Ep. 43 XJ Unibody Stiffening: Do You Really Need It? (Plus SYE Tip)

[Amazon link] https://amzn.to/45t4fLw
• Tom Woods or equivalent Slip Yoke Eliminator (SYE) kits for NP231 / NP242 [Amazon link] https://amzn.to/4wsGLlz
• High-quality transfer case output shaft seals [Amazon link] https://amzn.to/4yGYZBr
• Electrical tape & high-temp grease (for the seal-protection trick)  [Amazon link] https://amzn.to/3U05BuM
• Driveshaft U-joints and CV-style shafts [Amazon link] https://amzn.to/4frGXf5

Visit our website: https://jeeptalkshow.com/

Episode Transcript

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(Music)

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It’s that time again, XJ Talk Show is on the air.

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Okay, well, it’s a podcast, but you know what I mean.

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Anyway, here’s Tony. Well, thank you very much, and also too, thank you to Tom. Tom recorded me some little voice drops, and I finally got around to getting it edited and put into the show.

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It’s those are really good, Tom, thank you.

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So anyway, today’s show is gonna be great, because nobody ever says today’s show’s gonna

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you might as well stop listening now.

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(Laugh)

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But truth in advertising, I don’t think it

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I think it is a good show. I think the interviews are always very good, and I think the Jeep tip sections are always very good and informative.

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So stick around, and actually, what we’re gonna have today is, we’re gonna start off with a question that somebody called in to our voicemail. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a question called in like that, and it’s great, it was a nice surprise for me. And I wanna encourage all you guys to call in your questions and have them on the show, or

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just call in and tell us how you like the show.

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You don’t have to be in an interview situation, if that makes you nervous. Just call in and give us a little promo what you think about XJ Talk. And actually, if you don’t like the show, I’d like to hear that too. Frankly, I think it’d be funny as

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to play.

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(Laugh) So if you wanna make something up, that’s cool too, but it’ll probably break my heart.

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(Music) So we’re gonna have that, we’re gonna have our Jeep tips segment with Josh in W99XJ, or it’s XJ99. Anyway, Josh will correct me.

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And following that, we’ll have our interview, first time interview with Dan.

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And he has his own podcast called the 4×4 podcast. We were able to get him on a little connection we made through Facebook, and he was more than happy to do it. I think that’s wonderful of him to do. It’s kinda like what we do with the other Jeep websites.

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We’re not afraid of them, we like to promote them because that’s the whole idea behind XJTalk.com is to help our fellow Jeep Cherokee owners. Get the help they need and get things fixed, get things fixed cheaply, get them fixed right. So we’re always happy to talk about naxja.org or the Cherokee forum, Jeep forum, there’s so many out there. And I think that’s one of the reasons why I’m so flattered that there’s over 2,000 XJTalk.com members now.

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We’ve been going a little over three and a half years, and you guys have been great showing your support. We have a good solid core of people that are on the site, at least once a week, most of them every day. And we have several very knowledgeable technical people that check in daily and are very good about answering questions. I’ll get on there and I’ll try to answer the questions. Most of the time I think I get it right. A lot of that is from me going into Google and looking things up and reading two or three stories and seeing what makes the most sense to me and then reporting that back. I always try to report it back when I’m answering a question that this is what I read and I don’t want to give anybody the illusion that I know

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for sure because of my experience. Now when I have experienced it, I will say this was my experience.

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So hopefully truth in advertising as far as the answer you get from me. I think I’ve helped some people, but I know that we do have some very technical members that are very sharp and are able to help.

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And also too, xjtalk.com is entertaining. We enjoy getting on there and if you’re a guest, then you probably have not seen our chat window, which is at the top of the forum. It’s close to the top. It’s a small window and sometimes there’s a lot of activity going on in the chat. And that is chat as in real time chat amongst xjtalk.com members. But you do need to be a member to see that. And it’s really for the kids protection that even though we’re a family friendly site, it is an 18 or older site because, you know, come on, we’re all adults and we should be able to discuss things as adults. And we know we try to keep it, like I said, family friendly,

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but because the kids can still see it, but we try to do our best to minimize that exposure as much as possible. If you’re not a member, you should join if nothing else, so you can see everything that’s on the site. Uh, the chat, uh, will be available. And also too, uh, you’ll get rid of some of the ads.

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Yeah, you’ll get rid of some of the ads if you become a member. And I think you need to get up to 100 posts to get rid of, uh, at least half of the ads, maybe more. So a couple of incentives there, not only to join, but to post. And of course that’s the life blood of a forum or the post, because unless people are talking about what’s going on with their lives, their jeeps, what they found interesting today, posting pictures, then it’s not that an interesting of a site. And that’s one of the reasons why we try to make sure that, uh, we bring everybody with, uh, arms outstretched and welcome and not criticize you and not tell you what you should, shouldn’t, shouldn’t do. Um, we try to have a good attitude on the site and I think we, uh, we’ve been, uh, I think we’ve been doing that. Uh, I think that the, uh, uh, there’s a couple of people that, uh, have had some issues, but mainly it is, uh, overwhelmingly, uh, it’s a great site. It’s very friendly.

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And, uh, well, actually I think Steve said it best.

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Hey, I just wanted to tell you about XJ talk.com. It’s a great site. There’s no bashing. Everybody’s nice and friendly. Great place to be.

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Yep. And that’s the way we, we are going to make sure it stays and we do so with a very light touch, um, nothing public. If you get out of line, we just send you a, send you a PM and, uh, let you know where you went off the rails and it’s, you know, nothing personal. It’s just how we want to make sure that the site is available for everybody to feel comfortable in asking questions and expressing themselves, uh, within the, uh, within the confines of, uh, not upsetting the other people.

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Yeah, it’s about as close to hippie fight as you can get, but, um, I thought it was really important that, uh,

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there be a alternative to the other Jeep sites.

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Uh, where

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people would feel comfortable expressing themselves.

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So anyway, uh, I think we should get on with the show and, um, you know, I can stop talking at least in this segment and I’ll be talking a lot more in the other segments now you really can’t get away from me, but that might be changing soon. We may be having some, uh, well, we may be having a co-host show up really soon. So stay tuned for that.

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Hi, uh, this is, uh, Bob from Moab, Utah.

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I just bought an XJ last week and I was wondering what do you guys think about reinforcing the unibody? I’ve read some posts that say that’s a good idea and I’ve heard other people say it’s not necessary with mine, mine’s a 2001.

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I was just wondering what your members thought.

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Like I said, I joined, uh, XJ talk last week. Okay. Thank you. Bye.

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Hi, this is Steve from 4.3 liter XJ for XJ talk.com.

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That’s kind of a subjective question really. Um,

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it’s not necessary under normal use and unless a person is really, uh, collecting the suspension all the way out and getting opposite corners, uh,

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bottom down in the suspension is really not necessary.

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But it’s not a bad idea. Uh,

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I personally am going to

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stiffen my own frame, but I do a lot of rock crawling and, and I do

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get into a lot of extreme angles and so forth with my own.

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But I haven’t had a problem so far. I’ve never had any cracks. I’ve never been able to not open the door when I needed to or anything like that. So it’s, it’s not something that you have to do, but it’s something that’s maybe not a bad idea if you want to look at it from a preventative standpoint.

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And there are several options available that, uh, Tony can address with that.

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Hi, this is Josh Northwest 99 XJ on the forum. Uh, Bob, especially in Moab, Utah, if you’re going to be doing any sort of off-roading and whatnot, the, the unibody is definitely going to be beneficial, um, by being reinforced. You’re going to see a lot of improvements in auto on road handling as well as performance off-road, uh, the Jeep Cherokee unibody, especially the two doors. I don’t know if you have a two door or four door, but the two doors are even more unstable. The, the unibody not having a true dedicated frame likes to twist and flex as you go off-road with the suspension pushing back up on the body. And as you go on, on uneven terrain, especially a lot of that slick rock there in Moab, Utah, um, the XJ can get quite twisted up and you might not notice it until you would maybe put a tire up on a big rock, try and get out and open up the rear hatch to get some recovery gear or something. And lo and behold, you’re stuck. The rear hatch won’t open. You can’t get into the rig. The doors might not see properly. You might notice they kind of give an extra clunk when you close them and stuff like that. That’s the unibody flexing. There’s a lot of aftermarket companies out there that are making really good products with the unibody stiffening. Um, and you know, TNT customs is one that comes to mind. I’m just shooting from the hip here off the top of my head. Um, and there’s several other companies out there that make full front to back unibody stiffening kits. Now, most of them are weld in. So you’re going to have to, you know, have some experience with welding a little bit of fabrication to get those involved. And there’s things like, um, your suspension upgrades that you’re going to have to take into consideration either during or after, um, unibody stiffening, uh, when you’re, when you’re thinking about lift kits and things like that, a lot of long arm kits use a cross member where they may or may not have allowances for unibody stiffening. And because usually a unibody stiffening kit is going to be three 16s or eighth inch plate that is sandwiched on the unibody frame rails. And I’m going to use that term loosely. Uh, all it is is really double, triple thickness, a 16 gauge sheet metal that is formed to, uh, to a channel that runs on either side of the Jeep to create a, a pseudo frame. Um, and these plates get welded up to that from front to rear. Um, and there’s, there’s varying kits that will give you, you know, increasing, uh, stiffness and things like, um, uh, you know, our rear trailer hitch can even improve your, you know, stiffness a little bit. I know when I did my class three hitch in the back of my 99 Cherokee, I noticed it right away, uh, not having a hitch back there before I could feel the road manners change a little bit, having that, that lateral brace from one, you know, side of the frame to the other with that trailer hitch back there. So things like, um, you know, uh, cross members in the front cross members in the rear, um, can help with, uh, with stiffness as well as frame rail stiffness, um, things like the TNT customs, uh, frame stiffeners will help a lot. So Bob, to get back to your question, I do think it’s a good idea. Um, I do think the benefits way outweigh the, uh, the cons, which I can’t personally think of any cons, uh, to stiffening up the unibody other than the time and cost involved and the possibility of you might, might not be able to get the, you know, the suspension upgrades that you want if you’re looking at a long arm kit. So I would, I would highly recommend it. I would look into it. I would do some research, um, you know, explore, uh, some of the kits that are out there and look at what they have to offer, how they’re made and what it’s going to take to put those in and maybe even talk to some of your local four wheel drive shops or fabricators or welders and see what kind of, um, cost is going to be incurred in trying to install something like that. Uh, now, if you can weld yourself, then go berserk man and have fun with it.

