Ep. 34 P0740 Still On After XJ Solenoid Swap
Tony is back on the XJ Talk Show with Jeep Cherokee wrenching, a new red 2003 Wrangler TJ in the driveway, a stubborn P0740 torque converter lockup code after AW4 solenoids, and the big October 2011 giveaway winner. This classic episode covers Detours A-pillar mounts plus KC Daylighter lights, the new Knucklebone hitch tire carrier contest, house cameras spotting a possum, and why more posts and referrals keep the forum alive. Grab a coffee and settle in for old-school XJ Talk from Tony at XJTalk.com.
Timestamps
Key Highlights
- 1998 XJ AW4 solenoid swap and fluid/filter change still throwing a P0740 torque converter lockup code after 50 mph
- New matching PR4 red 2003 Wrangler TJ, hardtop off, Bestop mesh bikini top on order, and wife loving the open-air drive
- October giveaway winner De Great Tim with 651 posts takes Detours A-pillar mounts, KC Daylighters, harness, and high-impact covers
- November contest: most referral points plus two relevant posts each wins the Detours Knucklebone 2-inch receiver spare tire carrier
- 1999 XJ daily driver update, noisy wheel bearings, 242 vs 231 transfer case thoughts, WranglerTalk.com revival, and call-in line 530-675-4102
Like the video if this one takes you back, comment who you would have referred for the Knucklebone, subscribe for more Jeep Talk Show archives, and visit jeeptalkshow.com.
Support the Show & Shop Jeep Gear Thank you for watching and listening! If you enjoyed the conversation with Tony, consider checking out some of the great products and upgrades we discussed.
KC HiLiTES 6″ Daylighter Lights
View on Amazon
Bestop Bikini Top for Jeep Wrangler TJ
View on Amazon
Timken Front Wheel Bearing and Hub for Jeep Cherokee XJ
View on Amazon
Supporting the show through the Amazon storefront at jeeptalkshow.com/amazon costs you nothing extra and helps keep classic XJ Talk and new Jeep Talk Show episodes coming.
Announcing the October 2011 Give Away winner!
Also some information on the November give away, and more!
Click here to download!
Episode Transcript
[00:00:00:03 – 00:00:03:12]
Wednesday, November 2nd, Episode number 34.
[00:00:44:04 – 00:00:53:17]
It’s that time again. XJ Talk Show is on the air. Okay, so it’s a podcast, but you know what I mean. Anyway, here’s Tony.
[00:00:55:28 – 00:01:08:02]
I love that announcement. That’s great. Thank you. It’s good to be here. This is Tony. I’m a motor Roy on XJ Talk.com. And this is a podcast about Jeep Cherokees.
[00:01:10:06 – 00:01:24:28]
We have a nice little website, XJ Talk.com, where we talk about Jeep Cherokees and pretty much everything under the sun. And some things that are hidden by the sun. Dark, dank things.
[00:01:27:14 – 00:01:33:15]
But that’s usually what happens when a bunch of testosterone filled men get together.
[00:01:36:13 – 00:01:44:03]
We’d like to have women on the site, but we just don’t know how to behave well enough to have women stick around very long.
[00:01:48:11 – 00:02:08:29]
Yeah, it’s sad, but it’s true. I don’t know how we get married and keep women around us very long. I guess we know how to behave just long enough. I have a theory that men mature through junior high, and then that’s when it ends. Everything else is just us pretending to be mature.
[00:02:11:25 – 00:02:38:26]
I know the neighbors think that every time I drive away on the Jeep. Actually, we’ve added a couple of Jeeps. I did mention one on a previous podcast. We had picked up a 1999 Jeep Cherokee for my wife to drive. My hopes, and I’m not sure if I articulated it on a prior podcast, but my hopes were that that 99 Cherokee would wind up being a first vehicle for my two daughters.
[00:02:39:26 – 00:02:44:25]
My further hope was to get my wife a TJ.
[00:02:47:01 – 00:02:56:03]
That would allow us to live a wish that we had both had from our early adulthood to have a Jeep Wrangler.
[00:02:56:03 – 00:03:21:27]
That’s worked out as well. I’m very pleased that we were able to get a 2003 Jeep Wrangler TJ six cylinder. It is the same exact red that I have on the 98 Jeep Cherokee. It’s the PR4 paint code that I have on the 98 and now on the 2003.
[00:03:21:27 – 00:03:31:20]
I know this is a Jeep Cherokee podcast, but I’ve been having a little trouble. I’m sorry, not trouble. I guess it’s trouble. I guess anytime you have some sort of trouble, it could be good.
[00:03:31:20 – 00:03:36:27]
But I’ve been picking out things to go on the Wrangler.
[00:03:38:09 – 00:03:51:03]
The Wrangler came with a hardtop. I did that on purpose because I didn’t want to find that we needed a hardtop later and then go spend the $2,500 for a replacement, like Bestop sells replacements.
[00:03:51:03 – 00:04:53:17]
And so we got a hardtop. To my amazement, my wife absolutely loves driving the Wrangler without the hardtop on. And it does have the full doors. So I was really surprised because I thought it would be too loud and too windy for her. Not at all. Loves it. So we’ve ordered a Bestop bikini top and there was a discussion about should it be a solid cloth or a mesh. I was thinking mesh. Mesh would have been my choice because that allows you to have some cover from the sun but still be able to see out and up. And also too some blocking of the wind. And to my surprise, she thought mesh was great too. So ordered that. Kind of thought it would be in today. But it’s not. Due to an issue with my solenoid purchase that I’m none too happy about. I’ll just say that right now.
[00:04:54:17 – 00:05:15:01]
I ordered some solenoids for my 98 AW4 transmission. Because I was getting a P0740 code which was basically torque converter lockup. And I highly suspected the solenoid. So I went ahead and just got a whole set for about $200.
[00:05:16:14 – 00:05:24:25]
And I thought that was a pretty good deal from other prices that I had seen. Some other sites.
[00:05:25:29 – 00:05:28:15]
I’m trying to remember where I got these things from.
[00:05:29:24 – 00:05:40:17]
Anyway, I’ll get back to that later. I do have it on the post on the site so you can find out for yourself. By looking for the torque converter lockup solenoid post.
[00:05:40:17 – 00:05:45:28]
Anyway, I got those solenoids and I ordered them back in
[00:05:45:28 – 00:05:55:28]
late part of August. Maybe early part of September. No it was the early part of September. And didn’t get around to replacing them until last weekend.
[00:05:57:00 – 00:06:09:20]
And I was really very easy to install. The most difficult thing about installing the solenoids is putting the 19 bolts back in the transmission case cover.
[00:06:10:27 – 00:06:15:18]
That seemed like it took forever. But at least I was laying on my back and nice and comfortable.
[00:06:16:24 – 00:06:22:24]
But anyway, I went ahead and did a fluid and filter change since I had everything apart.
[00:06:22:24 – 00:06:50:16]
And it really is just as simple as taking the pan off, draining the pan, taking the pan off. And dropping the filter. Actually don’t drop the filter. It’s really messy. Dropping the filter and then one bolt holds each solenoid in. There’s just a bracket. And one electrical connection. And took those off. The ones that I got were significantly larger, longer than the ones that were in there.
[00:06:50:16 – 00:06:58:06]
Anyway, had some discussions with fellow admin, MS Mornberg. Very helpful.
[00:07:00:00 – 00:07:19:20]
We worked it out. Figured that these solenoids were the right solenoids. But they were just larger. Which you know, larger is not initially a bad thing as long as it fits and works. Anyway, got all the stuff back in and test drove it. Was very happy that it actually shifted properly. And then went to work the next day.
