Flat towing

There is a lot of discussion and debate out there about the best ways to flat tow a Jeep, with regard to how to set up your transmission and transfer case.

My YJ had a blown transfer case when I bought it. It had shifted into gear while being towed and it blew the entire front half of the case apart, the front driveshaft sheared and put a big dent and rip in the transmission tunnel, etc. To the best of my knowledge, it was being towed on a dolly with both tranny and TC in neutral.

That’s almost a best case scenario. Most people are saying to put the TC in neutral and the transmission in gear (for standard shift transmissions). What happens when you’re in gear, both driveshafts still connected, and your TC pops into 4Hi? Worse case scenario is you lose complete control of your vehicles and have a horrible accident. Middle of the road, you blow your transmission, since it is only designed to handle a few hundred pounds of torque while the TC can handle over 2000. The tranny will go first. Engine damage is a real possibility, but again I think the tranny would blow first.

The best thing to do is simply disconnect both driveshafts. It’s not like it’s hard! Removing twelve 8mm bolts will take care of my driveshafts, and I would spend some time wrapping up and taping the shit out of my TC output cone deal, since removing the rear driveshaft would expose the output shaft to all kinds of dirt and nasty crap. Wrapping and taping the TC end of the rear driveshaft is also a good idea, since it’s a pain in the ass to clean it later on.

Oh, and you might want to make sure you completely remove the driveshafts, rather than just disconnecting them from the differentials and hoping the wiring/rope/whatever you use to hold them up stays put. Imagine your loose driveshaft flopping down and catching on something in the road. No thanks.

In summary: the safest thing you can possibly do when flat towing is remove both driveshafts. I can do it in under five minutes with simple tools: 3/8″ socket wrench and 8mm socket, in this particular case. Why take chances with your very expensive, much loved rig just to save a few minutes and a little grease? It just doesn’t make sense.

Note to self

When you’re using your very sharp pocketknife and you try to close it one handed like usual, it’s a good idea to keep your thumb clear of the blade, instead of running it right down the serrated portion that cuts flesh like butter.

Like all the times I’ve been cut with sharp knives, it didn’t even hurt. Felt like a papercut with serious pressure behind it. This fulfils my semi-annual self inflicted knife wound, so I should be good to go until summer anyway.

Procrastination is my middle name

I’m really slacking on moving out of the house. I still have a solid 8 hours of work to do there, but every time I go, I end up sizing cases or working on one of my Jeeps, maybe moving a little bit… but not much.

The problem is I have no really efficient way to move my stuff. I don’t have many empty boxes, and I don’t want to just throw everything together in duffel bags even though I’ve got plenty. My best bet is probably just to throw everything together, bring it to the barracks, then sort it all out into keep-here, trash, ship home, and storage piles.

Maybe I’ll take a nap and do that first thing in the morning. I really want to be completely done tomorrow, so it’s going to be one hell of a long day. As a bonus, I get to tow my Wrangler on base with a tow dolly… alone! Yippee!

Updated: a little later… Wow, the military sure loves bags. I’ve got nine duffel bags, three rucksacks, three assault packs, two wet weather bags, and two laundry bags. Jesus. I think I literally have about twenty cubic feet of gear, packed. Oh, and another fun fact: I got issued–not kidding–fifteen pairs of ‘tactical’ gloves in Iraq. How about spending some of that money on some hand grenades next time?

Reloading irritation

I set up my 308 Winchester dies today while I was waiting for some other cases to finish tumbling. I’m using a new kind of sizing lube, since my RCBS lube turned into gel.

I only sized fifteen pieces of brass because it was so hard to size them that I almost broke my bench (3/4″ MDF). Like, I had to lean on the lever to raise the ram when the decapping pin hit the primer.

Turns out the new lube, Rooster case lube, is a dry film type with an alcohol carrier. You’re supposed to let it dry completely before sizing. However, they sure as shit don’t say that on the label! Considering how much emphasis they place on it on the website, you’d think they might have put a little warning on the bottle.

Assholes.

Friggin alternator whine

In both the cars I’ve installed good audio systems in, I’ve never gotten away from alternator whine. It doesn’t bother me that much, since it’s low volume and when the music is playing, you can’t really hear it. I still want to get rid of it.

It seems like there are lots of theories out there how to get rid of it, and ultimately it depends on the individual setup and vehicle. As I understand it, the whine is caused by a difference in voltage between the terminals, and also has to do with the conversion of AC to DC after the alternator? Sure. Sounds good. I’m not an electrical engineer, I don’t know.

