Ep. 9 4.3L Chevy V6 Swap & Jeep XJ Tech with Steve Howard

🎙️ XJ Talk Show Classic Episode | Interview with Steve Howard (4.3LXJ) Join Tony for a fun and informative interview with longtime XJTalk.com member and moderator Steve Howard, known as 4.3LXJ. Steve shares his Jeep journey — from his first WWII GPW as a kid, through Broncos and Cherokees, to his highly modified XJ with a 4.3L Chevy V6 swap, rebuilt 4L60E, and Atlas 4-speed transfer case. In this episode: • Steve’s wild California emissions stories and engine swap drama • Growing up off-roading in Lake Tahoe • Driving in snow & ice — tips that still apply today • Lockers vs Limited Slips: when to use each • CV Joint axles vs traditional U-joints (great info for Weldman’s question!) • Drive shaft angles, SYE vs slip yoke, pinion angles, and vibration troubleshooting • Plus a brand new custom song by Tom Rapp — “What a Jeep” (first play on the show!) A true classic from the XJ Talk Show archives packed with real-world Jeep knowledge, great stories, and community chat. 👉 Originally aired when XJ Talk was in full swing — great nostalgia for old-school Jeepers! **Timestamps:** 00:00:00 Show Intro & Steve Interview Preview 00:01:49 Introducing Guest Steve Howard 00:02:34 Jeep & Outfitters Sponsorship Message 00:02:58 Playing Tom Rapp’s New Song 00:06:19 Song Email Story and Bringing Steve On 00:07:34 Testing Audio and Welcoming Steve 00:08:41 Explaining 4.3LXJ Name and Engine Details 00:12:44 Californian Roots and Outdoor Adventures 00:15:09 Early Jeep Memories and Family Background 00:17:57 Family Relationships and Age Gaps 00:19:13 First Off‑Road Vehicle: WWII Jeep Story 00:21:21 Jeep Deal Comparisons and WWII Jeep History 00:23:00 Bronco Modifications and Performance Upgrades 00:26:27 First Cherokee Accident and Subsequent Purchase 00:28:37 New Jeep Ad and Snow Differential Discussion 00:33:04 Open Differentials vs Lockers on Ice and Snow 00:43:26 Spinning Jeep Reflections and Rain Driving 00:44:06 Discussing Community Feelings About XJTalk 00:47:07 Chat Room Launch and DetoursUSA Promotion 00:48:14 Product Tagline and Host Appreciation 00:48:45 Checking Steve’s Presence and Quick Chat 00:51:19 Rock Driving Insights and Transfer Case Talk 00:54:25 Technical Glitches and Chat Room Commentary 00:56:45 CV Joint Benefits and Discussion 01:02:01 Weldman CV Joint Question and Installation Time 01:02:54 Highlighting Notable Listener Question 01:03:27 Voicemail Call‑In Invitation 01:04:30 Checking Chat and LS Limited‑Slip Query 01:05:45 Limited‑Slip vs Locker for Various Terrains 01:07:53 Rear Axle Angle and Drive Shim Details 01:10:45 Confirming No SYE Installation 01:11:44 Transfer Case Spacer Stress Impact 01:13:07 Dana 30 U‑Joint Replacement Experience 01:14:07 Single vs Double Cardigan Clarification 01:14:51 General Chat and Closing Remarks 01:16:39 Wellman Video Idea and Spouse Assistance 01:18:36 Show Closing and Next Week Teaser If you’re building, wheeling, or just love classic XJs, this one’s for you! 🔗 Visit the original home of the show: https://xjtalk.com 🔗 Tom Rapp: https://tomrapshow.com 👍 Like | Subscribe | Hit the bell for more Jeep Talk Show classics, tech tips, and interviews! #XJ #JeepXJ #CherokeeXJ #4.3LXJ #JeepTalkShow #OffRoad #XJBuild #JeepLife #ClassicJeep “` Visit our website: https://jeeptalkshow.com/ Watch/Listen on Spotify https://jeeptalkshow.com/spotify Join our Discord Server: https://jeeptalkshow.com/discord Subscribe to our newsletter: https://jeeptalkshow.com/newsletter Help Support the show via Patreon: https://jeeptalkshow.com/patreon

Episode Transcript

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(Music)

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Hey guys, Tony here. This is XJTalk.com, the talk show.

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Thank you for being here tonight. We had a little problem last week.

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The whole kit and caboodle was down, which is the PC.

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There’s several people out there that podcast using Macintosh computers, and I’m sure they’re relishing.

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And I told you so about the PC problem. But I like Windows. I don’t like the Mac.

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Bad news for Steve Jobs. I hear he is no longer in charge of Apple. I think it’s because of his health. He’s been having reoccurring health problems here over the past several years, and I really hate that. He’s a very young man. He’s only a few years older than I am, which I guess I hate more because…

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Scares me.

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So as we were going to do last week, we have an interview with Steve Howard, also known as 4.3LXJ on XJTalk.com. He is one of the members, one of the moderators, and also to a big help to a lot of the people on the site.

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So we’re going to find out a little bit about Steve tonight in that interview. And then after the interview, we’ll be able to talk with Steve and ask him a few questions.

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And before we

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start with the interview, I thought I would play this customized, brand new song

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by Tom Rapp. If you don’t recall, Tom Rapp did a wonderful Christmas song called “Christmas Cheer.” And we played that around Christmas time, and I think even after Christmas we played that because I liked it.

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And

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I have not had a chance to listen to this. I was fighting with

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somebody or some people that were trying to take down the XJTalk.com site.

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And I just downloaded this custom, brand new song from Tom Rapp.

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And by the way, you can find out more about Tom Rapp and download his songs and read his blog at tomrapshow.com.

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I’ll have more on that a little bit later.

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So,

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let’s play it. It’s called “What a Jeep.”

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(Music)

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My God, that was good.

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Keep in mind, that’s the first time I’ve heard it. That was really, really nice. I won’t tell you the whole email back and forth that we did today, but suffice it to say, I thought it was going to be, you know, I know Tom’s stuff is good, but he literally threw that together today in about an hour.

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So, I thought that was very good. Yeah, I thought there was going to be some vocals to it, but his voice has been bothering him for the past month or so.

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Allergies, I believe.

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And that very well may be. I’ll have to double check with him. He may have misunderstood me because I’ve been trying to get him to do me a song for the show, an actual XJTalk.com show song. And I haven’t been pushing him about it, and I sent him an email today and said, “Hey, you know, show us today. So,

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you know, if you’ve got a song, and I’m thinking, is there something I can promote for you?” And apparently he thought, you know, “Hey, I want my song.”

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So, I don’t care. It sounds great. That was really good.

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Tom, if you’re listening to this, I see you’re not in the chat room, but when you’re listening to this on the podcast, thank you. That was amazing. Just amazing.

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Okay, let me, actually, let me, I should have Steve here on the phone. Steve, let me see if I can just check with you. I’m kind of concerned about the levels. I’m going to make sure you can hear everything okay. So, I’m going to bring you on. Are you there, Steve?

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I am here. How’s the sound there?

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No problem. Got it on the speakerphone and got the whole thing. Excellent. Okay, I’m going to put you back on mute, and we’ll get back to the show. Thanks.

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Okay. Steve’s listening on the phone. He

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gets his internet in a lot, in some sort of wireless deal. Instead of him listening to the show through his internet connection, which would really eat up his minutes, I called him up on the phone, and he can listen to it through the phone. I just wanted to make sure he was able to hear okay.

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So,

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let’s see. Yeah, I think we’ll go ahead and get to the interview right now.

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Hi, guys. Thanks for joining us today. We have Steve Howard, 4.3LXJ, from XJtalk.com, on the phone with us today, and Steve has agreed to do an interview. Steve, thanks for joining us.

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My pleasure, Tony.

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So, I already mentioned that your name, or member name, on XJtalk is 4.3LXJ, and I know the meaning of that, but some other listeners may not. Where did that come from?

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Well, it came

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from the fact that I put a 4.3L Chevy in my

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Jeep

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after the smog police got me,

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after me, and I just didn’t want to drive the thing to the crusher, so I

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stuck another motor in it.

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And the smog police are in California?

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Yes. Well, they’re in other states, too.

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Actually, I think it’s more stringent in Arizona than it is here. That’s interesting.

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Yeah, in Arizona, you have to

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put your Jeep on a dynamometer,

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and you do it in some places in California, too, but in the Phoenix area,

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they dino it and make sure you have all the right shift points,

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unless you’ve got full-time 4-wheel drive. But if you don’t,

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they make you stick it on the dyno.

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I think the state of Texas makes you do the dyno if it’s a 95 or earlier.

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But if it has the OBD2, which I believe is the 96 and later, you don’t have to do the dyno.

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Oh, really? Yeah. So, well, that might not be state of Texas. It may just be Harris County, and I think that was actually pushed on us by the EPA.

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So I know because my wife’s Mustang is a 96 and my Jeep is a 98, and we used to have a 95 Ford AeroStar, and the Ford AeroStar had to be put on the dyno.

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So, yeah, I guess it’s the government pushing things, the federal government pushing things that are causing us to have these issues. So the 4.3 is better smog-wise, or?

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Well, I can buy parts for it. The 2.8 liter I had in it, I was satisfied with it. It

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got around good. It got 22 miles to a gallon.

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Never got any worse than 17, and I was towing another Jeep with it at the time.

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And, but

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I couldn’t buy carburetor parts for it. California has a

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heaterized carburetor for those engines.

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just couldn’t get any, and

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nothing wrong with the motor. It ran fine,

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but

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it wouldn’t pass spog because I needed parts. And so

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went to the crusher. Kind of a catch-22.

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Yeah, well, it’s one of those things you only have to keep parts for 10 years, right? Yeah.

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Well, that’s a shame, but I guess you’ve taken care of it that way. When you say to the crusher, that’s not something… Is that literally what would have happened to the Jeep if you hadn’t have swapped engines?

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That’s literally what would have happened to it. They would have

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had me drive it to a wrecking yard, surrender the title,

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and

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then

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they would have sold parts off of it and crushed the body.

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That must be a really wonderful place to live for people to put up with that. California, I mean.

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Well, there’s ways to get around it. You just have to be a little smarter than the average bear.

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What a lot of people don’t know is that you can swap motors and things like that

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here, but you just have to be a little smarter about it.

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And one of the things that you

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have to know is that you can go same year or newer,

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and there’s certain equipment you have to have

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with it that was on the original vehicle that the engine came out of.

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And it’s a wise thing not to go too new because you end up having to transfer

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airbags and bumpers and stuff with it. So

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kind of cut those mods off at 95.

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So I chose the 93 to 95 vintage because

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it’s the engine I wanted and it has the most horsepower

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of that line of engines. What is the the rated horsepower?

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It’s 190, but I’ve got it up to about 230. Oh, that’s nice. I bet you can feel that.

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Yeah, it does zero to 60 in about eight seconds. That’s not bad.

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Yeah, that’s about

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little over a second off of the rated time for a stock four-liter.

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So are you a native Californian? Is that where you were born?

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Yeah, I was, but I didn’t spend all my life here. I went north

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after I left home. I was born in Los Angeles and

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we moved to Lake Tahoe when I was 11 and it was a great place for a kid to grow up. I always had

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plenty of outdoors things to do. I was never bored. I hear it’s a beautiful place.

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Oh, it is. It’s great.

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Everywhere you go is a beautiful view.

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went when the ski season was on. I went skiing every day after school and

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in the fall I was doing football and whatever.

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the springtime I started hiking and fishing and summertime I did a lot of hiking and fishing when I wasn’t working. And

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I used to go to the beach every day and swim in the water and the water is nice and clean. You can get your eyes under it and they don’t hurt.

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You can see for 100 feet underwater and it’s really a nice place to swim. It reminds me of a place, a church camp that I went to when I was probably about 11 or 12 years old. And it was out in West Texas and that’s the thing that stuck in my mind until this day was being able to swim in that cold.

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It was very hot, especially in West Texas, summertime.