[00:07:19:20 – 00:07:42:22]
And I guess within 2-3 miles I got to check engine light. And I was able to pull the code by using my handy dandy Android application, Torq. I used the free copy of Torq and I have a Elm 327 Bluetooth OED2
[00:07:42:22 – 00:07:43:00]
scanner.
[00:07:43:00 – 00:07:58:23]
And I can just hook that up to the OED2 port on my Cherokee. And I’ve got it just sitting in front of the seat so it’s out of the way of my feet. And then it communicates Bluetooth with my Android phone.
[00:07:58:23 – 00:08:43:02]
And I can monitor the OED2 information. Boy, I’m saying OED2 so much that I’m starting to mess up. I can monitor the OED2 information from my Android phone that I’ve got adhered to the windshield of the Cherokee. So it’s pretty cool. I can see speed, various temperatures, O2 sensor reactions within limits. And so I’m able to pull codes and clear codes and so on and so forth. Anyway, I was able to pull the code through some generations. And it was a P0740, which is a multitude of issues, but basically it’s talking about the Torq converter not logging up.
[00:08:43:02 – 00:08:45:18]
So I was a little surprised by that.
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I cleared the code and continued on. Well, it’s been…
[00:08:51:16 – 00:08:57:29]
Well, I guess it’s just been the three days that I’ve been driving it, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.
[00:08:59:06 – 00:09:05:24]
And I finally put it together today. The Torq converter is not locking up.
[00:09:07:00 – 00:09:20:16]
It’s not locking up at all. And I’m getting that code, I’m getting the check engine light and the P0740 code, after I hit about 50 miles an hour for
[00:09:20:16 – 00:09:32:11]
a few seconds, maybe 30 seconds. And what it’s doing, I believe, is it’s saying the Torq converter is not locking up, let’s throw a code.
[00:09:32:11 – 00:10:05:26]
And from where I live and going to work and where I work coming home, it takes two or three miles before I get to a point where I can drive about 50 miles an hour. And the point of that is that the Torq converter doesn’t lock up until you get into third gear. And it has to be at a stable speed in third gear before it actually tries to lock up. So I went from a situation where I occasionally had problems getting the Torq converter locked up,
[00:10:07:08 – 00:10:19:13]
and then throwing the code. I had gone for several weeks without having the code come up. So I’ve gone from the occasional issue to a constant issue.
[00:10:19:13 – 00:10:52:20]
So I called the fine people that I got the solenoid from who have a 30-day warranty on their siltenoids. And it was already past that, but I thought I would call anyway. You never know. You check with people, you check with companies. They have policies because people abuse things. I certainly understand that. And it’s my fault. I should have installed and found the problem within the 30 days that they gave me. Well, I got a very nice lady on the phone, and we discussed it. And basically I said, you know,
[00:10:52:20 – 00:11:10:02]
it’s outside the 30 days. I don’t know if there’s some testing that I can do to show you guys that this solenoid is bad, etc., etc. And she says, well, it’s a piece of electrical equipment, and it’s guaranteed to work when it leaves us.
[00:11:10:02 – 00:11:18:12]
And in that brief moment between when she said that and me saying the next thing,
[00:11:20:01 – 00:11:29:01]
I just didn’t – I thought of that, and I said – I thought to myself, this is a little silly because,
[00:11:29:01 – 00:11:36:19]
you know, I could say that myself. It was perfectly fine whenever it left here.
[00:11:36:19 – 00:11:39:15]
Well, where’s the proof of that?
[00:11:39:15 – 00:11:52:21]
I mean, I feel – I either installed something wrong, something broke that I was not aware of –
[00:11:52:21 – 00:12:02:03]
let’s see, how can I say this – something broke that just happened to break at the same time that I made this change,
[00:12:02:03 – 00:12:08:00]
or the solenoid’s bad, and I’m out the money. I mean, it’s completely useless to me.
[00:12:09:12 – 00:13:07:00]
So anyway, I really don’t have time to drive around without a torque converter locking up, because obviously the issues can be that you – where the bands – or I’m sorry, where the clutch pads too much because you’re not getting into a lockup condition. I guess fortunately – maybe it’s unfortunate for the transmission, but fortunately the path that I take to and from work, I go some back roads, so I don’t get on the highway and I’m not driving 70 miles an hour with a torque converter that’s not locked up. I do hit periods of roads that I’m going 50, 55 miles an hour, but there’s stoplights, there’s traffic, so on and so forth. And surprisingly, it’s a shorter trip for me. Well, I say surprisingly, it’s the way the roads are laid out. The highways are just too far,
[00:13:07:00 – 00:13:07:09]
I guess, out of the way.
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It winds up being about 10 minutes longer. I go faster, but it takes about 10 minutes longer to get home.
[00:13:16:09 – 00:13:58:25]
And while I was having the issues with the running hot on the freeway, it was actually nice to be able to drive on the back roads, and it would give the updated cooling system time to cool off the engine at stoplights and stuff. But to solve that, I’m not sure if I mentioned that on the other podcast. I guess that’s the problem with not having these podcasts very often, which I do apologize. I’m going to have to schedule these things on the weekend, why don’t I have more time. I have just not had any time during the week with so many things going on with the website, with my job, my personal life,
[00:13:58:25 – 00:14:09:22]
just getting the Wrangler and working on it and working on the 98. The 99 has been good. But anyway,
[00:14:09:22 – 00:14:44:00]
well, I had to pause the recording there for a second and lost my train of thought. I have, as many of you know, that are on the forums. I have four outside cameras set up, and some people have said, “Gee, you must live in a bad neighborhood.” No, not at all. It’s just something I always thought would be really cool to be able to see what’s going on outside whenever you’re comfortably sitting inside. No mosquitoes, no heat, no rain, etc. Well, I’ve got a display up just because it’s fun for me to watch the fruits of my labor of installing this thing.
[00:14:45:02 – 00:15:16:09]
I’ve got this little display up, and it’s showing the four. I only got four cameras. The four cameras set up. I recently moved one of the cameras from lower on the house in the backyard to the second floor. I was looking out over the backyard, and I thought it would be really cool to see weather, like lightning and so on and so forth. It’s 12.10 in the morning on Thursday now.
[00:15:17:16 – 00:15:32:09]
It’s quite dark outside, but these have zero lux with infrared eliminators. I can see things quite clearly, like there’s a tree in the backyard bush, I guess, if you want to get technical about it.
[00:15:33:12 – 00:15:44:14]
It’s a good 20 feet tall. Anyway, it’s probably 30 or 40 feet away from the camera, but it’s very well lit by the IR eliminators on the camera.
[00:15:45:20 – 00:16:01:03]
I can see it, and I can see that we’re actually getting quite a bit of wind, and I think some rain coming through. We must have that cold front coming through right now. Anyway, I’m sitting here talking, and I see this creature
[00:16:01:03 – 00:16:40:22]
in front of that camera. It’s under an eave, and there’s a spot. It’s about maybe two feet where it is. The eave kind of comes out from the second floor onto the first floor. The living room is on the first floor, and it has a vaulted ceiling, so there’s a roof line there, but it’s lower than the second floor. But it’s not very far because of the vaulting of the ceiling. The area is only like two feet wide or two feet high between the two. That’s where I’ve got the camera mounted under that eave. I see this creature, and I’m thinking, “Okay, occasionally I’ll see one of those wood roaches
[00:16:41:26 – 00:16:50:05]
coming across the lens of the camera on various cameras.” Not very often, but occasionally I pick it up. But I see this definite fur.
[00:16:51:24 – 00:17:04:22]
It’s fur that I’m looking at. It’s not an insect. This is some sort of mammal or something, hairy mammal. And then I’m thinking to myself, “Oh my God, is that a rat?”
