Just A Nerd's Garage

[jeremy_cherokee]

Nutanix is much better than UCS -

We have nutanix in the office along with blades.
You have to buy memory modules for nutanix which is fine then you have to buy storage blocks as well. I see a benefit of the converged platform but if I want to run server with 128G ram each Im buying huge amounts of memory blocks from nutanix. Why not just load up a blade with tons of memory, its cheaper.
On the storage side you start sticking lots of the storage blocks together - cool. Will the controller be able to handle all the IO the disks can shove out? I THINK the storage controller is a beefed up raid card.

I guess if your going to scale that out a SAN with dedicated storage processors would be a better route to handle IO. Dont know never seen a huge scale out of Nutanix storage.

Interesting. It almost seems like they are more for medium sized businesses that need more power and storage than a few random rackmount servers can handle effectively, but not quite to the scalability of a full on blade chassis. I wonder if they are easy to find used for cheap to play with - the platform just seems interesting to me.

Jeremy,
Why yes you are correct, plenty knowledge on this site and much more friendly than any others I've been around.

I've been disappointed with new cars advertising their MPG and not being able to get close to that. My two commuter cars I can get much better than what they were advertised to get sometimes by almost 10 mpg hwy. My wife's last car was a Mazda CX-5 6 speed rated at 35 mpg hwy, even going 65 on a flat road I was only able to pull 33, but wasn't ever able to drive it much how I drive my commuter cars. The Mazda and JKU are the only new vehicles I've ever had around all of the others are used with usually high miles. 36 vehicles, that is impressive, I'm 30 and am at 27 including 5 of my past motorcycles, but have picked up 5 just this year so I'm gaining ground slowly. I keep saying I'll get just one more and stop for a while, but just can't pass up a good deal I can make money off of, or just have some cash burning a hole in my pocket.

If it were up to me and I didn't keep finding something else I'd keep all of mine until the rust apart, or I just can't find the parts to make them run. My goal is to have picked up a vehicle with under 100k miles and drive it past 250k with the original engine and trans and not being rebuilt. The green Saturn I have now is headed that way, 186k now it was my wife's when we met, then sold to my older brother, then back to me so it will get there but will take a few years as I only drive it to work. If that was my only car it wouldn't take any time at all, we each drive about 30k miles a year between our commute and travel.

With two full size car seats it does fine as long as you aren't too tall but with the seat height adjustment it really helps. Now with those same two big car seats it is tough to sit between them but can be done for shorter trips, once they are in booster seats it is no problem at all even for leg room. I'd be weary of the JLU for the same reasons you mentioned and why not get a great deal on a tried and true JKU, plus diesel engines with DPF, EGR, PCV, DEF, etc. scare me just a little after taking the EGR off of my truck and seeing that nasty deposit junk on the intake.

I won't get my hopes up, but you just never know.
JB

I've had the same experience with new cars and their mileage rating. They never seem to get what they're supposed to. My Sonic is rated at like 32 and 40 or 42 and the closest I ever got to that was 38mpg and that was when I was only going 60mph every day on a county highway instead of the interstate. Now that I'm going down the interstate I get closer to 35. There were a few years where we'd buy a car, beat the **** out of it for 6 months or so, sell it to make a few hundred, and buy another car to beat the **** out of. It was a lot of fun but now I think you and I are in the same boat - I want to keep them now. I want to buy a car, play with it, put it in the garage for a little bit to give the other cars some attention, then come back and drive it again.

We must have the same mental wavelength going because I have the same "obsession" with miles ... I want to get the XJ up to 300k ... and I want it to look and function as good at 300K as it does now. That's why I'm taking extra steps now to keep it that way. For the longest time I wanted the Sonic to be the first car that I personally put 200k miles on. I bought it new and could have done that. However, at 50k it already blew a turbo, it's had a bad axle seal, a few interior issues, a PCV valve failed, and a few other issues. I don't know that it could make it to 200k without at least 2 more turbos and several other parts. So the XJ is my next target.

Awesome - I figured they would fit but it's nice to hear some confirmation. I do agree though, after a lot of thought. I think the JKU is going to be the best way to go. What ***** is they are discontinuing the Hydro Blue color the wife absolutely loves in the 2017 models so I guess we'll be on the search for a Hydro blue, 6-speed manual, 9-speaker sounds system, and Willys W edition wrangler ... used. Yep. That's going to be fun.

