Just A Nerd's Garage

[jbmatth]

I'm not very familiar with the 4.0 but does the distributor have the gear and oil pump shaft built into it? Did you loose oil pressure before it died? That is really odd but glad it all worked out in the end.
JB

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

I'm not very familiar with the 4.0 but does the distributor have the gear and oil pump shaft built into it? Did you loose oil pressure before it died? That is really odd but glad it all worked out in the end.
JB

In the last two years of the 4.0 in the XJ they switched to coil packs. However, I believe that they are all in one. The oil pressure dropped a tiny bit before it just died on the highway. As far as we can tell it didn't mess anything up inside. It's always got great oil pressure. I've never seen one of those go bad, especially considering I don't even think that one has 20k miles. I feel like this deserves one of these:

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

Last couple of weeks have been crazy with the kids' birthday, work, and travel but I have also gotten a few things done.

Man Cave 2.0

I was getting too anxious to see the TVs on the walls so convinced the wife to split the TVs with me as an early gift. I now have a 50" TCL Roku TV on opposing walls surrounding where the poker games happen. This will let us watch games/other stuff while we're playing cards. Also - we're going to do a MarioKart party for Super Bowl and play MarioKart on these while the game is on the projector. Pretty excited for that!

The kids made sure to ... "help"

I wish I would have gone to the 65" but when looking at them in the store I thought for sure the 50" would be tight. Ah well - these were cheaper and they'll get the job done just fine.

I also added this - just in case I've had a few too many when playing poker and don't remember where to go:

The Shop
I decided I wanted to go through EVERYTHING in the shop and basement and get rid of junk and organize everything I'm keeping. This will probably be a long project but I'm excited for it. So many years of having stuff EVERYWHERE I can't wait to get it organized. I'm going to have to build some storage and I need to get my steevo-inspired bench built, but it'll be worth it in the end. I have all the random stuff put on folding tables in the shop so I can better assess what I have and organize it. It's a little intimidating at the moment, but that's the only way to do this big of a task. I have to see what I'm working with before I can go and make it better.

Along with that, we had some warm weather the last few weeks and I got the Harley all cleaned up and put in the cover for the winter. Rylee made sure to help - she's always a great little helper:

Nerd Stuff
On top of the clean up projects and everything else I've got going on I felt obligated to improve the homelab. I have added several new services to it, Bitwarden being the most notable. If you want a password manager that's extremely well designed, free, and not hosted by someone selling your data, I'd give it a try. Really easy to setup.

I replaced my whitebox file server running FreeNAS with a Dell PE R510 running Server 2016. I added a Dell R710 that now acts as my shared storage for my VMWare hosts and now uses 10Gb direct connections. I also added a Dell R310 as a backup file server, running FreeNAS. Because of the added servers I had to add another UPS to the environment to actually be able to handle it all. When setting it all up I took the time to do some more advanced cable management and I think it was definitely worth the time.

And then yesterday I decided to diagram my environment. I've wanted to do this for a while but wanted to have the environment in a longer term configuration as I had been wanting to do the 10Gb stuff for a while.

Pretty excited to get my environment at home to this level. Now if I can just spend some time in the shop making christmas gifts I'll be all good.

 

[WarrenJ]

One heck of a home computer network, or do you run a business through it also?

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

One heck of a home computer network, or do you run a business through it also?

Just the services we use at home. It's got Plex, a password management suite called Bitwarden (really awesome product), my surveillance server for my Ubiquiti camera, nextcloud for file syncing and a few other things. We really use it like a production environment.

 

[BoilermakerFan]

Damn man, you and Denwood both are WAY over the top for home networking stuff!

The bathroom decal is great!

My garage is in the worse shape it's been in a long time... and I may be bringing home a '94 Katana 600 before Christmas. The price is right but the guy is looking for the title. He may have to apply for a lost title.

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

Damn man, you and Denwood both are WAY over the top for home networking stuff!

The bathroom decal is great!

My garage is in the worse shape it's been in a long time... and I may be bringing home a '94 Katana 600 before Christmas. The price is right but the guy is looking for the title. He may have to apply for a lost title.

I always enjoy reading through Denwood's build. He gives me ideas for so many new opportunities to learn. The networking stuff has been a hobby of mine for a long time and I've turned the server side of it into a career.

I've had that decal sitting in my basement for 3 years and almost forgot about it. I knew someday I would finish the basement and I knew I wanted that decal up there. I'm wanting to get some custom ones for the other doors because I'm a **** and I think it'd be cool.

I think the two of us are never allowed to surf craigslist together because I have a feeling we'd both end up with a packed full garage and no money left in the bank. Last year I had just gotten the garage clean and then saw a random 97 XJ with a stick that was a perfect donor (only 16 hours away) so I drove out with the old man and got it and then the shop was an absolute mess for months. But absolutely worth it!

wow I appreciate the transformations.

Thanks! Always a lot of work but it's always fun.

 

[rodpoa]

This is freakin awesome!

I also run a Plex server and NAS. I was glad to hear you also went for ubiquiti.

I just bought three ubiquiti aps for the new home and I am cabling cat6 for them. I may be looking for Edge switches or router due to their PoE that powers the aps.

I will definitely go for the ubiquiti cameras as well so I’d be glad if you can share what solution you are using for surveillance.

Finally I saw you run pfSense right?

I don’t have it yet but I intend to buy a r610 exactly for that. The r610 is the first dell server with AES-NI which decrypts OpenVPN in hardware level. With that I am supposed to max out my link completely vpned. I wanted something that would even shield wife’s shopping just because. It can’t be slow though hence the AES-NI.

One concern with this setup is that people says pfSense should run baremetal or you’re opening a dangerous door.