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But that stream was cold and absolutely clear. It was just like, to me, heaven because I had never seen anything like that in southeast Texas because you’ve got the muddy water in the rivers. You’ve got the water in Galveston which is nothing like Florida or things that I’ve heard about in the waters in Florida. It was really nice. So I imagine that was very nice. A lot of fun being able to swim in some water that you were able to see and look around. Did you see any fish? I remember seeing fish. I just thought that was the coolest thing.

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Yeah, we used to go out in a boat fishing and trolling.

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And the water there would turn green just like you drew a line.

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It would turn green at 100 feet and it would turn blue at 150. And you could look down in 80 to 100 feet of water

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and see fish swimming on the bottom.

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Of course, they were pretty good sized fish, but you could see them. Yeah, that sounds really nice. I wish I had a little more money. I would love to go see things like that firsthand and of course take the kids to see it as well. So you’re very lucky to

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have experienced that.

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Yeah, I was. And also a great place to learn how to four wheel too. I bet.

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And I would imagine not a lot of people telling you where you can go.

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No, not at that time. This was,

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I got my learner’s permit in 65 and before I got my license,

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there was some other jeepers in town. They had new CJ5s, new then. And with the V6s in them.

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And they had 11 by 15 aircraft tires on them, which was basically a 32 inch tire.

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High quotation. Hey, that was as big as it got in those days, 32 inches. Yeah, I imagine that was huge at that time. They drugged me along and I had to drag my mother along because I only had a permit. And

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we got with a big group and went from Reno to Virginia City

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on a road. And then after that, they asked me if I want to do some real wheeling and we did. And we took off from Virginia City.

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We didn’t know where we were going. We just

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started out and we went from Virginia City to Carson City on no roads at all. It was just cross country.

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And they had to wait for me. I was a little slow in my little forebagger and very skinny tires in that sandy soil. But we got there.

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I bet you that was a blast. Oh, it was. I loved it. Great learning experience.

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But that? Great learning experience. If you can drive through that, you can drive in heavy traffic.

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Yeah, yeah. Well, by the time I got my license

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and took my driver’s ed training in high school, which was mandatory at that time,

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didn’t have to teach me how to drive. That’s what I already knew.

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Yeah, I’m sure that was a big confidence builder too, because you’re doing things that a lot of people either don’t do or they are too timid to do.

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Yeah, well, driving instructor was a little surprised that I could operate a clutch on a hill because none of the driver ed cars had clutches in them. I mean, automatics. Right. So you had to learn how to drive a clutch.

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And so he took me out once and that was that.

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Didn’t have to go again.

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Yeah, it can be it can be rather interesting. I don’t know how people in San Francisco on the up and down hills do it. I mean, I know. Emergency break, but still.

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Oh, man. I’ll tell you what. I

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drove a Subaru with a clutch in it through that town. And

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I think I took 10,000 miles off of it. I know what you mean.

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My first car was a standard, but I didn’t learn in the standard. I learned what to

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the driver’s ed thing at school. It wasn’t that everything was automatic. And some of the people that were learning to drive, they were just

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very timid about what they were doing. And I wasn’t at all. I was having a blast. So anyway,

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so you’ve mentioned growing up in the Tahoe region, you didn’t mention any brothers or sisters. Were you the only child?

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Almost. I had a half sister that was 20 years older than I am.

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I have a niece that’s five weeks younger. So that means my mother and my sister were pregnant at the same time.

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So I imagine they compared notes. But

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anyway, I never lived with her. Right. Never really got along with her anyway. So

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can I probably only saw her

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a dozen times in my entire life, really. Well, that’s interesting because my I have a half brother that was 18 years older than me. And I think about the same time I was born, he was getting married and moving to Arkansas. And I never lived with him. He passed away last year, I believe.

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And we were never we were never close. He was primarily in Arkansas most of the time. He came down to visit on occasion.

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But my sister passed away to a long time back. I’ve outlived her by 10 years now.

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Well, it’s sad. But when I’m

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not that old, but if you had 18 to my to my age, it’s that is old.

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At 18 to my age, it’s even older.

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So I think I got this already. But your first off road vehicle was a CJ.

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No, it was a 42 Ford GPW.

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I have no idea.

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Well, it’s 42 World War Two, Jeep. Oh, OK.

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We we bought a

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back. I’m not sure if we bought it. It was given to us. We had when I was growing up in Los Angeles, we had a friend who had been a major in the Air Force.

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I think he retired out of the Air Force. I’m not sure.

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But I think he was he was of the age that he could have retired. Shortly after World War Two.

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But anyway, he got a hold of a very nice base Jeep that

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was a little bit unique in that it had a governor on it. And it had a special bump in the hood

[00:19:59:12 – 00:20:01:09]
to allow it to be there.

[00:20:01:09 – 00:20:04:26]
And

[00:20:04:26 – 00:20:07:02]
it was it was just a pristine Jeep. And

[00:20:07:02 – 00:20:09:29]
he died of a heart attack and his widow,

[00:20:09:29 – 00:20:13:18]
Solver, gave it to us. I’m not sure which. But anyway, it was

[00:20:13:18 – 00:20:17:09]
in our garage. And once a year we would take that Jeep and go camping

[00:20:17:09 – 00:20:20:19]
at the Bursar Cone Pines, if you’ve ever heard of them.

[00:20:20:19 – 00:20:23:20]
They’re about of Bishop White Mountains.

[00:20:23:20 – 00:20:24:17]
And

[00:20:24:17 – 00:20:29:07]
so I developed an interest in jeeps rather early. And then

[00:20:29:07 – 00:20:31:06]
eventually that Jeep

[00:20:31:06 – 00:20:34:18]
became mine. And I drove to school and

[00:20:34:18 – 00:20:37:11]
and drove in snow and

[00:20:37:11 – 00:20:38:27]
had a blast with it. So

[00:20:38:27 – 00:20:51:28]
this would be the standard Jeep that you would see in World War Two footage and movies and stuff with the folding window and top speed. Yeah, we had all the lights and everything on it.

[00:20:51:28 – 00:20:53:12]
It was it was pristine.

[00:20:53:12 – 00:20:56:16]
But I mean, they have like a top speed of 50 miles an hour, don’t they?

[00:20:56:16 – 00:20:58:05]
No, I could do 60 in it.

[00:21:02:03 – 00:21:06:10]
Give me a long enough time. I could get it to 60. We’re going downhill. Right.

[00:21:07:27 – 00:21:10:20]
Well, I bet you’d love to still have that Jeep now.

[00:21:10:20 – 00:21:19:00]
Yeah, if I could have it in its original condition, you bet, because right now, if we had it, it would be quite valuable in that in that condition.

[00:21:19:00 – 00:21:31:11]
So that sounds like that was a heck of a deal. It was almost sounds like almost as good a deal as what I got when I was 14. My mom sold her 1965 Ford Mustang

[00:21:31:11 – 00:21:41:21]
red hardtop to a neighbor just two years before I started driving. She sold it for five hundred and fifty dollars and she and they bought it new.

[00:21:41:21 – 00:21:43:01]
Oh, my. Yeah.

[00:21:44:29 – 00:21:50:22]
So not as good as the is the Jeep, but, you know, sixty five Mustang. Oh,

[00:21:50:22 – 00:22:01:07]
yeah. Yeah. I think she paid five thousand dollars for that thing or fifty two hundred dollars in sixty five, which was a lot of money. But that was an expensive car because in sixty

[00:22:01:07 – 00:22:06:11]
nine beginning of the model year, we bought a Ford Bronco for thirty two hundred.

[00:22:07:08 – 00:22:16:19]
It was a it was a snazzy vehicle, especially that color red. I think my the color of my Jeep is about the same red as what the color on the Mustang was.

[00:22:16:19 – 00:22:18:12]
Yes, they are the same.

[00:22:19:25 – 00:22:28:00]
I remember those red Mustangs. Yeah. And what five hundred fifty bucks. I mean, even at then, even at that time, it was

[00:22:28:00 – 00:22:41:14]
you could tell that it was something. It was something special. The Mustang of that year was something special because I think that would have been around seventy three, seventy four when she sold that. So she had she had it a good nine nine ten years.

[00:22:41:14 – 00:22:44:06]
I bought it for that. Oh, seventy three.

[00:22:44:06 – 00:22:45:00]
Sure.

[00:22:46:21 – 00:22:50:16]
Ten percent of the original the original prize.

[00:22:50:16 – 00:22:53:03]
Sure. Well, I had five hundred bucks sitting around a seventy three. You bet.

[00:22:55:21 – 00:23:01:22]
So you had the the original Jeep, the original World War Two Jeep. What was your next four wheel drive?

[00:23:01:22 – 00:23:03:05]
I was the Bronco,

[00:23:03:05 – 00:23:05:01]
the sixty nine Bronco.

[00:23:05:01 – 00:23:06:06]
And

[00:23:06:06 – 00:23:09:04]
that’s when I first started playing around with suspensions.

[00:23:10:12 – 00:23:13:17]
And

[00:23:13:17 – 00:23:13:29]
lip kits

[00:23:13:29 – 00:23:15:20]
at that point in time

[00:23:15:20 – 00:23:19:15]
in in the end of the 60s and early 70s

[00:23:19:15 – 00:23:21:08]
were almost non-existent for anything.

[00:23:21:08 – 00:23:23:23]
You just sort of had to figure it out yourself.

[00:23:23:23 – 00:23:24:23]
And

[00:23:24:23 – 00:23:26:26]
I raised it up about

[00:23:26:26 – 00:23:29:00]
an inch and a half, two inches. And that was

[00:23:29:00 – 00:23:42:24]
as far as I could get. I put some other springs on the rear, welded in the spring purchase and all that stuff. I should say a friend of a friend did that for me, but I had it all figured out everything. So that’s what we did. And I put some extra coils on the front. And

[00:23:42:24 – 00:23:43:29]
eventually I put

[00:23:43:29 – 00:23:49:22]
a break. I braised to get this braised because I didn’t have a weld yet.

[00:23:51:14 – 00:23:59:20]
Some brackets on the front for Gabriel racing shocks. That was the hot thing to do for those front ends at that time.

[00:23:59:20 – 00:24:00:21]
And I

[00:24:00:21 – 00:24:03:27]
got around pretty good with it. I ran

[00:24:03:27 – 00:24:09:04]
seven fifty sixteen Firestone Superall tracks on it, which was about as good as you could get.

[00:24:09:04 – 00:24:11:29]
Thirty two inches was it. And

[00:24:11:29 – 00:24:18:20]
I got around real well in the mud. I took it out in the mud here up in western Oregon where I was living at the time in the

[00:24:18:20 – 00:24:22:05]
early 70s. And I was going to school in Oregon State

[00:24:22:05 – 00:24:23:11]
and

[00:24:23:11 – 00:24:26:13]
eventually dropped a 351 in it.

[00:24:27:11 – 00:24:30:08]
I wore the 302 out and

[00:24:30:08 – 00:24:38:02]
had a lot of fun in that vehicle. I remember a lot of discussion about the 351s when I first started getting into

[00:24:38:02 – 00:24:47:00]
the Go Fast cars. I always stuck with the small block Chevy’s 350, 327. I had the 283 for a short period of time, but

[00:24:47:00 – 00:24:55:14]
one of them wore cubes. I think that if I could now, I’d have the Jeep of course, but I’d like to have a full size truck

[00:24:55:14 – 00:25:10:07]
and a big block in it. I don’t know if it would be a Chevrolet or a Dodge, but they have that big block torque and momentum to turn the wheels and probably some nice 44 inch tires.

[00:25:10:07 – 00:25:17:05]
that’s nice in a truck to have a big block. There’s no doubt I had a big block in my Dodge. And it was nice.

[00:25:17:05 – 00:25:19:20]
Yeah, it gets you

[00:25:19:20 – 00:25:26:17]
that momentum of the turning mass really gives you the torque. At least that’s what I was always told.

[00:25:26:17 – 00:25:36:28]
Yeah, it does. You can’t make a small block do what a big block does. But a small block will sure wrap. We’ll go up into the repetitions a lot quicker. I

[00:25:36:28 – 00:25:48:29]
don’t know. And also too, I think I need something a little more stout. I have not been able to break the 4.0 yet, but I sure did break that 327. The 327 and the 350 both were quite easy to break.

[00:25:48:29 – 00:25:50:17]
Yeah, you can.