 

[littleviking]

Nutanix is much better than UCS -

We have nutanix in the office along with blades.
You have to buy memory modules for nutanix which is fine then you have to buy storage blocks as well. I see a benefit of the converged platform but if I want to run server with 128G ram each Im buying huge amounts of memory blocks from nutanix. Why not just load up a blade with tons of memory, its cheaper.
On the storage side you start sticking lots of the storage blocks together - cool. Will the controller be able to handle all the IO the disks can shove out? I THINK the storage controller is a beefed up raid card.

I guess if your going to scale that out a SAN with dedicated storage processors would be a better route to handle IO. Dont know never seen a huge scale out of Nutanix storage.

Shade we just dropped about 500 GaBillion dollars to outfit an entire DataCenter on Nutanix platform. We do all Virtual so all of our hosts are heavy hitters. So each node of the Nutanix platform is basiclly a fully built out G9 with all the sparkly bells and whistles. We are saving about 75% space which allows us to put our entire data center in a shipping container. That way it can be moved from where it is now to somewhere else using a truck and driver. Very cool stuff.


As for the IO we tortured the absolute SNOT out of our stuff before we put it into production.

We COULD NOT get it up above 92% IO capability.

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

Shade we just dropped about 500 GaBillion dollars to outfit an entire DataCenter on Nutanix platform. We do all Virtual so all of our hosts are heavy hitters. So each node of the Nutanix platform is basiclly a fully built out G9 with all the sparkly bells and whistles. We are saving about 75% space which allows us to put our entire data center in a shipping container. That way it can be moved from where it is now to somewhere else using a truck and driver. Very cool stuff.


As for the IO we tortured the absolute SNOT out of our stuff before we put it into production.

We COULD NOT get it up above 92% IO capability.

That's pretty awesome. You guys are really making me want to play with one of these!

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

In the Shop
Got a little bit done to the XJ over the weekend. No pictures because there isn't a whole lot to see.

I installed the decent Pioneer speakers I bought from Best Buy last week. I hate ever admitting to buying something from that place, but they had them on sale and it's about the only car stereo place in the area. The back speakers and the front passenger's side went great - no issues. Then I got the the front driver's side. I'm not really sure what a previous owner was thinking but there is a random accessory wire with an empty clip just sitting clipped to the door. No big deal. However, they spliced into those wires in, what I can only assume, was a lazy attempt at fixing a broken speaker wire. Well ... they didn't think it through very hard because they spliced into it and used the side going to the empty plug, not going back to the stereo. Obviously that didn't work. So, instead, I got to buy some new stereo wire and pull both new wires. That was a little bit of a pain getting the wires to push through the rubber seal in the door, but not terrible.

At this point, I still had the headliner only halfway in. Well, I wasn't paying attention and knocked it down in the back which broke the crappy crimped speaker wires they had done back there. I should have replaced it when I hooked them up but didn't. So I went ahead and soldered on new connections there, too. So now all the speakers but the front passenger's side have new soldered on connections to the speaker. I'm half tempted to appease my OCD and run the passenger's side as well - although it was actually in great shape.

Then I started pulling wires for an amp and sub. I'm not into crazy loud music that people can hear from 3 blocks away - but I do love good music so I'm going to put a mild 10" sub in the little cubby in the back of the XJ. Those wires went down without any issue since I have the interior pretty much gutted.

Once the speaker wires were ran I started putting the interior plastic back in. I got all the upper trim in, the oh sh!t handles, and the back lower trim. Now I just need my carpet to dry out. I'm not sure how to accelerate this. Any ideas here? When I initially pulled out the carpet (probably at least 2 weeks ago now) the passenger's side was soaked. I put the carpet in the shop and just assumed it'd dry out. It didn't. Instead it's still just as soaked as it was 2 weeks ago. I had it sitting outside in the sun yesterday for hours and it's still pretty soaked. I need to get that dried out!

The XJ is now stuck waiting for carpet to dry out and I'm going to start pulling apart the donor and get my transmission ready. Hopefully I can make some good progress this week.

