Triple-purpose JK Build

[jsmoriss]

Here's a picture from our trip in Cape Breton last summer -- it shows the new ARB awnings on the trailer. I love them.



Not much has changed on the Jeep in the past year or so, but have a small mod and a few minor fixes coming up:

- I ordered the JKS trackbar relocation bracket (PN OGS170) for the rear. I changed most of the control arms and front trackbar for Rock Krawler arms, but couldn't do the rear. The RK rear trackbar was too short. Since I already had the JKS rear trackbar brace (PN OGS169) and their adjustable spring mounts (PN 2400), the choices to raise that rear trackbar mount were limited... Luckily JKS came out with a relocation bracket. I'm hoping it'll fit with the AEV diff slider (fingers crossed). ;-)

- The rear Expedition One bumper is starting to rust badly enough that I have to do something about it soon. The corners are especially bad since they get all the salt spray / slush in the winter.

- The Cibie Oscar SC's on the front bumper are also having a tough time with our winters. I painted them last summer, but will have to replace them soon-ish. I'm thinking plastic. One of them stopped working too, so I'll have to take out the multimeter and figure out where the problem is. Might be just a burnt / damaged bulb.

- And lastly, the Autometer water temp gauge stopped working. It might be the sensor or the gauge. I'll prob order a while new kit (gauge and sensor) to replace both.

Oh, and I broke my foot on vacation 6 weeks ago. :-/ I should be able to walk (and drive) again in another 3 weeks. It's been driving me up the wall... I still had the winter tires on the truck up until a few days ago. My girlfriend drove me to the garage to change the tires and engine oil, and I had to get the neighbor to haul the summer tires out of the basement. :-| Anyway, soon I should be able to tinker on the truck again and eventually drive it.

js.

 

[m(a)ce]

Sorry to hear about the foot... But glad to see an update on your build!

:beer:

 

[jsmoriss]

My g/f and I just came back from 9 days on Cape Breton, two of them spent in a backwoods camp we named "Bug Camp" - on the last night, the no-see-ums (biting midges) got so bad, we had to sleep in our bug-shirts!

And since I was updating this thread, I might as well post a pic from "Bug Camp".



js.

 

[jsmoriss]

Campa Trailer Owners on Facebook

And in case anyone else is interested and/or owns a Campa trailer, feel free to pop by the Campa Trailer Owners page on Facebook. ;-)

js.

 

[Arabia]

Father in Law

Ciao JS,
I went from first page to here, must say you and your FL are great, really nice job.
I have the same kind of FL, and am also very much perfectionist like you, seems like we are JK Cousins.

Am planning (after having gone all way thru the post) that I want :Wow1: to build a JK2D Roof rack on which would love to install a very-very-very light Roof Tent while keeping my Trek Top.

Will be steeling some of your ideas, and ask suggetions.

Keep going Man, your JK 3ple-purpose really rocks,

Franco

 

[daveh]

Cape Breton

I am planning a cape breton/meat cove trip also and will be leaving on 6/18. Any chance you could recommend some of the places you camped during your trip? Thanks and good luck with your foot and what an awesome build.

 

[jsmoriss]

I am planning a cape breton/meat cove trip also and will be leaving on 6/18. Any chance you could recommend some of the places you camped during your trip? Thanks and good luck with your foot and what an awesome build.

I don't know how often and what kind of camping you do, so I may mention some obvious stuff here...

The national and provincial parks are worth staying at for sure - everything else is pretty much a parking lot for RVs - or at least those we found. Macleod's Inverness was ok - it has a nice beach, which is great, and it has some 'wilderness' sites. The entrance is a little scary with all the RVs parked on the side of the hill, but follow directions and go check out the wilderness sites - a few are not bad. BTW, you probably know this, but I always like to scout the campground first and pick out a few sites I like (if any) before coming back to book the site. Battery Provincial Park is worth staying at. It wasn't busy when we stayed there and it looks generally quiet. Meat Cove is interesting.... Wide open, camp by a cliff, and (when we were there) windy as hell. I'd opt for a very low and wide ground tent (well staked-out) and leave the RTT closed. You'll probably want to park the truck in a way that blocks some of the wind. ;-)

We checked out some side-roads etc., using the garmin topo map, and stopped at one (aka "Bug Camp"), but next time we go, we'll definitely spend time exploring those dotted trails/roads again. Once you find a nice camping spot, it's worth staying a few days, so might as well put a little effort scouting them out. ;-)

So, here's a few pics....

Macleods:



Meat Cove:



Battery Park:



js.

 

[jsmoriss]

The Road to Myself: A Travel Journal of Reflections and Photographs

There's not much left to modify on the Jeep or trailer, so I'm looking at what and how I'll be sharing the remaining build - and especially - my future travels. I'll certainly revisit this thread on occasion and let you know what's working, not working, broken, etc., but I'll be writing a lot more on my own blog; The Road to Myself: A Travel Journal of Reflections and Photographs. As the title might suggest, this will be more about those thoughts and feelings we all have about our lives when traveling. There's something about changing the context that helps put things in perspective. ;-) It'll be about the Jeep and trailer too of course , but hopefully presented as a well worn pair of jeans, instead of a technical build. We'll see where the road takes it. ;-)

js.

 

[jsmoriss]

Time for the yearly rust maintenance. Melanie came over to give me a hand - my foot is coming along, but it was nice to put it up between coats. ;-) The rear bumper needed more TLC than usual this year. Pretty soon I'll have to consider more serious options for that rear bumper and the Cibie aux lights...



js.

 

[jsmoriss]

Hey guys,

On pages 12-13 of this thread I wrote about the installation of an in-cab winch remote. I took some time this morning to put all the install pictures together and document the setup a bit better. You can see the results here http://trtms.com/the-jeep/warn-9-5si-in-cab-remote/.

js.

