meant some times it struggled to find a way to get back in front of me. I think that option would work much better in a more open area.
 
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OK so went out and looked under the Jeep a bit as I've wheeled it quite a bit recently and found the front diff to be leaking... I wonder why, it looks ok from the outside doesn't it? lol.
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So time to replace it I guess... going to have to source those half sloped bolt head, not sure where to buy them... but anyway.

I've been looking for a Barnett cover for the front for quite a while to no avail, but I had a poison spyder bombshell laying around just in case so on it goes. Here the two are side by side, the poison spyder one is only 1/8th inch deeper than the OEM one so clearance isn't an issue.

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Somewhere along the line, the OEM one got some pretty good dents, one was deeper than I'd realized and I think was recent (pretty sure it was when I slid down that ledge, hit something hard and said "oomph"... you know the one right?).

Here's the dent from the outside with a ruler across it so you can see the depth, not sure if it shows in the other pics.

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And I'm glad I pulled it, as it seems the dent pushed in just far enough for the outer edge of the ring gear to put a bit of a groove in the cover. Luckilly I don't see any damage to the teeth, so I think I'm OK on that front. Here's the small groove.


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Anyway, no real issues, though I had to file down the lip of the housing again to make it flush along the bottom where the rocks had roughed it up, but took it for a drive and so far no leaks... will check it tomorrow after it sits a while to be sure.
 
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So Monday I went to replace my bent tie rod with a Blaine super duper hotted up one... and found that both ends had issues and when I started inspecting other stuff I found a bad u-joint.

Long story short, my first time changing a u-joint didn't go smooth... I could NOT get the old one loose for the longest time, finally made it happen with my press, but it scared me it had so much pressure and let go with a bang.

I think I got it all figured out though, and probably learned some stuff in the progress so it's all good :)

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DaveF said:
OK so time for an update I guess...

First, had an epic overnight snow wheeling trip up to Beckler road (US 2 Stevens Pass) with 15 other vehicles in my club new years eve. Of course snow was everywhere as the entire western washington had snow, but once we hit Beckler around 8pm we were in about 2 feet of snow. Proceeded up the hill and finally got everyone to the top at around 3:30am. I ended up strapping 3 vehicles behind me and pulling them to the top, then backing back down the trail 3/4 mile to get another 3, then doing that another time. At best guess I pulled/winched/unstuck other vehicles at least 40 times that night... we finally got home around 8:30am after I pulled a gladiator back down the top half of the pass. Happy to say my LJ was one of only 2 out of 16 vehicles to never get stuck all night.

Here is a video another club member made, you can see me pulling the first train up to the top at the 1:36 mark.


Here is a pic showing how deep the snow was AFTER the lead vehicles packed down a road... there was around 6' below the tracks based on how deep some of the tree wells were.



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So now it's time to start building now ramps for the trailer since mine were stolen. This is actually a good project for me to keep working on my welding. I also got to try out for the first time my new welder. I've been having issues getting enough penetration on 3/16" or thicker material with my little flux core welder and finally got myself a 240v/30a circuit in the garage, a new 240v welder (170a output) and set up with a gas bottle.

Before starting the ramps I did some test welds on some 1/4" pieces I cut up... here is one I welded at a 90 degree angle, then put into my press and tried to flatten... happily the steel bent before the weld was damaged at all so I think that will probably do!

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And here some pics of the first of the two ramps I'm building... using 3" C channel and 2.5" x .188 thick angle. I still need to do up the end to hang on the trailer.

I think my welds are getting better finally too, not looking as much like goobers :)


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I know this is an old thread, just wanted to comment on the welds. I'm a Certified Welding Inspector by trade and the test you did is very similar to the ones we use to test welders at work.

From what I can see your welds look good, no undercut or overlap and you've got good fusion with the base metal. Only suggestion I would make would be to wrap the welds around the corner and terminate the weld on a flat part of the joint. Corners and weld terminations are higher stress areas so it good practice to keep them separate.
 
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AirborneTexasRanger said:
I know this is an old thread, just wanted to comment on the welds. I'm a Certified Welding Inspector by trade and the test you did is very similar to the ones we use to test welders at work.

From what I can see your welds look good, no undercut or overlap and you've got good fusion with the base metal. Only suggestion I would make would be to wrap the welds around the corner and terminate the weld on a flat part of the joint. Corners and weld terminations are higher stress areas so it good practice to keep them separate.
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Thanks for the input! I can try to work on wrapping around like you say, still working on being smooth when changing directions and such though... but I'll hey, it's a work in progress.
 
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