[00:25:50:17 – 00:25:52:03]
My opinion of

[00:25:52:03 – 00:25:56:12]
the 60s and 70s Chevy engines

[00:25:56:12 – 00:25:58:24]
were that they go fast for a little while, but they don’t last.

[00:26:00:13 – 00:26:03:06]
That’s exactly right.

[00:26:03:06 – 00:26:20:23]
Yeah, without changing out the rear end or the transmission on my 72 Nova, I think I was doing 0 to 60 in 6.2 seconds. And that was me measuring it with my digital watch. So I may have been off a little bit, but it was, yeah, it was fun. It was a fun car.

[00:26:21:19 – 00:26:26:24]
I’m sure I could have made it go a lot faster if I’d had more funds available to spend on it.

[00:26:26:24 – 00:26:33:19]
So when did you get your first Jeep Cherokee and how did that come about?

[00:26:33:19 – 00:26:37:10]
I got my first

[00:26:37:10 – 00:26:39:11]
Cherokee, the one I have now, it was my first one,

[00:26:39:11 – 00:26:41:25]
in

[00:26:41:25 – 00:26:43:01]
think it was 2000.

[00:26:43:01 – 00:26:47:29]
Oh, I take it back. It wasn’t the one I have now. I got my first one in 2000. It was in 85.

[00:26:47:29 – 00:26:51:02]
I brought it down here to California

[00:26:51:02 – 00:26:54:00]
and there’s a shortcut I take up

[00:26:54:00 – 00:27:02:10]
to Grass Valley where my kids live. And there’s a 15 mile an hour curve on that shortcut. And it’s a 15 mile an hour curve. It’s

[00:27:02:10 – 00:27:04:15]
got canals on both sides and stuff. And

[00:27:04:15 – 00:27:14:17]
I was slowing down for it and did not make the curve because my brake pedal went to the floor. Oh, no. I shifted down into first and all that stuff. But I

[00:27:14:17 – 00:27:18:17]
hit that doing probably 30 miles an hour. And I had

[00:27:18:17 – 00:27:23:02]
set of swamplers on, which are not really good tires on pavement anyway. And the

[00:27:23:02 – 00:27:28:23]
thing just drifted right over and I rolled it right into an irrigation ditch. I got 30 feet of guardrail

[00:27:28:23 – 00:27:31:05]
so

[00:27:31:05 – 00:27:35:17]
that totaled it

[00:27:35:17 – 00:27:38:13]
for sure. Although it was drivable, it was what it was totaled.

[00:27:38:13 – 00:27:46:03]
Even after taking out the guardrail and rolling into that, and the irrigation ditch was not a small ditch. It was

[00:27:46:03 – 00:27:48:19]
something that would swallow several Cherokees stacked up.

[00:27:48:19 – 00:27:56:01]
It would drive and I could have driven it back up to Washington State where I was living at the time, but

[00:27:56:01 – 00:27:58:14]
had a hole in the radiator. And

[00:27:58:14 – 00:28:01:11]
I figured the cops would stop me somewhere along the line.

[00:28:02:16 – 00:28:07:29]
Right. Driving a total vehicle. Just like smoking the bayonet. Son, what the

[00:28:07:29 – 00:28:14:26]
are you driving? Yeah, that’s what I’ve been in. What did you do to that?

[00:28:16:09 – 00:28:18:19]
Are you running from a bank?

[00:28:19:22 – 00:28:28:08]
Yeah, no kidding. Let me smell your breath. Yeah, no kidding. But it drove straight. I mean, you know, it just looked like heck. Yeah, they’re amazing vehicles.

[00:28:28:08 – 00:28:29:09]
So I

[00:28:29:09 – 00:28:33:14]
saw an ad here,

[00:28:33:14 – 00:28:34:26]
down here I was visiting

[00:28:34:26 – 00:28:38:24]
and everything when this all happened. And I saw an ad for

[00:28:38:24 – 00:28:45:08]
the one I have now, it was up for sale for $1600 and it was an 86, just like I had an 86 Laredo.

[00:28:45:08 – 00:28:47:13]
75 Laredo. And

[00:28:47:13 – 00:28:48:19]
so

[00:28:48:19 – 00:28:50:20]
I went down to Sacramento to look at it

[00:28:50:20 – 00:28:51:28]
the guy was

[00:28:51:28 – 00:28:57:19]
kind of trying to pull a fast one on me. You know, he told me how much money he put into it, new belts and hoses and

[00:28:57:19 – 00:28:59:08]
all that stuff. And I said, okay, fine.

[00:28:59:08 – 00:29:05:00]
And he didn’t know how to turn a wrench, so he was hiring it all done. And so it was expensive. Oh my gosh, I bet.

[00:29:05:00 – 00:29:10:21]
Yeah, well, yeah, he put like $400 into the thing. It just belts and hoses. Sure, sure.

[00:29:12:11 – 00:29:15:21]
But I noticed when I walked around the vehicle that the right rear

[00:29:15:21 – 00:29:19:02]
wheel was cocked back a little bit. And I go, hmm,

[00:29:19:02 – 00:29:21:00]
broken center pin. I didn’t say anything about

[00:29:21:00 – 00:29:23:04]
But I knew what it was because I

[00:29:23:04 – 00:29:24:09]
done that before,

[00:29:24:09 – 00:29:26:26]
going down the road dog legged. And

[00:29:26:26 – 00:29:30:12]
so anyway,

[00:29:30:12 – 00:29:34:11]
he was willing to sell it cheap, so I was willing to buy it cheap and put another center pin in it.

[00:29:37:04 – 00:29:47:14]
So he wasn’t, he didn’t point it out and you didn’t point it out. No, he didn’t point it out and I didn’t mention it. And I thought, hey, this is a pretty good price. I’ll take it.

[00:29:47:14 – 00:29:51:05]
And it had been towed behind a motorhome. It was in excellent condition

[00:29:51:05 – 00:29:52:02]
when I got it.

[00:29:52:02 – 00:30:02:22]
It had a little bit of sun damage on some of the plastic because of where it had been sitting or whatever, just in one spot. But other than that, it was shiny. The upholstery was perfect.

[00:30:02:22 – 00:30:05:07]
And it had like

[00:30:05:07 – 00:30:07:01]
$285,000 on

[00:30:07:01 – 00:30:07:25]
it.

[00:30:07:25 – 00:30:14:10]
But the motor, I looked at it and looked at the oil and all that stuff and I figured it really had

[00:30:14:10 – 00:30:17:19]
about $30,000 on it. The rest of it had just been drug around.

[00:30:17:19 – 00:30:21:27]
So I thought, hey, this is a great deal. Sure sounds like it.

[00:30:21:27 – 00:30:24:10]
I wonder how you broke that pin.

[00:30:24:10 – 00:30:30:07]
I don’t know. When I took it out, it was just kind of rusted. They do rust. They

[00:30:30:07 – 00:30:32:11]
never last forever. They will break.

[00:30:33:15 – 00:30:34:00]
So

[00:30:34:00 – 00:30:49:20]
you might hit a chuckle or something. Who knows? I didn’t care. Yeah, I just he didn’t sound like if he didn’t turn a wrench, he doesn’t sound like the off road type. So I just was trying to think how he could actually break one of those pins. But they seem to be fairly substantial. But you know, they

[00:30:49:20 – 00:30:52:00]
yeah, if they rust through, though, they’ll go easy.

[00:30:52:00 – 00:30:53:02]
Oh, that makes sense.

[00:30:53:02 – 00:30:54:15]
I’ve had him do that.

[00:30:54:15 – 00:30:58:09]
So I guess he was I guess he was laughing because he got one over on you.

[00:30:58:09 – 00:31:02:12]
I imagine he did. But jokes on him, you know, because

[00:31:02:12 – 00:31:04:29]
I drove it up

[00:31:04:29 – 00:31:05:11]
to

[00:31:05:11 – 00:31:08:06]
get my trailer and haul my 85 back home.

[00:31:09:16 – 00:31:10:03]
And

[00:31:10:03 – 00:31:11:09]
and it had a

[00:31:11:09 – 00:31:13:29]
a had a class two hitch on it already

[00:31:13:29 – 00:31:15:27]
for me, which was nice. And

[00:31:15:27 – 00:31:19:08]
so when I got it into my shop, I had a

[00:31:19:08 – 00:31:21:08]
sky crane that I had made.

[00:31:21:08 – 00:31:23:12]
And I just picked it up with sky crane and

[00:31:23:12 – 00:31:26:08]
I had it all fixed in 20 minutes. So

[00:31:26:08 – 00:31:56:08]
that’s almost as good as getting one cheap because the CPS center went out and just replace it and drive it away. Yeah, yeah. It takes less time to change the center grid with a sky crane. Oh, I bet. Yeah, I bet. So you went for another XJ because you were pulling parts off the rolled one or you just were so taken by the XJ that for the price performance, you just you wanted to get another one. Well, it’s what I needed at the time.

[00:31:56:08 – 00:31:56:11]
I was

[00:31:56:11 – 00:32:04:13]
we were living up in Washington state on the east side and a lot of snow and ice and in the wintertime.

[00:32:04:13 – 00:32:05:16]
And

[00:32:05:16 – 00:32:06:25]
also,

[00:32:06:25 – 00:32:14:06]
I always tried to I always tried to keep a functional real four wheel drive around someplace in my

[00:32:14:06 – 00:32:15:24]
repertoire of vehicles

[00:32:15:24 – 00:32:23:11]
where we were living. Sometimes it would flood and there’d be water and mud going across the road. And a

[00:32:23:11 – 00:32:26:01]
lot of cars were not up to that. Oh, yeah, I’m sure.

[00:32:26:01 – 00:32:27:13]
I mean,

[00:32:27:13 – 00:32:31:28]
when the way they farmed around there, if it rained too much,

[00:32:31:28 – 00:32:36:05]
it would just wash the soil off down to wherever the bottom of the disk was.

[00:32:36:05 – 00:32:38:12]
And so

[00:32:38:12 – 00:32:42:06]
there was a couple of times I drove my Subaru XT

[00:32:42:06 – 00:32:45:24]
through there and I had water up to the floorboards and so forth

[00:32:45:24 – 00:32:48:29]
that I was crossing and mud and rocks and whatever. So

[00:32:48:29 – 00:32:55:28]
just tried to keep one of those around and one of the one of the good snow vehicle. And that’s why I bought it.

[00:32:55:28 – 00:33:00:07]
I never really intended to to wheel it hard when I got it.

[00:33:00:07 – 00:33:01:12]
This is a.

[00:33:01:12 – 00:33:16:01]
Just had a quick I had a quick question about the snow. It’s not really not really in line with the interview. But why are open differentials better on ice and snow than a differential like a locker or something or or is or is that information correct?

[00:33:16:01 – 00:33:18:02]
No, that information is correct.

[00:33:18:02 – 00:33:19:27]
When

[00:33:19:27 – 00:33:21:00]
when you

[00:33:21:00 – 00:33:25:24]
have a small difference in tire inflation, tire tread,

[00:33:25:24 – 00:33:35:15]
tires out of a different mold or whatever the situation is, the rolling diameter is affected in just that small amount of rolling diameter

[00:33:35:15 – 00:33:39:02]
is enough to make a tire want to break loose.

[00:33:39:02 – 00:33:40:24]
And then you throw in

[00:33:40:24 – 00:33:44:05]
another variable and that is when you go into a curve,

[00:33:44:05 – 00:33:47:05]
the inside wheels travel slower than the outside.

[00:33:48:19 – 00:33:49:05]
And if you have a locker,

[00:33:49:05 – 00:33:51:04]
that locker wants to lock up that

[00:33:51:04 – 00:33:52:26]
that inside wheel.

[00:33:52:26 – 00:33:58:03]
And so that inside wheel begins to spin, especially in the rear. You have a rear locker. You

[00:33:58:03 – 00:34:02:20]
know, and if you have a front one is that way, too. And so you really only have power

[00:34:02:20 – 00:34:06:27]
going to two wheels and they’re trying to drag the other side along. And so they all break loose

[00:34:06:27 – 00:34:09:10]
while you’re doing that. And that’s OK in the mud,

[00:34:09:10 – 00:34:12:03]
you know, because you’re going slow. And that’s OK when you’re

[00:34:12:03 – 00:34:19:02]
when you’re wheeling, you know, because you’re going real slow. And if you’re going 60 miles an hour into a curve, you don’t want that. Right.