I want also to run Qubes as my day to day OS. However it does require to be installed bare metal as well and demands a lot of RAM. My idea then is to find another server with hardware coded processors with VT-e (is this how the virtualization processor instructions is called in intels?) to manage Qubes. I’d use a simple terminal somewhere else in the office just to VNC into my Qubes running in the rack. That’s where Plex, Smartthings and Ubiquiti management should be.

However I think a dedicated r610 for pfSense is absolutely overkill! I don’t know if that’s the exact route I’m pursuing.

Congratulations!


Enviado do meu iPhone usando Tapatalk

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

This is freakin awesome!

I also run a Plex server and NAS. I was glad to hear you also went for ubiquiti.

I just bought three ubiquiti aps for the new home and I am cabling cat6 for them. I may be looking for Edge switches or router due to their PoE that powers the aps.

I will definitely go for the ubiquiti cameras as well so I’d be glad if you can share what solution you are using for surveillance.

Finally I saw you run pfSense right?

I don’t have it yet but I intend to buy a r610 exactly for that. The r610 is the first dell server with AES-NI which decrypts OpenVPN in hardware level. With that I am supposed to max out my link completely vpned. I wanted something that would even shield wife’s shopping just because. It can’t be slow though hence the AES-NI.

One concern with this setup is that people says pfSense should run baremetal or you’re opening a dangerous door.

I want also to run Qubes as my day to day OS. However it does require to be installed bare metal as well and demands a lot of RAM. My idea then is to find another server with hardware coded processors with VT-e (is this how the virtualization processor instructions is called in intels?) to manage Qubes. I’d use a simple terminal somewhere else in the office just to VNC into my Qubes running in the rack. That’s where Plex, Smartthings and Ubiquiti management should be.

However I think a dedicated r610 for pfSense is absolutely overkill! I don’t know if that’s the exact route I’m pursuing.

Congratulations!


Enviado do meu iPhone usando Tapatalk

I've been extremely impressed with the Ubiquiti stuff. I use their NVR software running in Ubuntu to manage my surveillance cameras. It's very well laid out, runs on a non-standard port, and is pretty straightforward to setup if you know some basic Linux. I really wanted to go with Ubiquiti for my edge and switches, however, I like to use my lab as a learning tool to continue to aide my career and there is just significantly more demand for the Cisco stuff. I figure at least with the NVR I'm getting to play with the Ubiquiti stuff and then the core I'm using Cisco.

Having an R610 is going to be a crazy powerful pfsense box. Mine is running bare metal on the R210 and even that's overkill. You might want to check into the R310s and the L series Xeons. I believe they have the same AES-NI support but are significantly lower poser consumption versus the X or E series (the L series are only 40W CPUs where as the E and X are both well over 100W). I used to have pfsense virtualized, and it worked well that way. My only issue with it like that is during maintenance periods for my hosts - if my host went down then so did pfsense and, with VLANs and other advanced networking, that became a problem.

I researched Qubes and it looks like a really well built system. A little more than I"m wanting to do, but more power to you for getting that involved in the security of your network. I believe the VT-e is just called the hardware virtualization in Intel CPUs. I could be wrong, but that seems to make sense.

Thanks for reading!

 

[BoilermakerFan]

<snip> surf craigslist together because I have a feeling we'd both end up with a packed full garage and no money left in the bank. Last year I had just gotten the garage clean and then saw a random 97 XJ with a stick that was a perfect donor (only 16 hours away) so I drove out with the old man and got it and then the shop was an absolute mess for months. But absolutely worth it!

Uh, how do you surf Craigslist and find a Jeep 16 HOURS away?

My garage isn't clean, and bikes find me... I'm waiting on a guy to find or get a replacement title for a '94 Katana 600...

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

Uh, how do you surf Craigslist and find a Jeep 16 HOURS away?

My garage isn't clean, and bikes find me... I'm waiting on a guy to find or get a replacement title for a '94 Katana 600...

It takes a lot of years of CL practice to randomly come across an XJ 16 hours away. a LOT of years.

I had a few fixer-upper bikes several years ago but I just didn't have the time to mess with them back then - or the resources. Would be fun projects now. A motorcycle restore is something I've been wanting to do for a while now.

 

[rodpoa]

Funny story: my deceased father-in-law had a 97 Cherokee here in Brazil.

Weeks ago my brother-in-law decided to restore it.

He was missing the central display, that computer between the seats not the one in the dash. We found one in our version of craigslist for... believe it or not... 1000 USD!!

I just found one on eBay but sometimes US sellers don’t ship overseas. Have you heard about shipito? I had to send through shipito so they can forward it here.

If I had the time I think I could start using this route to bring stuff from you much cheaper and sell astronomically overpriced!

 

[BoilermakerFan]

It takes a lot of years of CL practice to randomly come across an XJ 16 hours away. a LOT of years.

I had a few fixer-upper bikes several years ago but I just didn't have the time to mess with them back then - or the resources. Would be fun projects now. A motorcycle restore is something I've been wanting to do for a while now.

The motorcycles are SO MUCH easier! Especially certain models where so many parts interchange between several models. I dumped the cars a couple years ago and don't regret it. In theory, the motorcycles take up less space, which they do if you just have one, but they definitely multiply faster than other vehicles in my experience.

My good friend rebuilds TJs. He has a TJ Unlimited that is awesome. He's done 23 and he said he's done until his daughter is in high school if she wants a Jeep... Eventually I'd like a Wrangler, but I'll wait for the next model before I even think about buying one. I was shocked to see that the 2019 Wrangler will have the V6 EcoDiesel instead of the the Cummins I4.