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This segment brought to you by detoursusa.com. 10 years of innovating, not imitating XJ products. Check out www.detoursusa.com. And detours wants to remind everyone to practice safe sex. No pig borking till you wrap that rascal.

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Son of a. And we have Josh, uh, Northwest 99 XJ or NW 99 XJ as you’ve probably seen on XJ talk.com and, uh, Josh has a Jeep tip for us this week. Josh, what do you got?

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Well, as many of us know, when you start to lift up your Jeep, you got to deal with those dreaded drive line vibrations and you know, you can do a transfer case drop, but as most of us know, the best way to go about it is a slip yoke eliminator. And for those of you a little unfamiliar with it, I’ll be real quick and say a slip yoke eliminator, what that does is it removes the slip yoke from the transfer case output and moves it to the drive line. Uh, you know, if some people have the horror stories of over flexing their suspension and the drive line coming right out of the transfer case, the slip yoke eliminator eliminates the slip yoke in the transfer case. And there’s two, there’s two methods to do this. Um, there’s the, the, the hack and tap method, which I personally have used because I have the NP two 42 transfer case where there is a, there’s very limited options, um, for the slip yoke eliminator. Um, and the more common MP two 31 or the NV two 31, uh, which is primarily the, the most found transfer case in Jeeps. Um, and how the, uh, the slippery yoke limiter kit kit works is it’s a new output shaft. Um, you basically split the case, the transfer case, and you will be putting in a different output shaft. A lot of people think, Oh man, there’s a lot of gears in there. And, and you know, that could be real scary work. Actually it’s not, I thought the same thing delving into mine. Um, and, uh, I actually had to replace my output shaft. That’s a whole nother story. We’ll get into that another day. Oh my God. You didn’t bend it, did you? No, I didn’t bend it. Um, there there’s a, Oh, this is the, this is the one where you broke the, the, the, uh, the tap off in it. Yes, sir. And that was quite the ordeal. Okay. I won’t, I won’t tell, I won’t ask anymore about that. That’s painful enough just to remember. I saw the picture. Tell me about it. Tell me about it. Yeah. And I also say it was very easy when I did my, uh, S Y E on my end to be 242. It was a lot easier than I thought it was going to be.

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Yeah. And I, I was the same way. Um, once I actually got the transfer case out and got it split apart and started pulling things apart, I was surprised at really how easy things came, you know, as long as you keep track of, of the clips and the order of which you pulled things out and stuff, it’s, it’s really not that hard, but here’s the trick is, is, um, on the newer transfer cases, this is going to be on the newer models, uh, 96 and up the, um, there is a seal that goes around the output shaft in the, the cone on the back of the transfer case. And it’s kind of like an axle shaft seal. And it is very, very finicky and it can be nicked or damaged really easy when trying to get that cone back onto the back end of that transfer case around the new output shaft, um, it can get damaged kind of easily. And it does take, I’m sorry. It’s got a little spring in there. It does have a little spring and you nick that spring comes out and then so does the fluid. Yeah. You can roll that lip. You can, you can bend that spring really easy. And that spring is small where, you know, less than what you’d find in a little clicky pen or something like that. So you got to be real careful. Have had success with, oh, I just, you know, goop it up with grease really well and, and slide that cone on it and be good. And you may have had success with that or not. What I have found, um, is a really good trick to do is yeah, the grease works. You want to have that handy because you’re going to use it, but a little bit of electrical tape around the splined end. And you want to make sure that you start from the inside of the shaft, working your way to the outside, wrapping some electrical tape around those splines all the way out to the tip. And that’s the most important part is the tip, even though the most of those output shafts have a little bit of a bevel to them on the end of the splined output shaft, um, those splines are still pretty sharp. The edges are sharp and they can go ahead and just the slightest little nick on that seal will end up spraying transfer case fluid all over your undercarriage. So the electrical tape will actually help protect that output shaft seal from getting nicked and the grease, of course, once you wrap it up, you’re going to slather it with grease, but you leave yourself a little tab, um, you know, all the way out to the end of the shaft. And we’re only talking, you know, maybe two or three inches worth of electrical tape, uh, you know, wrapped around two or three inches of, of, of shaft, I should say. Um, but the electrical tape will go all the way to the end. And you leave yourself a little bit that you can grab onto at the end. And it’s important to go from the inside to the outside because once you grab, once you’re all reassembled and you know, you’ve got the electrical tape on, you’ve slathered everything down with grease. You’ve got your output shaft cone, um, you know, your, your rear seal put back on and everything. Um, you go ahead and you start to remove that, that tape and it will just pull right off, especially being all greased. And that seal will be protected and it will collapse right down onto the output shaft in absolute perfect shape. Oh, that’s a great idea. I went through probably three of them. And I think, um, I had a transfer case problems because I was always running low fluid because of that, uh, that issue.

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Yeah. I, uh, after I did my first one, I thought I had it right. I, you know, I thought, you know, I put so much grease on there. There’s no way this thing would have been damaged. And honestly, after I had taken it back out, um, it was hard to see where there was any damage, but I was driving home, uh, one day and it was, I just, you know, I’d done the repair, the, the, the slip yoke eliminator the night before went to work the next day driving home. And I’m noticing this giant mist of smoke and spray behind me as I’m driving down the freeway, what the heck is that? And I get home thinking, you know, the worst that I, you know, I’ve blown a, uh, you know, uh, you know, something in the engine or something like that. And I climb underneath and the entire undercarriage just absolutely coded in transmission for, you know, in the transfer case fluid. Yeah. And it’s from the transfer case back, which is, which is a good sign for the motor and the transmission, but a bad sign for the transfer case.

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And luckily, uh, you know, I didn’t lose all that much. Um, you know, I didn’t, I didn’t run it dry or anything like that. So, um, I was able to, um, to get home and, and there was still, you know, plenty of fluid left in there. You’d be surprised at how, how much a little bit of fluid will coat how much undercarriage and, and of course, spraying all over the, you know, the hot muffler and exhaust and stuff, it creates quite a bit of smoke too. Right. And everybody needs to understand that it doesn’t matter if you’re in four-wheel drive or not, if you’re in a 240, uh, running a 242, of course, you can be doing it down the road and a full-time four-wheel drive, uh, and certainly, uh, part-time for the 231 or the 242. But, uh, what you may not understand is those parts in the transfer case are always turning.

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It doesn’t matter if you’re in two-wheel drive or four-wheel drive. So you need that fluid in there. So don’t think, Oh yeah, I’m leaking fluid. I’ll worry about this later. I’ll worry about getting, uh, checking it, filling it up, blah, blah, blah. No, it’s, it affects you if the Jeep is moving.

[00:20:58:28 – 00:21:44:00]
And you don’t have to have a lift kit to, you know, have a, you know, transfer case issues or have to worry about replacing that output shaft seal. Some of you guys run in stock vehicles that may have higher miles. You know, those output seals can wear out over time, especially, you know, uh, in some of the saltier climates, uh, people living by the coast or where those, those seals might wear out a little bit faster. And you know, you might find that, uh, it’d be time to replace that seal. It is something you can do yourself. Um, it’s a little bit more involved than changing your oil. But you know, if you, uh, if you’re used to wrenching on a vehicle, especially Jeep, um, it’s really not all that entailed. Now you mentioned, uh, driveline vibrations. Why would a SYE kit, uh, have anything to do with improving driveline vibrations?

[00:21:44:00 – 00:23:39:21]
Well, as, uh, uh, some of you may know, um, the stock driveline, um, it’s, it’s, it’s not, it’s not set up for high angles. Um, and so when you start lifting the vehicle up, you’re increasing the driveline angle in relation to the pinion at the rear axle. And of course, where that driveline meets the output shaft of the, of the transfer case, um, going to a slip yoke eliminator, you then upgrade your drive shaft to a double card in or CV joint drive shaft. And what that enables you to do is run a steeper driveline angle as the, you know, the more lift you go, the higher you get up away from that rear axle. They remember that that transfer case is right up there next to the body. And the more lift you have, the further away that body gets from that rear axle. And, um, a lot of guys can get away with it by throwing a couple, you know, degree shims in, in that rear axle underneath the leaves and helping point that rear pinion back up towards the transfer case, which I recommend doing in any case, um, because, uh, you know, that just takes that much less, that much more stress off of those U joints, uh, down by the, uh, by the axle. But, um, when you start lifting the vehicle with that stock, uh, stock drive shaft, um, especially in the older models, a lot of guys, you know, it looks like a stick in a coffee can, um, it’s not set up for those steep angles of a lifted Jeep and, and those vibrations can occur because basically what’s happening is that those U joints, those joints inside of those, um, inside those yokes are basically bottoming out and, and it’s, it’s so stressed out, it’s basically, you know, hyper flexing or hyper extending those, those joints. And so every time that that drive line goes around in a rotation, you’re bottoming out on one of those U joints and inside, inside that yoke. And those were the vibrations are coming from. And also too, that would, uh, I guess that would mean that the U joints will wear out quicker. Absolutely.

