Barn Door for JK factory hardtops

[Matt.H]

Opening the windows this much on each side made a big difference. Fridge kept to 37 degrees all day. Maybe they could be open less but I wasn't shooting for a final answer today.

Now I have to decide if I want to devise something more secure than open windows. I've got a few ideas.

Get a Trunk Monkey.
(1) Funniest Trunk Monkey Commercials - YouTube

 

[oldnslow]

Get a Trunk Monkey.
(1) Funniest Trunk Monkey Commercials - YouTube

I don't think a Trunk Monkey will work in a Jeep - there is no trunk for him to hide in!

 

[14JKURX]

Opening the windows this much on each side made a big difference. Fridge kept to 37 degrees all day. Maybe they could be open less but I wasn't shooting for a final answer today.

Now I have to decide if I want to devise something more secure than open windows. I've got a few ideas.

They make these for the rear.

 

[jscherb]

I didn't get much time to test venting the cabin while I was in Florida, I was too busy with family things, so I just opened the windows a bit as in the photo the other day and it worked fine. I'm home now and it's cold and rainy so no chance to test cabin temp here .

One thing I have to test is whether the rear vent windows have enough air flow to keep interior temperatures down. These would be very easy to use because they're power and I can open them from the driver's seat. And they're secure, there's no way to open any of the locks from them.

If I decide to use the main windows, maybe I'd do something like these magnetic screens I made a few years ago. I could sew a cloth visor onto them to prevent rain ingress. The windows would be down only an inch behind the screens so I think the Jeep would still be pretty secure - it would be very hard to undo any of the door locks with the window open only an inch.

They wouldn't take up much space when stored - they roll up nicely would fit under the seat.

I'll do some more experimenting the next time it's hot enough.

 

[jscherb]

I received an email from Major Surplus (https://majorsurplus.com/) with a number of sale items recently. These hatchets caught my eye:

In addition to being very inexpensive, I figured they're probably low quality but at that price I thought they'd be fun to experiment with and could even possibly be useful, so I ordered two ($10 for two plus shipping).

They arrived the other day, and they're actually not too bad. The blade is pretty sharp and a few minutes with a sharpening stone tuned them up pretty nicely. I was able to chop through a 1" branch pretty quickly so they might be useful for chopping some light wood for a campfire, and the hammer side would be useful for tent pegs at a campsite.

This morning I sewed holders for them, designed to hang on both MOLLE panels and roll bar.

On a MOLLE panel:

I put one in the LJ and the other in the JKU. The LJ:

In the JKU I put it on top of the rear crossbar:

It's in front of the swing-down MOLLE panel I have over the cargo area, so it's in space that would never get used otherwise.

Stowing one of these on the roll bar somewhere takes up almost no space, so they're easy to have on hand. And they might be useful some day in the wild.

 

[Bruce_B]

You can free up a lot of floor space by relocating the sub-woofer to the rollbar. Might be a tight fit with the swing down MOLLE panel. I just made a simple enclosure out of scrap wood and attached it with a couple of pipe hanger bolts.

 

[jscherb]

You can free up a lot of floor space by relocating the sub-woofer to the rollbar. Might be a tight fit with the swing down MOLLE panel. I just made a simple enclosure out of scrap wood and attached it with a couple of pipe hanger bolts.
View attachment 722144

Did you also swap the trim panel to the non-subwoofer version? They're available for reasonable prices on eBay. There are a few different versions (2dr/4dr, etc) so this may not be the exact one for your year; also I believe another small trim part may be needed near the roll bar when this is swapped.

 

[Bruce_B]

Did you also swap the trim panel to the non-subwoofer version?

The subwoofer in my 2010 JKU had a self-contained plastic enclosure, just bolted through the carpet. Not that I would have bothered to add a trim panel, that area is covered by a double decker storage tote frame now.
I miss my old CJ-7: no carpet, no trim, flat metal dash that you could mount anything to, drain holes in the floor to rinse the sand and mud out.

 

[JDaPP]

I have made the swap of panels, I don't recall there being another piece, I think it uses the ones that are already there. Been about 9 years since I did it so I could be wrong.

 

[jscherb]

On the way to Overland West.

Lion's Choice? It's a St. Louis thing, you wouldn't understand .

 

[Zeep]

I don't know why this never occurred to me before. Why is your trailer not color matched to any of your Jeeps?

 

[jscherb]

I don't know why this never occurred to me before. Why is your trailer not color matched to any of your Jeeps?