[00:34:19:02 – 00:34:25:03]
And then another thing is, is what I do. And some people may argue that

[00:34:25:03 – 00:34:28:07]
when when I’m in the snow,

[00:34:28:07 – 00:34:29:20]
I’ll drop air a little bit

[00:34:29:20 – 00:34:31:17]
and I’ll run

[00:34:31:17 – 00:34:36:02]
twenty eight pounds in the front and twenty five in the back

[00:34:36:02 – 00:34:39:06]
or whatever pressure it takes to get a little bit more

[00:34:39:06 – 00:34:43:02]
sidewall squish in the back. And the idea is that

[00:34:43:02 – 00:34:46:03]
I have a larger, larger rolling diameter in the front.

[00:34:46:03 – 00:34:47:25]
And I’ve found from

[00:34:47:25 – 00:34:49:23]
doing a lot of wheeling that

[00:34:49:23 – 00:34:52:14]
a four wheel drive will do much better

[00:34:52:14 – 00:34:55:11]
in any kind of a situation if the front end is pulling.

[00:34:55:11 – 00:34:58:10]
But if you’re trying to push it with the back, so it’s plowing,

[00:34:58:10 – 00:35:02:02]
you’d be amazed at how much less performance you get.

[00:35:02:02 – 00:35:10:17]
And so with that information, would you would you say that a front locker is better than a rear locker, not necessarily on ice and snow, but just in general off roading?

[00:35:10:17 – 00:35:15:09]
No, I wouldn’t. I’m a proponent of a rear locker. And that is because

[00:35:15:09 – 00:35:17:21]
once you start going up a hill,

[00:35:17:21 – 00:35:19:27]
which is where you need more traction

[00:35:19:27 – 00:35:22:05]
with your locker generally.

[00:35:22:05 – 00:35:27:28]
The steeper the hill, the less traction you have with a front end anyway. Gotcha.

[00:35:27:28 – 00:35:32:04]
That if your locker is in the front, basically you’re putting

[00:35:32:04 – 00:35:38:00]
seventy or eighty percent of your traction into an open differential. And that front locker doesn’t do you that much good.

[00:35:39:23 – 00:35:40:02]
Right.

[00:35:40:02 – 00:35:47:02]
I gotcha. But anyway, getting back. I’m sorry, but lockers front and rear are still a good thing no matter what.

[00:35:47:02 – 00:35:51:14]
they are in a in an off road situation. Yeah. Right.

[00:35:51:14 – 00:35:59:26]
OK, anyway, going back to what you were saying. What I was going to add was is that when you when you have a larger rolling diameter in the front,

[00:35:59:26 – 00:36:01:27]
when you go into a curve,

[00:36:01:27 – 00:36:07:07]
I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but your your front tires track outside of the back ones.

[00:36:07:07 – 00:36:09:29]
So what that means is is that your front

[00:36:09:29 – 00:36:11:26]
has to turn faster

[00:36:11:26 – 00:36:16:17]
than the rear unless something starts skidding or breaking loose.

[00:36:16:17 – 00:36:21:01]
And so what happens to a lot of people when they’re in four wheel drive is they’ll head into a curve,

[00:36:21:01 – 00:36:32:29]
you know, like in town or even on the freeway. And and that back is tracking on the inside and it wants to go slower than the front and it will actually break loose in the back end to whip around.

[00:36:32:29 – 00:36:34:20]
In a slick situation.

[00:36:34:20 – 00:36:41:24]
So by having the front pulling, then you compensate for that in a curve and you don’t break loose. Interesting.

[00:36:44:12 – 00:36:47:09]
So really in with open differentials

[00:36:47:09 – 00:36:58:00]
and in four wheel drive, when you’re in ice and snow, I guess you it doesn’t matter if you’ve got a 242 or 231, you go part time or full time.

[00:36:58:00 – 00:37:03:07]
Well, if I if I had full time and I was just driving down the road

[00:37:03:07 – 00:37:10:15]
in snow, I would use full time instead of a part time, you know, lock in the axles together. And

[00:37:10:15 – 00:37:15:17]
if you do that, then you don’t have to worry about that tire pressure thing that I was talking about. But

[00:37:15:17 – 00:37:17:10]
I don’t have full time,

[00:37:17:10 – 00:37:18:25]
you know, and so

[00:37:18:25 – 00:37:21:10]
that’s how I compensate. And I

[00:37:21:10 – 00:37:26:08]
when I was driving back and forth between here in Washington state,

[00:37:26:08 – 00:37:30:02]
there was one time I drove

[00:37:30:02 – 00:37:30:05]
about

[00:37:30:05 – 00:37:32:22]
close to 500 miles in the snow

[00:37:32:22 – 00:37:38:07]
and it was cold and snow and and that’s just the way it was.

[00:37:39:15 – 00:37:40:07]
A long trip,

[00:37:40:07 – 00:37:43:27]
but and I used to drive on ice a lot coming down and

[00:37:43:27 – 00:37:47:18]
and so forth. And the roads in eastern Oregon will stay ice

[00:37:47:18 – 00:37:50:19]
for three or four months of the year. My gosh,

[00:37:50:19 – 00:37:55:19]
that’s a long time to learn how to drive on the ice. I bet you there’s a lot of accidents.

[00:37:55:19 – 00:37:56:20]
Not too bad.

[00:37:56:20 – 00:38:02:13]
The roads are pretty straight out there and they put pumice on the roads, but you can still

[00:38:02:13 – 00:38:05:23]
get yourself in trouble real fast if you put respecting it.

[00:38:06:25 – 00:38:14:10]
I’m sure that’s a very attentive 500 miles. A lot of a lot of stress being watching exactly what you’re doing.

[00:38:14:10 – 00:38:15:19]
Yeah, no sleeping.

[00:38:17:09 – 00:38:22:13]
I can’t just put it on autopilot and take a 2000 foot nap. Yeah.

[00:38:23:20 – 00:38:23:27]
Nope.

[00:38:23:27 – 00:38:36:08]
Wow, that would be an interesting interesting thing. You know, of course, I’m down here in South Texas and I’ve seen snow three times in my life and it was all in 1973 and 1974.

[00:38:37:14 – 00:38:54:19]
So it’s it’s interesting to me and that’s one of the reasons why I’m asking these questions and also to with all the snow and ice that’s going on going on across the country right now. I figure if if people don’t already know this might be good information for them to have about driving their jeeps out in the snow in the ice.

[00:38:54:19 – 00:38:58:20]
Yeah, it is. It’s just something I learned to do when I was

[00:38:58:20 – 00:39:03:22]
I mean, I drove miles and miles and miles in the snow. A

[00:39:03:22 – 00:39:07:18]
lot of times I’d be driving over Donner Pass, which is

[00:39:07:18 – 00:39:10:26]
up over 7000 feet

[00:39:10:26 – 00:39:12:29]
in the snow and I did it every weekend

[00:39:12:29 – 00:39:19:13]
when I was in community college because I’d go back up to the lake to work. That’s where my job was. So.

[00:39:21:12 – 00:39:25:14]
And I couldn’t get one that would pay as much down the valley. So I stuck with it.

[00:39:25:14 – 00:39:32:18]
So do you have to drive slower in the snow in the ice or do you get get a good feel for it and drive, you know, 50 60 miles an hour?

[00:39:32:18 – 00:39:36:02]
Well, that depends on a number of things.

[00:39:36:02 – 00:39:40:20]
If if I was in Eastern Oregon where the road there’s pumice on the road. Yeah, I would

[00:39:40:20 – 00:39:41:29]
drive 50 60

[00:39:41:29 – 00:39:47:11]
without a problem. Paying good attention, of course, to what I was doing. Right.

[00:39:48:14 – 00:39:49:16]
Don’t do anything suddenly.

[00:39:49:16 – 00:39:52:17]
Good, fresh, dry snow.

[00:39:54:24 – 00:40:01:01]
With nothing done to it. 50 or 60 is not bad if you have good tires with lots of sites in them and so forth.

[00:40:01:01 – 00:40:03:28]
But if it’s a slush or.

[00:40:06:03 – 00:40:11:02]
Hard packed ice with nothing on it, that kind of thing, you better believe I’m slowing down.

[00:40:11:02 – 00:40:16:03]
Are we talking 30 40 miles an hour or just depends? Well, you’d be slow. I

[00:40:16:03 – 00:40:23:16]
feel it out. You know, I kind of push it up to where I feel like

[00:40:23:16 – 00:40:33:01]
it might be getting a wee bit squirrely or something and then I back off. So it’s like what we would do down here in the rain. If it feels like it’s starting to get a little wiggly because it’s hydroplaning you back off a little bit.

[00:40:33:01 – 00:40:36:17]
Yeah, that’s true. And another thing is that

[00:40:36:17 – 00:40:39:11]
generally there’s two tracks that have ice in it.

[00:40:39:11 – 00:40:42:27]
And the crown in the center and the

[00:40:42:27 – 00:40:47:20]
and over by the shoulder will usually have snow that

[00:40:47:20 – 00:40:48:22]
is

[00:40:48:22 – 00:40:56:02]
will give you more traction because nobody’s really been driving on it. And so what I do is I just put my tires on that fresher snow

[00:40:56:02 – 00:40:57:29]
and stay off of that ice and.

[00:40:58:23 – 00:41:01:17]
You know, and pay good attention to what you’re doing

[00:41:01:17 – 00:41:06:16]
and then you can travel a little faster and much safer than you can on that ice. Interesting.

[00:41:06:16 – 00:41:19:22]
So it doesn’t sound like it’s that much different than what we do here. It’s just I guess the environment would be a lot different and it would be scary at first not having experienced it. But it sounds like it would still be a lot of fun, especially if you’re successful.

[00:41:19:22 – 00:41:49:23]
Yeah, well, I well, I have to tell you that I’m really tense when I do that. And I’m paying paying close attention. It is not for me like driving on pavement at all. No, no, I’m sure after I’ve spun my Jeep, my driving in the rain isn’t nearly as fun as it used to be. I’ve gotten back pretty good, but they’re after spinning it and going through the the pain of the pocketbook and also to the pain of seeing my beautiful Jeep crunched like that. I did not want to experience that again. No, you don’t.

[00:41:49:23 – 00:41:51:12]
The spin was fun.

[00:41:54:15 – 00:41:55:22]
It’s the hitting something.

[00:41:55:22 – 00:42:00:20]
Yeah, one of the things that I would add is that, you know, the newer vehicles now

[00:42:00:20 – 00:42:05:28]
that you get with all this automatic stuff, you know, computer control traction aids and

[00:42:05:28 – 00:42:11:03]
all this stuff, you can drive them faster in the snow than I would drive my XJ.

[00:42:11:03 – 00:42:13:03]
But the problem is, is that

[00:42:13:03 – 00:42:15:25]
once those break loose, there’s nothing that will save you.

[00:42:15:25 – 00:42:29:10]
Wow. If I break loose in the XJ, I have options. I can back off on the gas, you know, I can turn the wheel if I need to and that type of thing. And I can straighten it out. And

[00:42:29:10 – 00:42:31:29]
I don’t go around in circles that way.

[00:42:31:29 – 00:42:35:14]
I just straighten it out and say, OK, we’re going to drive a little slower now.

[00:42:36:15 – 00:42:44:08]
So with the computer controlled stuff, they go. It’s like a a diode. You get to a certain point and then you get the zener knee and it just it just goes

[00:42:44:08 – 00:42:48:13]
in a handbasket. That’s right. And they end up in the snowbank. Wow.

[00:42:48:13 – 00:42:54:11]
That sounds kind of iffy to me. I mean, it sounds nice from the standpoint of, you know, the computers handling it for you. But

[00:42:54:11 – 00:43:00:01]
when it gets out of the parameters, boy, yeah, I can see. Yeah, that would not be a good thing.