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

Funny story: my deceased father-in-law had a 97 Cherokee here in Brazil.

Weeks ago my brother-in-law decided to restore it.

He was missing the central display, that computer between the seats not the one in the dash. We found one in our version of craigslist for... believe it or not... 1000 USD!!

I just found one on eBay but sometimes US sellers don’t ship overseas. Have you heard about shipito? I had to send through shipito so they can forward it here.

If I had the time I think I could start using this route to bring stuff from you much cheaper and sell astronomically overpriced!

Craigslist and their alternatives are great ways to find some of the most random and obscure things - and usually at a good price. The Cherokees are my favorite Jeeps and it's cool to see that they are all over the place.

The motorcycles are SO MUCH easier! Especially certain models where so many parts interchange between several models. I dumped the cars a couple years ago and don't regret it. In theory, the motorcycles take up less space, which they do if you just have one, but they definitely multiply faster than other vehicles in my experience.

My good friend rebuilds TJs. He has a TJ Unlimited that is awesome. He's done 23 and he said he's done until his daughter is in high school if she wants a Jeep... Eventually I'd like a Wrangler, but I'll wait for the next model before I even think about buying one. I was shocked to see that the 2019 Wrangler will have the V6 EcoDiesel instead of the the Cummins I4.

I think my initial hurdle will be learning those ins and outs. Learning which bikes are interchangeable and which ones I can find parts for. Definitely something I want to get back in to!

The JL looks pretty interesting. We just bought the JKU but we've already cranked out 20k miles on it and it hasn't even been a year. We'll see how the JLs look in a couple of years and see if the wife is willing to trade hers in or not. I like that they kept the manual transmission as an option, although it's sad they aren't offering it with the diesel.

 

[BoilermakerFan]

I think my initial hurdle will be learning those ins and outs. Learning which bikes are interchangeable and which ones I can find parts for. Definitely something I want to get back in to!

The JL looks pretty interesting. We just bought the JKU but we've already cranked out 20k miles on it and it hasn't even been a year. We'll see how the JLs look in a couple of years and see if the wife is willing to trade hers in or not. I like that they kept the manual transmission as an option, although it's sad they aren't offering it with the diesel.

It's really not difficult to learn those shared families. There is a wealth of info out on the web. In my case, my CB550 and CB650s have a ton of interchangeable parts. And CB750 BBK pistons fit the CB650 jugs with machining. I plan to take parts of a CB550, CB650, and the BBK to make a 754cc engine that has a kick starter and CB650 head. Kind of the ultimate 750 SOHC.

Kawasaki KZ550, KZ650, and KZ750 share some interchangeability too and can be bored out to a larger displacement, something over 810cc.

Of course, all of this air cooled... water cooled bikes are a bit more challenging, but the Honda CX500, GL500, GL1000, and GL1100 have some things that can be swapped around.

Then you get into year specifics like the 1981 CB650 Custom and CX500 Custom have the same fork tubes so you can swap a dual disc CB650 fork onto a CX500... I learned that because I have both.

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

Well, ****, it's been a while since I've posted here. Life got a little crazy there for a while but it's now starting to calm down a little bit. So let's get down to business here.

The Shop

Remodeling the basement absolutely took the life out of me. I'd work from 9-5 every day, go home, work 6-midnight and then all day on the weekends. It absolutely exhausted me so I took a much needed break from just about any sort of work around the house ... and obviously it shows when you see how messy the shop was.

Fast forward a few months, and while I was in Philadelphia setting up a new office I was chatting with a coworker and happened upon the knowledge that they were selling off these really nice stainless steel tables. Once I got back to the office and checked them out, there was no way I was not buying them. I managed to get all 3 of these for $120 - they cost around $1000-1200/each when the company purchased them and they are sturdy as hell.

Lucky for me they all three fit in the trailer about as perfectly as you could wish for and I got to borrow the floor jack from work to drag them around the shop (they are definitely not light). I'm still figuring out how to use them to their full potential, but I think after a few days of cleaning the shop is finally starting to show some progress.

If you look closely in there, in the back right corner, there's a furnace. I found that on CL for $100 so I figure I'd give it a try. My goal is to be able to keep the shop just over freezing (40-50) all winter so that all my cleaning supplies and other liquids don't freeze and get destroyed.

Now that I've removed the old cabinets, I'm still actively designing how I want it to be setup. Right now it's more functional, but the walls look like **** (no one ever mudded the walls, just slapped paint on the sheetrock), the electrical is an absolute mess, half the bulbs are out, and it just needs a better setup. On top of that, there's some land about a block away from me that I'm going to try and get my hands on. It'd be perfect to put 2 post frame buildings on and just turn my shop into a wood shop and make the ones be for vehicle storage and then a auto shop. But that's going to take some investigation and some financing. So, in the meantime, I need to get the shop setup in a way that it could easily convert to a primary wood shop but still function as a auto shop for now.

Luckily, I had some help when I was cleaning up, although his attention with vacuuming up the actual dirt in the shop quickly transitioned to tearing apart a piece of Styrofoam and watching the vacuum **** it up:

One last thing ... I picked up a "big boy" air compressor for the shop - something I've always wanted but never focused the funds there. Pretty excited to get it installed and get to using it.

The Basement
After sufficient rest from the basement remodel, I finally got around to building the panel for the jetted tub. The panels look good but I could not get the gap to line up right between the two panels because the slope in the floor from the original floor drain was just too awkward for my limited wood working skills to get 100%. So what I'm wanting to do is put some sort of steel there that would tie into the existing theme of the bathroom. Also, after we used the tub a few times, we decided a TV would be a nice addition so we can relax and watch our favorite shows while enjoying the jets.