On the Shop
In order to do the 5-speed swap I'm going to need some more tools - specifically a cherry picker and engine stand. I'll probably borrow the cherry picker from a friend but I've found a Mac Tools engine stand for only $75. Hopefully going to have my dad pick that up while he's in the area this week.

BUGS! I really need to figure out the issue with bugs in my shop. I have crickets and spiders everywhere. And not little tiny crickets. Giant crickets. I kill them when I see them, but they don't stop coming out of everywhere! Going to spray some bug killer around the shop tonight but I haven't had much luck with that the past.

 

[JustinS]

Hey if you need an engine stand, ive got one I've been tripping over for three years, $20 and its yours.

 

[bdbecker]

I hear you on the bugs. I think this year is just bad for bugs in general with all the moisture we've had. I've got crickets and spiders worse than I've ever seen around my place. I'm going to bug-bomb my garage later this week just to take care of all the spiders.

As far as the carpet goes, try vacuuming it with a wet/dry vac to get as much moisture as you can off of it. Then cover it in baking soda (go crazy, its cheap) and let it sit for an hour or so and then vacuum up the baking soda. The baking soda helps pull moisture out and takes away the musty smell. At this point, it might be a little damp yet, so I would lay it out in front of a fan for the next day or two.

I had a ZJ that had issues with a damp passenger foot well - this method worked for me a few times until I figured out the cause.

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

Hey if you need an engine stand, ive got one I've been tripping over for three years, $20 and its yours.

Call it hold the 4.0? Because if the answer to that question is yes ... then I'll take it!

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

I hear you on the bugs. I think this year is just bad for bugs in general with all the moisture we've had. I've got crickets and spiders worse than I've ever seen around my place. I'm going to bug-bomb my garage later this week just to take care of all the spiders.

As far as the carpet goes, try vacuuming it with a wet/dry vac to get as much moisture as you can off of it. Then cover it in baking soda (go crazy, its cheap) and let it sit for an hour or so and then vacuum up the baking soda. The baking soda helps pull moisture out and takes away the musty smell. At this point, it might be a little damp yet, so I would lay it out in front of a fan for the next day or two.

I had a ZJ that had issues with a damp passenger foot well - this method worked for me a few times until I figured out the cause.

Awesome - I will do this when I get home for lunch.

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

I found the thread about night time pictures of the garage and was inspired. After this inspiration I realized I clearly need more lighting in the parking garage.

I also learned last night that spending 10 minutes to change out a flat tire is much more productive than trying to move a 3000+ pound vehicle with said flat tire installed. The donor runs but has a nasty leak in the pan gasket and didn't have any oil left - so I got the pleasure of pushing it. This was after moving a few hundred retention wall bricks and several loads of gravel at the old man's house.

One more pic because the Stryker doesn't get as much love as it should in this thread:

To get the donor in the shop I had to do a little bit of cleaning up. I realized last night that I have more storage than I originally thought I did. I also realized that convincing the wife to do the parking garage in racedeck might be easier than I had originally planned. Hmm ... she should not let me get away with what she does. But I won't mention that to her

In the process of moving the donor into the shop, the wife learned to appreciate power steering. I was laughing in between panting from moving that thing. My driveway doesn't look like it, but it actually has a little bit of an incline toward the shop. Because of where I had parked the donor the night we dropped it off, I had to back it down a ways into the driveway in order to straighten it out. That sucked.

 

[patent pending]

Marion, NC? If so that's my hometown. Now that is a random place to drive to from Iowa for a Jeep!

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

Marion, NC? If so that's my hometown. Now that is a random place to drive to from Iowa for a Jeep!

Hahaha yep that's the place. It's beautiful out there. In Iowa, the closest thing we have to a mountain is probably the NE corner and those are really just slightly large hills. And then we just have a bunch of corn and beans in between. It was neat to see all the scenery out there.

 

[shade]

Shade we just dropped about 500 GaBillion dollars to outfit an entire DataCenter on Nutanix platform. We do all Virtual so all of our hosts are heavy hitters. So each node of the Nutanix platform is basiclly a fully built out G9 with all the sparkly bells and whistles. We are saving about 75% space which allows us to put our entire data center in a shipping container. That way it can be moved from where it is now to somewhere else using a truck and driver. Very cool stuff.


As for the IO we tortured the absolute SNOT out of our stuff before we put it into production.

We COULD NOT get it up above 92% IO capability.

