Wow, this place has gotten musty...

The latest mod to my Jeep is the Savvy Offroad rocker guards, which are heavy aluminum plate with stainless steel skids. So I took'em out to Death Valley to test'em out in Mengel Pass's rock garden. Naw, dadburned rock garden has gotten as well groomed as Justin Bieber's hair. Still, there was a few mildly interesting spots, and I video'ed them with my new iPhone 4...

I'm being followed by a full-sized F-150 4x4 pickup truck, which is big and wide. I have to wait on him a bit from time to time -- like Marines, we 4x4 types don't leave folks behind.

So now you know what it looks like when I'm out there in the desert...

-- Badtux the Jeepin' Penguin

The Six Million err Thousand Dollar Jeep

"We have the technology, we can rebuild her."

As readers of my blog know, someone ran a red light in front of me and I t-boned him a couple of weeks ago. The right front corner of my Jeep was a mess and the steering box Pitman shaft sheared right off. But never fear, the Silver Demon is back on the road again:

Because the bumper was toast, I bought a cool Warn bumper. It cost the same amount as the OEM bumper but is much stouter. The fender is a new replacement, but rather than the OEM fender flare I bought some Bushwacker flat fender flares to replace the OEM's, this gives me more clearance under the fender for bigger tires and also some trick side running lights (DOT certified so they're street legal, don't worry). The fog light on that side was toast, so I bought some Hella 500 fog lights rather than an OEM replacement light, they actually use the same reflectors so that wasn't a big deal. I had my mechanic do most of this work because a body shop would have been utterly clueless.

I brought her home Thursday evening, and have spent most of this weekend going over her making sure everything's okay. I swapped out the lower control arms with some new JKS control arms and checked the OEM's to see if the impact had caused damage to the bushings, no, it hadn't. Doesn't appear to have hurt anything else either, the Jeep drives the same as it did before it got whacked. Jeeps are *tough*. Well, except for that OEM steering box, but I'm wondering if that fault line might not have been there on purpose so that if the wheel ever got a whack like that, it wouldn't cause the steering wheel to spin and break my fingers.

The shop mostly did things okay, but two things were wrong -- the wiring for the marker lights was reversed (so it would not blink when the lights were on), and the right marker light was hard-wired rather than having connectors (because the original wiring had been sheered off by the fender when it was crumpled). Easy fix for both. And the alignment shop did not center the steering wheel, grrr, but that was an easy fix too, just grab the spinner near the pitman arm and spin away (it doesn't affect alignment, just the centering of the steering wheel)... took me two tries, the first time was a little too far, the second try was successful, the only way to know whether it's okay is to drive it down the center of a straight road (so the crown doesn't make it want to go one way or another) and see whether the steering is straight, clearly the alignment shop didn't do that. Oh well!

Now to put the new (well, used, bought from someone else) Old Man Emu front springs on her to deal with the sagging front springs... I was going to do that today, but discovered that the new (well, used, being thrown away by work) workbench I'd put in my garage was too big and didn't give me enough room to jack the front of the Jeep up. I remedied that by shifting everything around to put the workbench in the corner, where it's now out of the way... but that ate up a bunch of my time, I have too much junk in my garage (for a definition of "junk" that is "tools and supplies"). And of course once I do that, I'll need to align the Jeep *again* and re-center the steering wheel *again*. Meaning I wasted my time centering it the first time, but what the hey, ain't the first time I've wasted my time ;).

-- Badtux the Wrenchin' Penguin

Toyota is the new Philip-Morris

Philip-Morris, you might recall, is the cigarette company that for years insisted up and down that cigarettes were good to you... all the while knowing, within their labs, that they were addictive and caused cancer. They became the poster child for companies that care more about profits than about the health and safety of their customers, so hated that they had to change their name to "Altria" (I guess if you can't X it out, effin' A it out) to escape their reputation.

So why bring up Toyota and Philip-Morris in the same breath? Well... it's because of the testimony of David Gilbert, an automotive technology professor who demonstrates a fault condition that Toyota's electronic throttle control software doesn't detect. Note that Mr. Gilbert does not say -- or prove -- that this particular error condition is the cause of Toyota's problem. Rather, he shows that there is a condition that Toyota's throttle control should detect -- two shorted wires to the throttle position sensors, which are supposed to have different voltages on them because they go to different resistor packs -- which it does not, in fact, detect, and therefore there is at least one bug in Toyota's throttle control software. And software bugs are like cockroaches -- if you can see one wandering around on your kitchen counter in broad daylight, likely enough there's a thousand more in the wall behind the counter hidden from view.