[00:43:00:01 – 00:43:11:17]
Well, it’s one of those things where you can have a lot of confidence to want to try to do 70 or 80 miles an hour in the snow. And believe me, a lot of people from the flat lands down here do that. That’s amazing.

[00:43:11:17 – 00:43:16:04]
And they and they get away with it until it breaks loose and then they’re done.

[00:43:16:04 – 00:43:17:06]
And

[00:43:18:15 – 00:43:19:10]
whereas,

[00:43:19:10 – 00:43:21:07]
you know, I’m I

[00:43:21:07 – 00:43:24:25]
feel like getting a little squirrely, I back off and I don’t care if those idiots pass me.

[00:43:24:25 – 00:43:29:03]
Right. No, I don’t blame you. That’s what I’m trying to teach my kids is it doesn’t matter what they’re

[00:43:29:03 – 00:43:50:21]
what they’re doing behind you. You need to drive the vehicle because you’re the pilot in command. You’re the one that’s going to have to deal with the consequences of whatever happens to you in that vehicle. So you drive the way you feel is safe and you know, you get in the right hand lane. If you got to get in the left hand lane because that’s where you feel safer, then that’s fine. But if you can get in the right hand lane, let the people going by you go by.

[00:43:50:21 – 00:43:53:14]
But you can’t drive faster than what you feel comfortable doing.

[00:43:53:14 – 00:44:04:10]
Well, you don’t want to get in the left hand lane and go slow down here. No, I know. But if there’s something if there’s something wrong with the right hand lane and you got to be in the left hand lane, then sorry, that’s what you got to do.

[00:44:04:10 – 00:44:06:10]
Yeah. Yeah.

[00:44:06:10 – 00:44:16:06]
So there’s one of the things that I always do in when I get somebody on the phone, I’ll ask them, what do you love or what do you hate about XJ talk?

[00:44:16:06 – 00:44:20:04]
Oh, well, one thing I really like about XJ talk was that

[00:44:20:04 – 00:44:25:18]
there’s no no flaming or any of that kind of nonsense.

[00:44:25:18 – 00:44:31:23]
know, everything is kept low key and it’s more like a community.

[00:44:33:11 – 00:44:36:07]
I’ve been on next year. I haven’t been there for a while, but

[00:44:36:07 – 00:44:37:21]
not quite as friendly there.

[00:44:37:21 – 00:44:41:01]
I just I don’t even go to pirate

[00:44:41:01 – 00:44:44:04]
anything I need to know there. If

[00:44:44:04 – 00:44:48:01]
I can be conceited, I figure I already know. But

[00:44:48:01 – 00:44:51:01]
I don’t have time for any flaming and stuff like that.

[00:44:51:01 – 00:44:55:13]
And I’ve been on some other forums where I’ve been playing and I just, you know,

[00:44:55:13 – 00:44:58:06]
just don’t have much tolerance for that.

[00:44:59:17 – 00:45:01:15]
I personally don’t understand it. So.

[00:45:02:28 – 00:45:03:11]
Well,

[00:45:03:11 – 00:45:07:25]
when you when you get out on the trails, I don’t know about anyplace else, but around here,

[00:45:11:01 – 00:45:15:29]
the testosterone is about knee deep, you know, everybody’s trying to take impossible lines so that they can

[00:45:15:29 – 00:45:17:26]
be, you know,

[00:45:17:26 – 00:45:22:05]
the big guy or whatever, you know, is going through their mind.

[00:45:22:05 – 00:45:25:04]
And, you know, we’ve had

[00:45:25:04 – 00:45:26:22]
incidences up here.

[00:45:26:22 – 00:45:28:18]
There’s been some fighting and

[00:45:28:18 – 00:45:29:24]
all kinds of stuff

[00:45:31:05 – 00:45:32:22]
perpetrated by some college kids that

[00:45:32:22 – 00:45:37:04]
haven’t grown up yet and so forth. And, you know, I

[00:45:37:04 – 00:45:41:19]
just don’t have much tolerance for that kind of thing. I just go out to wheel to have fun.

[00:45:41:19 – 00:45:45:15]
And if I’m on a forum, I’m there to have fun. I’m I’m not there to

[00:45:45:15 – 00:45:46:15]
to

[00:45:46:15 – 00:46:11:16]
try to behave like a tough kid. I’m not a tough guy with behind the security of my screen. Yeah, exactly. Oh, one thing I did neglect to mention, Steve is a moderator on XJ talk.com and also a very big help when answering questions for everybody on the on the site. And Steve, I want to thank you for that. Obviously, thank you for being a member on XJ talk. And it’s,

[00:46:11:16 – 00:46:21:16]
I’m sure that you being there is a large part of the growth that we’ve experienced. And I know I and I’m sure others really appreciate

[00:46:21:16 – 00:46:41:10]
Thank you. So, Steve and I have already spoken about doing multiple interviews because we haven’t even scratched on the surface of the things that he knows about. Certainly none of the mods that he’s made on his Jeep. So Steve has committed to future interviews. So

[00:46:41:10 – 00:46:49:15]
this won’t be the last one. And we’ve got, I’m sure a lot of very interesting mods and interesting stories that will be coming up in the future.

[00:46:49:15 – 00:46:54:18]
Steve, I want to thank you again. And was there anything that you’d like to add before we go?

[00:46:54:18 – 00:46:58:01]
Well, I can’t take anything except that it’s been a pleasure to

[00:46:58:01 – 00:46:59:03]
be on the forum.

[00:46:59:03 – 00:47:01:27]
Great. Thank you very much. And

[00:47:01:27 – 00:47:06:07]
with that, we’ll start taking questions here in just a moment.

[00:47:07:11 – 00:47:07:21]
Okay,

[00:47:07:21 – 00:47:08:28]
I’ll be on the chat room.

[00:47:13:17 – 00:47:25:13]
And there you have it. That was a very nice interview with Steve. It’s a lot of fun because I get to ask a lot of questions and hear about people’s experiences and

[00:47:25:13 – 00:47:31:11]
things that I’ve never known. I mean, Steve’s been on the website for, gosh,

[00:47:31:11 – 00:47:34:19]
six, seven, eight months, a year, longer.

[00:47:34:19 – 00:47:41:18]
And there was stuff I found out that I had no idea. So this has been personally very informative.

[00:47:41:18 – 00:47:48:18]
So I hope, hopefully you guys are enjoying it as well. Let me get a couple of things out of way here.

[00:47:48:18 – 00:47:55:27]
Did you know that xjtalk.com is on Facebook? Just go to facebook.com slash xjtalk and friend us.

[00:47:55:27 – 00:47:59:15]
We’re also on Twitter, twitter.com slash xjtalk.

[00:47:59:15 – 00:48:10:16]
Are you interested in being a guest on xjtalk? Well, you can contact me via email, tony at xjtalk.com. That’s tony at xjtalk.com.

[00:48:10:16 – 00:48:28:08]
This segment brought to you by detoursusa.com. Ten 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.

[00:48:31:00 – 00:48:33:17]
I just wanted to say xjtalk is the best

[00:48:33:17 – 00:48:34:24]
sight in the

[00:48:34:24 – 00:48:37:14]
world. And if you think you know a better

[00:48:37:14 – 00:48:38:07]
sight,

[00:48:38:07 – 00:48:41:17]
you. By the way, this is big M350.

[00:48:41:17 – 00:48:42:17]
Bye.

[00:48:43:22 – 00:48:45:12]
I love that.

[00:48:45:12 – 00:48:48:13]
Let’s see if Steve’s still with us.

[00:48:48:13 – 00:48:49:12]
Steve, you still there?

[00:48:49:12 – 00:48:54:05]
I’m here. Excellent. So hopefully you were able to hear the interview, okay?

[00:48:54:05 – 00:48:58:22]
Yeah, I heard it was fine. Were you in the chat room, seeing the colorful comments?

[00:48:58:22 – 00:49:03:22]
I just put the podcast chatroom on just now.

[00:49:03:22 – 00:49:12:02]
Oh, that makes sense. That’s right. Because the same reason I mentioned at the beginning of the broadcast, because of how you pay for your internet.

[00:49:12:02 – 00:49:18:15]
Yeah, well, I just got it figured out just now that I needed to have both of those chat rooms up. So I did.

[00:49:18:15 – 00:49:26:04]
Yeah, I mean, you can have the chat room up on xjtalk, but as far as the show goes, you can get right here on

[00:49:26:04 – 00:49:33:16]
the Ustream broadcast. And that’s the most critical one during the live show anyway, the way I look at it.

[00:49:33:16 – 00:49:54:10]
So guys, Steve’s on the phone. We’re live. That means I’m talking and moving in synchronization with my lips. And Steve’s, like I said, on the phone so he can hear you. I’m sorry, he can read what you’re saying. And if you have any questions for Steve from the interview, maybe something that wasn’t covered in the interview,

[00:49:54:10 – 00:49:56:28]
go right ahead. Type them in.

[00:49:57:28 – 00:50:00:10]
I

[00:50:00:10 – 00:50:04:11]
see that lizard runner has joined and blue dragon has joined.

[00:50:04:11 – 00:50:07:23]
OK, how many extremes have I

[00:50:07:23 – 00:50:09:26]
driven on and in? I

[00:50:09:26 – 00:50:12:22]
mean, on as far as terrain goes,

[00:50:12:22 – 00:50:17:20]
I’ve done it all. I’ve been on rocks tonight. In fact, I

[00:50:17:20 – 00:50:22:28]
was wheeling the Fort Ice Creek Trail, which is quite famous now.

[00:50:24:19 – 00:50:27:09]
Before it was ever named the Fort Ice Creek Trail,

[00:50:27:09 – 00:50:31:07]
it used to be known as the Paris and Grant Wagon Road. And

[00:50:31:07 – 00:50:33:12]
I was working in the area when I was

[00:50:33:12 – 00:50:39:20]
19. And so after work, instead of hiking on it, I went wheeling on it and

[00:50:39:20 – 00:50:43:26]
never got up to the top because I always ran out of daylight. But

[00:50:43:26 – 00:50:53:13]
I have done rocks. I love sand. I had a great time always at the Oregon coast. Did a lot of mud in western Oregon.

[00:50:55:24 – 00:50:59:15]
A lot of snow. Always been a lot of snow around someplace where I’ve lived.

[00:50:59:15 – 00:51:00:17]
And

[00:51:00:17 – 00:51:03:19]
basically I’ve done it all.

[00:51:03:19 – 00:51:10:00]
I think the rocks would be a lot of fun. The thing that terrifies me the most about it is rolling the Jeep.

[00:51:10:00 – 00:51:15:06]
And I’m not concerned so much that I would be injured. I just don’t want to total the vehicle.

[00:51:15:06 – 00:51:17:01]
That’s right. I don’t want to hurt my Jeep.

[00:51:18:06 – 00:51:18:27]
I’ll heal.

[00:51:20:07 – 00:51:24:10]
The thing about rocks is that if

[00:51:24:10 – 00:51:26:28]
you just have a…

[00:51:26:28 – 00:51:34:21]
I had a clutch at the time. I was using the Bronco. It had a 2-to-1 drop in the transfer case and 350 gears in the rear end.

[00:51:34:21 – 00:51:38:29]
I’m going to tell you, I had a sore left leg and that poor clutch was

[00:51:38:29 – 00:51:43:09]
pretty wore out, I think, when I got done. Or at least a lot of it was gone.

[00:51:43:09 – 00:51:48:06]
was a lot of hard work. And now there’s automatic transmissions and so forth.

[00:51:48:06 – 00:51:52:26]
My opinion of that is that equipment makes all the difference between

[00:51:52:26 – 00:51:54:13]
doing a lot of work and

[00:51:54:13 – 00:52:14:09]
taking a lot of punishment and having a good time. Yeah. I’m sure it makes it a lot more enjoyable when you don’t have… when you can just enjoy the accomplishment of getting up or over something. And this kind of dovetails into the question that detours just asked. “Transmission behind the 4.3 and do you use an adapter on it?”

[00:52:14:09 – 00:52:20:06]
Yeah. I’ve got a 4L60E that I rebuilt. It’s got all the heavy stuff in it.