New Adventures
Last year we did a lot of travelling and, although our daily drivers can technically fit us all, they just aren't comfortable for all 4 of us, the dog, and a bunch of luggage for a longer stay. We really want to get an RV but just aren't ready for that yet. So, in late February I found this Astro van for cheap. It's really clean for a 1999, has decent miles on it, and runs great ... after we did some maintenance. It's maiden voyage was a week trip to Denver in March and the Saturday before we were ready to leave I took it to the old man's place to do some maintenance. The oil cooler line went on significantly easier than we expected so we decided to do a coolant pressure check ... and that led us to last-minute replacing the intake gaskets. So that was a "fun" Saturday. All to have us have to be delayed due to a single o-ring that tore when we pulled the spider fuel injector out right after 9 when all the parts stores are closed. A quick seal up of the engine Sunday morning and we were off.

By far the most comfortable van we've owned. Every single seat can recline and Bailey (my dog) and I chilled out in the back seat and slept the whole drive out to Denver while my wife and Brother-in-law chatted away up front.

No More JKU

After just over a year of owning the JKU the wife decided spending $300/month in gas (we put over 25k on it in a year) was just not practical so we traded the JKU for a Mazda 6. 40 mpg is so much nicer than 16 when you drive that many miles!

Another Father's Day Adventure
The last week of May the old man decided to re-shingle his house and garage. Neither are particularly big and neither are remotely complicated. In addition to new shingles, he added a porch up front to give the front of the house some dimension as well as some nice shade. We picked the last week of May because we thought we'd have nice weather. Well ... mother nature decided otherwise and gave us record high temperatures just 2 weeks (I think) of getting a ton of snow - it was 95-100 every day we were up there, rained, and was humid as all hell.

Well ... after that nightmare, we definitely needed a break and this last weekend we got to take a break and continue our Father's Day tradition of riding Harleys. Unfortunately this might be the last year now that Eagle Rider has taken over the Harley rental program, doubled (almost) the cost of the rental, charges you $65 to guarantee the bike that you reserved, and increased the cost of insurance. So, we wanted to make sure this was one to remember and we rode the bikes all the way over to Rapid City and rode around Custer State Park and the Rushmore area. Was absolutely beautiful. It was a really rough ride out (5" of rain at home delayed our start by 5 hours) but it was totally worth it.

 

[shade]

Great updates...Been awhile since I've seen this thread...Too Funny I also picked up a Harley recently. Always fun to ride.

 

[Mr. Roboto]

Nice to hear from you, thanks for the updates, good work! Nice score on those tables too.

 

[jbmatth]

You have been busy so no need to apologize for the lack of updates...just don't let it happen again.

Great score on the tables, if you were closer I'd try to talk you out of one of them.

Good call on the JKU swap, my wife still loves hers and I still disdain driving it as a family vehicle on long trips for both the ride and the fuel consumption. She decided to put a lift on it and bigger tires, that should help fuel consumption right?

JB

 

[CoogarXR]

Astro vans are great trip vehicles. I have owned probably 7 of them, and I have one right now as my daily driver and junk hauler. I just drove it 2000 miles a few weeks ago, pulling a camper through the mountains.

 

[Y2KFirehawk]

Love the thread, garage, and especially the thread title. As a fellow-IT professional, I can appreciate the home racks. I have done a few of them at home years gone by but I usually end up tearing down the servers because of power consumption so kudos to you

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

Great updates...Been awhile since I've seen this thread...Too Funny I also picked up a Harley recently. Always fun to ride.

It's amazing how much you get addicted to cruise control once you've used it. I had the Stryker for a couple years and loved that bike but long distance cruising is just more comfortable on a bigger bike with cruise!

Nice to hear from you, thanks for the updates, good work! Nice score on those tables too.

Yeah the tables are pretty awesome. I was hoping to get to do some more clean up last night but just didn't have time. However, the old man is going to come over today and we're going to get the compressor hooked up tonight so pretty excited about that!

You have been busy so no need to apologize for the lack of updates...just don't let it happen again.

Great score on the tables, if you were closer I'd try to talk you out of one of them.

Good call on the JKU swap, my wife still loves hers and I still disdain driving it as a family vehicle on long trips for both the ride and the fuel consumption. She decided to put a lift on it and bigger tires, that should help fuel consumption right?

JB

hahaha will try to keep them coming now

When he told me about them I kind of knew what he was talking about but hadn't seen them in at least a couple of years. When I got back to the office and saw them, it took a few minutes to soak up the drool and I quickly handed them the cash and got them loaded before they changed their minds.

Our goal is to buy a camper in a year or two and pull an older TJ behind that. We love the Jeep but I think it'd work better for us as a weekend toy than a daily driver. I missed out on a one owner TJ with only 80k on it in mint condition just a few weeks ago - that thing sold faster than I've ever seen a TJ sell before. Really wish I could have got to that one ...

Astro vans are great trip vehicles. I have owned probably 7 of them, and I have one right now as my daily driver and junk hauler. I just drove it 2000 miles a few weeks ago, pulling a camper through the mountains.

Nice! The wife made fun of me when I started looking for them but I knew once she rode in one and saw how practical and comfortable they are then she'd be in - I was right. It's getting new tires installed today and last night I installed a new stereo (I was hoping to resolve a static issue but it must be the antennae, not the stereo). We're getting ready for our 10 year anniversary vacation. We're going out to Salt Lake City, then Idaho Falls, then Rapid City for 2 weeks ... plus I have a little pre-vacation-vacation surprise setup for the wife on our actual anniversary. Making sure the Astro is all ready for probably around 3,000 miles. Now all I have left is a new U-Joint on the driveshaft and install the shocks I purchased and it should be good.