I guess my only question is - i know what the scale out looks like using blades and a SAN. I know at some point the bottle neck becomes the storage processors on the frame
I'm trying to find out how scaling out Nutanix works.
I understand that the storage writes out across all the disks in the cluster.
Each storage node uses hardware raid cards in each....

i guess curious on an apples to apples comparison of each set up. Tried googling some of that information the other day and its not easy to find.

 

[littleviking]

I guess my only question is - i know what the scale out looks like using blades and a SAN. I know at some point the bottle neck becomes the storage processors on the frame
I'm trying to find out how scaling out Nutanix works.
I understand that the storage writes out across all the disks in the cluster.
Each storage node uses hardware raid cards in each....

i guess curious on an apples to apples comparison of each set up. Tried googling some of that information the other day and its not easy to find.

are you asking about how it performs when you have more then one block connected together?

I know how its supposed to work but I'll respond back tomorrow and give you real life examples if you'd like.

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

Nerdish stuff
I had another eventful weekend, as seems to be the norm for me (and I love it).

Friday night we decided to have a Mario Kart 64 tournament party using a couple of Raspberry Pis setup as "retroPi" with some emulators. We had brackets made up and the whole works. I ended up coming in second place because I had one really bad circuit, but it was a ton of fun. We ended the night with a "don't drink and drive" game where you have to finish a beer before you finish the race but you can't be drinking while driving. That was fun! Here was the setup:

Shop Stuff
Saturday morning I actually got to add a new tool tot he shop thanks to JustinS here on the forum. Picked up the engine stand he offered to me and the kids quickly decided it was a toy, not a tool:

Then on Sunday I got to go and pick up a car I've been wanting for several years now. I found a 2002 Miata with only 55k on the clock. This thing is about as clean as an almost 15 year old car can be. It has the rock chip protecting film on the front, seats are in great shape, it's the special edition with the LSD in the rear - and it's an absolute blast to drive. We had to drive up to the Okoboji area to get it - but it was absolutely worth it.

And then this morning I woke up early (for me) and drove down to the Des Moines area to pick up my dad's birthday present. Saw this on one of the FB swap and meet sites and thought he'd love it. He's a big JD guy so I'm sure he'll enjoy it.

This week, pending I can divert my focus from the Miata, I'll finally get to start tearing apart the donor Jeep and get working on the 5-speed conversion. Getting excited!

 

[JustinS]

Dude, I'm really digging that leather in the Miata!

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

Dude, I'm really digging that leather in the Miata!

Me too! When I first saw it in the pics I wasn't sure about it. But when I went and saw it for the first time - I was sold. I've already put probably 400 miles on it since I got it Sunday. It's pretty much like driving a go-kart. The only bad thing is changing the oil, as I found out last night. That filter is in the absolute dumbest spot I could imagine

 

[Dennx]

I'm diggin' this garage. Some of the same interests. Working on a 4x4, computers and wanting to weld. Lookin' good.

 

[Mr. Roboto]

Congrats on the Miata! Looks like a fun little ride. Enjoy it!

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

I'm diggin' this garage. Some of the same interests. Working on a 4x4, computers and wanting to weld. Lookin' good.

Glad there is more of us out there haha. Nice FJ in the pic. For the longest time I never thought much of those things. Then I looked into them and man, they pretty nice 4x4s. A friend of mine has one ... but he's in Delaware. I'm thinking once the XJ is "done" I'll take it over there and we can do some wheeling together.

Congrats on the Miata! Looks like a fun little ride. Enjoy it!

Thanks! It's been a blast so far!

 

[jbmatth]

I've only ever driven someone else's Miata and it was a fun little car, at the time I had a second gen RX-7 and they were very similar in that they were both the size of a beer can with wheels. Come to think of it they were probably about as safe as one too. I am right there with you on this topic until you get into the computer tech talk, then my eyes glaze over, I catch a word or two that I know then have to smack my head to get my eyes uncrossed. I know I lack in that knowledge and would like to get better but doubt that will happen. I can set up wifi, connect computer to TV, install a printer and use most programs on a computer, but that is about the end of it.
JB