[00:52:20:06 – 00:52:27:18]
And it’s got an advanced adapters tail shaft and housing on the back of it so that I can

[00:52:27:18 – 00:52:33:07]
put anything with the 6-volt pattern, any transfer case with the 6-volt pattern on it.

[00:52:33:07 – 00:52:36:08]
had a 231 on the back of it for quite a while and

[00:52:36:08 – 00:52:38:23]
started making good money and I said, “Well,

[00:52:38:23 – 00:52:41:26]
I can afford something better.” So I got the Atlas.

[00:52:41:26 – 00:52:47:02]
Yeah. That Atlas really stood out when I saw the picture of that. I knew that wasn’t a

[00:52:47:02 – 00:52:52:28]
new process, new venture, 231 or 242. I knew that much when I saw it.

[00:52:52:28 – 00:52:56:01]
Yeah. It’s a much bigger case. It takes up more room.

[00:52:57:01 – 00:53:04:25]
I think I asked you this on the post, but was it very difficult to make room to install it and get the shifter through the floor and

[00:53:04:25 – 00:53:06:09]
have a place to sit?

[00:53:06:09 – 00:53:16:22]
Oh, well, I lucked out on that. I did a little homework before I bought the transfer case. The Atlas 4-speed is not supposed to fit

[00:53:16:22 – 00:53:19:04]
behind an AW4 and a 4L

[00:53:19:04 – 00:53:25:18]
because you have to do a lot of work on the floorboard and the door. You have to see the seat pedestal on the driver’s side and so forth.

[00:53:25:18 – 00:53:28:25]
But I was fortunate in

[00:53:28:25 – 00:53:31:17]
the fact that by putting the V6 in,

[00:53:31:17 – 00:53:37:01]
I had to move the engine and transmission forward a little bit. And also the

[00:53:37:01 – 00:53:46:25]
Chevy transmission is 4 inches shorter than the AW4, so it worked out just right. I just had to dimple the floorboard a little bit under the seat. You can’t even see it.

[00:53:48:12 – 00:53:51:05]
And then it fit just like it was supposed to.

[00:53:51:05 – 00:53:55:12]
If you were going to put a multi-speed transfer case in

[00:53:55:12 – 00:53:59:19]
to an XJ, the one to use would be a stack. It would fit a lot better.

[00:53:59:19 – 00:54:02:14]
And as far as the linkage goes,

[00:54:02:14 – 00:54:06:01]
I just made it fit. It took me, I don’t know, it took me

[00:54:06:01 – 00:54:07:07]
at least a week

[00:54:07:07 – 00:54:10:18]
make that linkage fit right and so forth. And so it

[00:54:10:18 – 00:54:15:05]
fits exactly in the console and I haven’t had to alter the

[00:54:15:05 – 00:54:18:09]
floorboard or the transmission tunnel at all for it.

[00:54:18:09 – 00:54:20:07]
It fits the console like it’s supposed to and

[00:54:20:07 – 00:54:21:23]
it looks real clean.

[00:54:21:23 – 00:54:24:27]
And it’s always a conversation piece. I bet.

[00:54:24:27 – 00:54:28:20]
I see they’re complaining in the chat room that the,

[00:54:28:20 – 00:54:40:06]
I guess the video on the audio is glitchy. Yeah, I was just typing in the chat room. The website was under attack earlier today

[00:54:40:06 – 00:54:55:23]
and it may still be. So that’s going to be affecting the bandwidth on that we’re using to send this to Ustream. And yes, it should not affect the

[00:54:55:23 – 00:55:12:09]
podcast at all because that’s all local. So if you’re having problems with the show now, then you shouldn’t have any problem hearing the podcast. And just so everybody knows, the podcast is available on iTunes and on

[00:55:12:09 – 00:55:16:26]
HTTP podcasts

[00:55:16:26 – 00:55:18:12]
with a plural S,

[00:55:18:12 – 00:55:20:02]
xjtalk.com.

[00:55:20:02 – 00:55:30:07]
And you can find it from the website as well. Just from the nav bar, there’s a, the word podcast is up there and you can click on that and it’ll take you to the podcast page.

[00:55:30:07 – 00:55:33:09]
I see Wayne came back. So is there,

[00:55:33:09 – 00:55:38:11]
is there, yeah, well, I don’t know. Some people aren’t having problems. A lizard runner says it’s just fine.

[00:55:38:11 – 00:55:44:23]
Big Jim, clear 3G here. Jim, are you watching the show on your, on your smartphone?

[00:55:44:23 – 00:55:49:24]
Jim types with his elbows, so it takes just a bit for him to, to respond back.

[00:55:49:24 – 00:56:42:12]
Steve, I don’t know. I suspect that you’ll, you’ll have an idea on this question, but this is actually a question that Weldman sent in a couple of weeks ago. And it was, when I was speaking to him on the phone the other day, it was actually kind of interesting. It was a question that I had based on seeing an episode of extreme four by four where they were using this item. And let me, let me play this and let’s see if maybe we can’t help him out. It is Weldman, my first name is Kurt. My question is, does anybody know if the U-joint fun axles are compatible with the CV joint axle shafts? Because that would just make life a whole lot easier to do the fact that they’re, you know, sealed and can have a bit more flexibility and you don’t get in cornering. So that’s my question. Thanks. Bye. Cool site.

[00:56:42:12 – 00:56:47:08]
That last part was cool site. He kind of snuck that one in there.

[00:56:47:08 – 00:57:16:11]
Thank you very much. Thank you very much for calling and on the voicemail Weldman and leaving a, leaving a question. So, so I don’t know, were you able to hear that? Okay, Steve? Well, I missed a little bit of it. He’s talked about U-joint front axle shafts. Yeah, he was talking about using CV joints instead of the traditional universal joint on the shafts. Can you use the axles with the CV joints on, I would assume the Weldman, I guess that would be the Dana 30 that you were asking about.

[00:57:16:11 – 00:57:23:14]
Okay. The answer to that is, assuming that he’s asking about any axle, is yes.

[00:57:23:14 – 00:57:23:17]
In fact,

[00:57:23:17 – 00:57:28:00]
the full-time

[00:57:28:00 – 00:57:35:28]
four-wheel drive in the early XJs like mine used a CV joint on the front axle. It

[00:57:35:28 – 00:57:40:02]
was kind of a weak joint and the axle shaft was kind of weak, but it was a CV joint.

[00:57:40:02 – 00:57:44:08]
And one of the benefits that you have with a CV joint is that

[00:57:44:08 – 00:57:46:25]
when you make a hard

[00:57:46:25 – 00:57:55:24]
in four-wheel drive when you’re locked up, you don’t get that wheel steering wheel jerking back and forth every time the axle shaft turns over.

[00:57:55:24 – 00:58:01:28]
It makes it much more smooth and that’s why that joint was designed in the first place was to eliminate that.

[00:58:01:28 – 00:58:18:08]
That’s actually one of the things he was trying to get across to me on the phone the other day and I thought that that hopping motion was actually what occurred whenever you had the front and rear drive shaft locked together in part-time mode. It does.

[00:58:18:08 – 00:58:21:24]
It’s due to the stress on the axle and that

[00:58:21:24 – 00:58:29:06]
when you turn one U-joint, when you just go through one U-joint and you don’t have a corresponding joint

[00:58:29:06 – 00:58:32:26]
on the other end that’s set up at the same angle,

[00:58:32:26 – 00:58:36:19]
there’s actually a change in velocity,

[00:58:36:19 – 00:58:38:06]
the shaft. It

[00:58:38:06 – 00:58:40:16]
doesn’t seem like it should be, but there is.

[00:58:40:16 – 00:58:44:05]
Tom Woods has it all figured out on his website, so I’m taking his word for it.

[00:58:45:22 – 00:58:47:25]
That causes the

[00:58:47:25 – 00:58:49:25]
front wheel to want to

[00:58:49:25 – 00:58:53:08]
change speeds and when it does,

[00:58:53:08 – 00:58:56:06]
something has to give. So it’s the steering wheel in your hand

[00:58:56:06 – 00:58:58:26]
that does from the change in velocity.

[00:58:58:26 – 00:59:04:20]
The CV joint or Rezeppa was the guy that invented it,

[00:59:04:20 – 00:59:07:18]
was designed to eliminate that.

[00:59:08:19 – 00:59:13:07]
It’s an old joint. It goes back to World War II and so forth.

[00:59:13:07 – 00:59:15:14]
In fact, my Mighty Might

[00:59:15:14 – 00:59:16:24]
has

[00:59:16:24 – 00:59:19:01]
those CV type joints in the front

[00:59:19:01 – 00:59:23:12]
because it has a front axle that’s engaged all the time. It’s very smooth.

[00:59:23:12 – 00:59:26:22]
You don’t even realize

[00:59:26:22 – 00:59:29:25]
that you’re in a hard turn or anything with those CV joints in there.

[00:59:31:03 – 00:59:52:07]
guess the thing that I, when I saw them using an Xtreme 4×4, I was thinking to myself, “Oh my gosh, why isn’t everybody using this?” Then I got to thinking about it and I went, “Wait a minute. I think the Grand Cherokee is you use CV joints. The CV joints are used in front wheel drive vehicles and yada, yada, yada.” So why are we using universal joints on our axles?

[00:59:52:07 – 00:59:54:01]
One word, cheaper.

[00:59:55:09 – 00:59:57:16]
I thought it was stronger.

[00:59:57:16 – 01:00:03:20]
Well, the CV joints have gotten a bad rap for being weak

[01:00:03:20 – 01:00:06:28]
simply because they don’t put enough metal in them. If

[01:00:06:28 – 01:00:11:18]
you get a CV joint from Bobby Longfield, for instance,

[01:00:11:18 – 01:00:12:01]
that

[01:00:12:01 – 01:00:16:12]
would be about the same size as what you would put in our Dana 30s,

[01:00:16:12 – 01:00:20:25]
and in fact will fit in inside of the knuckle on a Toyota

[01:00:20:25 – 01:00:23:02]
pickup front axle,

[01:00:23:02 – 01:00:24:06]
those

[01:00:24:06 – 01:00:25:14]
CV joints

[01:00:25:14 – 01:00:28:10]
are as strong as the Dana 60 crosses.

[01:00:28:24 – 01:00:29:07]
They

[01:00:29:07 – 01:00:31:18]
actually destructed just

[01:00:31:18 – 01:00:36:06]
a slightly higher torque than a stock Dana 60.

[01:00:36:06 – 01:00:38:22]
My goodness. I bet you they’re pricey.

[01:00:40:05 – 01:00:44:16]
Yeah, they’re pricey, but they’re well worth it. You can run a nice,

[01:00:44:16 – 01:00:48:02]
small, light axle that has the same strength as a Dana 60

[01:00:48:02 – 01:00:50:16]
without any problem, and you can run larger tires

[01:00:50:16 – 01:00:51:25]
never have any problems.

[01:00:51:25 – 01:01:01:10]
So what all do you have to change on a Dana 30 if you want to run a good, strong, equally strong as the U-joint axle?

[01:01:01:10 – 01:01:07:05]
If you’re going to go to the CV, you don’t have to change anything. I think it’s our CV

[01:01:07:05 – 01:01:11:10]
as a kit that you can buy. It’s an axle shaft

[01:01:11:10 – 01:01:12:09]
where you just

[01:01:12:09 – 01:01:18:00]
pull your old shaft out, you throw this one in, you bolt it all together, and you got it. That sounds like a sweet deal.

[01:01:18:00 – 01:01:19:19]
It is. It ain’t cheap,

[01:01:19:19 – 01:01:20:17]
but

[01:01:20:17 – 01:01:23:20]
if you’re having trouble with

[01:01:23:20 – 01:01:26:08]
U-joint crosses and so forth,

[01:01:26:08 – 01:01:30:08]
and they’re not very strong when you’re in a sharp turn, that’s when they fail.

[01:01:30:08 – 01:01:31:16]
These

[01:01:31:16 – 01:01:33:14]
CV joints

[01:01:33:14 – 01:01:36:22]
will take the torque in a turn,

[01:01:36:22 – 01:01:41:07]
so they can be worth their weight in gold eventually if you break enough axle shafts. Sure.