Well ... now that I think about it, I forgot I bought an additional car outlet thing I was going to install so that the kids have charging capacity in the back. We generally don't let the kids use ipads because, well, they could better occupy their time, but when you're cramped up in a van and a bulk of the driving is boring as hell (sorry, Nebraska, you don't have much scenery on I80 west of about Lincoln) we just want them to be quiet hahaha.

Love the thread, garage, and especially the thread title. As a fellow-IT professional, I can appreciate the home racks. I have done a few of them at home years gone by but I usually end up tearing down the servers because of power consumption so kudos to you

It's funny you mention the rack because I'm getting the itch to add or change to it again. I've been having some issues with my pfsense box so I'm contemplating changing to untangle since it has spam assassin built in and my spam firewall has been attacked and supposedly spam assassin works more effectively. Really the big thing I will likely need to do later this year is increase storage capacity. Right now I've got 8 of the 3 TB drives in my primary file server in a RAID 6 which gives me about 12 TB of usable space. I've been buying up Blu-Rays and even with good compression they take up some serious space - especially when you do TV shows. So I'm starting to save up to go to 12 (I have 4 empty bays right now) of the 10 TB drives now that I read an article stating that the larger capacity drives have the same or better failure rates as the smaller drives - it definitely built my confidence in them.

As for the power consumption ... yeah. I've swapped the CPUs in all of my servers to the Xeon L series and that takes them from 190 Watt processors (I think) down to 40 or 45 watts. So that helps but I'm sure the whole rack is still probably costing me around $80/month in power. One day I'd really like to get solar added to my house as I'm pretty sure the shop would provide ample sunlight to make that useful. Then I wouldn't feel so bad about its power consumption.

 

[zmotorsports]

Don't know how I missed this thread before. Jeeps and Harley's should have grabbed my attention. Sorry to hear that you sold the JKU but I understand the mileage aspect.

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

Don't know how I missed this thread before. Jeeps and Harley's should have grabbed my attention. Sorry to hear that you sold the JKU but I understand the mileage aspect.

Yeah we loved that Jeep ... but I'm more of a TJ guy (that 4.0 is my thing) so I'm hoping to go that direction. Plus, the wife randomly got really excited about the prospect of owning a camper so now I can use that to start going that direction and also pull a TJ behind it - would be a ton of fun to take it out west and run some trails while we camp.

Glad the thread found you - it doesn't get much better than Jeeps and Harleys

 

[zmotorsports]

Yeah we loved that Jeep ... but I'm more of a TJ guy (that 4.0 is my thing) so I'm hoping to go that direction. Plus, the wife randomly got really excited about the prospect of owning a camper so now I can use that to start going that direction and also pull a TJ behind it - would be a ton of fun to take it out west and run some trails while we camp.

Glad the thread found you - it doesn't get much better than Jeeps and Harleys

A TJ would work great to pull behind an RV. We've been towing Jeeps behind coaches for nearly 25 years now and love finding off-pavement adventures everywhere we travel in the coach.

My son recently sold his built LJ and purchased a stock WJ that he is preparing to build in the near future.

Good luck in your search for an RV that suits you and your family.

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

A TJ would work great to pull behind an RV. We've been towing Jeeps behind coaches for nearly 25 years now and love finding off-pavement adventures everywhere we travel in the coach.

My son recently sold his built LJ and purchased a stock WJ that he is preparing to build in the near future.

Good luck in your search for an RV that suits you and your family.

That's what we're thinking. My big thing is deciding to go with an RV or a camper. I would prefer the RV because it would simplify the process, however, they seem to be difficult to find affordable and with a split bedroom configuration. I'd rather not have the kids just in a converted table area and the campers have a lot of models with the split bedrooms. So .. that means I get to buy a truck but have to learn how to double tow ...

An LJ would be fun - good luck to him with the WJ!

 

[BoilermakerFan]

Well, since nobody else said it regarding the SS tables: YOU ****!

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

Well, since nobody else said it regarding the SS tables: YOU ****!

hahah

I'm going to take that as a complement. My fat *** can stand on them and not even get the metal to flex so I'd say they are pretty solid.

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

The Shop
Just a quick update today. Over the weekend I got both the air compressor and the welder wired up. Had to remove a little drywall but wasn't too bad. I also added 2 outlets - one by my wooden bench I built and one up above the door. The one above the door is for network equipment (a switch and a WAP) and the one by the bench is so I can connect a power strip to it and power the equipment on there. Here's the pic after I got it all finished up:

Don't worry - I added more support under the compressor after I took this pic.

My drill press is currently on the fritz. I was using it when I was finishing up the panel for the tub and it just stopped working. I hear it spin and something clicks in the back but it doesn't spin the chuck. I think I've used it all of 3 times so it's pretty disappointing that it's already crapped out. I haven't looked at it much yet, so I'm hoping it's an easy fix.

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

Did the break in process on the compressor yesterday and I heard a hissing when it was done. I was hoping I was just hearing stuff so I let it sit for the night. I went out this morning and checked it and, unfortunately, there's a leak on the primary brass fitting going from the motor to the tank. I removed the two smaller lines in hopes I could just loosen up the brass fitting and put some thread sealer on it - no luck. That is obviously not designed to move. So, we're going to hopefully exchange it tomorrow and get that all taken care of. Luckily the hard part is all done so it should be pretty easy to exchange.