Toyota can try to spin this all they want, but as someone who has an EE+software engineering background, I agree with Gilbert that this seems to indicate that Toyota's throttle control software is not as robust as they claimed and thus cannot be eliminated as a possible cause of the problem. So what's Toyota's response? A) say that Gilbert was paid by trial lawyers (true, but so what? The software problem doesn't go away just because of who Gilbert is paid by), and B), to hold a dog and pony show claiming that Gilbert's *SPECIFIC* bug is not the cause of the acceleration problem. Uhm, okay, but Gilbert himself did not say his bug was *THE* cause, just that it indicated a problem with the software.

All Toyota is accomplishing is making themselves look like the cigarette companies -- i.e., a bunch of lying bastards more concerned about the bottom line than about the health and safety of their customers. This points to a problem in the Japanese psyche that has been sort of shoveled under the covers since WWII -- the Japanese unwillingness to ever admit that they made a mistake or are not perfect. The Japanese refused to believe that their codes had been broken for years after Pearl Harbor, allowing the U.S. to know exactly what they were doing at all times, and even when things happened that should have just blatantly told them "our codes are broken" (like American carriers appearing off of Midway Island *just in time* to sink their own carriers) they refused to believe that any mere American could ever do such a thing to their "perfect" codes. I'm seeing the same mentality at work on the part of Toyota right now... and it ain't pretty, ain't pretty at all.

-- Badtux the Car Penguin

Gimme heat!

I'm not sure when the low speed on my Jeep's heater quit working, but I noticed it one day while driving down the street -- no hot air blowing out of my vents. WTF? I checked the next three speeds up, and they all worked. So it wasn't the motor, and given that my Jeep has less than 40,000 miles on it, it didn't seem likely to be the switch. At that point, it clicked: Heater resistor.

To understand what I'm talking about, here's the deal. Your heater blower motor takes 12 volts. The way pretty much all American cars are wired, it takes that 12 volts straight from the fuse box, through a relay controlled by the "Hi" setting on the air conditioner/heater fan control. If you want the motor to run slower, you have to feed it less voltage. The way that American cars do that is to have a resistor network, where each resistor gives you a progressively lower voltage, and use the heater control switch to switch which pin of the resistor network gets sent to the blower motor. The higher the resistance, the lower the voltage, and the lower the fan.

Checking out my handy dandy factory service manual, I decided to pull the resistor out and test it. The problem was, where is the blasted thing? Finally after sufficient digging around I found where it is: mounted right above the passenger side footwell light. So I unbolted the light and unplugged it and put it aside, unplugged a bunch of wires under there and moved them aside, and there we were, two 8mm bolts holding this thing in so that it sticks into the airflow where it can get cooled down while the heater is operating. So I removed it and it turns out to be a flat circuit board with resistive traces on it. I take my ohm meter, and yeppers, the connection between the last two pins (the smallest one is the low speed pin) is gone, and a glance at the circuit board shows that the trace apparently exploded where the connector's pin attaches to it, probably due to a manufacturing defect that allowed moisture to get into the circuit board.

A quick trip to my local Jeep dealer and $25 later, and I have a new resistor, and have all fan speeds going again. And yeah, this was probably caused by a manufacturing defect of this Hecho en Mexico hunk of junk, but my OEM warranty ran out at 36,000 miles, so fat chance of getting reimbursed. WTF, it's just $25. So anyhow, if you ever run into this with your own car, it might be as simple as that: a $25 resistor panel might be blown. It's a cheap and easy first thing to check anyhow, and it's not as if they're (usually) expensive...

-- Badtux the Now-Warm Penguin

What the fuck is the matter with cars?

Toyotas that accelerate because they feel like it or won't brake because they don't feel like it. Hondas whose airbags deploy with the force of a stick of dynamite. This shit that just came out where all the Jap cars seem broken is just crazy. But you know what? I ain't surprised, because the Japs have gone for that electronic shit big-time -- electric steering, electric brakes, electric throttles, electric everything. And when electronics go wrong, they fucking GO WRONG, unlike old-school shit.

My Jeep is old-school. The cable from the throttle goes to an air flap at the throttle body. I open the throttle, the flap opens. I close the throttle, the flap closes. A throttle position sensor, a mass air sensor in the air intake and two oxygen sensors on the exhaust manifolds send signals to a small computer that adjusts how much fuel gets injected by the injector. If the computer goes out, my engine don't run -- it doesn't suddenly decide to go zooming across the freeway at nine bajillion miles per hour. Same deal with my brakes. The brake pedal attaches to a hydraulic plunger. The hydraulic plunger pushes brake fluid into brake lines and forces the brake pads towards the disk. There's actually two plungers attached to my brake pedal (one in front of the other, one for the front brakes and one for the back brakes) so that if one of the brake lines gets busted, there's still two wheels that have brakes and will stop me.