Because I wanted it to be yellow.

Since none of my vehicles are the same color and my trailers get pulled by all of them, I didn't see any point in matching it to any of them. And I like the safety yellow color, hopefully it makes the trailer more visible behind me so nobody changes lanes behind me not expecting a trailer to be there.

My other trailer doesn't match anything either, but that's to be expected because it's the first example of my fiberglass military replica trailer kits out of the molds.

I did paint one trailer to match my LJ, but not for the reason you might think. This is the first of my Jeep-tub trailer kits out of the mold; I painted it black because a) I had extra black paint left from painting the Safari Cab hardtop, and b) nothing shows the quality of a surface like gloss black and I wanted to show how nice the fiberglass parts were .

And BTW hello from Tucumcari NM, tomorrow we arrive Flagstaff for the show.

 

[fredeharley8]

I made this one a little smaller than the original because the sample piece of vinyl that came with the machine wasn't very big. I will be able to make them in the original 50's size or any other reasonable size as soon as my supplies arrive.

I didn't buy the Cricut machine to make coffee cups, but since the rest of my supplies haven't arrived yet I can't make anything else, so I put my test decal on a cup:

I've got a lot of Jeep logos I can do, here are a few. All of these are replicas of original decals/emblems and can be done in the same size as the originals or sized as needed. The 4 "Jeep" letters, for example, are sized for the embossed Jeep logo on a CJ tailgate.

The Cricut is capable of cutting material up to 4' in length, so hood-side decals can be made. Multi-color decals can also be made; I like the camel train decal on the side of this Mahindra Savari so maybe I'll do something like that as a real test of the machine's capabilities.

Hello, I have never used a Cricut before and am about to purchase one mainly for making cupcake wrappers. Can anyone tell me which Cricut would be the best to buy? I know I have to buy the cartridge for the wrappers so I need a Cricut that would work with that cartridge. Also, I've been cutting wrappers by hand for a few years now and get 5 wrappers per piece of cardstock that I use. How many wrappers do you get when using the Cricut, is it less than doing them by hand?

I have just spent the last three hours looking for cupcake wrappers that I need and can't find anything. So I started searching for info on the Cricut on different websites. I too would love to know this info! I don't think I can cut any more by hand. LOL
I'm not really sure about the differences between the two and what you get for the extra money spent on the higher model.

 

[jscherb]

Hello, I have never used a Cricut before and am about to purchase one mainly for making cupcake wrappers. Can anyone tell me which Cricut would be the best to buy? I know I have to buy the cartridge for the wrappers so I need a Cricut that would work with that cartridge. Also, I've been cutting wrappers by hand for a few years now and get 5 wrappers per piece of cardstock that I use. How many wrappers do you get when using the Cricut, is it less than doing them by hand?

I have just spent the last three hours looking for cupcake wrappers that I need and can't find anything. So I started searching for info on the Cricut on different websites. I too would love to know this info! I don't think I can cut any more by hand. LOL
I'm not really sure about the differences between the two and what you get for the extra money spent on the higher model.

I have the smallest Cricut - the Joy. I've done decals, iron-ons, infusible ink and cut some cardboard stencils for spray painting through but I don't know anything about cupcake wrappers. The max material width of the Joy is only 4.5 inches. That's plenty for the things I've made but you probably need one of the larger machines but I don't know anything about them, sorry.

 

[jscherb]

We had a short drive today to Flagstaff so we did some sightseeing on the way. Starting with Winslow, Arizona...

Well, I'm a standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona
And such a fine sight to see
It's a girl, my Lord, in a flatbed Ford
Slowin' down to take a look at me

We also wanted to see Winslow because last week on HGTV they did several renovations there in their Home Town Kickstart series. One of the renovations was a local root beer stand, so we stopped by to have a snack.

We drove by another of the renovations but since there are no Jeeps in the pictures I won't post them here.

After leaving Winslow we stopped at Meteor Crater. It's said to be the best preserved meteorite crater in the world and it's huge. They say 20 football fields could be placed at the bottom and if the walls of the crater we turned into stands, they could seat 2 million people. Our cell phones couldn't quite go wide enough to capture the entire crater...

These next aerial views are from Google Maps. The observatory building and parking lot is very large, in the photo at right the small specs are vehicles in the lot.

Both detours definitely worth doing, but enough of this non-Jeep sightseeing, stay tuned and over the next few days I'll post photos of things I find interesting at Overland West.