Now I'm looking at a socket set. I've been reading a lot of reviews here and basically the consensus I've got is the HF ones are the go-to really cheap ones, but either the Kobalt or the Craftsman tools are the in-between brands (which is what I've known for a while, but was nice to have additional opinions). I've been a little turned off by Craftsman as of late since everything is made in China and seems to have gone down quite a bit in quality. I think I'm going to pick up a Kobalt set tomorrow and see how I like it. The advantage is that Lowes is close and they have lifetime warranties. I already have an old sears-craftsman impact that I got for free from a CL deal years ago and I tested it and it works great so hopefully we can get the tank exchanged and I can pick up some sockets as I intend on putting them all to work this weekend.

 

[bigsteve2011]

I have the kobalt deep and short metric and deep SAE impact sets and have been very happy with them. I already had a older Sears short SAE set.

These are the ones I have.
SAE Deep
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Kobalt-13-...-Drive-Deep-6-point-Impact-Socket-Set/3364174

Metric Short
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Kobalt-13-...ive-Shallow-6-point-Impact-Socket-Set/3364172

Metric Deep
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Kobalt-16-Piece-Metric-1-2-in-Drive-Deep-6-point-Impact-Socket-Set/3364176

 

[JustinS]

Checking back in, good updates! Before we bought our Town & Country I looked at full size vans. Part of me still wants one for all that space!

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

I have the kobalt deep and short metric and deep SAE impact sets and have been very happy with them. I already had a older Sears short SAE set.

These are the ones I have.
SAE Deep
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Kobalt-13-...-Drive-Deep-6-point-Impact-Socket-Set/3364174

Metric Short
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Kobalt-13-...ive-Shallow-6-point-Impact-Socket-Set/3364172

Metric Deep
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Kobalt-16-Piece-Metric-1-2-in-Drive-Deep-6-point-Impact-Socket-Set/3364176

That's actually what I'm looking at today. I saw they have a pretty good kit for about $150. I do some automotive work but it's not like I'm out there every day. I think that set is a good compromise - it's locally accessible, seems decently built, and has a good warranty. Glad to see someone else is using them!

Checking back in, good updates! Before we bought our Town & Country I looked at full size vans. Part of me still wants one for all that space!

What I like about the Astro is it's not quite a full sized van, but it's just a little bigger than the minivans. I love that when we drove out to CO in March we had the wife and brother in law up front, the kids in the middle row, and Bailey and I in the back and I was able to stretch out fully, recline back, and had plenty of room. On top of that, there was still plenty of room in the back for all of our luggage for a week. Plus it's got a receiver on it and I get one of those hitch-mounted luggage racks for it that will probably get some use on our 2 week vacation coming up in July.

 

[Denwood]

Well, ****, it's been a while since I've posted here. Life got a little crazy there for a while but it's now starting to calm down a little bit. So let's get down to business here.

The Shop

Remodeling the basement absolutely took the life out of me. I'd work from 9-5 every day, go home, work 6-midnight and then all day on the weekends. It absolutely exhausted me so I took a much needed break from just about any sort of work around the house ... and obviously it shows when you see how messy the shop was.

Fast forward a few months, and while I was in Philadelphia setting up a new office I was chatting with a coworker and happened upon the knowledge that they were selling off these really nice stainless steel tables. Once I got back to the office and checked them out, there was no way I was not buying them. I managed to get all 3 of these for $120 - they cost around $1000-1200/each when the company purchased them and they are sturdy as hell.

Lucky for me they all three fit in the trailer about as perfectly as you could wish for and I got to borrow the floor jack from work to drag them around the shop (they are definitely not light). I'm still figuring out how to use them to their full potential, but I think after a few days of cleaning the shop is finally starting to show some progress.

If you look closely in there, in the back right corner, there's a furnace. I found that on CL for $100 so I figure I'd give it a try. My goal is to be able to keep the shop just over freezing (40-50) all winter so that all my cleaning supplies and other liquids don't freeze and get destroyed.

Now that I've removed the old cabinets, I'm still actively designing how I want it to be setup. Right now it's more functional, but the walls look like **** (no one ever mudded the walls, just slapped paint on the sheetrock), the electrical is an absolute mess, half the bulbs are out, and it just needs a better setup. On top of that, there's some land about a block away from me that I'm going to try and get my hands on. It'd be perfect to put 2 post frame buildings on and just turn my shop into a wood shop and make the ones be for vehicle storage and then a auto shop. But that's going to take some investigation and some financing. So, in the meantime, I need to get the shop setup in a way that it could easily convert to a primary wood shop but still function as a auto shop for now.

Luckily, I had some help when I was cleaning up, although his attention with vacuuming up the actual dirt in the shop quickly transitioned to tearing apart a piece of Styrofoam and watching the vacuum **** it up:

One last thing ... I picked up a "big boy" air compressor for the shop - something I've always wanted but never focused the funds there. Pretty excited to get it installed and get to using it.

The Basement
After sufficient rest from the basement remodel, I finally got around to building the panel for the jetted tub. The panels look good but I could not get the gap to line up right between the two panels because the slope in the floor from the original floor drain was just too awkward for my limited wood working skills to get 100%. So what I'm wanting to do is put some sort of steel there that would tie into the existing theme of the bathroom. Also, after we used the tub a few times, we decided a TV would be a nice addition so we can relax and watch our favorite shows while enjoying the jets.

New Adventures
Last year we did a lot of travelling and, although our daily drivers can technically fit us all, they just aren't comfortable for all 4 of us, the dog, and a bunch of luggage for a longer stay. We really want to get an RV but just aren't ready for that yet. So, in late February I found this Astro van for cheap. It's really clean for a 1999, has decent miles on it, and runs great ... after we did some maintenance. It's maiden voyage was a week trip to Denver in March and the Saturday before we were ready to leave I took it to the old man's place to do some maintenance. The oil cooler line went on significantly easier than we expected so we decided to do a coolant pressure check ... and that led us to last-minute replacing the intake gaskets. So that was a "fun" Saturday. All to have us have to be delayed due to a single o-ring that tore when we pulled the spider fuel injector out right after 9 when all the parts stores are closed. A quick seal up of the engine Sunday morning and we were off.