[00:23:39:21 – 00:23:51:26]
So I don’t understand if you, if you change, you put the slip yoke on the, the, the rear of the transfer case, there’s a drive shaft in front. Don’t you have to modify that one as well?

[00:23:51:26 – 00:24:47:18]
No, you don’t. Because the output shaft of the, um, envy or the N, uh, MP transfer cases, that’s new venture, new process. That’s what most of the transfer cases we have, um, in our Jeeps, um, primarily the NP two 31 or the two 42, uh, the two 49s, I believe, were found in the grand Cherokees, um, those were the, you know, all wheel drive all the time. But all these transfer cases have a fixed yoke output, um, for the front. And so you have, um, the, the double cart and style, uh, drive shaft for the front of the vehicle. And oftentimes what guys will do, um, even in my case, uh, you go to a junk yard, you search around, you find a front drive shaft because it’s set up for what you’re going to be doing in the rear. Um, and a lot of guys will be running a front drive shaft out of a Cherokee for their rear drive line after they do a slip yoke eliminator.

[00:24:47:18 – 00:25:39:28]
Which I guess means that you now have a spare drive shaft. So if you end up breaking a U joint or, you know, worse, twisting up a drive shaft or bending it up on the trail, um, you know, you’re looking at not being able to get home. Um, and so you would be able to just unbolt your front drive shaft, put it in the rear and limp your way home. And while it wouldn’t be limping, you’d be able to get down off the trail and drive around in regular two wheel drive. Oh, that’s great. That’s, it’s nice having spares on the, on the Jeep like that. And I guess technically you could, you could drive home and a four wheel drive. It would be a front wheel drive, which is the popular thing that, uh, all the manufacturers seem to be making now anyway. So I hate front wheel drives, but, uh, well that’s, that’s really cool. So, uh, have you, have you seen any downsides to, uh, the, the hack and tap method? I know I’m not a big fan of the hack and tap.

[00:25:39:28 – 00:28:15:20]
Um, there once you get into, you know, bigger lifts and especially bigger tires, um, you get into those gear ratios, you know, um, you know, like four 88s and five 18s, I think would be the next step up from that. Um, you know, you’re, there’s a lot of torque that’s applied on things in there. When you’re getting up into maybe 35s and above, uh, you know, you’re, you’re, you’re flirting a little bit with, with danger on that. But I have heard of guys that have been running the hack and tap successfully doing extreme, uh, four wheeling with this, with the hack and tap running 33s, running 35s and, and for years being just fine. Um, you know, it’s, it’s going to really come down to, I think, um, your, your driving style, how hard you are off road. Uh, I think the biggest thing to stay away from with a hack and tap would be a high angle bounce where your front end is way up in the air and you’re climbing over a very steep obstacle. You’re running very deep gears. You’ve got big tires. We’re talking 35s or larger, and you’re trying to climb this face of an obstacle and your Jeep is doing that bouncing up and down. And you’re, you’re really, you know, trying to, you’re going to be wrapping up that, that rear axle against the suspension and of course the drive line. And what’s, you know, connected at the end of the drive line. Well, you’re slippy, yoke eliminator to the transfer case. I’m not saying it’s a weak point. You know, oftentimes a U joint, um, strap is going to pop before your, your hack and tap would, um, because especially it’s, it’s secured with grade eight hardware, um, more times than not, at least it should be. Uh, but it could theoretically be a weak point. I do know there are guys out there running them and they’re running them hard and they last, but, um, ultimately the best solution would be a short shaft at replacing that output shaft with a fixed yoke style for the slippy, yoke eliminator coming out of the rear output of a transfer case. Yep. And that’s what I went with, which was, uh, uh, the Tom Woods, uh, solution for my MP two 42 and it’s, it’s absolutely wonderful, but it required a custom drive shaft and, uh, the, uh, the short, you have to replace the tail cone and you replace the shaft. And, uh, it’s very nice, but, uh, it’s, it’s very expensive. I think it was four 75 after I sent back all the, uh, the other parts, the core. Yeah. Cause they do require a core on that, on that particular kit, don’t they? Yes. Well, it’s interesting cause I spoke with one of the people there at Tom Woods. And, uh, he said that you would, you would be really surprised how many people do not send the cores.

[00:28:15:20 – 00:29:10:11]
So they literally are sitting on $400 worth of, uh, of refund. So you’ll be out of pocket, you know, about 800 some odd dollars initially, but you get a big chunk of that back sending in the core. Yeah. It’s, it’s a hard, it’s a hard purchase to make unless you have lots of credit on your credit card. Uh, cause it’s, it’s, it was like $900 upfront. And, um, but like I said, you get about 400 back now that’s the, the MP two 42 is a little more expensive than, than their two 31, uh, solution. Yes. But, uh, yeah, I was just going to say too, you know, a lot of people get away with a lot of things that are, are, are, uh, what is common do not do, uh, and the Jeep knowledge database like run a Dana 35, which I know Steve, uh, 4.3 LXJ runs a Dana 35 and he just went off road last weekend and he’s fine, uh, it all has to do with skinny pebble pebble, skinny pedal folks,

[00:29:12:09 – 00:29:25:10]
you know, being smart about things and choosing your trail and, uh, you know, driving skills, what it amounts to, but, uh, uh, I’m just glad I have a, uh, an eight and a quarter on the back of mine and I don’t, uh, to me, it’s one less worry.

[00:29:25:10 – 00:29:27:16]
Less skill I have to have.

[00:29:27:16 – 00:29:28:07]
Yeah.

[00:29:30:10 – 00:29:46:28]
So, uh, anyway, it sounds like an S Y E is a, is a good idea. And, uh, I was asking that question about the front because I know some people would, uh, that aren’t knowledgeable in the area would say, okay, well that’s fine. I got the front taken care of what I do. I mean, I’ve got the rear end taken care of what I do about the front.

[00:29:46:28 – 00:29:59:03]
I personally don’t fully understand why they went to the time and expense of doing a, uh, the, the slip yoke being inside the driveshaft on the front, but I didn’t

[00:29:59:03 – 00:30:00:19]
do the same thing in the

[00:30:02:05 – 00:32:03:03]
Yeah, it makes no sense at all. I mean, you’re already doing it on the front. The technology’s there. It’s obviously proven, uh, you know, why not do it in the rear? Uh, and I just don’t, I don’t understand, you know, it had to be 59 cents savings on, on the line or something. That’s what it was. I’m sure, I’m sure if we got right down to the, the, the meat of the matter, that it would make plenty of sense as the reason why they did it. Uh, but to, to somebody that is lifting the jeep, I’m sure that’s what somebody that is lifting the jeep and taking it off road, it would be, this has been so nice if they have just, has it stunned the back driveshaft just like they did the front. And one other thing that you didn’t mention is the really nice thing is, is that if you do break something in the rear, the driveshaft, uh, anything that disables the drive line from the transfer case back to the axle, you can take that driveshaft out and you don’t have to worry about leaking fluid. Because you know, you got that yoke on there. It’s just like you have on the front of your transfer case and it will be perfectly fine. It’ll just spin. It’s spin while you’re driving along and it’s not going to be spraying out a transfer case fluid. So it’s wonderful. Yeah, because the stock setup, it does. I mean, the, the, the stock setup makes it so that the, the output shaft is, is essentially hollow, uh, going right into the transfer case and your drive line slides in and out of that and you lose that drive line stock, uh, with, you know, no slippery yoke eliminator, you’re on the trail. You’re going to be leaking fluid all day long and that’s not only bad for the engine, but it’s also are bad for the transfer case rather. It’s also bad for the environment. Uh, you know, you don’t need to be spilling fluids out on the trails. Yeah. So with the slippery yoke eliminator, it seals that transfer case up button tight and you worst case scenario, you do break a driveshaft. Um, you’re not going to be stranded and you’re not going to be leaking fluids. Right. And even if you’re not a big environmentalist, uh, I’m not big on the environment, but I am big on them closing trails. Yes. Yes. So keep that in mind that even if you don’t think, Oh, what do I care? Well, if they, if they close the trail and you can’t go out there and play, then then maybe you would.

[00:32:03:03 – 00:32:27:25]
Yeah. I’m not, uh, what you’d call a huge environmentalist either, but, um, I like having the trails open and the, you know, the more that we can do as a, as a community, as Jeep owners to keep those trails open, the better. And if that means, uh, making sure we’re not spilling fluids on the trail, then so be it. Yeah. I have no problem with people with tree huggers, but, uh, I remember I took one time and lit had to lean against the tree and I had a rash for a good three weeks, so I don’t know how they, I don’t know how they do it.