All these new cars, though, they don't have that kind of old school setup. What they have at the top end of the accelerator pedal is a sensor that tells the computer how much you've pushed down the throttle. Then a motor under the hood opens or closes the throttle flap appropriately to make the car go slower or faster in the most efficient way that the computer has calculated. So if the computer decides that this flap thingy needs to be all the way open even though you've let up on the gas pedal, well, it'll do it.

Same deal with the brakes on the Prius, the Toyota that's been having the problems with braking. The Prius cars that have been having stopping problems, they don't got that old-school piston shit. They got *electric* brakes. You push on the brake pedal, and it signals a computer to start reverse-charging your battery, using the electric motor in reverse as a generator and incidentally slowing the car down. You push even harder, and an electric pump starts squirting brake fluid into the lines until the car stops. If the electric pump decides it's tired and doesn't feel like pumping, or if the computer decides the electric pump doesn't need to pump, you're fucking *screwed*.

Now, I've thought about upgrading to one of those new-school Jeeps with the electric throttle and shit. They get better gas mileage and you can fit bigger tires to them without worrying about breaking shit, because their wheel wells are bigger and their axles are sturdier. But I tell ya, there's something to be said for old school. I can't think of a damned thing that'd make the throttle stick on my hoary old Jeep, and same deal with the brakes -- yeah, old-school master cylinders wear out over time, but they fucking *give you warning* that they're going out, the brake pedal starts going down closer to the floorboard and you might have to pump the brakes, and that's when you know it's time to put another master cylinder in. But that electronic shit... when it decides it ain't gonna work, it just don't fucking *work*. Which is a big-ass problem if you're talking about *stopping*.

What we have here, ladies and gents, is a case where the geeks who programmed these cars have forgotten what the wrenches knew years before the geeks finished kindergarten: cars ain't a place to experiment with shit that could kill people if it goes wrong. I'm stickin' with my old school Jeep. Yeah, it's crude and ugly as shit, but you can fix the goddamned thing with a big fucking hammer and a pair of pliers, and it don't decide it's going to go galumphing down the freeway at a bazillion miles per hour just because some goddamned computer geek forgot to carry a digit somewhere in his code. As someone who programs computers for a living, I'm happy as a clam that the only computer in my Jeep is the one that handles the fuel squirters and spark plug sparkers. If they quit squirting and sparking, all that happens is that the Jeep stops going. Which sure the fuck is preferable to what those goddamned Toyotas with their little electric-motor-controlled throttle thingies have been doing, yessiree.

-- Badtux the Old-school Penguin

And.... it worked!

The "small leak in evaporative system" was fixed by cleaning the gas cap gasket and firmly replacing the gas cap. No more light. It went out before I could even get around to clearing it, took a couple of days but remember I'm still waiting from my scan tool to arrive. (You can read codes via the odometer on my Jeep, but the only way to clear them without a scan tool is to pull the battery cable, and that causes everything else to lose its presets so I decided not to do that).

My negligent self

Oh dear, I've been neglecting this blog, haven't I?

So let's review what I've done to my Jeep over the past month, shall we?