 

[jsmoriss]

The truck turned 5 on May 30th. I think she's doing just fine for a 5 year old truck... Some of the hinges are starting to bubble, but aside from that, the stock components are holding up well. The worst would have to be the Cibie lights - the salt spray in winter just kills them. If I was to do it again, I'd consider lights made from different materials than steel. The Expedition One rear bumper is also starting to be a problem. The powdercoat isn't holding up that well. And of course the Garvin roof rack need constant care - I knew that before I installed it. The Fox shocks are also taking a pretty good hit. I should have sprayed them with Amsoil HDMP when I got them, but didn't want to spoil the look. Of course now they don't look as nice either. ;-)

Some small things have broken - I recently had to change a lightbulb in one of the front Cibie lights. I had a spare. I always have spares. That's one thing I've learned to do - when I order something, I always get service and spare parts with it. That way, when it breaks, you don't have to waste time tracking down the part.

The latest thing to break was the water temp gauge. I didn't want to start diagnosing the problem before having some parts on hand, so I finally ordered a new gauge, and the other day starting tracking down the problem. I figured it might be corrosion as the sensor, so started from there. Cleaned the connection, used the multimeter to test resistance on the various pins, and compared to the sensor and gauge I had. Everything checked out, though one circuit going to the gauge was reading a bit low. Then I went to the fuse box, mounted under the glove box, and checked the corrections there. And finally I took the gauge off and tried the new one. Bingo! The gauge had died for some reason.

And because no post is ever complete without pictures, here are a few. ;-)



This week I also decided to change the synthetic winch line. It's been on there for 5 years, and used many times (mostly on other trucks). ;-) Last time I used it, about a year ago I think, I could hear a lot of more of the individual strands popping. I'd been carrying a spare rope for a few years, just in case, so the plan was to install that one. Taking off the old one was pretty quick. Since the bumper covers a good part of the winch, I used a socket wrench through the fairlead with a long extension and flexible joint at the end. The retaining bolt came off easily enough, but getting it back on was a real pain... That flexible joint makes screwing the bolt on straight almost impossible - and I really didn't want to cross-thread it! In the end, I had to remove the grill to access the bolt from the rear of the winch. Getting that grill off, with the bumper still mounted, is a bit of a challenge. The other alternative would have been to take the bumper off.

So here's some more pics. ;-)



Meanwhile, I've also been working on my travel journal website at http://trtms.com/. I'm a long time Perl guy, and have managed to avoid PHP for all this time, but since WordPress and it's themes/plugins are written in PHP, I had to start playing around with it. Yuck, it's as bad as I thought. It's like writing code in a word document or something. Anyway, I ended up tweeking several things, and even wrote a plugin for WordPress. You can see it at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/nextgen-facebook/. And in case you were curious, I chose WordPress because I'm also an Adobe Lightroom user. There are a few Lightroom plugins for NextGEN Gallery (a WordPress photo gallery plugin) available. I've tried them all, and by far, the best one is "NextGEN Gallery Export" at http://alloyphoto.com/plugins/nextgen/. I'm looking forward to using it on the road.

I just received a National Luna Portable Battery Pack this week, so I'm going to look at wiring that up this week-end.

Take care,

js.

 

[jsmoriss]

National Luna Portable Battery Pack

On Monday I installed the wiring for the National Luna Portable Battery Pack. It comes with 100A fuse and enough #4 cable to reach a starter battery. Since I'd already brought some #2 cable back behind the driver's seat for the backup battery, hooking up the PBP was fairly easy.

First I had to remove the platform:



Then mount the fuse block, measure & cut the cable, and solder all the terminals:



And a final pic before I re-install the platform -- I took the time to annotate this one, since there's quite a bit of wiring here... ;-)



js.

 

[Maine07jk]

Time for the yearly rust maintenance. Melanie came over to give me a hand - my foot is coming along, but it was nice to put it up between coats. ;-) The rear bumper needed more TLC than usual this year. Pretty soon I'll have to consider more serious options for that rear bumper and the Cibie aux lights...

View attachment 108426 View attachment 108427

js.

I may have missed it, but what do you do for the "yearly rust maintenance?"

 

[jsmoriss]

I may have missed it, but what do you do for the "yearly rust maintenance?"

Just the usual stuff - grind off the rust and spray using a black semi-gloss metal/rust-resistant paint.

js.

 

[jsmoriss]

Sophie and I are in Cap-de-Cocagne NB, leaving tomorrow morning to go canoeing in the Bay of Fundy for a few days. I posted a few updates of our trip so far on The Road to Myself. You can also follow us on Facebook.

We've had a bit of a problem with the tongue-mounted National Luna fridge... It's been raining most of last week, and after a few hours of driving in the rain, the front panel of the fridge gets flooded and the fridge throws an error. Yesterday it didn't rain - which was nice - so I got the chance to work on the fridge problem and shine a light behind that panel, and low-and-behold, there's no weatherproofing on that panel! It's just a bare pcboard! So I taped off a section to protect it (somewhat) from the rain, and will have to do a better job once I get back. I'll probably remove the protective grill, clean the pcboard etc., and then spray somekind of coating on the pcboard and wiring. Anyone have a suggestion for a spray that would last?

I don't know what Chris at Campa was thinking with that design... It doesn't look like he'd planned on rain or (something like) Australia's bulldust...

I have a long-term plan that will probably fix this issue though -- I've already mounted some mud flaps on the front of the trailer, and installed some tie-downs around the front, now all that's left is to create a pattern out of cardboard, and have a PVC canvas sewn to cover the front. This will protect the trailer from flying rocks, and the fridge from rain and (hopefully) dust.

js.