[00:32:29:03 – 00:32:31:25]
Well, Josh, thanks a lot for this week’s Jeep tip.

[00:32:31:25 – 00:32:33:05]
Absolutely. Thanks, Tony.

[00:32:33:05 – 00:32:34:20]
And now for a disclaimer,

[00:32:34:20 – 00:32:49:20]
Jeep tips for entertainment purposes only. If you choose to follow these tips, man up and take the responsibility for your own actions, if you cannot, or you feel that working on your Jeep is beyond your abilities, seek the help or advice of a train certified mechanic.

[00:33:19:26 – 00:33:39:17]
Hi tonight we have Dan Jeep in Idaho from XJ talk.com and a host of the four by four podcast. Hey Dan, thanks for joining us tonight and doing this interview. Hey, my pleasure. Any chance I get to, uh, sit down with somebody and talk about Jeeps is a, it’s a pleasure.

[00:33:39:17 – 00:34:05:11]
Yeah. Interesting. Interestingly, I found out today that, uh, Dan is in the army and he’s out in the desert right now talking on his cell phone through Skype. So if it sounds a little funky, it actually sounds a lot better than it would be if it was a cell call and, uh, Dan’s going the extra mile to do this interview with us, so I’m, I’m, uh, very happy that, uh, he’s able to do that. Uh, first off, Dan, is it hot out there?

[00:34:05:11 – 00:34:11:19]
You know, it’s actually, it’s been a very nice day today. I think it may have just barely broke 90 degrees.

[00:34:11:19 – 00:34:30:00]
Um, usually like two days ago, I was getting a, uh, nice hot wind. I call that the blow dryer. Yeah. It’s like sticking your head, your head in front of a blow dryer. That’s really all it is. You can’t even cool off. Now I think it’s cooled off to about 80 degrees, 82

[00:34:30:00 – 00:35:37:02]
feels nice. Well, you know, it’s, it’s the differences that you notice. Uh, if it’s like three inches from the surface of the sun and now it’s 80, then you know, you’re thankful for what you can get. Yeah. A week and a half ago is like 115 out here. So this is a welcome change. So Dan, I recently became aware of, uh, of your podcast. I was, uh, uh, looking around through, I think I was, uh, I think I actually saw it on, on beyond, uh, beyond pod, uh, the lab occasion and I was doing searches for things and I went, wow, look at, look at this. It’s a, uh, a four by four podcast and I added it and, uh, uh, started listening. And then, uh, I can’t remember. I think I saw you on Facebook and, uh, you were amenable to doing a, uh, an interview, we want to do a little, uh, cross, uh, podcast pollination, so to speak, and I thought that was great. Uh, it was wonderful to run across somebody that was doing basically the same thing I was doing. Although your show is more of a, a wide range, uh, and as by the name, four by four, which covers a lot of ground, whereas we, uh, kind of focus on just the, uh, the Jeep Cherokee here.

[00:35:37:02 – 00:35:39:12]
So, uh, how did you get started with that?

[00:35:39:12 – 00:36:01:26]
Well, uh, I have been, I, at the time I was living in South Korea, um, my army duties had taken me over there and I was there for three years. And after about two years, I got tired of being disconnected from my Jeep and from the off-roading community. So I decided, you know what, I’ve been thinking about starting a podcast. I listened to a ton of them. And I know that

[00:36:01:26 – 00:36:12:10]
once I get back to the United States, I’d appreciate being able to listen to an off-roading and adventure travel type podcast, uh, as I’m driving across the country for

[00:36:12:10 – 00:36:17:19]
whatever it is that I’m doing. And, uh, I figure I’m probably not the only one. So I went ahead and

[00:36:17:19 – 00:36:25:01]
put together, uh, the four by four podcast and got my brother on to co-host it. And since then it’s been

[00:36:25:01 – 00:36:28:10]
just a great adventure, meeting all kinds of great people.

[00:36:29:11 – 00:36:41:21]
Met a lot of great people in the industry and a lot of great manufacturers and their, their products and just been a great time. We just, just crossed the one year anniversary. So it’s been a lot of fun.

[00:36:41:21 – 00:37:10:27]
That’s great. And, uh, you mentioned adventure a couple of times there. And gee whiz, if I was in South Korea, it certainly would go under the heading of, uh, of adventure to me. Now you said you’re away from the four by fouring and whatnot. Isn’t there like an H1 or something you can take out across, uh, uh, North Korea? I mean, being very careful not to wander in South Korea and I didn’t want to wander to North Korea, but, uh, surely there’s something you can do out there in South Korea, isn’t there?

[00:37:10:27 – 00:37:54:24]
Oh, yes. Uh, now I’m not with my vehicle, but you’re right. At the time I was in command, so I had access to a lot of military vehicles. And if you actually go to the four by four podcast.com, uh, under the, one of the menus is my little profile and tells a little bit about me. And there’s some videos of doing some off-road driver training and mounted land navigation type things. And, you know, you can see kind of what off-roading is like a real military vehicle instead of just the derivative Jeeps that we drive around today. Now that’s one vehicle that, uh, as far as a Hummer goes that I’ve never made, made fun of is the military Hummer because to me, uh, that is, uh,

[00:37:54:24 – 00:37:57:26]
hell of an off-road vehicle. What’s your estimation of it?

[00:37:57:26 – 00:38:13:04]
Well, you know, it’s, it’s really good. Um, but it’s just like any other off-road vehicle. It, it depends on the driver, uh, in the hands of a really good driver, you can do some just phenomenal things with that Humvee, uh, but in a

[00:38:13:04 – 00:38:21:02]
hands of a new soldier that doesn’t know what they’re doing, doesn’t know how to do left foot braking, how to actually engage the, uh, the lockers that are

[00:38:21:02 – 00:38:35:27]
in the vehicle. You know, it all comes down to the driver. So. Well, it certainly is a very unique looking vehicle, uh, unlike the, uh, the H2. Now I kind of liked the H3 it’s, it’s kind of Cherokee looking, but, um,

[00:38:35:27 – 00:38:40:03]
it’s still got some issues with visibility. It’s got a real high belt line.

[00:38:41:10 – 00:38:46:00]
That’s, that’s not what it is with a lot of the newer off-road vehicles, like the FJ cruiser that has the same issue.

[00:38:46:00 – 00:38:47:06]
You know, it’s just

[00:38:47:06 – 00:38:54:12]
limited visibility. And the same thing with the Humvee military Humvee man, unless you’ve got the doors off, you can’t see anything out the back.

[00:38:54:12 – 00:39:10:17]
Well, would part of that be just to protect the, uh, the soldier inside or is it just the way it’s designed? Uh, I think it’s just kind of the way it’s designed. There’s really no consideration of creature comfort or anything like that. Um, it was very utilitarian and there’s

[00:39:10:17 – 00:39:20:09]
or 30 different variants of the Humvee now and the newer ones that are actually up armored, yeah, the visibility is an issue because you’re covered in armor, but.

[00:39:20:09 – 00:39:23:29]
Even the older ones, you know, if you take the top off,

[00:39:23:29 – 00:39:27:25]
doors off, it’s still pretty limited just because of the way it’s designed.

[00:39:27:25 – 00:39:41:07]
And how is it approaching, uh, obstacles in the, uh, the Humvee with the 50 caliber on top, I would think that would make, make it make you feel a little bit better. Cause if it really messes it up, you can always take the gun, the main gun to it.

[00:39:42:25 – 00:39:46:28]
Yeah. Yeah. You can do a lot of damage with the 50 cal. Yeah.

[00:39:46:28 – 00:39:51:22]
You get to do the deple, depleted uranium rounds, or is it just your standard, uh, big

[00:39:51:22 – 00:39:52:09]
bullet?

[00:39:52:09 – 00:39:59:11]
And you know, mostly it’s just the big lead round, you know, the, uh, depleted uranium ones are kind of rare. The armor piercing, but,

[00:39:59:11 – 00:40:21:10]
uh, well, I guess, I guess in, in South Korea, you really don’t want to be firing off guns that much. So that’s true. You know, one of the funny thing is a lot of people don’t know a lot of the training areas are very close to the DMZ. And, you know, I’ve been on some ranges where you can stand on top of the hill and see the markers for the military demarcation line.

[00:40:21:10 – 00:40:27:20]
So you’re that close. And some of the ranges you can’t even fire live 50 cal rounds because

[00:40:27:20 – 00:40:41:19]
of the range, it just takes one ricochet and it’s gone over the border and you’ve created an international incident. Right. You know what they’ll do. They have plastic 50 cal bullets. Okay. So the range is limited because it’s a real light round and

[00:40:41:19 – 00:41:07:02]
very inaccurate, but I guess it still gets the, the feel of firing around. Yeah. I would imagine that’s quite a jolt, uh, from the, just the sound and, uh, the, the, uh, base type stuff hitting your chest. So I could, it would be, to me, it would be a little nerve wracking, at least at first, just, uh, being that close to that much danger because you don’t, you never know when the, when it’s going to hit the fan. And, uh,

[00:41:07:02 – 00:41:47:20]
I kind of stopped thinking about it after, you know, well, you get used to it. Yeah. The actual combat areas where I know I’m being shot at. Yeah. I’m sure it’s like anything. You just, uh, you just accept the way it is and you’re okay now and you’ll probably be okay later and if not, you’ll just deal with it as the situation comes up, but we all deal with things that, uh, as best we can, uh, in stressful situations, so, and as I, and as I told you, and as I told you in the email, I thank you very much for your service to the country. It’s very important to me. I, uh, I was a kid, uh, during the Vietnam war and I never agreed then or now how they were treated and, uh, I’m glad to see that,

[00:41:47:20 – 00:42:01:18]
um, uh, both political parties are, are trying to treat our soldiers. Um, at least in, at least verbally, they’re trying to treat them right. I don’t necessarily think that cutting, uh, military funding and stuff is a good thing, but there you go.

