Barn Door for JK factory hardtops

[jscherb]

Today was the first day of Overland West. It started out sunny and beautiful but by 11am it was raining and the rain lasted until the event ended for the day at 5pm. I did spend some time walking the show in the rain but didn't bother to take photos of things I found interesting, hopefully it'll be nicer tomorrow and I'll do some photos then.

The only photos I took were in the morning before the rain, I'l share a few...

The Overland Outfitters display (near side of the photo) and the MORryde display:

Austin from MOrryde:

MORryde was handing out these cards offering a discount, I'll post it here in case it helps someone:

OO released its Storage on the Spare components; these are the first production examples:

If the weather is nice tomorrow I'll take photos of things I find interesting and post some tomorrow evening.

 

[14JKURX]

Hopefully the weather will be better for the rest of the show!

 

[jscherb]

Arrived home this evening. Roughly 4800 miles round trip; 4200 of which was done with the failed rear driveshaft removed and running in front wheel drive. No issues. I wonder if that's a distance record for "getting off the trail in crippled mode" (even though we weren't on any trails on this trip).

UPS says new driveshaft arrives tomorrow (Thursday); hope to get it installed by the weekend.

I have a few photos from the expo I'll post as soon as I get to it.

 

[jscherb]

The Overland West show seems to grow each year and I enjoyed walking around looking at things but I didn't see too much that was really new. It seemed to me like there were more trailer manufacturers and more Sprinter campers there than last year but that could just be my imagination. I didn't get as much time to walk around as I would have liked because MORryde and OO took up a bunch of my time and because it rained almost all of Friday, but it was still a great experience.

This conversation was in my mind one day as I was walking around and it was cold and rainy:

Looks like you have everything you need to go camping!
Except some air conditioning for here in Texas.

Definitely wouldn't need A/C that day. But maybe this would help in Texas?

I didn't stop to get more info because it was pouring rain at the time. Friday it started out as a beautiful day but rain started at 11am and continued until the show closed at 5. Miserable. But the other two days were perfect.

There was also a company selling small electric heaters but I didn't stop to look at those in detail.

This was interesting...

Not sure what chassis it was built on, but it's definitely not a Jeep under there.

Battery and lighting company Wagan was giving out these nifty little camp lights (). I stuck it to the underside of my swing-down MOLLE panel to provide some light at the kitchen:

Not sure if they were giving them out to everyone - there was a card in the vendor packet that could be exchanged at their booth for the light but maybe it was only in the vendor packet.

Overland Pros was showing this huge 270-degree awning (https://overlandpros.com/product/wraptor-6k-270-degree-freestanding-vehicle-mounted-awning/) and this hanging organizer.

Not sure how useful the organizer might be though, it doesn't look like stuff you put in the pockets would stay in them when you stow the organizer - there are no flaps over the pockets to keep things in. Do you think this would be a useful product as it is? For me I'd rather have something that keeps the contents in place when stowed.

Looks like maybe they should make use of their organizer?

 

[jscherb]

MORryde was showing their new Overhead/Swing-Down MOLLE panel for the JL. They've had this for the JK for a long time and now a JL version is available. They were showing it in their JL with a 4-gallon Rotopax in place:

I've had the JK version in my Jeep for a long time and it's a great way to use unused space.


There's also a lockbox version for both the JK and the JL.

There were a number of companies showing various styles of drawers for the rear of the vehicle, here's just one example of the many that were there:

I've been suggesting to MORryde for a while that they offer a drawer system to go with their Trail Kitchen so I did a rough photo-edit for them showing what a stackable drawer system might look like next to (and on top of) the Trail Kitchen:

I had my vacuum table prototype on display on the Jeep for the whole show and it got a lot of attention.

I showed it to MORryde and their first question was "What are you doing with it after the show?". To which I responded "Giving it to you I guess." . Right answer - they wanted to take it back so their engineers could duplicate it. They're interested in its uses as a tailgate table (not suction) and possibly in the RV market (their main business). And also the vacuum version. I designed it so that most of the parts are shared between the various versions and I've done mounting hardware for the JK, JL, TJ and the vacuum mounts. Not sure exactly what versions they'll do with it but they seemed very excited about it. I didn't have the MOLLE panel option at the show (I've posted photos of it here before) but they were very interested in that too. I'll post updates as I get them from MORryde.

OO tells me they had a very successful show, it seems the overland crowd really appreciates the style and quality of their products and many of the designs I've done for them. This was the first event where they were showing and selling the components of their "Storage on the Spare" system and unexpectedly (to me, at least) they sold several sets to Sprinter owners, and one set to a camper company that asked if OO would private label them for sale as an option with their campers. One buyer sent OO this photo the day after the show and OO forwarded it to me:

The person wrote "Working great so far!!" and based on the dust on them they must have used them on a trail. (No problem, they wash off easily with a garden hose).

 

[jscherb]

I liked this innovation in hard shell roof top tents from Intrepid Camp Gear. It's a variation on the front hinged hard shells but with a second hinge in the roof that really increases the space inside. Most of these hinged hard shells open in a wedge shape, which really limits the inside space at the hinge end. These guys have solved that.

It also has integrated pockets on the inside and a stretch net across the top for storing things. Nice details.

If I were to decide to retire my current RTT and opt for something new, I would give this one serious consideration.

 

[jscherb]

As I was driving back across the Southwest states heading home I was thinking ahead to the next time I would be traveling these roads - it'll be in late October to go to Las Vegas for the SEMA Show. By strange coincidence, I got an email from SEMA while on those roads announcing the availabilty of this year's show floorplan online. It's at https://www.expocad.com/host/fx/sema/sema23/landing/map.html in case anyone wants to see who will be exhibiting.