[01:01:41:07 – 01:01:56:09]
Well, and depending on how much time you like spinning on the trail, working on your rig. Well, Weldman, there you go. It sounds like you were dead on with what you were thinking about the CV joint being a better all-around

[01:01:56:09 – 01:01:57:02]
solution to

[01:01:57:02 – 01:02:00:23]
letting the wheels on the axle turn left or right.

[01:02:00:23 – 01:02:08:16]
Okay, Weldman has another question on this. It’s related. He says, “Will the CV pass through the bearing hole?” And the answer is no, you have to pull the knuckle.

[01:02:13:04 – 01:02:17:26]
I’m trying to picture that. I remember changing the…trying

[01:02:17:26 – 01:02:20:00]
to remember when I changed the wheel bearing assembly.

[01:02:20:00 – 01:02:22:09]
Yeah, normally on a Dana 30,

[01:02:22:09 – 01:02:24:16]
late model Dana 30, what

[01:02:24:16 – 01:02:27:13]
you do is you just pull the unit bearing out,

[01:02:27:13 – 01:02:35:11]
and then you can pull the axle shaft with it, and the whole thing will come out right in your hand. But the RCV kit, because it’s

[01:02:35:11 – 01:02:38:13]
physically fatter and there’s more metal in it, and

[01:02:38:13 – 01:02:41:00]
it’s so much stronger, you have to

[01:02:41:00 – 01:02:45:14]
take the nuts off of the ball joints and whack it with a hammer and

[01:02:45:14 – 01:02:50:18]
pull the steering knuckle off, and then slip the axle shaft in. My goodness.

[01:02:50:18 – 01:02:54:19]
Well, it’s not that big a deal. It only takes another 20 minutes at the most.

[01:02:57:08 – 01:02:57:21]
Okay.

[01:02:57:21 – 01:03:08:13]
Well, excellent. We’re running over. We’re about 10 minutes over right now, but some good information. Anybody else have any other questions for Steve?

[01:03:08:13 – 01:03:13:29]
Mark says, or Detour says, “We talk in stock.” Was that for us, Mark?

[01:03:13:29 – 01:03:16:21]
don’t know. He’s not saying.

[01:03:16:21 – 01:03:18:28]
Mark says, “Thank you, Steve.”

[01:03:18:28 – 01:03:21:17]
You’re welcome, Mark.

[01:03:21:17 – 01:03:42:19]
Well, that was a very good question. I think that’s probably one of our better questions that we’ve had on the voicemail. And you guys should call in on the voicemail and either leave a colorful message like Jim doesn’t remember doing, or a question like, “What Kurt Weldman

[01:03:42:19 – 01:03:45:29]
sent us not…” Well, gosh, probably two and a half weeks ago.

[01:03:45:29 – 01:03:58:11]
So here’s the information for calling in, and it’s 24 hours a day, seven days a week voicemail. Nobody’s going to call. My wife’s not going to pick up the phone and go, “Oh, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have picked that up.” It’s just voicemail, so

[01:03:58:11 – 01:04:20:15]
you don’t have to worry about somebody picking up on you. Do you have questions or comments that you would like played in 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, your location, and your question or comment. Chances are good it’ll get played on the air.

[01:04:20:15 – 01:04:29:24]
That number again is 530-675-4102. We look forward to hearing from you today.

[01:04:29:24 – 01:04:37:25]
I’ll just check here on the chat room here one more time. Make sure there’s not another question floating around.

[01:04:37:25 – 01:04:44:26]
Tony was wanting to know what you meant by stock. I don’t know.

[01:04:49:06 – 01:04:58:06]
was there anything that you wanted to add? That was a good 40 minutes plus of talking, so you probably covered everything.

[01:05:02:12 – 01:05:03:22]
Unless we missed a question,

[01:05:03:22 – 01:05:07:27]
put those posts for coming in kind of quick. I don’t know if I have any questions.

[01:05:07:27 – 01:05:10:07]
Yeah, I think we caught it.

[01:05:15:15 – 01:05:16:20]
You were kind of chopping. Are you still there?

[01:05:18:02 – 01:05:21:05]
Yeah, I’m still here. I’m just sort of seeing if I missed something here.

[01:05:21:05 – 01:05:44:26]
Okay. I’m going to go ahead and start with the original rock environment as opposed to lockers.

[01:05:44:26 – 01:05:47:29]
That’s a relativistic question.

[01:05:47:29 – 01:05:52:00]
I’ve used limited slips for years.

[01:05:52:22 – 01:05:55:12]
There are some types of limited slips that you can

[01:05:55:12 – 01:05:57:21]
increase the torque on

[01:05:57:21 – 01:06:02:07]
or the bias between the axles. I used them

[01:06:02:07 – 01:06:09:24]
effectively in sand and mud and in snow and with no problem. But if

[01:06:09:24 – 01:06:13:15]
you get them into rocks, what can happen is that

[01:06:13:15 – 01:06:15:10]
they don’t have enough torque

[01:06:15:10 – 01:06:19:04]
to do what you want to do, and you can start spinning a wheel and

[01:06:19:04 – 01:06:21:13]
you can burn up a set of clutches in one.

[01:06:21:13 – 01:06:22:18]
So

[01:06:22:18 – 01:06:23:27]
the answer is

[01:06:23:27 – 01:06:25:21]
yeah.

[01:06:25:21 – 01:06:27:29]
Sand, mud, and snow, they’re really good and

[01:06:27:29 – 01:06:30:12]
many times just as effective as a locker.

[01:06:30:12 – 01:06:36:15]
And rocks, you’ve got to kind of watch it because you can wreck the clutches in one.

[01:06:36:15 – 01:06:38:09]
That’s interesting. So

[01:06:38:09 – 01:06:52:20]
would a locker be an all-around, a mechanical locker be an all-around good thing, or would a limited slip be better in some cases? Because I think what I just heard you say was in sand and mud it would be better.

[01:06:55:22 – 01:06:58:02]
Yeah, in sand I prefer

[01:06:58:02 – 01:06:59:21]
having a limited slip

[01:06:59:21 – 01:07:02:19]
over a locker because

[01:07:02:19 – 01:07:05:27]
it does allow you to turn, but it gives you just enough of

[01:07:05:27 – 01:07:12:01]
a fraction aid so that your wheels are pretty much going the same speed.

[01:07:12:23 – 01:07:17:12]
In mud, you don’t really have to have a locker. If you’re really in mud,

[01:07:17:12 – 01:07:22:26]
most of the time your wheels are slipping anyway, and it doesn’t take much to keep them

[01:07:22:26 – 01:07:24:12]
going the same speed either.

[01:07:25:15 – 01:07:26:08]
In snow,

[01:07:26:08 – 01:07:27:16]
I would

[01:07:27:16 – 01:07:29:16]
many times prefer a limited slip

[01:07:29:16 – 01:07:34:08]
just for turning reasons so that I can turn. You still have good traction.

[01:07:34:08 – 01:07:38:26]
But like I say, you start getting into rocks and

[01:07:38:26 – 01:07:42:08]
you really need a locker or something like a

[01:07:42:08 – 01:07:44:10]
Detroit True Track,

[01:07:44:10 – 01:07:47:24]
which has like a 70% lock-up rate

[01:07:47:24 – 01:07:49:13]
on it, and

[01:07:49:13 – 01:07:52:19]
it doesn’t have clutches in it to burn up.

[01:07:52:19 – 01:07:57:20]
Weldman says, “What degree do you run your rear axle at or drive angle?”

[01:07:59:00 – 01:07:59:19]
Drive angle?

[01:07:59:19 – 01:08:01:17]
I have a CV joint

[01:08:01:17 – 01:08:04:28]
coming off the back of the transfer case, so I’ve got a

[01:08:04:28 – 01:08:07:14]
straight shot right into the pinion.

[01:08:07:14 – 01:08:13:23]
So I don’t know exactly what degree it is because I never measured it. I just put the hydraulic jack under it,

[01:08:13:23 – 01:08:17:10]
held the drive line up, and when it looks straight,

[01:08:17:10 – 01:08:18:23]
that’s when I stopped. Then

[01:08:18:23 – 01:08:24:09]
I measured it and went down and got myself a 4 degree shin and stuck it in. But

[01:08:24:09 – 01:08:27:15]
what exact angle it is right now, I can’t tell you.

[01:08:27:15 – 01:08:43:10]
Yeah, I don’t think it was on the interview. I think after we got done with the interview, we were talking about that. You had said that you’ve done it so much now, you don’t have to actually measure the drive angle. You can just eyeball it and get it right.

[01:08:43:10 – 01:08:46:15]
Yeah, on those I can. I don’t have to measure for

[01:08:46:15 – 01:08:48:00]
the CV joints.

[01:08:48:00 – 01:08:50:22]
Like I said, I just stick a hydraulic jack under it and

[01:08:50:22 – 01:08:53:15]
start pumping it until it looks just right

[01:08:53:15 – 01:09:00:21]
and take it before and after measurement, and then I know what kind of shim to get, and then I just go get it. It is that simple.

[01:09:00:21 – 01:09:07:19]
The procedure though for a non-CV drive line though is a little different.

[01:09:07:19 – 01:09:13:06]
You really need an angle finder for that. So many times on forums,

[01:09:13:06 – 01:09:21:02]
everybody says, “Oh, drop the transfer case. Try a 2 degree shim or a 4 degree shim or whatever.” And that’s just throwing parts at it.

[01:09:21:02 – 01:09:26:02]
The thing that you really need to do is to measure the angle on the back

[01:09:26:02 – 01:09:27:14]
of the transfer case.

[01:09:27:14 – 01:09:30:28]
And you can use the fill

[01:09:30:28 – 01:09:37:13]
nut on there. It’s a machine surface and you can just stick the angle finder on there and measure that and then measure

[01:09:37:13 – 01:09:38:17]
the pinion angle.

[01:09:38:17 – 01:09:42:09]
Take the drive shaft loose and measure the angle

[01:09:42:09 – 01:09:43:09]
on the pinion.

[01:09:43:09 – 01:09:48:26]
And what you need to do is to make those two angles as close as possible. And if you have to go buy a shim,

[01:09:48:26 – 01:09:55:01]
then you just need to do a little subtraction first and subtract one number from the other and that’s what degree shim you need. And

[01:09:55:01 – 01:09:57:02]
it’s not hard, but

[01:09:57:02 – 01:10:03:13]
when you start doing things like putting aftermarket springs on, they’re all different. There’s no rule of thumb.

[01:10:03:13 – 01:10:04:15]
And

[01:10:04:15 – 01:10:11:09]
if you put a shackle on, one rule of thumb, I sat down and figured it out with my high school geometry here.

[01:10:11:09 – 01:10:16:05]
Every time you drop the back of that spring an inch,

[01:10:16:05 – 01:10:18:19]
then you change the pinion angle by one degree.

[01:10:18:19 – 01:10:25:14]
So if you have a 4 inch longer shackle, you’ve changed your pinion angle by 4 degrees. And I can just about guarantee you it will vibrate.

[01:10:25:14 – 01:10:29:13]
And you will have to change the

[01:10:29:13 – 01:10:31:13]
pinion angle accordingly so that it won’t.

[01:10:31:13 – 01:10:35:26]
And that’s how you do it. You just have to get the angle finder, pay the 10 bucks and

[01:10:35:26 – 01:10:38:13]
do a little basic arithmetic.

[01:10:38:13 – 01:10:49:24]
BigGem350 says, “I have a 4 degree shim in mind with a non-CV and SYE.” So no SYE. And everybody said it would blow you joints and it hasn’t.

[01:10:49:24 – 01:10:54:09]
Well, not necessarily. I ran around with 5 inches of lift in the rear

[01:10:54:09 – 01:10:59:03]
a long time on a stock drive shaft without

[01:10:59:03 – 01:11:02:19]
any problem at all. If I went to 6, I had a problem. Because

[01:11:02:19 – 01:11:06:21]
wouldn’t take the bend up by the slip yoke.

[01:11:06:21 – 01:11:12:08]
But you can get a YJ slip yoke which will fit right into our 231s

[01:11:12:08 – 01:11:17:24]
with no problem. And it is made to take a steeper angle. So

[01:11:17:24 – 01:11:26:00]
you can do that and not have to buy a slip yoke and an eliminator. I’ll spit that out. Or a CV drive shaft if you want.