[00:42:01:18 – 00:42:12:10]
Yeah. Uh, it is totally my pleasure. I really enjoy my job, you know, despite, you know, being sent out to the middle of the desert for however long, there’s still a lot of fun to be had.

[00:42:12:10 – 00:42:20:20]
Uh, talking to my sister on Facebook, you know, give me a Humvee with a full tank of gas and a little bit of time to explore. I’ll have a ton of fun out here in the desert.

[00:42:20:20 – 00:42:45:14]
Yep. On the, uh, and all the taxpayers dime too, but not like you’re not like you’re not earning it or anything. I want to indicate that, but that’s pretty cool. Lots of, lots of good training to be had. Yeah, there you go. So, uh, tell us about your Jeep Cherokee, cause you’re not just a Humvee driver. Uh, you’re also a Cherokee owner and operator. Yeah. I, I’ve really fond of the Jeep Cherokee. I got my first one

[00:42:45:14 – 00:42:46:25]
in

[00:42:46:25 – 00:42:49:00]
2000. It was a 1990

[00:42:49:00 – 00:42:53:27]
and drove it up to college from Colorado Springs up to Idaho

[00:42:53:27 – 00:42:56:18]
and put a lot of miles on it, uh,

[00:42:56:18 – 00:43:00:13]
had it for a number of years and then finally and,

[00:43:00:13 – 00:43:10:12]
drove it from Idaho, made a cross country trip. And this was really kind of phenomenal. I went to Northern California down through Southern California to Phoenix, to

[00:43:10:12 – 00:43:19:15]
Houston, up to Colorado Springs, back down to Houston or Dallas, and then all the way across the United States through Alabama, and then up to Baltimore, Maryland.

[00:43:19:15 – 00:43:24:22]
I put about 6,000 miles on the Jeep in about two weeks time

[00:43:24:22 – 00:43:29:14]
and it just kind of gave up, uh, it

[00:43:29:14 – 00:43:37:03]
flipped the head over it or flipped the cylinder head over inside the cylinder and shot the piston rod out the side of the engine.

[00:43:38:28 – 00:43:42:21]
Dumped oil all over the place and it was just, that was it. It gave up.

[00:43:42:21 – 00:43:50:04]
So I was in the market for a new Jeep and, uh, just for fun, I was looking on eBay one night and, uh, I found

[00:43:50:04 – 00:43:51:24]
the Jeep that I have now

[00:43:51:24 – 00:43:58:23]
and there was a guy about two hours South of where I was, uh, was selling it for less

[00:43:58:23 – 00:44:16:16]
than he spent on the parts, uh, and he was a kind of a spoiled kid and his dad just paid for all the parts to be installed at a professional shop. So when I bought my 1990 Jeep Cherokee Sport, the two door, it already had an eight inch Skyjacker lift

[00:44:16:16 – 00:44:25:09]
with 35 inch BFG mud tires, had the chromoly axle shafts with four 56 gears, ox lockers front and rear.

[00:44:25:09 – 00:44:28:25]
I’ve got the ARB bull bar on the front,

[00:44:28:25 – 00:44:32:02]
uh, Drango four by four bumper on the backside.

[00:44:33:06 – 00:44:34:01]
And,

[00:44:34:01 – 00:44:56:16]
I think that’s all the mods that were done to it when I got it, but that’s certainly not a short list. No, it’s not. I mean, you, you could have done said two of those and it would have been a big deal. Uh, my gosh, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s gotta be horrible. Uh, I mean, it’s great, great news for you, but that’s just going to be horrible for the, for the dad and I can’t help but think that that kid, uh, sometime in the future is going to look back on that and go, what the

[00:44:56:16 – 00:44:57:07]
was I thinking?

[00:44:57:07 – 00:45:03:21]
Yeah. Well, I think they did it a little bit together as a project, just, and they didn’t do it any of the wrench time themselves, but

[00:45:03:21 – 00:45:07:16]
you know, just shared in the buildup process, I guess together. And

[00:45:07:16 – 00:45:11:09]
then they wanted to start a new project. So they sold it off for,

[00:45:11:09 – 00:45:14:24]
I bought it for 10,000 and I, I totaled up all the parts

[00:45:14:24 – 00:45:19:04]
and they were just recently installed. It was still nearly brand new and I got it.

[00:45:19:04 – 00:45:29:21]
And it was, I think he spent 12 just on parts, not even counting the labor. So I picked it up for nothing and it’s been serving me well since 2004.

[00:45:29:21 – 00:45:37:17]
Uh, on your, on your 90, uh, the, the one that gave up on you, what size tires were you running on it?

[00:45:37:17 – 00:45:39:24]
You know, I was running 30.

[00:45:39:24 – 00:45:41:22]
You see a 31 to 32.

[00:45:41:22 – 00:45:47:28]
And it was a standard, uh, probably three 55 gears on your, uh, your differentials.

[00:45:47:28 – 00:45:55:29]
So 55, I had a three inch, uh, rusty lift kit that actually, it’s funny. I was on another, it was one of the Yahoo groups.

[00:45:55:29 – 00:46:06:14]
Um, there was a guy down at Albuquerque. So I drove down from Colorado Springs. We met in the middle and I bought his used lift. He had three inch, uh, leaf springs and three inch coils.

[00:46:06:14 – 00:46:10:18]
And I bought them for 80 bucks, use lift kit, uh, went home and

[00:46:10:18 – 00:46:11:23]
it took me about a

[00:46:11:23 – 00:46:15:08]
five, six hours to swap the Springs and everything.

[00:46:15:08 – 00:46:19:11]
And it ran great. You know, after a while I started getting a little bit of, uh,

[00:46:19:11 – 00:46:24:10]
drive shaft vibration because I didn’t correct the opinion angle.

[00:46:24:10 – 00:46:34:20]
Um, so that caused a little bit of problems, but I didn’t get a full three springs cause they are, you know, used in already starting to sag,

[00:46:34:20 – 00:46:40:23]
but it was great, uh, kind of a starter. That was my first Jeep, my first lift and everything.

[00:46:40:23 – 00:46:51:24]
Yeah. It’s kind of what got me into it more. Yeah. You can, you learn a lot, uh, whenever you get out there and start doing those things. So, uh, did you notice a big difference between, uh, the three 55s and the four 56 years?

[00:46:51:24 – 00:47:07:18]
Oh, yes. Yeah. I mean, even with 35 inch tires, you’re, you have to notice it. Those three 55 on, on 32s, especially going over just minimal overpasses on the highway is a, it’s to be very interesting. Yeah. You got to downshift right away. Yeah.

[00:47:07:18 – 00:47:15:15]
You know, even with 35s and four 56 years, I can run down the highway seven miles an hour and it’s about 2,500 RPMs.

[00:47:15:15 – 00:47:32:23]
Yeah. I, that’s another reason why I was kind of thinking about doing the 35s was to get my RPMs back in line. Cause if I do 80 with my, uh, 33 inch tires, but do 80 on the with the four 56 years, I’m turning 3000 RPM.

[00:47:32:23 – 00:47:39:07]
Yeah. And that real great for the gas mileage. No, no, it’s not, but it’s, um,

[00:47:39:07 – 00:47:49:13]
it’s very peppy. It’s more like it was one of our first got it now. Uh, here, here the next, uh, a couple of days I’ll be changing out the, uh, the engine,

[00:47:49:13 – 00:48:01:03]
uh, with a, uh, a 4.1 liter. It’s not a stroker, just a 60 over somebody did the calculation for me on XJ talk and, uh, it’s, uh, going to be about a 4.1, uh, liter,

[00:48:01:03 – 00:48:01:25]
uh,

[00:48:01:25 – 00:48:08:26]
uh, Jeep engine and, uh, Matt and I are going to be, uh, uh, at his shop in Conroe.

[00:48:08:26 – 00:48:28:17]
This Friday swapping that out. So I’m, I’m, I’m interested to see what it’s going to be like with a fresh engine. Cause the, uh, I probably had, um, Oh, 110,000 miles. Uh, whenever we’ve at the four 56 gears in there. So, uh, it’ll be interesting with a little extra horsepower and a much fresher engine to see what it’s going to be like.

[00:48:28:17 – 00:48:33:26]
Yeah. You have to make sure you capture all the stats for before and then after.

[00:48:33:26 – 00:49:10:05]
Yeah. Well, it, I’ve got the gas mileage information. Uh, I’ve, I’ve been collecting gas mileage information since before the four 56 gears were, uh, were installed. And actually that was the main reason for doing it. Uh, but for putting the gears in, cause I was told that that would make a big difference and it jumped me. It gave me about a two mile per hour, um, mile per gallon bump. So, uh, yeah, of all the things that I’ve done to it, uh, to trying to fix some of the, uh, uh, gas mileage issues, that was the biggest thing, but I’m still, uh, if I see 12 miles per gallon, that’s rare.