[00:17:04:22 – 00:17:10:03]
And I’m still talking to you guys, recording the podcast, looking at this thing.
[00:17:11:03 – 00:17:36:13]
It kind of moves further away from the camera, and I’m about 99 percent sure it was a possum. So the possum is probably in the garbage or trying to get in the garbage right now, but I find it interesting that it was climbing across the top of the house. And that’s one of the fun things about having this camera. I really would like to have more, and it really would be nice to have one that I could…
[00:17:37:13 – 00:17:59:16]
I guess it’s called pan and tilt. And then of course having a zoom on it would be nice too. But anyway, the neighbors might have a problem with that. I mean, just having one camera up in the backyard is one thing, even though it’s not very noticeable. That’s one thing, but having one that you can pan, tilt, zoom, might go over the edge a bit for some.
[00:17:59:16 – 00:18:18:29]
I swear, all I’m doing is looking at what’s going on in the backyard. I’m not looking at what’s going on in other people’s backyards necessarily, and certainly not looking at what’s going on in their house. I don’t care. I got plenty of stuff in this house to keep an eye on without looking at stuff in other houses.
[00:18:18:29 – 00:18:29:24]
Anyway, I’m sorry, the main reason for this podcast was to announce the winner of our October giveaway.
[00:18:30:29 – 00:18:36:07]
Now, if you’re not familiar with our October giveaway, let me just go over it real quick.
[00:18:38:24 – 00:19:01:24]
Yeah, I can’t…it’s a recording, but I hear you. I don’t even get to the point. I understand. Anyway, the idea was that we wanted to have some giveaways. I’ve been wanting to do giveaways for some time, but we just haven’t been able to do it. We don’t have the funds available, as any of you that have done anything with forums are aware. It’s a pretty good expense,
[00:19:01:24 – 00:19:34:15]
and it’s the Internet, so everybody wants free. It makes it very difficult to do giveaways, because even if you approach vendors that may be hoping to profit from advertising on your site, they’re spread pretty thin, too, because having a forum set up isn’t that difficult a thing to do. And if you add to that a high unemployment rate, and some of those unemployed being IT workers,
[00:19:35:16 – 00:20:03:24]
it’s really not difficult to set up a forum, because they’ve done a lot of technical stuff, and they’re prior or prior jobs. So anyway, the advertisers are spread pretty thin, so if you go to an advertiser and you say, “Hey, we’d like to do a giveaway. You’re a very valuable vendor on this site, and we know people will really like your product, and it’ll help give you some advertisement,” and so on and so forth,
[00:20:04:25 – 00:20:07:19]
they’ve got to look at it like how many of these things can we afford to do.
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And even if they can afford to do it, it’s very difficult for them to give you a $200 or $300 product.
[00:20:17:05 – 00:20:40:04]
So we made the decision that in October, November, and December of 2011, we were going to have three giveaways, and we wanted to do something that was fairly substantial. Now, back a few months ago, we did a giveaway of the Detours A-pillar Light Mounts.
[00:20:41:16 – 00:20:52:01]
The A-pillar Light Mounts are very popular on the Jeep Wranglers, but there’s not a lot, at least not that I’ve seen, a lot of A-pillar Light Mounts for Jeep Cherokees.
[00:20:52:01 – 00:21:11:05]
So Mark over at Detours, detoursusa.com, came up with these light mounts, and we had a little contest and we gave those away, and one of the things that the winner said was, “Hey, this is great. Now I just need lights.”
[00:21:12:15 – 00:21:46:15]
And, you know, yeah, I know, beggars can’t be choosers, but apparently they can. And not that our winner was a beggar, it’s just a saying. Sorry, Pat. Anyway, Pat has an excuse. He’s been struck in the head by a flag from a golf course. Anyway, so I thought about it and I thought, well, you know, maybe what we should do is start our giveaway with a set of Detours A-pillar Light Mounts and we’ll throw in some lights.
[00:21:46:15 – 00:21:58:18]
Now, I started to ask on the forum what would be the best lights to give away, and I didn’t want to get into all that because everybody has their own idea, and I like KCs.
[00:21:58:18 – 00:22:05:10]
So that’s what I got. I like the KC highlighter, I’m sorry, highlights, daylighters.
[00:22:06:21 – 00:22:21:29]
I’ve got four of them on the front of my Jeep. They’re nice. I’ve always liked KC lights and that’s what we got. So we got two of those, and I do not, absolutely do not like those yellow covers with the crappy-ass
[00:22:21:29 – 00:22:35:08]
smiley faces on those KC lights. They are horrible. Now, you know, it’s great that they include those things. It’s great because it does protect the lenses, even though they’re hardened plastic lenses.
[00:22:36:27 – 00:22:44:21]
I just, you know, I don’t like them. And also, too, they tend to melt if you turn the lights on because you’re trying to get somebody the
[00:22:44:21 – 00:22:45:19]
out of your way.
[00:22:47:01 – 00:23:19:12]
So the alternative to that is the nice high-impact plastic KC covers. And it says KC on the front like it’s supposed to, not some smiley face. So we threw in a pair of those covers. And I went ahead with the black, even though some of the other colors like red or silver or even yellow appealed to me more. I figured black would mean that there would be less grief from the people that saw it and certainly the person that received it.
[00:23:19:12 – 00:24:23:14]
So anyway, two 8-pillar mounts, two KC lights, the wiring harness with the two KC lights that comes with it, and the high-impact plastic covers, which are, you can run those lights, well, the 100-watt lights, with those covers on. So now you have protection for the lights. You have a look cool for the lights. And you can use them. So you don’t have to get out and pop the covers off because there’s going to be times, legal or not, whenever you need to see on public roads. And most of the time it’s going to be whenever it’s really bad weather out. And you know the way I look at it is, if I need to see and I’m not keeping other people from seeing, then they’re going to be turned on and I’m going to be able to see where I’m going. And if a cop wants to pull me over and discuss it, that’s fine. I’ll tell him what my rational thinking, my rationale, what I was thinking. And if he wants to give me a ticket, that’s fine. I’ll explain it to the judge. And if he doesn’t want to listen to it, then I’ll pay the fine.
[00:24:24:14 – 00:24:45:13]
But the nice thing is, is that I’ll be safe, my family will be safe, and the Jeep probably won’t be damaged as a result. So you know, sometimes you just got to do what you think is best. Even if the law says otherwise. Sometimes you find out you’re wrong. But anyway, that’s all we can do, is to think and do our best.
[00:24:45:13 – 00:24:48:11]
So anyway, back to the contest.
[00:24:50:22 – 00:25:11:28]
I’m sorry, the giveaway. Not a contest, it’s a giveaway. Anyway, the way to get this item, or these items, was to have the most posts in the month of October. And that was from midnight, October 1st, Central Time,
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to midnight, October 31st, Halloween, 2011.
[00:25:19:03 – 00:25:23:02]
And we had a lot of posts.
[00:25:24:04 – 00:25:51:06]
For the first 15 days, we were posting up the results of the number of posts who had the most posts. And one person really pulled away in those 15 days. They were well ahead of everybody else. And we’re talking about the number two person, not including myself. I’m technically the number two person on this, because I post a lot.
[00:25:52:20 – 00:26:10:04]
But of course, I’m not going to take the prize myself, even though I’m sure I could if I’d really tried. I wasn’t even trying, I was just responding to posts. And I think I had over 500 posts for the month. I suspect if I go back and look, I probably post that much every month.