[01:11:26:00 – 01:11:31:28]
I don’t know if you recall Jim is at 6.5 or Rough Country 6.5 inch lift.

[01:11:31:28 – 01:11:34:27]
Yeah. Okay. No, I didn’t recall. But

[01:11:34:27 – 01:11:38:02]
if I had a YJ slip yoke, I could

[01:11:38:02 – 01:11:39:06]
run a

[01:11:39:06 – 01:11:42:02]
stock shaft on 6.5 inches

[01:11:42:02 – 01:11:43:28]
without any problem at all. Okay.

[01:11:43:28 – 01:11:49:29]
Weldman says, “Does the transfer case drop spacer increase stress on the front shaft?”

[01:11:49:29 – 01:11:54:17]
It doesn’t increase stress. What it does is it increases the angle

[01:11:54:17 – 01:11:59:02]
at the

[01:11:59:02 – 01:12:00:13]
CV. So

[01:12:00:13 – 01:12:03:14]
theoretically you’re going to get a little bit more wear there

[01:12:03:14 – 01:12:08:28]
on the CV joint on that front drive shaft. But other than that,

[01:12:08:28 – 01:12:12:17]
there’s no difference in torque or anything like that. So

[01:12:12:17 – 01:12:16:07]
it shouldn’t hurt it. Which end of the drive shaft?

[01:12:16:07 – 01:12:23:06]
On the transfer case side of it. Okay. I’m getting a little bit of vibration on mine during

[01:12:23:06 – 01:12:29:26]
acceleration around 55 or so. I don’t really notice it. It may be there under that lower

[01:12:29:26 – 01:12:38:00]
miles per hour. But I don’t notice it. But up around 55 or 60, I can feel it if I’m accelerating. I let off and the vibration goes away.

[01:12:38:00 – 01:12:40:21]
So I figured it was a U-joint. I just didn’t know which one it was.

[01:12:40:21 – 01:12:42:20]
Oh, I see what you’re saying.

[01:12:42:20 – 01:12:47:21]
Yeah, what you kind of have to do is crawl underneath and start wiggling things around.

[01:12:47:21 – 01:12:54:12]
Look for signs of a dry joint. Look for signs of any red dust

[01:12:54:12 – 01:13:03:05]
around the seals. Right. If you find any red dust, it’s that one, guaranteed. Well, now that I’ve learned that I just go to O’Reilly’s and rent their big

[01:13:03:05 – 01:13:06:18]
C-clamp changing the U-joints, it’s pretty simple.

[01:13:07:13 – 01:13:14:19]
Boy, it was a bear changing the axle U-joints on the Dana 30, but I was using the hammer. Same way I used to do it

[01:13:14:19 – 01:13:42:28]
a long time ago when I was changing U-joints out in my Pontiac Ventura. Use one hammer or two? One hammer. And I think I literally beat on that one U-joint. I forget which axle it was, but I took the axle out and I beat on that U-joint literally for two hours straight. And it would not come out. And when I finally found out about the, that you could rent those tools or borrow those tools because it’s not really a rental.

[01:13:42:28 – 01:13:50:15]
And I got that big C-clamp and I put that C-clamp on it. The cap literally came apart. It was so

[01:13:50:15 – 01:14:00:26]
embedded in that, in the axle, that little hole of the axle. And it just broke apart. I didn’t care because I had another one to go in it. Unfortunately, the other one didn’t have a problem.

[01:14:00:26 – 01:14:07:15]
Let’s see. Weldman says, is that a double cardigan on the YJ?

[01:14:07:15 – 01:14:09:02]
I believe that was the…

[01:14:10:07 – 01:14:10:22]
The single.

[01:14:12:18 – 01:14:14:26]
What was it that, what was it that you called that? I forgot now.

[01:14:14:26 – 01:14:19:02]
Double cardigan. The part that you said to get off the YJ.

[01:14:19:02 – 01:14:25:11]
Oh, it’s the, it’s just the YJ slip yoke. The slip yoke. Slip yoke. Okay. So it’s not a double cardigan.

[01:14:25:11 – 01:14:32:01]
Before they had slip yoke and laminators and all that stuff, way back in the day when they first came out with the 231s and

[01:14:32:01 – 01:14:33:19]
with YJs and so forth.

[01:14:33:19 – 01:14:46:13]
If you wanted to lift an XJ, you didn’t have an SYE available. So what you did is you just went down and box yourself a YJ yoke and set your drive line up properly and everybody was happy.

[01:14:46:13 – 01:14:49:20]
Just look in here at the chat room and see if there’s any more questions.

[01:14:49:20 – 01:14:51:02]
Or one that I missed.

[01:14:51:02 – 01:14:55:18]
Yeah, Weldman says, I have a small vibe all the time like a hum.

[01:14:55:18 – 01:14:58:08]
You got a hum? That’s what he says.

[01:14:58:08 – 01:15:08:04]
A small vibration. It’s like a hum. All the time. I would assume that you mean while you’re rolling. Right, Kurt? Not while you’re sitting still.

[01:15:08:04 – 01:15:09:09]
Okay, I’m

[01:15:09:09 – 01:15:11:15]
say… He says yes. He says yes.

[01:15:11:15 – 01:15:13:09]
Okay. Only when he’s rolling.

[01:15:13:09 – 01:15:14:03]
All right.

[01:15:15:13 – 01:15:18:12]
Thing to check is rear wheel bearings on that probably.

[01:15:20:15 – 01:15:24:00]
If it doesn’t change with your foot on the accelerator or off,

[01:15:24:00 – 01:15:27:07]
unfortunately our day-to-day, unfortunately our

[01:15:27:07 – 01:15:30:17]
day-to-day, unfortunately our Dayna 35 axles, because

[01:15:30:17 – 01:15:32:26]
Chrysler was being cheap,

[01:15:32:26 – 01:15:36:07]
they don’t have an interrace on the wheel bearings.

[01:15:36:07 – 01:15:39:02]
The roller is right on the axle.

[01:15:39:02 – 01:15:43:21]
And I’ve got one of those too. It makes noise just because of wear.

[01:15:43:21 – 01:15:47:02]
And there’s nothing you can do about it except replace the axle.

[01:15:47:02 – 01:15:48:25]
Or you can just put up with it.

[01:15:48:25 – 01:15:50:06]
But that’s probably it.

[01:15:50:06 – 01:15:52:12]
Just guessing from your description.

[01:15:52:12 – 01:15:54:14]
Now if it changes,

[01:15:54:14 – 01:15:56:02]
say you

[01:15:56:02 – 01:15:59:11]
only get that hum under acceleration and

[01:15:59:11 – 01:16:03:08]
you don’t get it when you let off of the gas, or if you’re braking,

[01:16:03:08 – 01:16:06:02]
then that’s in the differential generally.

[01:16:06:02 – 01:16:07:14]
That’s the difference between the two.

[01:16:07:14 – 01:16:11:03]
Could the problem that I’m experiencing be a differential problem?

[01:16:11:03 – 01:16:12:09]
No, it shouldn’t.

[01:16:12:09 – 01:16:14:17]
If you’re getting the vibration, something’s

[01:16:14:17 – 01:16:16:18]
not balanced right.

[01:16:19:25 – 01:16:22:29]
You may be losing a U-joint, and that’s one of the telltale signs is that

[01:16:22:29 – 01:16:28:18]
you’ll get on it, let’s say, and you’ll get a little bit of a vibration in the

[01:16:28:18 – 01:16:30:18]
wheel. Yeah, that’s what I was thinking.

[01:16:30:18 – 01:16:33:24]
Sometimes, but not all the time. Right. Yeah, it’s a crap shoot.

[01:16:34:24 – 01:16:35:29]
It is.

[01:16:35:29 – 01:16:38:14]
If it was easy, Cher would be able to do it.

[01:16:39:11 – 01:16:39:19]
There we

[01:16:39:19 – 01:16:55:23]
Oh, also too, Wellman. I don’t know if it would be a doable thing or not. Certainly don’t want you to do something that would put you at danger. But you can always take a video and perhaps capture the sound.

[01:16:57:19 – 01:16:58:29]
And often, oftentimes too,

[01:16:58:29 – 01:17:23:09]
when we experience something, we are busy listening to the radio or thinking about what it could be. And we don’t actually record exactly what the sound is in our mind. We don’t record it exactly, or we don’t think about when it’s really happening. So sometimes when you record it and you can play it back whenever you’re not busy driving the vehicle, it’s even a help as a diagnostic tool. So

[01:17:23:09 – 01:17:40:22]
if you’ve got a camera on your cell phone and video capabilities, you could try doing a video and maybe capture the sound or even describe it while you’re driving. And then when you’re not focused on the driving part, you can go back and listen to it, and you could always post it up on XJTalk, and we could help you there.

[01:17:40:22 – 01:17:45:11]
Okay, Weldman has another comment. It says it didn’t do it until after his lift.

[01:17:48:19 – 01:17:56:04]
I’ll tell you what I would do is I’d take my significant other – they always have great ears for rattles and things. Yes. Critical.

[01:17:57:20 – 01:18:01:25]
But I just put her in the back and have her listen and

[01:18:01:25 – 01:18:05:09]
see where it’s coming from, see if it’s coming from one side or the other,

[01:18:05:09 – 01:18:07:18]
or in the middle, or

[01:18:07:18 – 01:18:13:04]
if it’s even coming from the back. It might be coming – you might be getting some noise from the

[01:18:13:04 – 01:18:16:20]
guilt coming off the transfer case or something, but that

[01:18:16:20 – 01:18:17:25]
does a lot of

[01:18:17:25 – 01:18:20:26]
good as far as pinpointing things,

[01:18:20:26 – 01:18:22:09]
making sure where it’s coming from,

[01:18:22:09 – 01:18:25:08]
as far as diagnosing. Yeah, that’s very true.

[01:18:26:05 – 01:18:27:01]
So, you know,

[01:18:27:01 – 01:18:28:14]
put your sweetheart to work.

[01:18:28:14 – 01:18:32:04]
Tell her ahead of time why she’s getting in the back seat so you don’t disappoint her.

[01:18:33:09 – 01:18:35:08]
Yeah, don’t tell her you don’t want to be seen with her or anything.

[01:18:35:08 – 01:19:07:18]
All right, guys, that’s a – we’re coming up on the hour and a half on the show, and that’s about long enough, I think. We’ve had lots of people drop out, but we had lots of good questions here over the last 15, 20 minutes. So, didn’t want to leave anybody hanging. And like I said, Steve has already promised he’ll come back, and we can get into some more technical stuff. Weldman says she’s listening. Too funny.

[01:19:12:10 – 01:19:19:04]
Well, Steve, I’ll give it back to you again. Is there anything that you wanted to cover or anything that maybe you saw in the chat room that I missed?

[01:19:20:16 – 01:19:21:23]
I think you probably got it.

[01:19:24:08 – 01:19:48:16]
Okay, guys, thanks very much. It was – it’s always a lot of fun. I appreciate everybody coming in and getting in the chat room. Thank you for our guests. I think we had seven or eight guests tonight, and you guys need to get a Ustream account set up so that you can get in the chat room, ask questions, cut up with the rest of us.

[01:19:51:23 – 01:20:20:06]
Again, this is the song that Tom Rapp did today and sent over to me, and I was very surprised because the way he portrayed it to me, it was like a half afterthought for him putting it together. Very talented individual. His site is Tom Rapp Show. That’s two P’s. Tom R-A-P-P. Show.com.

[01:20:21:07 – 01:20:35:06]
And you should check it out. He’s got some very interesting stories on there, things that he’s – songs that he’s written for Allison Rosen, who is actually now the new news girl,

[01:20:36:08 – 01:20:41:18]
on the Adam Carolla podcast, Adam Carolla Show podcast. It kind of goes back and forth.

[01:20:41:18 – 01:21:05:27]
And since she’s been on there, I’ve been listening to that, and it’s some pretty funny stuff. A lot of blue language and several of the other colors in the rainbow. But it’s quite funny, and you’ve got to listen. I think you’ll enjoy it. So guys, thank you again, and remember next week, same bat time, same bat channel.