[00:49:10:05 – 00:49:12:05]
Oh, wow. Yeah.

[00:49:12:05 – 00:49:26:13]
Uh, I don’t know why it’s that way. Uh, I don’t think it should be based on the other things that I’ve, uh, I’ve heard, have you ever done, uh, good, uh, uh, mile per gallon calculations on yours? Yeah. I keep pretty close track of that. Um,

[00:49:26:13 – 00:49:27:26]
I usually get.

[00:49:27:26 – 00:49:30:00]
Between 200 and

[00:49:30:00 – 00:49:32:27]
and 280 miles on a tank,

[00:49:32:27 – 00:49:36:22]
I think comes out to about 13 and a half, 14 miles per gallon.

[00:49:36:22 – 00:49:43:00]
I ended up driving to and from work down state highways, usually doing about 55.

[00:49:43:00 – 00:49:50:21]
So, yeah, but I’ve got the five speed manual so I can get into a top gear pretty quick, uh, that’s, yeah, that makes a big difference.

[00:49:53:03 – 00:49:54:00]
I love having that manual transmission.

[00:49:54:00 – 00:50:39:05]
Yeah. I hear, uh, whenever I went to get mine, I bought mine brand new and, uh, I was looking at it, it was the right color and all that. And I said, uh, this is nice. Uh, it was on the showroom floor and I said, this is nice, but do you have one, uh, that’s a standard because in my mind, a, uh, a four by four should be a standard and they, the salesmen looked at each other and go, well, they make, uh, they do make them with a standard transmissions, but we’d have to order you one from the factory. Oh yeah. You know, the standard thing they tell you whenever they don’t want to get you something, they want to sell you what you, what they have. Yeah. They want you to take what’s on the lot. Yeah. Another reason I was looking at the standard was, uh, my wife and I were actually there to make the decision on a, uh, on a Wrangler, a 98 TJ.

[00:50:39:05 – 00:50:57:18]
And, uh, we had two young children, uh, at the time, three and four years old. And I saw the, uh, uh, uh, the red Cherokee there on the showroom floor. And I thought, you know, we could drive this it’s four doors. It’s still a four wheel drive and, uh, we could get the, uh, the TJ later.

[00:50:57:18 – 00:51:09:18]
So, uh, we, we finally did get that TJ later, much, much later, uh, earlier this year, so, uh, and my wife is driving that one. So we, um,

[00:51:09:18 – 00:51:17:03]
uh, we have the TJ, the 98, uh, Cherokee, which, uh, which we had bought new then, and,

[00:51:17:03 – 00:51:18:06]
um,

[00:51:18:06 – 00:51:28:08]
shortly before, I guess maybe six months prior to getting the TJ, I found the 99 XJ and, uh, my oldest daughter is driving that one now. So

[00:51:28:08 – 00:51:33:19]
we are a three Jeep family. That’s awesome. I’m sure the, uh, the neighbors think we’re crazy.

[00:51:35:28 – 00:51:44:00]
I know. And I’m a two SUV family. When, uh, my second daughter was getting ready to be born, we realized at time I’d bought a, uh,

[00:51:44:00 – 00:51:45:15]
FJ cruiser for my wife,

[00:51:45:15 – 00:51:53:27]
right. The very first year of a no seven when it was released, um, because I was getting ready to deploy the vehicle we had was a Chevy,

[00:51:53:27 – 00:52:09:27]
I was GMC, uh, Yukon. It was getting close to a hundred thousand miles. And I don’t want my wife to have any issues, uh, during the supposedly year while I was gone, which turned in 15 months. So, so you know what, we’ll just go ahead and get you a new car. Got the FJ cruiser.

[00:52:09:27 – 00:52:11:01]
And, uh,

[00:52:11:01 – 00:52:17:21]
then we had to get a second vehicle or a different vehicle because the FJ cruiser doesn’t really fit two car seats in the back.

[00:52:17:21 – 00:52:20:22]
Really? That’s interesting. I would thought I would have thought it would.

[00:52:20:22 – 00:52:28:19]
Yeah. There’s the way it’s the back seat is arranged. The, uh, the middle seat in the rear is kind of raised

[00:52:28:19 – 00:52:32:08]
and, uh, it’s not real conducive to car seats

[00:52:32:08 – 00:52:33:23]
and having a,

[00:52:33:23 – 00:52:38:06]
rear facing car seat behind seat was just not going to happen. It was impossible.

[00:52:38:06 – 00:52:43:01]
Whoever that passenger would be knees up in their chest through the dash. And

[00:52:43:01 – 00:52:48:06]
so we had to make the decision. Okay. Are we going to go for a minivan or are we going to go for something else? And

[00:52:48:06 – 00:52:54:24]
she was starting to lean towards a minivan. I really wanted to get something bigger that could, that could tow my Jeep because we,

[00:52:54:24 – 00:53:06:17]
the multiple moves with the army, you know, Oh yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. It’s not a real highway friendly vehicle. I mean, I can drive it on the highway, but the cross country trip is not going to be real fun. Right.

[00:53:06:17 – 00:53:19:08]
So I, uh, got her in a Chevy suburban and a test drive. And she said, you know what? I really liked this. This is really comfortable. I said, sweet. This V8 will pull the Jeep on a trailer. No problem.

[00:53:20:18 – 00:53:25:28]
She goes, yeah, that was my first concern. It’s like, yeah, sure. Whatever. I don’t care about that. I can put a lot of stuff in the back.

[00:53:25:28 – 00:53:30:00]
A lot of stuff. Yeah. Those are great from that, especially with the family.

[00:53:30:00 – 00:53:33:24]
Yep. So it’s been great. I’ve got a suburban from my wife and

[00:53:33:24 – 00:53:36:20]
it’ll tow the Jeep across country, which it’s done

[00:53:36:20 – 00:53:37:25]
couple times.

[00:53:37:25 – 00:53:44:11]
And, uh, the way I always know I’ve got a vehicle to come rescue the Jeep. That should it break down,

[00:53:44:11 – 00:53:57:27]
which hasn’t happened yet. There was one time we were getting ready to go to Korea and had to put it in storage, so my sister-in-law was going to take care of it. So we drove from like Richmond, Virginia to halfway between there and Nashville.

[00:53:57:27 – 00:54:03:05]
And as I was back in the Jeep off the trailer, the transmission just totally took a dump.

[00:54:03:05 – 00:54:07:09]
I said, great. Here I’m in the middle of nowhere with the Jeep with no transmission.

[00:54:07:09 – 00:54:12:17]
And my sister-in-law was going to drive it back to Nashville and take care of it for the three years.

[00:54:12:17 – 00:54:18:18]
So I ended up having to run the winch cable back up to the front of the trailer and self recover itself.

[00:54:18:18 – 00:54:20:14]
Drive, you know, just on a,

[00:54:20:14 – 00:54:30:20]
you know, minutes decision to say, all right, we’re just going to drive the West way in Nashville and, uh, kicked it off the trailer in front of full wheel parts there. I mean, uh, I think Franklin, Tennessee,

[00:54:30:20 – 00:54:32:08]
and they took care of everything.

[00:54:32:08 – 00:54:34:03]
What did it turn out to be?

[00:54:34:03 – 00:54:37:19]
Uh, the master cylinder. Oh, okay.

[00:54:37:19 – 00:54:40:00]
So, so you just couldn’t get it, uh,

[00:54:40:00 – 00:54:42:20]
get it where you could shift. Yeah, it was un-driveable. Right.

[00:54:44:02 – 00:54:50:25]
I got it into first gear while it was not on that I would, you leave the clutch out and just.

[00:54:50:25 – 00:54:57:25]
Starter, use a starter and jockey it back up onto the trailer as much as I could. And I said, you know what, I’ve got the winch. I might as well just use it. Sure.

[00:55:00:13 – 00:55:02:02]
There’s been lots of adventures with that Jeep.

[00:55:02:02 – 00:55:32:12]
Well, the neat thing is, is that you can, uh, you can usually work out a way to, uh, get down the road or, or like you said, recover itself. It’s nice having that ability. And, uh, it’s kind of funny. I was, uh, on Facebook, XJ talk on Facebook, somebody, uh, one of the XJ talk members posted, uh, something from a Morris four by four. It’s a, uh, an image, uh, a satellite image of a hurricane approaching Florida, which is, is kind of what’s in process right now.

[00:55:32:12 – 00:55:42:14]
Yeah. It’s not the exact image that this currently going on, but it’s similar to what’s happening currently. And it said, uh, uh, something along the lines of, uh,

[00:55:42:14 – 00:55:47:11]
Prius owners or, uh, wishing they had Jeeps right now. Oh yeah.

[00:55:49:26 – 00:56:26:22]
Perfect for those post-apocalyptic seasons, you know? Yeah. I mean, it’s great to have the gas mileage and it’s, uh, it’s great to be, you know, one of the cool kids with the low vehicles, but boy, I tell you what, whenever, uh, the fan is getting ready to be hit, it’s nice to have something that’s going to, uh, uh, be able to get you from point A to point B and most any situation and, uh, well, I mean, that’s, that’s the reason why we, uh, what, well, the reason why I built up the, the 98 in the first place was because of hurricanes here on the Gulf coast. If, if not everybody’s familiar, I’m in a located in the Houston area. So

[00:56:26:22 – 00:56:27:17]
we,

[00:56:27:17 – 00:56:38:11]
um, we prefer hurricanes here over earthquakes because we have warning, but still it can get pretty, uh, pretty ugly, uh, given the, uh, uh, the severity of the hurricane.

