Must watch vid for Dana30 JKers & How to replace uni
Hi Guyz
I was out wheeling last weekend in the Watto's, B+ grade trails in low range 1st, scrambling up a fairly steep hill and heard a very soft metallic sounding tick / crack,
so I immediately switched off the engine and did some investigating, pulled & pushed just about everything - nothing found, so I decided to drive on carefully and get off the trails and go home!
Returned to 2wd and the faint clicking went away, OK that tells me the problem is in the front end, so I upon investigation i discovered some damage to the drivers front UNI joint, so before I fixed it I gaffed my iphone4 to my bull bar and made the video below, Hopefully if you watch the vid and commit the sound to memory when you hear it on your Jeep (and you will eventually - its not if - its when) you will be able to quickly recognise it and switch to 2wd before you damage the uni ears, my repair cost me a uni joint and my time. I have seen several other JK'ers ignore the warning signs and then have to replace hubs & axels - a lot more expensive than a Uni Joint.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mV7cH6aDxto
Heres how I replaced my front uni
Take 1
Started with a handful of smart@ss pills and decided that I could change it without removing the front wheel, disc brakes or hub, see pix below. Those of you with an ounce of mechanical expertise or have replaced a JK uni before - feel free to start laughing Now. Anyway 3 hours later 2 broken screwdrivers and a broken jimmy bar all I had managed to do was to remove the circlips!
Take 2 LoL
1. Jack up Jeep, chock wheels, insert jackstand, take off front wheel and slide it under the jeep as extra safety should the jack stand fail
2. Remove the 2 bolts that secure the brake callipers, remove callipers and secure them out of the way.
3. Remove the 3 unusually shaped bolts that secure the hub to the Knuckle
4. Very carefully remove the hex head bolt that secures the ABS / TC/ ESP sensor - its plastic so be very careful and unclip it from the 2 guides and secure it in a safe place.
5. Carefully pry off the hub from the knuckle and slide out the hub, uni and axel.
6. Optional - I removed the drag link to give me better access - probably wasted my time - D'oh - still feeling dumb from my first attempt LoL
7 Place in a vice or similar and remove all 4 circlips then wearing suitable eye protection get an old useless socket and place it on the end cap of any of the unijoint end caps and beat on it neanderthal style hard until you pop the opposite end cap out. repeat 3 more times until all 4 end caps have been whacked out!
8. inspect all 4 ears for wear / damage and in my case burs - lightly sand with fine paper to clean out any surface blemishes and lubricate with a few drops of oil
9 unpack new uni joint and extremely carefully remove all 4 end caps DO NOT DISTURB the needle bearings! . place the uni joint into the axel end first and insert 1st endcap - gently tap it in place with a hammer - install the next end cap bearing - invert and gently tap in opposite end end cap bearing. I tried to use a G clamp - dumb idea - my mechanic told me just to tap them in gently and in the end that worked out to be the best solution.
10. install circlips - word of caution my circlips were to fat to insert so I put them on a diet (thicknesser) and reduced them to half their original thickness before inserting.
11. repeat process above for hub
12. reassemble - basically steps 1 to 5 in reverse LoL
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Jeeped a ZJ Grand..... something
I got see just how well a shorty can tow a big car trailer with WJ on it today - I picked up a mates WJ from Morrisett
I got to use one of my smarty pants reverse winch crazinesses to load his dead (dead Automatic box) beast on to the trailer
I had a great day out with Hunno - we got to share some fun stories and watch the grass grow as we rocketed down the freeway at 80kph LoL
Cheers Hunty
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JK Oil Additives, Snake Oil & Old Wives Tales!
At the recent SJC meeting at ARB I got a chance to drive the Bears Rig, given that his JK and mine have the same engine I fully expected his to start and run like mine! - fair enough right!
Well it didn't........ it was noticeably smoother and quieter!......
I had to ask the Bear the famous question "Why is it so?"
His answers enthralled and excited me, he told me about Japanese airplanes in ww2 that had their sumps and radiators shot to bits yet they kept flying, he also told me about a trial in OZ where somebody emptied out all their oil and drove to Melbourne and back without blowing up their engine or spinning a bearing.