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

I've only ever driven someone else's Miata and it was a fun little car, at the time I had a second gen RX-7 and they were very similar in that they were both the size of a beer can with wheels. Come to think of it they were probably about as safe as one too. I am right there with you on this topic until you get into the computer tech talk, then my eyes glaze over, I catch a word or two that I know then have to smack my head to get my eyes uncrossed. I know I lack in that knowledge and would like to get better but doubt that will happen. I can set up wifi, connect computer to TV, install a printer and use most programs on a computer, but that is about the end of it.
JB

Growing up I always thought they were weird looking cars and was never really interested in them. Then I started reading about them. Then I started obsessing over them. Then I drove one and I was hooked. Took 2 years I think to find this one but it was worth the wait. My poor Stryker has sat in the garage all week and it probably doesn't like it's new sibling the Miata.

Setting up wifi, in and of itself, is already more than a lot of people i know can do. The great thing about GJ is that, despite our varied interest, we still all share a few common grounds - which is why we all keep coming back here

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

The Jeep

This week wasn't as productive as I was hoping. I ended up having to travel to Austin for some work and that threw off my whole week. However, before I left, I was able to get a little work done to the donor. I got the front end pulled apart and the engine is now ready to be pulled:

Lucky me I had some help from the little ones:

Hoping to pick up a cherry picker from a friend this weekend and start working on getting the engine/transmission pulled out of the donor. Then start working on getting the pedals out of the donor. Winter is coming so I need to get the only vehicle I own with 4 wheel drive ready for prime time.

Random

I started rewatching Breaking Bad so if I start fantasizing about a Chrysler 300 SRT-8 in a week or so when I get to Season 4 or 5 you now know where that comes from

 

[jbmatth]

Seems like you have been watching too much Breaking Bad, you haven't updated in a month now. How is everything going for you?
JB

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

Seems like you have been watching too much Breaking Bad, you haven't updated in a month now. How is everything going for you?
JB

hahaha - It has been a crazy couple of months. I went to Austin 3 times for work and have been crazy busy at home.

The Jeep (What I'm now calling FrankenJeep)

Well, I finally got the Jeep going last week and what I would consider 100% last night.

We started by pulling the transmission and transfer case from the donor. That went relatively smoothly other than dealing with the insane amount of rust on that thing. We did have one problem, however. Getting the transmission and transfer case to separate ended up costing me the transfer case. I was hoping to sell that but that thing was seized on there hard. Once that separated we had to drill out the cut off bolts:

Once we got that all done we worked on getting my AW4 pulled from the good XJ. That came out without much issue at all - most likely due to the fact that it was just out a year ago when I installed it. We got the AX15 mounted and installed and something just didn't feel right as we were putting it on. My dad had it in his head that something just wasn't right. Well ... he was right. In the center of the crank there is the pilot bearing but it was way too far in for the transmission to hit it. Did some research and apparently there's a "pilot bearing with sleeve" that needed to go in there. Good thing my dad catches that stuff. We ordered the new pilot bearing with sleeve and got it all mounted up.

After some time spent on the interior I got it all put back together and man does it look good with the correct shifter:

On black Friday I waited a couple of hours and went to Best Buy (something I hate doing) and found a Pioneer stereo on sale for $40. I had already replaced the speakers but my stereo was junk. I picked that up and got it installed when I put the interior back together. It's cheap, but it has bluetooth and plays music well enough.

We got it fired up and has a spongy clutch that started grabbing when you still had the pedal on the floor. The aftermarket slave cylinder doesn't allow you to bleed the lines. Apparently Chrysler's slave doesn't either. So I sucked it up and bought the complete master/slave/line that's pre-bled. We got that yesterday and got it installed and it made all the difference. Clutch grabs right where it's supposed to and I was able to drive it in to work today

Now I just have a few little things to take care of in the Jeep. The first thing is the front drive shaft. The AX15 is offset from the AW4 by enough that the front drive shaft won't fit. So I bought one form the local salvage yard but the seals were junk. I ended up ordering one online and hopefully it'll be here this week as I think snow is in the forecast next week. The other thing I want to do to the XJ is get the gas tank fixed. Right now you have to just barely hold the gas pump lever otherwise it stops due to back pressure. That ***** when it's less than 30 degrees outside. My spring project will be repainting the roof as it has a whole bunch of surface rust spots on it and I want to take care of it before it becomes a real problem.