I've already arranged my show badge and my hotel in Las Vegas for that trip. I look forward to the show and the trip every year.

 

[Dan Grec]

Sorry I missed you at the show Jeff, I'll see you at SEMA!

-Dan

 

[jscherb]

Sorry I missed you at the show Jeff, I'll see you at SEMA!

-Dan

Definitely will be looking forward to seeing you there! Sorry I missed you in Flagstaff.

 

[jscherb]

New driveshaft arrived yesterday. It's very nicely built, I'm impressed. Should have it installed within the next few days.

 

[jscherb]

Part of my original Trail Kitchen design was an enclosure; it enabled things to be stored on top of the kitchen and it had a MOLLE/Rotopax panel on the side. These are photos the prototype I made, which has been in use with my kitchen for a long time.

MORryde has now released the enclosure to production, it's available on etrailer.com and Summit Racing, among others:

It's been very handy, I often pack things on top of it for travel and it holds the Rotopax water supply for the sink. I'm glad it finally made it to production.

Now I'll work on getting them to do the companion drawer units... .

 

[jscherb]

New driveshaft is installed.

Now I've got something that's field-serviceable. The factory CV joints did last 270,000 miles, but the parts are a bit hard to get. The u-joints in this new shaft are available at any auto parts store.

 

[jscherb]

A few years ago my son bought a 2dr JK, I posted about it at the time. He really liked the flat fenders I designed for my JKU and wanted a set for his JK. I told him I would teach him fiberglass work so he could use my molds and make the fenders himself. With my help of course. He and I did make a set for his Jeep and he used them until he sold the Jeep two years later. (He sold the Jeep to Carvana for about $2k more than he paid for it ). He removed the fenders before selling the Jeep and then he sold the fenders.

I'm at the Bantam Jeep Fest this weekend, helping OO with their booth and the person who bought the fenders came up to me, introduced himself, and showed me this photo of the fenders on his JK. Pretty sweet looking...

He says he's had requests from Jeep guys in his area wanting to know where they can buy a set for their own Jeeps and he proudly tells them there are only two sets of these fenders in existence.

The other set is on my JKU... (this video was taken when Robert still had the fenders on his JK). Robert also wanted a JL-style grille on his JK, so we did one of those for him too, so both Jeeps have that grille too...

 

[jscherb]

At last year's SEMA Show an air compressor company I've done some work for gave me two small compressors suitable for air bag systems. I've got AirLift 1000 systems in the rear of all three of my Jeeps and I've always inflated them as necessary with a hand bicycle pump, but I wanted to experiment with a small compressor for this purpose so I asked the compressor company for some samples to play with.

What's on my workbench right now... in this photo is one of the compressors and most of the plumbing necessary to connect one bag. One bag will be sufficient for my bench testing but of course two would be used on the Jeep, one on each side. I need a few more fittings to connect all the plumbing together but other than that all the plumbing is there.

The black and silver item in the bottom left side of the photo above is a pressure transducer, I'll use it to monitor the pressure in the system. For bench testing I'll also be using an analog gauge to verify the readings from the transducer.

And on my desk:

The transducer will feed an Arduino microprocessor through a voltage sensor, and the microprocessor will control the compressor. In this next photo, left to right, a 12v > 5v power supply to provide appropriate voltage for the electronics, the voltage sensor the pressure transducer will connect to and the microprocessor will read from to determine the pressure in the system, the Arduino microprocessor board, and a relay board to control power to the compressor. The small black rectangular thing below the microprocessor is an OLED display, I'll use that to display the current pressure and perhaps other info.

A microprocessor is way overkill and really unnecessary for the air bag application, but I've always wanted to get into microprocessor control of real-world hardware and this seems like a fun place to start. Also I haven't written code in a very long time so it'll be good to flex those mental muscles again. I doubt this will become anything more than a bench test science experiment because my bicycle pump works just fine, but it'll be fun to interface the microprocessor to the real world.

And if I decide to do something more involved, I've also got a CAN BUS interface for the Ardiuno so when the air bag science project is done I may see what I can do with the Arduino interfaced to the JK's CAN BUS.

 

[jscherb]

The plumbing for phase 1 of my air bag "science experiment" is complete.

The pressure transducer will output a voltage that varies based on the pressure in the system, and the microprocessor will read that voltage and behave accordingly.

The analog pressure gauge is part of the plumbing for now to help me calibrate the pressure transducer; since the pressure will be displayed on the OLED display the gauge won't be necessary once the project is complete.

For phase 1, the desired pressure will be set in the microprocessor code and the compressor will turn on below that pressure and turn off when that pressure is reached. The pressure release valve (with the red cap on it in the left side of the photo) will be used to manually release pressure.

The next step in phase 1 is to wire and program the microprocessor to read voltage input from the real world using a voltage sensor. Once that's done I'll connect the pressure transducer to the voltage sensor and calibrate the code so the voltage output of the pressure transducer can translated into pressure by the microprocessor.

For phase 2, the manual pressure release valve will be replaced with a solenoid-operated air valve similar to the one pictured below; the microprocessor will be able to open that valve to reduce the pressure.

And for phase 3, if I decide to go that far, the desired pressure will be set via keypad.

As I said in my previous post, this is mainly a science experiment because the bicycle pump method of setting the pressure in the AirLift 1000 air bags has worked just fine for me for years, but interfacing microprocessors to the real world in Jeep applications is something I've wanted to experiment with for a long time and this seems like a good place to start. And along the way I'll be dreaming up other Jeep/microprocessor applications that may be more useful than this.