He then told me all about an engine oil additive that decreased friction and increased smoothness, power & fuel economy, I wanted to try it immediately! and The Bear was kind enough to get me some "LiquiMoly" MOS2 Anti-Friction Engine treatment, which I then proceeded to empty into my Heap!
Day 1 - nothing
Day 2 - nothing, nada
Day 3 - nothing, nada, zip
Day 4 - nothing, nada, zip, Zero
Day 5 - went to Morrisett to pick up Hunno's ZJ 1.3Tcar trailer and 2.5T Jeep on the back - Less than nothing!
Day 6 - gave it some loud pedal whilst changing into 2nd and got a chirp!!! - Halelujah! finally I noticed something
Day 7 - changed down to 3rd going up a steep hill near "Wooders" and really noticed it had extra pull.
Sweeeeeet - finally the MOS2 did something and WoW what a difference a can of the stuff makes,
Heres the best way I can describe the difference - its way more noticeable than going from 91octane unleaded to 98! - it actually put a smile on my dial and has done so since,
If you do a bit of research on the net you will find many people using it claiming that their engines have hundreds of thousands of kilometres on them and when stripped down reveal little of no wear - apparently it coats the surfaces of the cylinders and bearings etc and gaurds them against wear!
This people is a very inexpensive way to get a little more out of your petrol JK for very little expense $10 - $15 a treatment / can depending on where you buy it from - it lasts to the next oil change - many claim it will go 20,000km +
I have searched the net to look for any adverse contraindications and have specifically searched to see if it will mess up the extra protection 5w30 oil provides to my Jeep - My heap is out of warranty so I can do as I please with it now.
Thanx Heaps Bear (Sydney Jeep Club el president) for putting me on to this amazing stuff! You are one extremely prodigious Jeeper!
Cheers Hunty
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Hunty's Snow 4x4 wheelin tip!
I managed to find a heap of good offroad snow driving trails last week and had a blast!
Hunty's Snow driving tip for climbing slippery snowy inclines;
momentum will get you only so far, the loud pedal is useless, so when you get as far as you can using your sand and mud driving skills remember that the slower you can get your Jeep to crawl the further you will go - I engage 1st low and let the Jeep idle up as slow as possible! - this will allow your mud / snow tyres to get the maximum grip / dig.
I spent last week in the snow on a work assignment and had a little down time that allowed me to play in the snow and develop so new driving skills, I also learnt that sleeping in a swag in minus 10 degrees will really "fubar" your body LoL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFf0EXLQ_3M
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Oh Cr@p! - Finally got to use my 100psi front bar air tank!
Hmmmm
Where to begin the story?
It was a beautiful morning! Met a Maccas @ 7:30am got to Zig Zag by 9am - a mate rolled his jeep twice by 9:30am second time it was attached to the front of my heap via my winch - he didnt want to wait to disconnect the winch - I dont blame him - I would'nt want to winched by me and stuck all over the web on Hunty's Jeep assist thread! either LoL - problem was ....... as his Jeep charged off down the hill, the 2 meters or so of slack finally ran out....... well my heap got the biggest tug of its life! - the dyneema rope snapped with the sound of a whip cracking, I had the rope in my hand at the time and am very happy with my choice of line to use on my winch as my hand and fingers are still attached and I (Not Jax) am typing this essay LoL - any way I had 15 psi in my tyres and the extreme sideways drag my Jeep was assulted with took the tyre right off the rim! - I was on the side of a cliff almost in trouble myself as he had pulled my jeep into a deep hole and I almost rolled! -so I had to double pull with slightly shorter winch rope and if you look closely at the top left of the pic you can see 4 guys trying to stop me from rolling just to get my heap somewhere I could change my tyre. well his jeep after rolling twice on the same hill was in remarkably good condition - after I righted it a second time I had to remove the sparkplugs and crank out all the oil that was hydrolocking it! but WoW he drove it home ! go Jeep! - tuff stuff!