The Shop
A few months ago I sold my old Craftsman tank of a table saw in order to save some space. I'm glad I did because the XJ project would have been a little more challenging with that huge thing taking up space on the side of the shop. The wife was asking me what I wanted for and I told her that I could use a table saw that is easily stored out of the way and, would you look at that - there was one on black friday special at Lowe's. We went out black friday and picked up the Kobalt table saw that was on sale. I got it assembled Sunday night and, honestly, for a relatively cheap saw - it seems pretty nice. Probably won't last as long as that Craftsman, but that's OK. It takes up less space. No pictures yet but I'll take some when I start to clean up the shop later this week.

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

One More Thing (XJ Related)
My other lingering "issue" with the XJ is that the computer is looking for the torque converter giving me code P0705 "Trans range sensor circuit malfunction" - so I either need to get the computer flashed or I need to figure out how to get that code to go away. If there's any thoughts out there they'd be greatly appreciated.

 

[Mr. Roboto]

One More Thing (XJ Related)
My other lingering "issue" with the XJ is that the computer is looking for the torque converter giving me code P0705 "Trans range sensor circuit malfunction" - so I either need to get the computer flashed or I need to figure out how to get that code to go away. If there's any thoughts out there they'd be greatly appreciated.

Nice job on the swap! Sounds like the amount of challenges you had is just about par for the course when it comes to wrenching on jeeps

Can't you just swap the ECU from the donor jeep over to the new jeep? If not, maybe you can do a resistor bypass on that circuit with the value that the sensor is expecting to see.

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

Nice job on the swap! Sounds like the amount of challenges you had is just about par for the course when it comes to wrenching on jeeps



Can't you just swap the ECU from the donor jeep over to the new jeep? If not, maybe you can do a resistor bypass on that circuit with the value that the sensor is expecting to see.

Thanks! Yeah - Jeep stands for "Just Empty Every Pocket" for a reason. But I love the thing, though.

We thought about that, however, my Jeep uses the coil ignition and the 97 uses a distributor:-/

 

[jbmatth]

Congrats on getting the XJ back on the road and with the stick, that is awesome! I'm in a similar boat, I've only been in my office 5 days in the last 7 weeks, that makes getting any shop or GJ time difficult.
JB

 

[sean Buick 76]

Nice work on the Jeep project!

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

Congrats on getting the XJ back on the road and with the stick, that is awesome! I'm in a similar boat, I've only been in my office 5 days in the last 7 weeks, that makes getting any shop or GJ time difficult.
JB

Thanks! This time of year, especially, gets crazy busy for me. I work in IT so it's just coincidence, but it always seems like October-ish through about June is crazy busy for me.

Nice work on the Jeep project!

Thanks! We ended up just having one minor issue - still have bad vibrations. However, I decided to buy a brand new front drive shaft because I've always used JY ones and I wanted to eliminate the possibility of it being the front shaft. In my previous testing, I'd remove the rear driveshaft and I'd still have the vibrations - but I always had a JY driveshaft that was questionable. This time, I installed the front DS, removed the rear and drove it and it was smooth as butter. After that I went and ordered a modified rear drive shaft that incorporates the double u-joint design of the front DS, just minus the CV portion, into the rear so I don't have to do a SYE but should have a better angle for the u-joints and avoid them going bad real quick.

According to the UPS site the rear DS is out for delivery so I've got my fingers crossed that this resolves my issue I've been chasing for a year and a half!

 

[JustinS]

How is the xj running? I saw you trying to get rid of the donor shell, did it ever sell?

I sold my JKU so im on the hunt for a project xj or wj.

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

How is the xj running? I saw you trying to get rid of the donor shell, did it ever sell?

I sold my JKU so im on the hunt for a project xj or wj.

It's amazing how quickly life takes over and makes it almost impossible to even spend 5 minutes updating these posts.

I did end up selling the donor - it went to a guy that is just parting it out for the remainder of the few good parts. Funny story about when he picked it up - I learned not to stop the Jeep on ice. We were pushing it up on to his trailer, and because I apparently lost any and all common sense at this moment, I stopped pushing right over a patch of ice. When getting it moving again I slipped and gave my face a good smacking. Luckily nothing broke but man did I feel that one.