[00:26:10:04 – 00:26:29:25]
It’s easy to do, because I go on and I start up little stories, little goofy things that I think of. And what’s the largest steak that you’ve ever eaten? That’s a post I did recently. I’m quite proud of that. I wouldn’t mind having a steak right now. Anyway, but I digress. So a
[00:26:29:25 – 00:26:44:04]
lot of posts, and it doesn’t matter who gets the item for the giveaway. We’re all winners, because there’s more posts. It’s a forum. If there’s no posts, people don’t come.
[00:26:45:24 – 00:27:10:05]
There’s no reason for them to come and look at nothing. So the whole idea was, let’s give something away, let’s get some posts, let’s get some people in here, and we all win, because it’s going to bring more people in here eventually as they do Google searches and find us. And hopefully they’ll say, hey, this is a really cool Jeep forum. It’s different than the other Jeep forums, and I’m going to stay.
[00:27:10:05 – 00:27:21:04]
So anyway, we had a lot of posts. And let me just say that the, gosh, we’re 30 minutes into this, and I haven’t said who the winner is.
[00:27:22:10 – 00:27:29:26]
The winner of the 2011 October giveaway is…
[00:28:04:04 – 00:28:22:12]
Yeah, I’m sorry. We’re only, I don’t know, we’re only halfway through the show. I do need to bring this out, to draw this out as long as possible. So we’ll get to the winner here in just a second. I’m sorry. I don’t know what I was thinking. So anyway, as you guys are aware,
[00:28:22:12 – 00:28:47:08]
we’ll fall back on a prior podcast. I was in the 1999 Jeep and having issues with the cooling system, and I was worried that maybe I’d blown a head gasket in. Yada, yada, yada, yada. The 99’s working perfectly fine. I haven’t had any issues with it. Now, it may quite very well be the case that I have a slight head gasket leak.
[00:28:48:09 – 00:30:06:18]
And I’m going to address that on it. I’m sure I’ll pull the head and replace the gasket, take the head and have it milled, and so on and so forth, and just see if we can get it going, get the temperature going back to where it was before, which was well below the 210 before we overheated it, dramatically overheated it. But as far as running day to day, getting back and forth, driving on the freeway, perfectly fine. It gets my wife from point A to point B, and now my daughter, she has, my oldest daughter has her learner’s permit, and she’s driving it every day when my wife drives over to the school to pick her up, and then Cassie jumps in the driver’s seat and drives it back home. Actually, I think they cruise around a little bit, and then if Cassie has to go to work, she drives the back roads over to the mall where she works at, and then her mom goes and gets her, and she drives home. So the Jeep Cherokee, I feel very comfortable with them driving the Jeep Cherokee. I’ve got new BF Goodrich AT tires on it. It’s looking pretty good. It’s a Cherokee. I still want to lift it.
[00:30:07:25 – 00:30:36:03]
But one thing I do need to do is the wheel bearing assemblies are a little noisy and have been since we first got it. So I was going to order some of those, some Timken wheel bearing assemblies for the other day, and I was surprised to find that there are two types. There’s one for the cast iron rotor, and there’s one for the, I think it’s a two-piece composite rotor.
[00:30:36:03 – 00:31:15:01]
So I guess what I need to do is just, I probably could just do it without looking at the, taking the wheel off and looking at it, but I think there’s some differences in the measurements of the wheel studs, and I probably need to pull the wheel off, look at it, and also measure the wheel studs so I get the right one. Now, I’m either remembering incorrectly or there’s been a dramatic price drop, because when I replaced the wheel bearing assemblies on my 98, when I had about 100,000 miles on the odometer, I thought I paid $150 apiece for those Timken bearings.
[00:31:15:01 – 00:31:35:21]
And what I’m seeing now is about 75 or 80 bucks per Timken bearing. So that basically means the price is half of what I thought I remember paying for it a couple of years ago. Well, probably three years ago now.
[00:31:35:21 – 00:32:20:28]
And maybe I’m just remembering wrong. But anyway, I’m happy because I didn’t like spending the, I think it was, gosh, maybe it wasn’t 150. I think maybe I found them cheaper than that. I really, really think that I paid around $270, $250, $270 for a pair of those wheel bearings. And I thought that was god-awful at the time, god-awfully expensive at the time, and still do. But now I’m looking at 150 for the 99. And I really need to get those. And the other day I was thinking, you know, I’m concerned about those wheel bearings making noise.
[00:32:22:14 – 00:32:37:10]
And I think I had just gotten out of the 98 and I was walking into the house after getting home. And I was thinking about this because, you know, my wife and my children are riding in this vehicle. And I don’t want it to have a problem. I certainly don’t want a wheel bearing to fail.
[00:32:38:24 – 00:33:14:29]
And I thought about it. And I remembered the wheel on Scott, XJ4IV’s Cherokee, that was leaning at about a 45 degree angle because his wheel bearing assembly had a problem. And I stopped and I turned and I looked at the 99 that was there parked in the driveway. And I looked at the tire and the wheel and it was perfectly straight. And I moved over to the other one and it was perfectly straight. And I thought to myself, you know, I probably have a few days. I probably don’t need to be worried about getting the Timken bearings ordered today
[00:33:16:19 – 00:33:29:15]
because it could be much worse. There have been people, and I won’t mention any names, Scott, driving on wheel bearing assemblies that were so far gone,
[00:33:31:02 – 00:33:46:06]
well, the Jeep could have stopped and the wheel could have kept going. And it probably will eventually, someday, somehow. Although he’s got it broke down right now because he’s trying to switch over to some Dana 60s.
[00:33:46:06 – 00:33:55:29]
And I guess that will be less of an issue when he gets the Dana 60s on it. Although I think it’s going to be more of an expense issue when he does have to replace parts.
[00:33:55:29 – 00:34:09:24]
Still, I’m looking forward to that. I think some nice full size, good God, what are those things? Two ton axles under a vehicle that weighs 2,800 pounds. It’s great.
[00:34:12:11 – 00:34:38:19]
I’m serious though. I think it really looks cool. And if I had an off-road only rig, I think it would be a lot of fun to put some full size Dana 60s. And I think it would really be cool to have steerable front and back. Not that it would be of any great use, any real purpose, but I think it would be fun to have a rear steerable Dana 60 axle on the Cherokee and just be able to walk that thing around.
[00:34:39:28 – 00:34:41:06]
Anyway, so
[00:34:41:06 – 00:34:51:24]
back to the giveaways. I mentioned the October giveaway. The October giveaway has ended. We do have a winner. We’ll be announcing the winner shortly, which is the reason for the podcast.
[00:34:53:02 – 00:35:41:07]
The reason why I made myself do it tonight. I did have a nice nap. So I was sitting here scanning the site, chatting online with the few people that are in chat late night. And said, “I got to stop goofing around and got to get this podcast going.” Anyway, so I was mentioning earlier that we came up with the giveaways that we were going to do for October, November, December. Now we’re into November. We started our next giveaway. I was very, very happy. I had a conversation with Mark at detoursusa.com back in October, first part of October. And I was talking about the giveaways we were going to have. And I was trying to think of what we could do for a giveaway in November and December.
[00:35:42:08 – 00:35:53:08]
And he mentioned that he had a new product called a knuckle bone. And the knuckle bone is a really cool idea, as Mark’s ideas usually are.
[00:35:54:08 – 00:36:01:13]
And it’s basically a tire carrier that fits in the 2″ receiver of your trailer hitch, if you have one.
[00:36:02:18 – 00:36:31:10]
And the cool thing about it is that it’s small. It doesn’t weigh very much. It serves a very useful purpose getting a too large of a tire to really put in the back of your jeep and carry anything else in there. I know because I carried a 32″ 11.5″ x 15″ in the back of mine for a while until I got the first detours product that I bought, which was the slimline bumper with tire carrier.