So I ran my ground wire all the way back to the battery, which probably got rid of some regular system noise, but the whine is still there, logically. I haven’t made a huge effort to isolate it, because I’ve had better things to do, but my research suggests it’s diode induced from the alternator itself, rather than a crappy ground path in the chassis somewhere.

My guess is the whine is coming from my head unit ground. I’m going to make this filter and hook it up to the radio circuit to see what happens. Then I guess I’ll shove that deal in my dash somewhere behind the head unit… here’s hoping it actually works! If it doesn’t I’ll just deal with it.

The reason I’m thinking about this stuff is I spent some time last night rerouting my power wires. I had used a quick and cheap route before, letting them go out one of my floorboard drains, under the passenger lower control arm, and up into the engine bay that way… but they were clearly visible, and theoretically at risk to ground hazards, though in two years they never even got nicked by anything.

I didn’t have a drill or dremel here when I installed the system, see. Now the wiring looks a lot better and is safer, but ultimately I want to strip the interior and run the wires properly. I’ll do that when the Cherokee is off the road for maintenance later on.

My damn left woofer is not giving me any sound at all, and it appears the wiring probably came loose in door itself, since it somehow got drawn really tight (probably because of people fucking around when borrowing my car), and the wiring isn’t broken or disconnected anywhere else. I’m still getting tweeter sound on the left, so that means my wiring has to be broken after the crossover.

This shit never happens except when I let someone else use my car. Apparently you have to be a fucking genius not to break shit in my car, even though I seem to get by with regular common sense. I make sure to take better care of other peoples’ stuff than my own, but apparently that level of courtesy is no longer common.

Headlamp covers are illegal why, again?

During daylight, at least, why is it illegal to keep headlight covers on your car? I want to get some for gravel roads, but it seems between the cost of the covers ($50 minimum) and the possible traffic citations, I’m better off just carrying spare headlamps!

Not a huge deal on my Jeeps. $30 buys a pair of brighter-than-stock replacements, since they’re sealed headlamp units. It must suck on new cars with the $300 headlamp assemblies… But I’m more worried about my windshield than anything. Maybe I’ll have some 3M film installed. It won’t stop a big rock from breaking the windshield, but it might stop it from totally fucking the windshield.

I can protect my Wrangler windscreen when towing anyway; I’ll just rig a tarp from the bumper up over the brush guard to the top of the windscreen. Maybe a piece of canvas, actually, with some thin plywood for support? It’ll look gay as hell, but at least I won’t be replacing my windshield and repainting the whole front end when my Cherokee sprays the Wrangler with mud and gravel. Hell, I might even save a little in gas with a more aerodynamic shape to the front of the Wrangler!

No spring classes for me

I had a few options for courses to take this spring, mainly courses I neglected to withdraw from when I just stopped going to school in 2004. That’s why my GPA dropped from 3.7 to 1.87! Smart.

Well, I can’t take ANY math courses, because apparently my placement through the college is no longer valid–I never took a placement test because I took up through calculus in high school, and I got an 800 on the math section of my SAT. Now, I have to take a placement test to be eligible for any but the lowest math courses. And naturally you have to be there in person to do it. To be clear, I live 2200 miles away from this school.

The nutrition course I could take without prerequisites is full. The economics course I wanted to take just for knowledge requires a math prerequisite. No other courses appeal to me, either due to necessity or desire.

Looks like I better start e-mailing four year schools to see if I can just start fresh.

Adapt yourself, not your environment

I’m not talking about living the granola crunching birkenstock wearing green hippie life.

I’m talking about pricks that move from places like LA, San Francisco, or NYC to a conservative, rural area and then go about completely fucking it up for everyone by bringing their city politics and attitudes with them.

The idea of moving to Alaska holds great appeal for me. It’s one of the more free places left to live, and likely to be ruined at a slower pace than the rest of the US due to the difficulty of moving there. It’s also a relatively harsh place to live, so the weak minded are less likely to stick around even if they make it up there to begin with. I fear for the next generation–I live a substantially less free life than my father did, and my kids will be less free than me.

Upstate NY would be a great place to live if you took the big cities and completely removed them from the equation. Much of the evil in NY state comes from NYC. It holds over half the population of the state (last I checked) and is so biased in the statist, nanny, liberal way that despite how normal most rural upstaters are, they have no chance of influencing politics. After the 2004 election I did some research into the matter, and it seems that for the state to go red in a presidential election, upstate NY has to vote 70% Republican. Which is obviously not going to happen.