[00:56:38:11 – 00:56:45:21]
Yeah. Well, right now I’m living in, uh, Northern New York, Central New York. It’s about an hour and a half north of Syracuse

[00:56:45:21 – 00:56:51:28]
and we get the, uh, this last winter wasn’t so bad, but I’ve only been living there for seven months.

[00:56:51:28 – 00:57:01:16]
But when they do get snowed, like the lake effect snow just comes out of nowhere and just slams everybody and they get, they measure, they measure snow in feet instead of inches.

[00:57:01:16 – 00:57:12:09]
And, uh, a few times this last winter when we did get slammed with snow, it was great. It was like a playground. Nobody driving around except for me. I was going blasting through snow banks, having a blast.

[00:57:12:09 – 00:57:14:14]
So, uh, how was it with the lockers?

[00:57:14:14 – 00:57:16:25]
Uh, well, since they’re ox lockers,

[00:57:16:25 – 00:57:25:15]
I can disengage them anytime. So when I’m driving on ice, just open differentials and snow issues. Um, but then when

[00:57:25:15 – 00:57:43:28]
things get muddy and sloppy during the spring, I can, uh, engage them and climb out of the suit and the ruts with no problems. So what are the New Yorkers think of the, uh, the lifted, uh, actually eight inch lift is pretty substantial and the 35 inch tires. What do they think about all that?

[00:57:43:28 – 00:58:00:17]
Well, it’s funny, you know, there’s down in Syracuse, there’s the, uh, CNY Jeep, uh, dot org group. And I, I went for a little bit with them a couple of times. I go down there, club meetings. When I get a chance, they’re usually during the week and I have a hard time getting down there for, uh, getting off of work on time.

[00:58:00:17 – 00:58:06:27]
Um, but they’re a great Jeep group. There’s a couple of them that are running Cherokees. Most of them are Wranglers.

[00:58:06:27 – 00:58:15:29]
I fit right in with those guys. I guess it kind of gave me a hard time, but then when I crawl through the obstacles with no trouble, the ones that they’re having a really hard time with

[00:58:15:29 – 00:58:21:22]
the laughing stops. Of course. Yeah. And then the, uh, the name calling begins at least under their breath.

[00:58:21:22 – 00:58:40:19]
Yeah. But then right in Watertown, the nearest town, they’ve got a truck club. It’s not a Jeep specific group. And I’m actually one of the smaller guys. They’re mostly running full size pickups. Most of them are diesels and they’ve got big exhaust stacks coming out of the bed and

[00:58:40:19 – 00:58:47:02]
running 38th and larger tires. So the first trail running the spring I did with them,

[00:58:47:02 – 00:58:49:15]
I didn’t know really what I was getting into,

[00:58:49:15 – 00:59:03:21]
but they were going through water. It was about three, three and a half feet deep. And, uh, that was coming up to the door on my, on my Jeep. I thought, well, I got my four year old daughter in the back and she loves going off roading.

[00:59:03:21 – 00:59:14:06]
And I just go chugging through the deep mud and water, no problems. And watching them slide off because they’ve just got lots of lift without the traction days they need.

[00:59:14:06 – 00:59:18:10]
And not the same kind of articulation. So these deep ruts,

[00:59:18:10 – 00:59:27:26]
I’ve got tons of flex. I can grow through it, maintain traction, and they’re dragging their, their beds and bumpers across everything, getting hung up. Right.

[00:59:27:26 – 00:59:35:18]
Oh, it was funny. I watched the one truck in front of me, he had his exhaust stacks stick up past the top of his cab by about two feet, three feet.

[00:59:35:18 – 00:59:43:07]
And he had to stop, get out, climb up on the roof with his chainsaw and cut down the tree ranges just so he could get past. Oh, wow.

[00:59:43:07 – 01:00:11:12]
Yeah. The, the Jeep is a very much a different type of vehicle than the, uh, the full size pickups. You know, we, I see those, uh, those land yachts driving around here all the time. And I love a full size truck. The first four wheel drive I had was an 83 Chevy. I had, I went with a four inch lift because I didn’t like the, uh, the, six inches, uh, six inch lifts that were very common back then. It was a lot of room between the top of the wheel and the, uh, the fender.

[01:00:11:12 – 01:00:35:17]
So I went with a four inch lift and 33 inch tires and I’m sorry, 36 and a half inch tires, and, uh, it was a blast. I just, uh, I miss being up that high and driving around. It was, uh, it was great. You did have to watch out for small vehicles though, because, uh, might run over one. Yeah. That was the reason I didn’t take my Jeep to Korea actually. I didn’t take the suburban because I knew I’d be

[01:00:35:17 – 01:00:43:29]
just hard pressed to get through the narrow streets and everything, but I didn’t take the Jeep either. Cause I’d run over a dude on a mocha and not even know it.

[01:00:43:29 – 01:01:10:05]
And it’s, it’s, it can be humorous when you say that, but it really literally can happen because you get high enough up in the air. You can’t see really what’s going on on the other side. I remember driving my truck around. It was, uh, I would make a joke about, you know, I didn’t see that car that was there, uh, yet I had the large mirrors on the side of the Chevy truck. And even with that, it was difficult to see. Uh, I managed to keep off of people, but, uh,

[01:01:10:05 – 01:01:24:11]
it, uh, it really, you really have to be, it’s, it’s a different world when you, when you start getting up that high. Oh yeah. And you got to consider how you’re driving because I don’t have sway bars on either the front or the rear. But it’s got a stiff enough,

[01:01:24:11 – 01:01:31:14]
uh, spring rate that, you know, as long as you slow down in the corners enough, you really don’t feel like you’re gonna flip over.

[01:01:31:14 – 01:02:06:13]
Either that, or I’ve just become accustomed to it. I no longer have that same pucker factor that most normal human beings have. Yeah. It’s a much different feeling. I have a tendency to drive mine like a race car with the, uh, with the custom bumpers and now with the, uh, the sliders and the, um, uh, the frame stiffeners. I’ve got a lot of weight down low and I can make, uh, make turns pretty, uh, pretty good. I’m a, I’m a low fast kind of guy. And that’s the reason why I got into SUVs trucks and SUVs to start with is just so I would have an excuse to not drive fast. It’s a lot of fun, but

[01:02:06:13 – 01:02:25:01]
so, uh, uh, whenever I, if I forget to connect the, uh, the quickness connects back up and I start making those turns, I notice it. It’s not earth shattering. It’s not like a, like a death wobble or anything. It is like, Hey, that feels kind of strange. It went, Oh, I forgot to hook up the disc, the sway bar. That’s what it was. Lean.

[01:02:26:05 – 01:02:36:19]
What’s going on. I got a flat what’s going on, you know? So yeah, I understand. I’ve heard that on the, on the site where people, they just don’t run the sway bar at all, and of course mine only came with a front sway bar. So,

[01:02:36:19 – 01:02:42:26]
uh, it’s a, it’s quite a quite capable road vehicle with, uh, with just the, the front sway bar.

[01:02:42:26 – 01:02:47:17]
Yeah. I don’t know what the rear sway bar does anyways. It’s so skinny. The stock one, it just

[01:02:47:17 – 01:02:57:10]
serves virtually no purpose, you know? You know, I don’t know. Uh, recently, uh, put a lift on the, uh, the wife’s TJ and it’s got a, uh,

[01:02:57:10 – 01:03:02:15]
uh, it’s got one on there. So I don’t know if it’s a good thing to have it or not, but you know, whatever.

[01:03:02:15 – 01:03:08:13]
Uh, I’ll just leave it alone. And then, uh, as I learn about the, uh, the Wranglers, I may do more to it.

[01:03:08:13 – 01:03:34:07]
Well, Dan, we’ve come to the, the magical 30 minute, uh, Mark, and I’ve been doing my, uh, level best to, uh, to get into the, uh, the 30 minute, uh, limitation. So we can, we can wrap this up and you can stop, uh, tearing up all the minutes on your, on your cell phone. Uh, that’s fine. Yeah. I guess it just really depends on the plan. So, uh, when, when, when are you going to have another, uh, four by four podcast episode?

[01:03:34:07 – 01:03:48:04]
Well, it’s a very good question. Uh, I guess it would depend on how the recording with this current setup that I have seems to come out. Okay. And I’ve got a couple interviews lined up. Uh, I just gotta

[01:03:48:04 – 01:03:55:11]
be able to get them on lately. I’ve been having a lot of overland, uh, off rotors on the, on the podcast.

[01:03:55:11 – 01:04:07:00]
And, uh, you know, I’ve got one lined up, uh, Lewis and Lacey from, uh, lost world expeditions, they’ve just got the travel bug and they’ve been traveling around through South America,

[01:04:07:00 – 01:04:09:01]
Chile and Peru.

[01:04:09:01 – 01:04:18:12]
Uh, they’ve just come back for a little sabbatical and refill the bank accounts. So I’d be doing interview with them pretty soon. Um, overland gourmet,

[01:04:18:12 – 01:04:20:26]
uh, Zach from, uh, Phoenix,

[01:04:20:26 – 01:04:42:11]
he’s a, an overland traveler that does gourmet cooking, actually overland gourmet.com. He’s got a whole store selling cooking gear, lots of great things going on. Uh, hopefully if I can work things out right with my boss, I’ll be able to escape the Mojave for a little bit for the Southern California mountain rendezvous.