[00:36:32:12 – 00:36:52:01]
And it’s really cool. I mean, it’s a lot of fun to have something that is not what came with the vehicle. I remember when I put that slimline bumper on and I had that big 32″ tire bolted onto the tire carrier, it just felt like an off-road vehicle.
[00:36:53:03 – 00:37:52:06]
It no longer was just the pretty red grocery getter that we had had for 9 or 10 years. It’s more of an off-road vehicle now. I mean, I knew what the vehicle was capable of, but the civilians out there, they don’t know. And that’s why a lot of them are impressed with Hummers, because the H2s, because they’re big, they’re square, and they look different. Those of us that know about off-roading know that they’re more for show than practical off-road use. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. There’s nothing wrong with having a nice looking vehicle. There’s nothing wrong with having a head turner. What you do with it, you pay for it. What you do with it is your choice. And I say that because I like having mine off-road capable, but it being a daily driver, I need to take care of it so I can get back and forth to work.
[00:37:52:06 – 00:38:01:11]
And I take a lot of razzing on the side about that. That’s fine. People can use their Jeeps for whatever purpose they want. I’m not going to,
[00:38:01:11 – 00:38:06:12]
not in reality, give them a hard time, and in jest, I’ll give them a hard time.
[00:38:06:12 – 00:38:11:15]
But anyway, having the tire carrier on there was really cool.
[00:38:12:19 – 00:41:30:17]
So Mark has come out with his knucklebone, which is basically a really easy and much less expensive way of being able to carry a tire, a spare tire, on your rig at a much lower center of gravity than if you would if you had it on top of the roof. And it gives you the ability to still carry things in your cargo area. I mean, actually the entire cargo area is now available to you for camping or whatever, and you’ve got a spare tire. How great is that? So Mark says, “Hey, I’m going to be having the knucklebone come out pretty soon.” And I said, “Well, would you, I don’t know how long it’s going to be before you’ll actually have them available, but would you have it available for like a December giveaway? Because I’ll get one from you, and we’ll do that as a giveaway, do a little promoting of the knucklebone and detours.” And he says, “Oh, it’ll be ready this month,” which was October. And I said, “Well, could we get one for November then?” And he says, “Yeah, sure.” So I said, “Great.” And fortunately, I was just mentioning earlier about the vendors, various vendors are getting spread pretty thin on the various forums, and it’s hard to get people to, hard to get vendors to give away their products. Mark is actually doing 50% of this thing for me. So we were very lucky to have a great vendor like Mark and detours to provide us with this product, and very happy to be able to give it to one lucky person on the site. So it’s ready. Mark’s got it built, and he sent me some pictures of the actual item. He took the XJ Talk sticker that I sent him a while back and put that on the knucklebone, which I thought was pretty cool. He’s got a detour sticker on there, obviously, for very good reason. It is just a beautiful, beautiful work of art, which is what I’ve come to expect from Mark. I have three of his products on my vehicle. The Slimline bumper with tire carrier, a custom front winch bumper, and now have his sliders with frame stiffeners on there, and that has a bit of a custom work done to it as well. And just beautiful, beautiful work. Love having it on my Jeep. My Jeep means a lot to me, and it means a lot to me having things on there that are as nice as my Jeep. And again, you don’t care what your Jeep looks like. It makes your blood curdle when you say, “Nice looking Jeep.” Oh, that’s fine. You know, that’s the way you look at it. That’s not the way I look at it. I like the way my Jeep looks, and I want it to perform well, and I think it does both.
[00:41:31:28 – 00:41:47:21]
Anyway, so I got some pictures of the knucklebone, the one that he specifically made for our giveaway. He’s got it all stickered up, and I’ve posted that up on Facebook, on the XJTalk site on Facebook, and of course on the XJTalk.com forum.
[00:41:49:07 – 00:42:07:29]
And I had to come up with a way of how we would determine who would get this item. And what we came up with, and when I say “we,” I mean me, I don’t blame anybody else for this, but I like the idea
[00:42:07:29 – 00:42:27:09]
of having more people come and register on the site. I have a firm belief that when people try out XJTalk.com, they’ll see a big difference from the other sites, a positive big difference. And they’ll enjoy the site. They’ll interact with the site and interact with the people.
[00:42:28:28 – 00:42:32:03]
So I wanted to try to do something to get people to the site
[00:42:32:03 – 00:42:49:19]
and in large numbers. So, again, during the period of November, because we don’t want to give people that haven’t been on or haven’t been doing as much as others the inability to win this giveaway.
[00:42:50:21 – 00:43:04:21]
So during the month of November, from November 1st, midnight through November 30th, I think I put in the post, 235959.99, as close to midnight as you can get,
[00:43:06:22 – 00:43:11:25]
whoever has the most referrals and
[00:43:11:25 – 00:43:25:26]
the most posts from those people that they referred will get this giveaway item. I know it’s a little complex. I understand that and I apologize. And the reason for that is this.
[00:43:25:26 – 00:43:31:05]
If we just did the referrals, it would be very easy for somebody to cheat.
[00:43:31:05 – 00:43:50:11]
And because you can go to Google and Hotmail and so on and so forth and create a near infinite number of email addresses. And then you go back to the site and you register on the site with, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20, whatever it takes.
[00:43:52:07 – 00:43:56:14]
And to get this lovely knuckle bone,
[00:43:56:14 – 00:43:59:19]
2-inch receiver tire carrier.
[00:43:59:19 – 00:44:06:09]
And I wanted to come up with a way that would make it a little more difficult.
[00:44:06:09 – 00:44:10:08]
Obviously that is not a
[00:44:10:08 – 00:44:20:09]
way to get this giveaway item. And if we find that somebody has done that, we’ll remove those referrals from the site.
[00:44:21:18 – 00:44:36:22]
It’s not fair to everybody else. It’s, you know, you should be a member on the site. You should encourage people to come join the site and make sure they put in your name that you used on XJTalk as the person that referred them.
[00:44:36:22 – 00:44:43:16]
Once you have a person on the site, a referral, you need to get them to post.
[00:44:44:24 – 00:44:52:26]
They have to post a minimum of two relevant posts. And relevance means something that, you know, is of interest.
[00:44:52:26 – 00:45:46:07]
You know, I don’t know, something about their jeep, something about their day, something interesting, something that isn’t just a blatant, “Hello, I’m here. I’m trying to win this thing for Bubba.” You know, whoever. And again, the idea is we’ll get some people on the site. We’ll get them posting, which is I think the hardest thing for most people is to make that first post. Especially if you get flamed from the other sites or other forums. Not necessarily jeep forums, just any forums where you go and you expect to get flamed on your post. You know, you kind of have to get a feel of the group and stuff. Well, I think that if we get people to post, they’ll see that we’re friendly, they’ll see that we’re not going to flame you. And I think that once that eyes is broken, you’re more likely to post more.
[00:45:47:08 – 00:45:49:00]
I could be wrong, but anyway, we’ll see.
[00:45:50:07 – 00:45:59:21]
So you’ve got to get the person that you have referred and then they join and set you up as the referral name person.
[00:46:00:27 – 00:46:10:15]
They need to make a minimum of two posts. The cool thing is that for each referral that you get on the site, you get two points.
[00:46:10:15 – 00:46:16:17]
For each post that they make, relevant post, you get three points.
[00:46:16:17 – 00:46:19:09]
Whoever has the most points
[00:46:19:09 – 00:46:23:07]
by November 30th gets the knuckle bone.
[00:46:24:17 – 00:46:32:10]
So it’s not as easy as most posts in the month, but it’s really not that difficult.
[00:46:33:22 – 00:46:42:24]
The rules aren’t that difficult. You basically got to talk to somebody, get them to come to XJTalk and register and put your name as the person that referred them.
