• It's time to cast your vote for the third annual Ride of the Year (ROTY) contest! The winner will receive a free BMB big brake kit compliments of Blaine. Click here to vote! Voting ends December 31st at 12 AM MST.
Novak Conversions Jeep Wrangler TJ engine mounts

What did you do to your TJ today?

Fixed two cars today. The Fiat needed a new 02 sensor - so when I hopped into the Jeep to drive off to get one, it went "Brrrr, click, click, click, click...." I had known that the battery was showing signs of being on its way out for about the last week. My Interstate dealer didn't have a group 34 on hand, so I toyed with the idea of a Mall*Wart "Everstart" as that was what was in it and it was almost 6 years old. Local store didn't have it in stock either, and I needed this thing fixed NOW. Ended up with a Die Hard from Advance Auto, although I *did* give about a 35 milli-second thought to Auto-Zone's DuraLast since @Jerry Bransford speaks so highly of them. ;)

DSC01996.JPG


DSC01997.JPG
 
Last edited:
Po installed the cheesy (to me) mini front fender flares, so before coughing up $$$ to genright good’ens, for the snow season, I’ll be trying this. I will clean up the silicone with a greenie and brake parts once it sets..
48” long john mud flaps and Ace rivets $45 total take your time if you try it and go one hole after the other, measuring 100 times. Hope someone can use this similar idea…

IMG_2345.jpeg


IMG_2344.jpeg


IMG_2342.jpeg


IMG_2341.jpeg


IMG_2340.jpeg
 
Po installed the cheesy (to me) mini front fender flares, so before coughing up $$$ to genright good’ens, for the snow season, I’ll be trying this. I will clean up the silicone with a greenie and brake parts once it sets..
48” long john mud flaps and Ace rivets $45 total take your time if you try it and go one hole after the other, measuring 100 times. Hope someone can use this similar idea…

View attachment 463035

View attachment 463036

View attachment 463037

View attachment 463038

View attachment 463039

IMG_2339.jpeg
 
Fixed two cars today. The Fiat needed a new 02 sensor - so when I hopped into the Jeep to drive off to get one, it went "Brrrr, click, click, click, click...." I had known that the battery was showing signs of being on its way out for about the last week. My Interstate dealer didn't have a group 34 on hand, so I toyed with the idea of a Mall*Wart "Everstart" as that was what was in it and it was almost 6 years old. Local store didn't have it in stock either, and I needed this thing fixed NOW. Ended up with a Die Hard from Advance Auto, although I *did* give about a 35 milli-second thought to Auto-Zone's DuraLast since @Jerry Bransford speaks so highly of them. ;)

View attachment 462774

View attachment 462775

Receipt in a zip loc bag taped to the bottom of mine, then registered with vatozones cheap replace parts just for ‘incase’ easy swaps. With the batteries nowadays, you’ve got to act as if you’re your own insurance underwriter, ready to get every nickel and dime
 
584.jpg

Started charging at 4 amps, quickly dropped to 3, then 2; then dropped to a bit over 1 amp overnite - the sign of a fully charged healthy battery. Interestingly, the old battery would never drop below about 2 amps, even when it was just 2 years old when I first bought the Jeep.
 
Used the TJ to help build my shop...still using Mr. B's test rope...got the red final version ready to go and this seems like a fitting send off.

View attachment 462842

-Mac

More walls...snatch block high up in a tree. Who says recovery gear isn't a good investment. Anyone else put a tree saver 30' up in a tree?

IMG20231004134752.jpg


-Mac
 
Germans always take a simple idea and complicate it all in the guise of making it better.

Decades ago, I worked with a German-educated Dutch engineer. He could not help himself when it came to setting tolerances on part dimensions. He was always much more precise than the design required. Most of the time, it added unnecessary cost to the parts (sometimes to extreme amounts), but sometimes, it actually affected assembly and reliability because clearances at the extremes of tolerance became too small. He had a unique last name, but for anonymity, let's say it was "Snooker." Every time I encountered a problem with his extreme precision, I said, "Boys, we've been Snookered again!"
 
Decades ago, I worked with a German-educated Dutch engineer. He could not help himself when it came to setting tolerances on part dimensions. He was always much more precise than the design required. Most of the time, it added unnecessary cost to the parts (sometimes to extreme amounts), but sometimes, it actually affected assembly and reliability because clearances at the extremes of tolerance became too small. He had a unique last name, but for anonymity, let's say it was "Snooker." Every time I encountered a problem with his extreme precision, I said, "Boys, we've been Snookered again!"

Ha!
I was a Benz master tech for 15 years. Yeah, everything is made in the same philosophy as those ornate cuckoo clocks. It's amazing when everything works as designed. But one small error compounds to a hot mess clusterfuck when something doesn't conform 100% to the design parameters.
 
Ha!
I was a Benz master tech for 15 years. Yeah, everything is made in the same philosophy as those ornate cuckoo clocks. It's amazing when everything works as designed. But one small error compounds to a hot mess clusterfuck when something doesn't conform 100% to the design parameters.

I work for a company that makes woodworking machinery here in the US. We've been in business for over 100 years and one of our products is clamping wood for panels and posts. We occasionally go the the Ligna Show in Hanover Germany and show our equipment. Every time we go there, the Germans talk to us like we've never built machinery before and that our clamping equipment is not sufficient because we don't use hydraulic ram pressure. I always tell them that 90% of the furniture, cabinet, window, and door manufacturers in the US have been using our equipment to some extent for over 100 years without an issue. I then take two pieces of wood that have just come off the rip saw and put glue on them and stand them on edge and tell them to come back to the booth in an hour. If and when they do come back, I take the two boards and break them on a hard object and get wood failure, NOT glue joint failure. They look at me as if I just did a magic trick. I tell them they don't need that much pressure to glue wood together it's not how PVA glues work. They still don't get it and continue to purchase high priced machinery that is overkill.
 
Every time we go there, the Germans talk to us like we've never built machinery before and that our clamping equipment is not sufficient because we don't use hydraulic ram pressure.

Does your equipment work in a highly-automated production environment? Europe has much more automated manufacturing plants due to labor costs, and hydraulics (and even more so, pneumatics) are used for that reason. About 20 years ago, I toured several factories in Europe with an automation company we were looking to partner with, and I was astonished at how few humans were on the production floors at each one.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Blondie70
Novak Conversions Jeep Wrangler TJ engine mounts