There are similar, if less extreme numbers in PA with Philadelphia and I’d wager most other states. Urbanization is a big problem. It doesn’t encourage, or frequently even allow, self sufficiency. Cities are hives–full of specialist drones that can’t survive on their own, but must rely on the swarm for a living. As such they have no problem with statism and nanny attitudes because they’re not individualists.

Sometimes one of those drones, a bit less reliant on others than some, but still not ready to embrace the rural mindset and lifestyle, will make a bundle and go retire someplace like Wyoming. Usually they pull some trick like buying cheap land next to a 90 year old shooting range, then forcing the range out of business with legal action when the noise bothers them.

I could live a full, happy life finding people who do similar things and punching them in the nuts. 9-5 every day, punching nuts of selfish fucks. Maybe that’s what I’ll do during my retirement if the whole nation hasn’t already been ruined by then.

Dumbass car

My check engine light in my Cherokee is back on. It’s still not giving me anything for codes.

I guess I’ll just have it inspected and see what happens.

Internet fixed by bullets

Well, not really. But rather than sit around here pissed off at how slow my internet was, I figured I should go put some rounds downrange with my Rock Island.

I brought out a single target stand and two hundred rounds of WWII surplus ball ammo. I wanted to put the pistol through its paces all at once to see what I could do with it.

It fed perfectly fine when the magazine did its part. I have to say, I’m not very impressed with this Wilson Combat magazine. It feeds better than a Chip McCormick in this gun, but it also got really gummy after only eighty rounds or so. I sprayed some gun scrubber in it and tried to clean it up a bit, but after 150 rounds it was impeding slide operation and getting stuck too low in the magazine body to lock the slide on empy. Shitty plastic followers apparently aren’t designed to work well on moderate round counts.

There were also a few fail to fires of the light strike variety, which I’m attributing to hard primers in the 65 year old ammo, but if it ever happens with a commercial round I’ll replace the mainspring immediately.

My sights are apparently regulated for 50 meters. I’m hitting around three inches low at seven yards, which is fine when I’m putting quick rounds in the chest, but it means I have to aim at the top of the head for a good head shot. Most of my headshots land in the mouth area. Not good. I suppose I could file the front sight, but I’d rather just get the sights replaced with high profile night sights.

From a sandbag rest on the hood of my Jeep, I put eight shots in an inch and a quarter from about eight yards. Seven of the shots were well under an inch; it seemed like my first shot on each of the eight shot groups I put on paper was a bit low. Strange. Probably me screwing up somehow.

I also tried longer range shooting. I would pick a target and try to drop shots on it from 50-150 yards. It’s amazing how much a bullet will drop at 150 yards out of a short barrel. I had a lot of trouble figuring out the holdover, especially since with such a tiny front sight I was covering the target with the muzzle. I was hitting a human torso size area probably three in eight shots standing offhand at a hundred yards. The rest would scare him, anyway.

I think this Rock Island will be a real gem once I get new sights, grips, and get a throat/ramp job. The machining is much better than that in my Colt Officer’s ACP, the fit of the ejector and extractor is better, and the lockup is tighter. I guess I got a Colt made on a friday afternoon…

…Time passing…

…Forgot to post this before I left…

Two hours later. I went to my regular gun shop and turned in my Rock Island for some gunsmithing (throat and non-night sight high profile sights), along with putting the Colt Officer’s ACP on consignment and buying a new Officer size magazine and some powder.

I went with the Kimber KimPro Tac-Mag 7rd magazine because I’ve heard nothing but good things about them, and the Gov’t size KimPro mag I got with one of my Kimbers has worked flawlessly from day one. The powder I picked up was Green Dot, which is on my short list of powders to develop loads with for comparison. I also have Titegroup and Bullseye on that list. Now I just need a chronograph.

I’ve never had this gunsmith do any work for me, so I hope he’s good. My Para needs all kinds of work… and I have a few other projects. My shotgun needs ghost rings installed, my Marlin 336 needs a new buttplate fitted, and when I buy the Marlin 1895GS I’m planning on getting, I’ll need a good gunsmith to install the sights and oversize lever for me. My 220 Swift Remington 700 has a cracked stock, but since it’s in NY, I’ll have to have someone up there fix it.

At least I know he’s cheap. Only $35 for a throat job, which is a lot cheaper than a custom shop like Robar would charge. Here’s hoping he’s a diamond in the rough.