Chimney Rock

Today I took the jeep on a very intense mission. I do not know if it was really ready for today, but I figured to go ahead and go for it. I woke up around 9:00 drove to my shop, installed the roll cage and seat belt, secured a couple miscellaneous things and headed off. On my way I bought some extra oil, antifreeze, and power steering fluid. I added 12 gallons of gas and hit the trail.

I was driving up to chimney rock to meet up with a friend. I think my tires were too stiff or something because on the way up I was being vibrated like crazy from the bumps. I lost pretty much every nut that fastened the body and roll cage to the frame (lock washers did not help). I will probably use a nylon lock nut on all those fasteners from now on. I curse that road. It was making me so pissed I had to pull over and take a break. Also my windshield was flopping back and forth smashing into the front of the roll cage which was getting me more upset than anything else. I think once I get all the vibration stuff taken care of and the right tire pressure things will be a bit nicer.

On climbs I definitely preferred 4 LOW since I had to carry too much speed in 4 HIGH, as a result I would get slammed around.

This is all I had for a map, picture on my camera.


This is me about a mile in trying to figure out what the deal is with the road!


Here I am at the destination, decided to crawl up a boulder a bit.

That is the famous chimney rock.

Me, totally dusty, my mouth is still gritty.

I should've kept driving up the rock, but I wasn't too excited about my emergency brake.




All and all it was a good learning experience insofar as to what the major issues are that need to be addressed before the jeep is passenger safe.

I probably won't be doing this again until I work out the major issues with the vibration.

Pipe Dream

Hardware

So I've been tossing hardware on the jeep like a mad-man here are some of the highlights:

Did I mention the window flips down?




Here are the nerf bar shots:

They make it easy to get in!

Front bumper and nerf bars installed:

Back in Black

I painted most of the items that I primed black. Painting the rollcage and bumper were very difficult and the results were mixed. I will be using some rattle can paint to do some touch ups. I did not have enough paint to do the nerf bars, but I am going to hit them up with some spray on bedliner. Most importantly I did have good painting results with the dash and shift boot plate.

My paint suit became very torn after manuevering around such a small booth (5 paintjobs worth). I had to make some he-man underwear out of masking tape. Someone walked in my garage and was like "Oh my Jonathan, what is it that you are wearing--you look lovley. "

"This ol' thang?" I replied. I bet this picture will be on 4chan so fast. It'll become an internet joke called the painter. Like someone will post it on your site or link you to it and you will get "painted."

The painter.

The painter. You is gettin painted.

Completed dash.

Misc parts

Prime Suspect

After much too much sanding and not enough beer I finally prepped all the jeep's accessories for paint. I also built a new paint booth which has some better properties than the previous one.

Better plastic (3.5mil thick) and a PVC (1.25" dia) frame helped make the paint booth more like a room. Also a set of sawhorses helped to serve as a table to support lots of parts.

I am painting the dash, roll cage, front bumper, nerf bars, shift plate, shift book plate, tow hooks, windshield hinge brackets, roll cage mounts, and fuel rack.

The parts spread.

Bumper was hung from the garage door beam so it could be rotated as it was painted.

That little guy over there is smiling because he has huffed more paint and VOCs than the sum of paint huffer appearances on COPS.

Fuel and tire rack.

Here is me mixing some primer in the booth.

Making batter.

Spraying paint

There is nothing more manly that spraying a nice coat of primer on diamond plate. Maybe if I was grilling a steak or cleaning a fish on it--those would be contenders.

Here is the painted roll cage and bumper.

Here are some small parts.

Here is the beautiful dash.