[00:46:43:25 – 00:46:52:08]
And then they’ve got to make two posts. If they don’t make two relevant posts, that referral doesn’t count. You get zero points
[00:46:52:08 – 00:46:58:03]
for that referral. If they make two posts, you get the two points for the referral
[00:46:58:03 – 00:47:01:13]
and then three points for each post.
[00:47:04:08 – 00:47:04:22]
So
[00:47:04:22 – 00:47:15:28]
just one referral with two posts is going to give you, what is it, six, seven, eight? Is that right? Yeah. Eight points.
[00:47:15:28 – 00:47:24:00]
So you can see that if you get ten people and they do the minimum, you’re going to have 80 points.
[00:47:24:00 – 00:48:05:06]
At the end of the month, whoever has the biggest number gets the knuckle bone. Now, we do have several international members, and I really apologize that we do not have an economical way of shipping these things internationally. And, you know, I’m sorry, guys. I would love, love, love to be able to get these things over to you. New Zealand, Australia, we have a member in Japan, we have a member in Germany, so on and so forth. They all have Jeep Cherokees, and these products would be wonderful to be able to get to them.
[00:48:06:07 – 00:48:42:13]
Unfortunately, it’s just too expensive to ship those things. Now, you’re more than welcome to compete. And if you do win the item, I’m more than happy to ship it over to you, but I’ll need to get the difference from what it would be, let’s say, worst case, shipping in the 48 U.S. continental and the United States to wherever you are. So I’m more than happy to pay what I was going to pay for shipping to anywhere in the U.S. I’ll pay that portion of it. The rest of it will be up to you.
[00:48:43:24 – 00:49:09:07]
And the other thing we could do is if you win the item and you don’t want to pay the $97 gazillion to have it shipped to you, you can always say, “Hey, this is mine, but I’m giving it to so-and-so.” And we can ship it to them as long as they’re in the United States or they want to pay the difference in shipping.
[00:49:11:01 – 00:49:50:02]
Now, we’re going in December. I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself. There was one person complaining that there’s too many giveaways being talked about at one time. It’s hard to keep up. I wouldn’t think that that would be a bad thing. But anyway, they were complaining about it. So with that in mind, I apologize for telling you about our December giveaway. I’ll just mention it briefly. In our December giveaway, I am not going to get the item until we have a winner. And I specifically said the item for a reason because I’m not telling you what it is. You’ll find that out probably the last week of November.
[00:49:50:02 – 00:50:02:05]
But I’m not going to get that item until we have a person to give it to. And the nice thing about doing it that way means that if an international member
[00:50:02:05 – 00:50:04:21]
is to win this item,
[00:50:04:21 – 00:50:19:19]
what I’ll do is instead of buying the item and then not shipping it to you because it costs too much money to ship it to you, all you need is a PayPal account and I’ll just give you the money.
[00:50:20:27 – 00:50:22:04]
Yep,
[00:50:22:04 – 00:51:37:21]
you’ll get the money for the prize instead of the prize. And then if you can find it where you live, great. If you want to buy beer with it, great. I don’t care. It’s us at XJTalk thanking you for being a member on our site. I personally love our international members. I’ve stated it repeatedly. I think it is the coolest thing that a Jeep that is predominantly thought of as an American vehicle, I mean it was from an American car manufacturer, obviously the parts are from all over, but an American car manufacturer, an American vehicle, and Germany, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, all over. And seeing how people in other countries use their Jeep and hearing the stories about how like in New Zealand, the Jeep Cherokee is looked at as a luxury vehicle and anybody that would tear theirs up by lifting it and taking it, swimming in a river is just insane. And these are people that are in their Range Rovers, which is a luxury vehicle here.
[00:51:39:07 – 00:51:48:06]
So it’s an interesting, I like that. It’s fun to learn about other countries and how the different customs and how things are looked at differently.
[00:51:48:06 – 00:51:53:14]
So anyway, love our international members.
[00:51:54:24 – 00:53:08:11]
But anyway, back to the giveaways. So we’ve got these three giveaways that we’re going to be doing. And there are no plans as of yet for January, so on and so forth. We’ll see how it goes. We’ll see how these three months of giveaways has improved the site, improved the member count, improved the activity of the site. And then we’ll reassess. There’s springtime. There’s February. I mean, there’s the cold months. There’s all kinds of giveaways we can do. And when I’ll mention really quickly, we kind of had a side giveaway going on in the month of October. We were able to score some gift certificates from jeepingoutfitters.com, some $25 and $50 gift certificates, quite a few of them. I think we had eight, I think $25 gift certificates and two $50 gift certificates. And I thought it would be pretty cool to have a totally out there giveaway, which was just if the moderator likes you, he’s going to give you a gift certificate.
[00:53:09:16 – 00:53:21:02]
And the most difficult thing, and this really, really surprised me, the most difficult thing about that giveaway was getting the moderators to give them away.
[00:53:21:02 – 00:53:51:23]
I was reminding them, “Hey, you know, the month is wearing on. Would you please give a certificate away?” There was no qualification necessary. All they had to do was like a person. If they liked their post, if they liked their picture, if they liked the name, if they liked the color of their jeep, I didn’t care. It’s a gift certificate. These are your gift certificates to give away. Find somebody and give it to them.
[00:53:52:24 – 00:53:57:20]
And it was a constant reminder, “Hey, would you guys mind giving away a gift certificate?”
[00:53:59:01 – 00:54:42:26]
So I want to thank Steve, 4.3LXJ, for stepping up there at the end of the month and giving away the rest of the gift certificates. I don’t, I love giving stuff away. If I had millions of dollars, I’d be giving stuff away all the time. It’s fun. It’s fun to give people things. And I don’t know. Maybe they’ll chime in. Maybe the moderators will chime in through our 24-hour comment line or on the forum. Maybe they just felt uncomfortable giving away something that, you know, a gift certificate that they personally didn’t go and get for somebody. Maybe they didn’t like giving a gift that they didn’t pick out. I don’t know.
[00:54:44:06 – 00:55:03:23]
But to me, I thought it was really cool. And I was like, “Man, you know, come on. I’m going to start giving these away if you guys don’t give them away. It’s just, you know, it’s just eating me up. I’m bad that way, though. I can’t buy anything for my wife or kids without wanting to tell them what it is before it comes in.” And then when it does get here, it’s like, “I know it’s six months before Christmas, but open it! Open it!”
[00:55:05:01 – 00:55:16:11]
And then I’ll remind you that this is your Christmas present on Christmas Day. So, yeah, I guess it’s just me. I’m just a big kid. Obviously, that’s true from the three Jeeps that we own.
[00:55:16:11 – 00:55:35:22]
But it’s nice. It’s nice that we got… Actually, just on the way, we have three four-wheel drive vehicles now with the 98, the 99, and the 2003 Wrangler. I’ve got two 231 transfer cases and one 242.
[00:55:37:01 – 00:55:52:08]
And I really would like to have a 242 in that 99. I think that would be a lot more reasonable than the 231 would be. But anyway, maybe I’ll get some feedback from you guys on that thought.
[00:55:53:12 – 00:56:13:20]
There’s a lot of 231s out there, and people seem to be getting from point A to point B just fine. I just wish that the… I like the 242 when it’s wet out. It really gives you some nice traction on the road. And there are some roads out there that really, really need some better traction.