By far the most comfortable van we've owned. Every single seat can recline and Bailey (my dog) and I chilled out in the back seat and slept the whole drive out to Denver while my wife and Brother-in-law chatted away up front.

No More JKU

After just over a year of owning the JKU the wife decided spending $300/month in gas (we put over 25k on it in a year) was just not practical so we traded the JKU for a Mazda 6. 40 mpg is so much nicer than 16 when you drive that many miles!

Another Father's Day Adventure
The last week of May the old man decided to re-shingle his house and garage. Neither are particularly big and neither are remotely complicated. In addition to new shingles, he added a porch up front to give the front of the house some dimension as well as some nice shade. We picked the last week of May because we thought we'd have nice weather. Well ... mother nature decided otherwise and gave us record high temperatures just 2 weeks (I think) of getting a ton of snow - it was 95-100 every day we were up there, rained, and was humid as all hell.

Well ... after that nightmare, we definitely needed a break and this last weekend we got to take a break and continue our Father's Day tradition of riding Harleys. Unfortunately this might be the last year now that Eagle Rider has taken over the Harley rental program, doubled (almost) the cost of the rental, charges you $65 to guarantee the bike that you reserved, and increased the cost of insurance. So, we wanted to make sure this was one to remember and we rode the bikes all the way over to Rapid City and rode around Custer State Park and the Rushmore area. Was absolutely beautiful. It was a really rough ride out (5" of rain at home delayed our start by 5 hours) but it was totally worth it.

A pretty epic update. Nice find on the stainless tables!!

 

[bj383ss]

The Shop
Just a quick update today. Over the weekend I got both the air compressor and the welder wired up. Had to remove a little drywall but wasn't too bad. I also added 2 outlets - one by my wooden bench I built and one up above the door. The one above the door is for network equipment (a switch and a WAP) and the one by the bench is so I can connect a power strip to it and power the equipment on there. Here's the pic after I got it all finished up:

Don't worry - I added more support under the compressor after I took this pic.

My drill press is currently on the fritz. I was using it when I was finishing up the panel for the tub and it just stopped working. I hear it spin and something clicks in the back but it doesn't spin the chuck. I think I've used it all of 3 times so it's pretty disappointing that it's already crapped out. I haven't looked at it much yet, so I'm hoping it's an easy fix.

Try turning the drill press on and see if you can spin the chuck by hand it get to start. If you can then it is just the capacitor on the motor. Mine did this replaced it for under $10. Sorry to hear about the Air compressor leaking. Good that you can exchange it but they aren't exactly easy to move around.

Bret

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

A pretty epic update. Nice find on the stainless tables!!

Thank you! The tables are amazing. I sit my fat **** on them regularly and they don't even budget. That was an awesome find - thanks for reading!

Try turning the drill press on and see if you can spin the chuck by hand it get to start. If you can then it is just the capacitor on the motor. Mine did this replaced it for under $10. Sorry to hear about the Air compressor leaking. Good that you can exchange it but they aren't exactly easy to move around.

Bret

I did this and it turns out the belt had just slipped off. Finally got off my **** and just checked it and that's all it ways. Yay!

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

It's amazing how quickly life can just happen and take you away from this. I'll try and start where I left off.

Two Week Vacation
Shortly after my last update we took the adventure van on its final voyage for us. We went from home to Loveland Colorado for a night, then on to Salt Lake City, followed by Idaho Falls, and finally Rapid City. 13 days and 4,460 miles total in the van. The only issue we had with the van was the rubber seal around the windshield gave out up around Salt Lake City but I was able to get some sealer that worked well enough for the trip.

Salt Lake City was probably our favorite although we could have easily spent a week in Yellowstone. The house in SLC was absolutely beautiful and in a great location. We spent days driving through the mountains and just exploring. The house in Idaho Falls was OK but Yellowstone and the surrounding area were amazing. The final stop through Rapid City just reminded us that we needed to come back out there.

Here's a few shots from the trip:

Salt Lake area:

Yellowstone:

Rapid City:

Dual Sport Craziness

August we got to calm down on the travelling for a while. However, by the tail end of it my friend had convinced me to do some dual sport riding. We ended up booking a couple of dual sports and drive out to Aurora Labor day weekend. We had a ton of fun even if we both ended up being out over $1,000 in "damages" to the bikes. My buddy's had some clear damage but mine was questionable and they wouldn't budge. We ended up accidentally going down the hardest trail in the park. Was scary but a ton of fun.

Goodbye 2ZOOMS

Last but not least, after a long time of thinking about it I finally let 2ZOOMS (the 2002 Miata) go to a new home. The kid had been saving up for a few years and it was basically his dream car. I'm glad it went to someone that will take care of it but it just wasn't doing it for me anymore. I need more space (the kiddos seem to end up in my car more) and I wanted something newer. So ... I found the only not-black, AWD, manual, m-sport with all the options 435i xDrive I could find. There were 3 for sale in the US I could find, one had a bunch of prior damage to it and the other was black and bother were further away. Then I saw the blue one. I haven't looked back since.

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

The Shed
Pretty much since we moved to our current home, I've wanted to add a shed to it. In fact, I was originally going to have an outdoor office in a shed that I had some pretty detailed drawings completed for in Sketchup before we even moved in. However, life always gets in the way and it had been put off ... until now. Right before it started getting cold, i decided to go through with it since a bruised rib delayed my roof getting shingled this year, I figure I might as well be productive with a "small" project.