[01:04:42:11 – 01:04:49:19]
Uh, got lots of things going on, but my military professional duties kind of limit things. So

[01:04:49:19 – 01:05:06:18]
worst case, it’ll be probably the end of October. I get another episode out. Gotcha. Well, uh, as long as you keep them coming, uh, because, uh, I’ve started listening and, you know, I don’t want to sit around and wait for, you know, the summer reruns and then wait for the fall schedule and all that stuff that they do.

[01:05:08:02 – 01:05:20:04]
Yeah. I think we’ve got at least 20 episodes out of the four by four podcast. So you can, you might as well skip the first one. That one was pretty bad. Oh, they always are. They always are, but they’re never as bad as you think.

[01:05:20:04 – 01:05:32:18]
Yeah, it was good. It got things started. And actually on one of the early podcasts, I did an interview with Jim Taylor. He is a, the trail boss at the Brazos Valley off-road ranch outside Brian, Texas.

[01:05:32:18 – 01:05:48:03]
So I know that’s a little bit of a drive from, you know, Houston, your area. But if you ever get a chance to go up there, I’d definitely give Jim Taylor a call, awesome trails down there. Yeah. Real quick question. How’s your wife with, uh, doing the off-road thing?

[01:05:48:03 – 01:05:52:09]
You know, she is a, she loves adventure traveling. Um,

[01:05:52:09 – 01:05:59:12]
when we’ve just before we started dating, I think it may have been when I asked her, I said, you know what you’re getting into, right? Cause

[01:05:59:12 – 01:06:11:01]
anytime you hang out with me, you’re bound to be involved in some sort of adventure, whether it be planned or unplanned, say, no, I think I can handle it. Say, well, you say that now,

[01:06:11:01 – 01:06:48:14]
but we just had our 10 year anniversary this last weekend and it’s been a wild adventure the whole time. Oh, that’s right. That’s right. I take that back. Cause I did listen to an interview where you were talking about teaching your wife how to drive off road. And so she does go off road. The reason why I asked that is, is my wife doesn’t want to have any part of going off road. I went up a steep embankment, uh, once before the, the Jeep was lifted and everything, and my wife almost bailed out. I think she got, I think she said eject twice before I got it leveled out. You know, the 30 Jack, then the, the, the, the top would have got off and she would have been gone.

[01:06:49:27 – 01:06:55:07]
Yeah. You know, one of the very early times in a relationship with my wife, we,

[01:06:55:07 – 01:07:01:28]
went off-roading by ourselves in February and Southwest Idaho, which,

[01:07:01:28 – 01:07:03:17]
you know, this is like

[01:07:03:17 – 01:07:09:23]
the strikes are piling up against us. Eventually we got high centers and it was

[01:07:09:23 – 01:07:13:08]
probably well below freezing. The frame was

[01:07:13:08 – 01:07:20:23]
literally frozen to the ground and there was no hope of getting that vehicle recovered. Uh, fortunately I always have my,

[01:07:20:23 – 01:07:27:25]
my bug out bags. I had my sleeping bag, some food and blankets and all the emergency stuff in the back end of the Jeep. So it was ready. So we had a

[01:07:27:25 – 01:07:34:00]
relatively, uh, comfortable night despite the freezing temperatures and blowing wind and

[01:07:34:00 – 01:07:36:15]
the Jeep that was not quite level.

[01:07:36:15 – 01:07:59:25]
Uh, but ever since then, it’s just been one adventure after another. So just, just for clarification in down in Houston, where we don’t have weather like that, uh, and we, and we go out with a girl, we run out of gas. But I guess in Idaho, what you do is you high center the vehicle and sleep overnight. And that’s right. You wait for a time to come around and reassess the situation.

[01:08:01:08 – 01:08:04:10]
We were thoroughly stuck. There was no doubt about that.

[01:08:04:10 – 01:08:08:06]
Oh yeah. I have no doubt a skilled driver can stick a vehicle.

[01:08:10:19 – 01:08:13:11]
That’s right. When I get stuck, it is really, really stuck.

[01:08:13:11 – 01:08:25:24]
Well, great, Dan. Uh, that’s funny. Uh, we’re going to have to get you on, uh, again, because I can tell there’s some, uh, there’s some more stories that you can tell. Is there anything you want to tell our listeners before we wrap it up?

[01:08:25:24 – 01:08:39:24]
Well, now I just encourage everybody to go, uh, check out the four by four podcast.com and check out all the episodes. You can find it in iTunes. Uh, we’re on Facebook, uh, Facebook.com slash the four by four podcast.

[01:08:39:24 – 01:08:49:23]
Nice and easy. Uh, I think we’re on Twitter and, uh, see also Google. Plus, you know, there’s not a whole lot of interaction there just because

[01:08:51:01 – 01:09:05:28]
it’s Google plus Google plus is still kind of a morphing and developing creature. It’s because there wasn’t enough Facebook, you know, they had to come up with something else. I really liked Google plus, but it’s still just kind of a developing community. Yeah, it really is.

[01:09:05:28 – 01:09:19:09]
But lately we’ve been doing the, uh, the off-roading question of the day and the off-roading answer of the day kind of summarize everybody’s answers. Lots of good things talk about, you know, manual verse automatic transmission. Uh,

[01:09:19:09 – 01:09:32:08]
let’s see. We also talked about, do you change your own oil kind of modification? Would you make today? If you could, lots of different things. It’s a new question every day and a lot of interaction on Twitter and especially Facebook, so

[01:09:32:08 – 01:09:34:16]
lots of things to check out, you know,

[01:09:34:16 – 01:09:43:15]
we don’t have a forum for the four by four podcast or anything. It’s just, just a hobby for me, not a business. Um, it’d be great if hobby could pay for itself, but

[01:09:43:15 – 01:09:48:10]
you know, that’s not why I do it. I just enjoy talking about off-roading with folks. Yeah, that’s great.

[01:09:48:10 – 01:10:01:19]
Well, Dan, thanks a lot. And, uh, again, thanks for being a guest on the, on the show. It, uh, it’ll help me feel another week before I have to scramble around and find another guest, but you know, but you know how that is. Yeah.

[01:10:01:19 – 01:10:10:09]
That’s the thing. You got all these people that you’d love to talk to, but just lining up schedules sometimes pretty difficult. You know, if work just didn’t get in the way,

[01:10:10:09 – 01:10:12:19]
Yeah, I always interrupt in real life.

[01:10:14:14 – 01:10:15:02]
Well, thanks again, Dan.

[01:10:15:02 – 01:10:16:24]
All right. We’ll talk to you later.

[01:10:16:24 – 01:10:31:25]
We welcome and look forward to your questions and comments dial 5 3 0 6 7 5 4 1 0 2 5 3 0 6 7 5 4 1 0 2 and leave your message on our 24 by seven voicemail.

[01:10:33:01 – 01:10:45:29]
Well, that’s our show. And, uh, want to thank Dan again, not only for being on our show and doing the interview, but also being a member of our armed services and protecting this country. And, uh, you know, if nothing else, just being in the desert and sweating his

[01:10:45:29 – 01:11:42:14]
off because I know it gets hot here. Uh, fortunately this, uh, this past Friday, when, uh, MS Moriburg and I, uh, were installing, uh, the 4.0 leader, uh, or taking the 4.0 leader out and putting in the 4.1 1 leader. I had a little bit of rain that morning, so it wasn’t too terribly hot. It got that way towards the afternoon and I’m not kidding you, man. Uh, I stood there and asked questions and, uh, told jokes and held a flashlight in 10 hours. Matt took that 4.0 out, put the 4.1 in and got it started and running. We just have a slight little issue with it where it’s not performing like we expected to. So trying to get that lined out, you know how engine swaps are, who knows what it is. Uh, but hopefully by next week we’ll have some better, better news on that. Maybe even sooner.

[01:11:44:06 – 01:12:53:03]
So, uh, just want to take a moment to remind you that we’re on Facebook. So you can, uh, friend us, uh, at, uh, Facebook.com slash XJ talk or on the Twitter, uh, Twitter.com slash XJ. Talk. And, uh, if, uh, you don’t want to type that in, you can just go to XJ talk.com. The, the reason why the podcast is here, the forum about jeeps and Cherokees and gosh, technical stuff and fun and jokes. And, uh, well, I won’t tell you about anything else. So, uh, you can go there and at the very top, there’s little icons that you can click on, including, uh, getting to this podcast. Of course, this podcast is available on iTunes and various other outlets, but, uh, you can go to podcasts.xjtalk.com and, uh, you can listen directly from the site or you can download it onto your smartphone. So anyway, until next week, we hope you have a very good week and thank you again for listening to the show. (Music)

[01:13:04:18 – 01:13:07:21]
I just wanted to say XJ talk is the best

[01:13:07:21 – 01:13:09:00]
site in the

[01:13:09:00 – 01:13:11:21]
world. And if you think you know a better

[01:13:11:21 – 01:13:12:12]
site,

[01:13:12:12 – 01:13:15:21]
you. By the way, this is Big M350.

[01:13:16:25 – 01:13:17:02]
Bye.

[01:13:18:20 – 01:13:21:19]
Mmm, yeah, I guess green jeeps are okay.