[00:56:13:20 – 00:56:52:02]
I will admit, though, the KM2s that I now have on the 98 are a lot better, have a lot better traction in the rain. The 50 plus thousand miles that I had on the KM1s may have a lot to do with that. Anyway, I did mention that we have a call in line that you can call in comments, questions, general feedback for the show. Let me let you know about that. Do you have questions or comments that you would like played on the air? We’ve set up Voicemail just for that purpose. All you have to do is call 530-675-4102. Just leave your name,
[00:56:52:02 – 00:56:53:28]
your location,
[00:56:53:28 – 00:56:57:15]
and your question or comment. Chances are good it’ll get played on the air.
[00:56:57:15 – 00:57:06:23]
That number again is 530-675-4102. We look forward to hearing from you today.
[00:57:06:23 – 00:57:13:13]
know, I mentioned we’re on Facebook, and it’s just really simple, facebook.com slash xjtalk.
[00:57:14:24 – 00:57:33:02]
We have a little group set up for XJtalk members. If you’re an xjtalk.com forum member and you follow us on Facebook, if you friend us on Facebook, put in a request to join that group. There’s not necessarily a lot of stuff that goes on there, but
[00:57:33:02 – 00:57:46:13]
it’s a group. You know, might as well be a part of it, right? But we’ll add you to that group if you send us a request. It’s not a hard, fast rule that you have to be a member on the forum.
[00:57:47:15 – 00:59:00:19]
We’ll add you in there anyway, but it’ll probably, being a member on the forum and a member of that group, the stuff that we type in there for the group stuff may make a little more sense than maybe it would if you weren’t a forum member. Also too, we take posts that come up on the forum and we put them on Facebook. So it’s an automatic thing. It shoots out three of the three most recent posts every 30 minutes. So if you can’t visit xjtalk.com during the day because of the work or the type work that you do or internet restrictions at where you work, you can certainly have an app on your phone and look at what the posts are, what the last three posts are, the last 30 minutes via your Facebook app. And if you want a more direct way of following the posts on xjtalk.com, you can use a product, an application that’s available for iPhone and Android called Tap-a-Talk. I don’t know if I’m pronouncing that right, but it’s Tap-a-Talk, one word.
[00:59:00:19 – 00:59:41:00]
And that app allows you to access xjtalk.com interactively. So you can go in and browse the site, read posts. I believe they only have the paid version now, so I think you’ll have to pay the two bucks or whatever it is to buy the app, which we don’t get any kind of kit back on that. It’s just money that goes to them. But anyway, you buy the app and then you have the ability to read and write posts. There’s people that access the site exclusively through their phone. And nothing wrong with that. I’ve got to have a bigger screen.
[00:59:42:18 – 01:00:08:24]
It’s a little screen. I like my smartphone, but a little screen. Browsing forums, no. I’m probably just spoiled. Anyway, so you can access the site. We’ve brought up our new, I’m sorry, not new. It’s relatively new because we just brought it up. But we’ve brought the wranglertalk.com site back up. So if you have a Wrangler, if you’ve got a friend with a Wrangler,
[01:00:10:16 – 01:00:28:21]
please get them on wranglertalk.com and post up. One of the reasons why that went away, we just didn’t have the funds available to renew the one-year lease on the software, the V-bullet and software that we use. This didn’t make sense because we didn’t have enough activity on the site.
[01:00:29:23 – 01:00:33:17]
It was money better spent on xjtalk.com.
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Well, here recently we went and purchased the license. It’s not a one-year renewal thing anymore. We actually have the license in perpetuity. So there’s no reason for the site to go down. In other words, unless something catastrophic was to happen, the site will be up from now on. So it’s not going away.
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So it’s wranglertalk.com. It’s about TJs, XJs and JKs. I’m sorry I said XJ. I meant to say YJ. TJs, YJs and JKs.
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And, you know, it’s run just like xjtalk.com. So if you like xjtalk.com and you’ve got a buddy with a wrangler, tell them about wranglertalk.com. It’s not busy. There’s hardly any post going on. We need people to come over there, post stuff up, talk about their Jeeps. And of course I’m posting about what I’m doing to our 2003 TJ.
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That’s one of the reasons why I cranked that site back up, is because I felt like since I had a TJ now,
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I would be able to post questions up, interact with people, and I’m thinking that’s what a lot of the success for xjtalk was, is that I had an XJ and I was able to interact with people, and had an interest in specific interests, specific interests and specific questions about the XJ.
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So we’ll see. And I do need to get on some wrangler sites so that I can get some of those questions answered, because it is so,
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so quiet on wranglertalk.com.
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I’ve got several questions posted up there about various things that I want to do to the TJ and no responses. So,
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disappointing, but you know, we’re sticking with it. Also too, we have, again, my fault. I do not have the prices on the xjtalk store yet, but we do have xjtalk coffee cups.
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We have xjtalk license plates. And I know some of you out there live in states that do not require a front license plate. So if you would like to get one of these very nice xjtalk license plates, I guess it’s a license plate if it’s not an actual license plate. It’s a little sign, a printed sign that goes in the place where the license plate is.
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Anyway, it is on the store. There’s just no way of buying it yet, because I need to find out what the shipping is going to cost. Also need to figure out what we’re going to put it in to ship it. The license plate’s probably not so bad. The coffee cups, there’s nothing worse after spending, you know, 15, 20 bucks for a stinking coffee cup that you get it and it’s in pieces. So I want to make sure that, you know, we can get a decent box, a decent size, and get it to you in one piece. But the coffee cups, very, very nice coffee cups. Very impressed with the quality on the coffee cups. They’re expensive. I don’t think they cost any more than any other place that you might get them online. But it just seems, I don’t know, I guess I’m just cheap.
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So anyway, guys, that’s kind of it for tonight. I hope that you enjoyed the show. Again, I think it’s wonderful that we got our first giveaway winner. Congratulations. And we’ll be getting those KC lights, the detours, and the KC light covers out to you very, very soon. Thank you so much for all the posts that you all made in the October giveaway.
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It’s wonderful that everybody that participated did so. If you received a $25 or $50 gift certificate during the month of October, thank you for being a member on the site. We really appreciate it. We’d love to be able to give more to all you guys, if nothing else, for all the entertainment that we get from your posts and your comments and chat and so on and so forth. Really, really thank you. I mean it. So if you got a certificate and you feel bad about it, don’t.
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It would be my wish that we didn’t have to pump anybody for money on anything. If all we had to do was bitch and moan about getting you to post, that would be wonderful.
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So don’t worry about it. Enjoy the certificate. If you, when you get something from jeepingoutofedders.com, if you would share with us what it was that you got, it would be great.
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You know what?
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I don’t think I’ve announced the winner yet.
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No? I haven’t. Okay, well let’s go see.
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How many people did I upset
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just then?
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I’m thinking the same people that I upset whenever I did announce the winner earlier at the 30 minute mark.
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Okay,
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so,
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yeah I know, I know. It is exactly as you say.
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Hang on.
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Okay, just ran the numbers again. That’s why I said hang on. Pause the recording. So looking at the stats, the posting stats on xjtalk.com, running from October 1, 2011, midnight central time through October 31, 23 hours 59 minutes, 59.99 seconds,
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the top 10, and I’ll post this up on the forum later today, today being Thursday,
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November the 3rd, the top 10, let’s see, that’s 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, I think I counted right. Well I’m going to start with Scott.
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That’s not top 10, that’s like top 12. Scott xj4iv, 150 posts during the month. BigGem350, 169 posts. You guys remember BigGem, don’t you?
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I just wanted to say xjtalk is the best
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sight in the
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world, and if you think you know a better
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sight,
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you. By the way, this is BigGem350.
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Yeah, BigGem, sorry, BigGem, sorry BigGem, BigGem350, 169 posts.