The Design

I've been a big fan of Sketchup for stuff like this so I went ahead and threw a detailed design together in Sketchup. I set it up so that my studs would double up on 4' to make the sheeting easier and tried to make it easy to assemble and require minimal cutting. The one thing I wish I should have spent more time designing was the roof ... or I should have just bought trusses instead of building rafters. Here's a screenshot of the original design.

Framing

We picked a nice day and started lying out the concrete blocks. After building this I'm a pretty big fan of these blocks. They are real nice to set down the boards into and seem to do a good job at keeping stuff together.

My daughter was much more interested in helping this time around than little man. At first I was just going to have the blocks laid out like that last photo and then finish up the floors on 16s. However, after getting in the middle boards, there was just too much flex in the floor for me. I wanted something nice and sturdy so I added 4 more blocks in the centers to give it additional support. This puts it at about what the specs are for a deck in regards to support so I think it'll have plenty of support and absolutely no flexing after adding that. In this picture you can kind of see the added supports:

If you look carefully along the front (left side of the photo) of the shed you might notice something a little funny. I somehow managed to forget to knock down all the beams 3" to accommodate the end boards and make it a nice and easy 12' x 16'. So, instead, I just added some treated 1x4s to the end and called it good. Luckily it was that direction and not the other direction so there's plenty of support under them.

Another pic of my f**k up in case you wanted to see failure up close and personal

The Tools

A special shout out here to the mobile miter box stand I got from my father-in-law for last year. It got put to good work. Just the Harbor Freight one but, honestly, I love it. It works really well and I think it's just as good of quality as the one my dad got from Sears or something.

The Framing

Framing going up (and this time with extra help):

The Roof

Got it all sheated up and got the leftover wrap on it. Those of you with a good eye will probably notice the slight dip in the roof. Unfortunately we didn't notice that until we went to start shingling. We were (thankfully) able to correct it a little bit with the roof vent but this goes back to that "I should have bought trusses" statement. It's sturdy as hell, just didn't notice on the backside we got 2 of the rafters off a little bit when getting them tied down and ... yeah ... that's the result. Also, we made that roof steep as hell. So ... shingling was "fun"

The day after Halloween and the old man and I were working on the shed and I thought it'd be funny to hide their candy up on the roof to see what they would do. My son just gave me a look but, without any hesitation, my daughter goes straight for the ladder and tries to figure out how to reach their candy. I think that, if I wouldn't have stopped her, she absolutely would have found some way up there.

Weather and sunlight prevented the roof from being a one-day job, but we did get it all done before snowfall, which was the goal.

PSA: Ladders have warnings. You should obey those warnings

As we finished up the shingles, I was cleaning up tools and the old man decided to clean up some random pieces of the roofing paper that were kind of hanging out from under the shingles. So he grabbed his 6' ladder and was walking around with the razor just cutting off the section that was visible so we didn't see it. Was just finishing touches, really. As I'm walking back from the shop to grab more tools I here a loud noise. I holler back at the old man and all I hear is "I fell off the ladder." Turns out, in his infinite wisdom, he had decided to stand on the very top of the ladder ... with a razor in his hand. He slipped, fell down kind of on to the ladder, and we thought for sure he had a broken finger and it looked like he had sliced open his hand with the razor.

After a little panic I got him to the urgent care. This is now the second of my parents that I've taken to the urgent care or ER this year as I had to bring my mom earlier in the year when her and my brother handed me a sheet of OSB while I was on their roof helping with their projects and it slipped out of my hand and landed on her causing her to get staples.

Anyway, I got him to the urgent care and they did a bunch of x-rays and such and it turns out he had just dislocated the finger really bad and it had hit so hard he didn't cut his finger with the razor, he actually pulled the finger back so hard it tore the skin open on the bottom side of the knuckle.

I'll let that one sink in for a moment.

Because of this, I created the following shirt for him for Christmas:

The Finishing Touches

Once the shingles were all done I started siding. What was the biggest delay here (and why it's still not 100% done) is the siding ended up being on a 2 week delay because of the color we picked. We wanted it to be the same thing I will do the house in next spring so we wanted it to be right. After the 2 week delay then the days started getting a LOT shorter so it's stalled a lot of my progress. However, I did finally get the siding up, the door installed, and now (without photographic evidence) I do actually have all of the soffits done and I have the front fascia done and half of one side. The other side was a giant pain to do the soffits because of the way we extended the 1x6 for behind the fascia. We created a little gap (unintentionally) that caused the board to bounce every time you swing the hammer at a nail instead of letting the nail go through. By the time I had it shimmed and corrected I was just barely able to get the soffits in and now I'm waiting for enough daylight to finish up the fascia.

The Inside

Once I had the door in and the siding on, I went ahead and threw together a shelving unit to get the kids' outside toys organized. The primary goal of this shed, besides replacing the nasty one up front, is to keep the kids' stuff out of my garage so we can better fit our cars in the front garage.

The roof didn't turn out perfectly, but it's totally-100%-a-coincidence that permits for sheds come into play at 200 square feet and 12 x 16 is 192 square feet, so I've got a ton of space and it looks pretty damn good overall. I can't wait to finish up the fascia and get the rest of the stuff put in there (and some power).

 

[wasfast]

Great set of posts for all the adventures. Regarding your parents, I'd say you should find other labor source in the future. They aren't easily replaced.......

 

[jeremy_cherokee]

Great set of posts for all the adventures. Regarding your parents, I'd say you should find other labor source in the future. They aren't easily replaced.......

I have since recruited my friends to help reduce their injuries We've gone so many years without any issues, I guess it was about time