Father's Day Hotness Causes Carnage

i took the kids wheeling on Father's Day. It was hot. It was the kind of hot where the fan is constantly working harder to cool the motor, leaving the rest of the rig to soak in it's own heat. So hot that when i was reconnecting the sway bar and my forearm touched the front differential, my body reacted on its own and pulled away. That's hot. That's a great reason to change the diff oils.

The 'black dragonfly' as our family calls the jeep, definitely performed differently. I would go so far as to say that an older jeep would have boiled over or destroyed a battery... something! i also noticed that we humans acted differently, more sluggish. We're just different when we're that hot and the proof is in the fender, i mean pudding.

i was letting the boy sit in my lap and steer, as he likes to do. He decided that he wanted to take a trail offshoot and climb the hill. As it turns out the hill was easy, lame even, but turning off the trail proved difficult. The boy turned to the right and out of no where comes the chilling sound of plastic and metal doing the dance of death. The jeep had turned right into a fallen tree and the roots were like fingers coming out to rip sh1t off passing vehicles in a fit of mother nature fueled rage. When it was all over the passenger front fender popped 4 or 5 clips and the quarter is slightly bent in one spot. All in all not bad, but combined with the more than average underbody metal on rock sounds the day was just 'off'. It was sort of like listening to Bieber's voice and then finding out the voice belongs to a male. Something just wasn't right.

i re-learned this father's day that NC heat is no fun to wheel in during the day. This time of year save your wheeling time for early morning, late evenings, and best of all, night wheeling!

i'm gonna have plenty of repairs to keep me busy this winter!

Dude's trip and oil change

My friend and i recently got the chance to leave the family behind and go wheeling. i do enjoy wheeling with my kids and family. That being said, there's no jeep trip like the '2 dudes' trip. It is the quintessential off roading experience. You take the back seat out and fill the back up with all the luxuries that 2 dudes might require.

We set out to Uwharrie (duh!) with our packed jeep and no doors. It rained. Uwharrie was totally different. That finely crushed sub micron Mars dust turns into a thick greasy mess that clings tighter to your tires than a dress on Lady Gaga! Let me tell you that this is when your stock jeep goes from 'hands down the best offroading machine available' to the equivalent of driving a Nissan Sentra through 2 feet of snow. My stock tires absolutely rot in the mud. It makes me look forward to the day the warrantee is expired so i can heavily modify the rig or at least get good rubber on the rims. We camped out at Kodak rock and were essentially the only jeepers out there. The weather treated us extremely well and the only thing that was marginal was our wood (The kind you burn in a pit, get your mind out of the gutter).

After we returned from our redneck site seeing tour, i got the oil changed at 15527 miles and once again it drives like new. It's amazing how these newer tighter tolerance engines run like total ass with dirty oil. Don't worry about high priced oil, find the cheapest you can and keep it changed.

i'll be getting after the differential fluid change here shortly and i plan to use the Lucas oil stabilizer. I think that will really help for offroad wear and tear where the diff is just rocking back and forth and not flinging up any oil.