1. M.O.R.E. 1" body lift. This picks the body up off the frame a bit more to a) allow fitting larger tires (I'm trying to make room for 33 inch tires), and b) allow tucking various stuff that hangs below the frame (like the transfer case skid plate and the gas tank) upwards a bit with aftermarket skid plates. I'm going to start with the gas tank because that skid is always clanging on the rocks when I drop off a ledge, and it's a lot easier than tucking the transfer case up (because you need to add a slip-yoke eliminator and CV driveshaft to tuck the transfer case up, which in turn requires adjustable control arms to tilt the rear axle pinion upwards to point at the transfer case rather than being parallel to the transfer case output shaft, which in turn requires relocating the shock and spring mounts slightly because their mounts are now pointing in the wrong direction). It also allows installing:
2. M.O.R.E. motor mount lifts. This raises the engine up by an inch. This has two effects: a) the fan is now lined up with the shroud again (the radiator and its shroud are body-mounted and are thus now higher, remember?), and b) the revised angle of the engine-transmission-transfer case assembly allows adding longer springs front and back without throwing the driveshafts out of alignment. Remember, the operation of the control arms means that with longer springs (i.e. a lift), the pinion points further upwards on both axles compared to the stock location. This means that a) the front output shaft of the transfer case needs to be higher so that the front pinion is still pointing at it (this happens because the front output shaft extends forward somewhat and got raised a bit when the front of the assembly got raised), and b) the angle of the rear output shaft needs to be greater in order to remain parallel to the rear pinion (since the rear has a non-CV driveshaft). Which raising the front, but not the rear, of the combined assembly accomplishes.
3. EBC YellowStuff front brake pads. These are race pads that are also good for normal street braking. They both stop faster than regular pads, and are more resistant to fading due to their ceramic construction. They won't last as long as the OEM pads probably, I'll be checking them every 6,000 miles when I rotate my tires, but they'll stop me, and one of the side effects of having bigger tires is that the additional leverage offered by the larger tires makes your brakes suck. I needed more brakes. These give it.
4. Centric premium rotors. The rotors currently on my Jeep need to be turned before they can be used with new pads -- they have a decided ridge on them from the wear and tear of the OEM pads. But I have to drive the Jeep to the automotive machine shop to get them turned. What to do? Oh yeah, buy new rotors, and then swap between the new ones and the OEM ones on each brake change, that'll do it, I'll drive on the new rotors to get the old ones turned! Plus the Centric rotors are nicely painted. Purty!

So that's what I've done to my Jeep this month. The PITA with the body lift was the transfer case shifter plate (necessary -- even with the motor mount lift, things are otherwise out of whack) and the steering shaft relocation block (needed to relocate the steering shaft bracket to re-align it with the new location of the steering wheel, since the steering wheel is now higher due to the raised body). The PITA with the motor mounts was that picking up the engine moved the engine not only up, but moved the forward bracketry back a bit (simple geometry, dudes!). I struggled with it for a while trying to get the engine to drop into the new mounts, finally realized the problem, loosened the transfer case mounts so they could slide forward some, pried with a *big* prybar to shift the whole assembly forward a bit, and *finally* got it to drop onto the mounting holes in the frame. Remember, the combined engine-transmission-transfer case assembly weighs about 700 pounds (405 for that big cast iron straight-6 engine, about 150 apiece for the transmission and transfer case), so shifting that big honkin' mother takes a *big* prybar :).

As for the brakes, they just slid on. Take tires off. Unbolt calipers (two bolts). Whack disks with rubber mallet to knock them loose from hub, set aside. Remove outer pad. Use giant C-clamp on inner pad to push the piston back (remember to loosen your brake reservoir cap first or you end up with an exploded brake reservoir cap!) . Remove inner pad. Clean with brake cleaner to get all the old dust and grease off. Put new pads on. Put new disc on. Install caliper. 45 minutes per wheel, tops, and that's if you're slow.

So anyhow, all that's working. But now I have a check engine light. I used the on-off-on-off-on quick flick of the key to get the codes onto the odometer, and checked the resulting code against the list of codes. Hmm. P0456 Small Evaporative System Leak Detected. *PROBABLY* means my gas cap was loose. I removed it, wiped the gasket, replaced it. That *should* fix it, but now I need to clear the code to make sure I didn't mess up the evap system somehow when I lifted the Jeep, which means I need to go buy a cheap scan tool from Amazon.com so I can keep clearing it between attempts to solve the problem until I find/resolve the problem. After all, the evap system is mounted on the body, while the gas tank is mounted on the frame -- and remember, I just picked the body up by an inch. Has a hose wiggled loose because it's stretched too tight? Or was the problem just a loose gas cap? I'll replace the gas cap next with a MOPAR locking gas cap if the code recurs, then if it still happens again, I'll pull out the inner fender liners (a PITA but I've been there, done that) and check the evap system (which is hidden between the inner fender liners and the stamped wheel wells). But all this requires having the OBDII scan tool to reset the code between attempts to fix the problem... so off I go to amazon.com to order it! (Why order it? I can get a decent tool from amazon.com for $30 cheaper than the local price, that's why... and it does everything I need to do, so why pay more for a tool that works no better for what I need?).

And that's the month of September for my Jeep. Huh, now that I have no more motorcycles to take up time and money, and no more Jeep payments sucking my paycheck, my Jeep is suddenly getting a flurry of attention :). But that is pretty much over until November, when I will be putting new (well, actually lightly used) springs on it to pick it up higher, and maybe some nice rocker guards and corner guards, or a roll cage reinforcement in case I roll it (eep!) because the stock roll cage works, but the windshield crushes in and can chop your head off if you roll wrong (eep!) so some additional bars to keep that from happening is well worth it...

-- Badtux the Wrenchin' Penguin