I stuck my never b4 used silverstone tyre on and drove back to the ZigZag train station and decided to see if I had enough air to pop it back on - YES! - no problem so after a couple of years of driving around with a front bar air tank I finally got to test it on a trail and it worked!
what did I learn - 33's don't work for me on std 16' Jeep rims - scrape city! - I don't know how the Bear and others do it! - cheers Hunty
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEiiDE_TNYw&feature=youtu.be
Replacing my JK Front drive shaft - due to stuffed CV joint
Funny Story; well I wore out a front drivers side UNI (see my dumb@ss yet successful attemp to repair - earlier post) and after I replaced it I went out for a test drive on the grass field behind my office, as I was "testing" aka performing the technical manoeuvre know as grass D'ohnuts when I heard a new noise - sounded like a dead / dying CV. sure enough I had just killed my front driveshaft CV at the transfer case.
After much research I decided to replace my factory shaft with a Double Cardan from Wooders Garage, much stronger and should last more Km's.
Thankfully the old shaft gave me plenty of notice! - infact I went wheelin several times with it complaining whilst I waited for the replacement to arrive.
Replacing the front shaft is a pretty easy / straight forward job.
To make the repair you will need;
1 x small socket to remove the million little bolts that hold the CV to the transfercase adapter
1 x Large Socket to remove the M22 nut in the centre of the flange / adapter see pic
My 2 cents / hopefully helpful advice.
Firstly you will need to remove the bash plate, I did this repair as I do everything, (without a hoist in the driveway) I removed 3 of the 4 bolts that hold it in place then grabed a handful of smart@ss pills, and just loosened the 4th bolt enough to swivel the bash plate out of the way - I did this because I did not want to have to lift it back in place.
Disconnect / Drop the front driveshaft uni first by removing the 4 bolts then put your transfer case in neutral - this will allow you to remove one of the millions of little bolts before you rotate the shaft to remove the next little bolt and so on until they are all out
When removing the centre nut from the adapter flange put the transfer case back into 4L so you can swing on it to loosen it and get it off.
When swapping out flanges be sure to carefully remove the fat little rubber Oring / seal and carefully install it into your new flange - As a total dumb@ss I missed this important step , and as I was packing away all my tools and feeling well pleased with my efforts I noticed the "stupid" little Oring was still embedded in my old flange D'oh, so back on the jack stands, remove the bash plate remove front uni.........blah blah blah....... dumb@ss LoL
If you have any mechanical aptitude you should be able to do the job in around 90min's (unlike me who took a little bit longer, ok a lot longer - LoL)
Cheers Hunty
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AeroForce Gauge is awesome
Ive been using my aeroforce gauge now for 6 months and am very happy with it
The Aeroforce gauge can be setup to show two things at once or cycle through as many as you like - I mainly use it to monitor battery voltage and water temperature on road and for off road I have it cycling through a bunch more;
When im in the slop I select water temperature and steering angle
water temp so I can see if i have clogged up the radiator with mud as the std JK gauge will show "12oclock" all is well for any temperature between 85 and 112 degrees C
and steering angle so i know when I have the wheels pointing straight as those of you who wheel in the mud will know - sometimes you can have the wheel 1 complete turn from straight and have almost NO idea!
When winching I use the aeroforce gauge to bump up the idle - you can input what ever RPM you want - I usually input 1850 which is a apparently the rpm needed to get maximum output from the alternator.
You can program your Jeep for different gears and different tyre size to correct you car computer and speedo readings.
Reading and clearing DTC - fault codes
Another awesome feature is - the aeroforce gauge has 2 analog inputs that you can connect whatever you want to - I am planning to install a long range fuel tank and will connect the sender up to the 1st of the 2 analog inputs - i have done some research and have determined that the gauge will display anything - 0 - 5v.
it is brilliant, I still have my scan gauge but now it lives in my tool box and comes out only when I want to assist my friends in diagnosing their Heaps.
There are 2 super bright Led's that can be configured to light up in any condition or combination of conditions - I have mine set to light up on high temperature (over 100 degrees C) and / or high RPM.
cheers Hunty
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ps
last pic shows ipad in its old location