The XJ is running great. Since we had a pretty light winter it didn't get used a ton for snow purposes, however, I've still put some miles on it. Then my dad borrowed it for almost a month because he had a bunch of little projects going on - so it's been getting its exercise. When I first got the 5-speed conversion done I though the clutch wasn't right but after a few thousand miles of breaking it in it feels great now. My only issue with the XJ now is the same stupid vibrations that I had prior to the swap. I'm 90% sure this is related to driveshaft angle now. I pull the rear shaft and the vibes go away. So an SYE is in my future - but I want to rebuild the t-case at the same time so I'll probably be a while.

Did you find your project XJ? It's funny that you sold the JKU because we ended up buying one. After going back and forth between a 2014, we couldn't pass up the deal we got on a brand new 2017. It's Chief Blue, 6-speed manual, Freedom Edition. This was my wife's dream Jeep and she's loving every minute of it. We bought it back in February (I had to get it in KC because it was the only place with a 4-door, manual, in that blue) and we've already crossed over 7200 miles this weekend.

Other Updates
So far this year I've been to Vegas twice (my best friend and my wife's 30th birthdays), Phoenix, Tampa, and Denver. It's been a crazy year! Now that travel is settling down I finally get to start playing in the garage again.

Last year I tried out a few riding lawn mowers and they were all just too big for my yard. So I started going through CL again the other day and picked up a little Snapper. It had a completely torn apart engine and the PO wasn't sure what happened to it so I decided that would be a great opportunity to upgrade it from the little 8hp to something with a little more grunt. Spending a little time on CL again I found an 18hp engine that should work on it. This will hopefully be a project for this week so I can start using it. Pretty excited to see how this thing does with an 18hp engine on it.

 

[JustinS]

Nice snapper. I didn't pick up an XJ, but I did buy a basket case 1947 CJ2A!

i really like that blue on the JKU.

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

Nice snapper. I didn't pick up an XJ, but I did buy a basket case 1947 CJ2A!

i really like that blue on the JKU.

Thanks! For the $100 I paid for it, I think it was a good deal. It's in crazy good shape.

The CJ2A will be a fun project. Did you luck out and get one without significant rust or are you going to have to go down that path too?

She was dead set on the Hydro blue that Jeep offered for years before that. When she first heard they were getting rid of it she was not happy. Then she saw the Chief and fell in love all over again haha.

 

[JustinS]

Its got plwnty if patina that will probably stay. Itd be easiwr to buy a repro tub at this point. But, its gettimg cut up for bigger tires so i dont care too much!

 

[jbmatth]

That is a great looking JKU, I know the feeling trying to find one in manual though, that took some doing. I have a question though on the running boards, were those factory or after market? I've been looking for some for my wife's JKU and haven't found much that will actually keep the mud from our gravel road off of the hinges and door handles.

I bet the snapper will be a mowing machine with 18hp now.
JB

 

[JustinS]

Those are stock JKU running boards. If you buy one from the dealer without, they can be had for cheap on Craigslist.

 

[cash68]

Why have a PC in the garage? Tablet works pretty well for looking things up.

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

Its got plwnty if patina that will probably stay. Itd be easiwr to buy a repro tub at this point. But, its gettimg cut up for bigger tires so i dont care too much!

That'll be a fun toy! We've been searching around for land because I'm definitely getting the itch to just have a toy to play with and some where to play in it with!

That is a great looking JKU, I know the feeling trying to find one in manual though, that took some doing. I have a question though on the running boards, were those factory or after market? I've been looking for some for my wife's JKU and haven't found much that will actually keep the mud from our gravel road off of the hinges and door handles.

I bet the snapper will be a mowing machine with 18hp now.
JB

Thanks! Yeah those are factory. I was afraid they would mess with ground clearance for when we take it on trails when we go out to CO but we were out there 2 weeks ago and found a nice little course and it didn't mess with it at all.

Those are stock JKU running boards. If you buy one from the dealer without, they can be had for cheap on Craigslist.

Yep!

Why have a PC in the garage? Tablet works pretty well for looking things up.

Primarily because I'm cheap hahaha. I have an ipad but I'd rather it not get all greasy and broken. We had a bunch of surplus desktops at work so I got it for $25 - can't beat that!

 

[jbmatth]

Thanks for the info JustinS and Jeremy, I'll see if she likes them or not. Hope you had a good trip in Colorado.
JB