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Lizardrunner, Lizardrunner, great xjtalk member, he’s on every day. If you guys don’t get into the chat, little chat window, some of you may not care for it, that’s fine. But the chat window, Lizardrunner is usually in there every morning, as am I, and a few other members. Get in there and chat with us. If you’re just a regular member, basically you have a blue user name, you do need to make one post before you can type and chat. You’ll be able to read chat, but actually to be able to type and chat, you’d have to at least make one post. That’s one post per 24 hours, and we do that because we don’t want people using chat instead of posting. I know, we’re diabolical. Anyway, then we’ve got PRCG Patrick, the one I made the comment about getting hit in the head by a stolen, I didn’t mention stolen before, a stolen golf flag.
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I guess that was Karma smacking him in the head. Not only did Patrick PRCG, not only did Patrick do 183 posts during the month of October, he also won two of our Jeepin Outfitter gift certificates. He won a $50 gift certificate for that colorful story where he was on the golf course, stole the flags, what do you call them? The flags they put in the holes, the various holes. Apparently he drove around a lot because he had several of these things. Had them in the back of his Jeep,
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was leaving the golf course down the witty trail that he came in on, and one of the flags sticking out of the back of the Jeep, out of the side window or something, he caught on a branch and the back end got some pressure and it came off and smacked him in the back of the head. I think he had staples put in.
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I don’t think they were necessary. I think he just wanted them. But anyway, he got a $50 gift certificate for that story and a $25 gift certificate, I don’t know, because somebody liked him. Now I think one of the modders had a mini giveaway thing going on, a carnage or something.
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Patrick did pretty good in October. He got $75 total gift certificates, which is fine. I mean, everybody, I would have preferred to spread them around more, but one person could have won them all.
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Anyway, so then we’ve got Showtime, $34.92, great XJ Talk member, very interesting posts, a lot of interesting things, good information.
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Everyone should aspire to be able to have as much good information as Showtime, $34.92, 195 posts for the month of October. Prerunner 1982, which I thought was going to be our winner, but I think some commitments in his life got in the way, and I’m pretty sure he was aware of that was going to be an issue whenever he knew that some of the things that were lined up for October were going to make it difficult for him to be on the site as much. But he was certainly a front runner for those first two weeks.
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Prerunner 1982, also a great member, long-term member. We all hate him because he gets more than 20 miles per gallon on his Jeep Cherokee, 204 posts.
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And then also another great member with a lot of great, interesting posts, very helpful to all the members, and a moderator, Steve, 4.3 LXJ with 266 posts.
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And don’t let this guy fool you. He’s a great guy. He’s a foreigner, but he’s still a great guy, and he’s gone through a lot, being in Christchurch with the quakes and not knowing how to steer away from a large body of water. Wayne, cannedhab27 in Christchurch, New Zealand, had 304 posts.
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And also too, another good member, a great member of XJTalk.com and a member of the armed forces is Blue Dragon 436.
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He’s very well aware that he doesn’t get any kudos, any post-count editions from welcoming new people to the site. But yet he does it all the time. He’s very friendly, very helpful, very active on XJTalk. Really appreciate his activity and his posts. Blue Dragon 436.
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He had 339 posts for the month of October.
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And this guy, what can I say about this guy? He’s a great guy. Oh, I’m sorry, that’s me. Yeah, I’m the number two person on the post for the month. And as I said earlier, it was around 550 posts. The exact number is 556 posts. So I was able to do 556 posts without really trying.
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Believe it or not, I’m really not that chatty. I don’t like talking on the phone. Email and typing in chat is not too bad.
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But talking, and that might be one of the reasons why I’ve been having trouble getting, sitting here and doing the podcast.
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Not a big talker. It changes. It varies with the company and so on and so forth, obviously.
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So, here we are. The number one
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poster
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child. No, the number one poster for the month of October. And winner.
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He already knows who he is. Even though we stopped posting up the total number of posts for the month, he knows who he is. He’s been chewing on his fingernails and I’m sure his kids wanting to know, wanting to be announced the winner. The winner of the 2011 October giveaway is… How did he tell me this is… I forget exactly how you pronounce this thing.
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The great time. That’s what it is. D-A-G-R. The number eight, you kids, and your number is for letters.
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Time. T-I-M.
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It’s missing an E. Maybe it’s the great Tim. That must be the great Tim. There we go. With 651 posts,
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certainly,
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just blew away the competition. I don’t know… I have 556 posts and I wasn’t trying. But yet, I’m going to say this. I don’t know how somebody could come up with 651 posts in one month and have interesting things to say. He had responses that were relevant. He had responses that were helpful.
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You could tell he was digging around and looking at old posts, but the comments were thoughtful, irrelevant, thought-provoking, etc. They were good posts. And that’s what we were looking for. That was the whole reason for us doing the giveaway. We wanted to have more posts for people to read and the posts, hopefully, interesting, colorful, funny, whatever. And he certainly did that.
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I really, really want to thank you for taking the time to do all those posts. I know that you were out because of the birth of your twins.
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Some may say, “Well, gee, you were off.” But then again, you were off and taking care of those kids and doing these posts. So, juggling that, I’m sure the twins were not in any danger during the times that you were posting.
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I know you’re a good dad.
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But you really can’t take anything away from this guy. I mean, yeah, he was off, but he had those kids to take care of, and he still managed to do this. And let this be a lesson to you kids at home.
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It’s not that difficult to post.
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Take the time to post. We’ll have to hear from De Great Tim.
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But I don’t think that he felt uncomfortable. I don’t think that he had any problems with his post as far as the comments that people made. I think that he was engaged by other members, and it was fun for all of us. We had more to read, more to react to.
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It’s fun. I mean, that’s what the forum is meant to be helpful, but it’s also too entertaining. I mean, come on, if it wasn’t fun, why would we be there? And why would some of us be there daily?
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Which, by the way, I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Xjtalk.com is the only XJ or Jeep site that I visit daily.
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It’s been that way for over a year, maybe a year and a half.
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I’m not telling you you shouldn’t. I’m just saying that that’s the only one that I go to every day. I have that much fun. I get all my questions answered there from the other members. It’s great. Thank you, guys.
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On top of being proud of what we’ve built here, I’m
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personally satisfied daily with all the fun and entertainment information I get from the site. Thank you, guys. I really appreciate it.
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So anyway, don’t forget, we have a giveaway going on now in November.
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The detours knucklebone, two inch receiver mounted tire carrier.
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Visit the site if you would like to be a member.
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You do have to be a member before you can have a referral, but you can still join in this month. And, you know, get this thing. All you have to do is get a bunch of people to join and get them to post. Make sure they get your name right on the referral.
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And we’ll be posting up how that’s going, going along probably for a couple of weeks like we did for the post counts. We’ll let you know what your competition looks like, let you know where you are.
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I’ll have to look into it. I know there’s a way that you can see what referrals you have and what successful referrals you have. Also, too, we have the invitation system that’s available on the site with our November Thanksgiving theme currently.
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I believe all you have to do is go to the nav bar, click on quick links, and then you will see a link that says, “Invite your friends.” All you need to do is put in their email address, and that will send them an email and they’ll have a link in there. I think it will automatically get that referral to you so you can get full credit for it.
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Do you have a question or comment that you’d like to hear on the show? Just call 530-675-4102 any time of the day or night and leave it on our voicemail. (Music)
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So, guys, that’s a show, a podcast, another one in the can.
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Thank you very much for everybody that participated in the October giveaway.
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The great Tim will be getting your winnings out here very, very soon. It’s already in a box, ready to go, and we would appreciate some pictures and seeing it on your Jeep, etc. So, guys, until next time, this is Tony Mutteroy on XJTalk.com wishing you a good day, evening, or whatever the
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you’re listening to this.
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(Music)
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This is Big Jim 350, and I
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love XJTalk.com.
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