WTF-J

On a recent Friday morning I got tired of my PC and the phone and decided it was time for a road trip test.   Leaving out of our place you can head south to the Ohio river and follow it down south to the next bridge crossing into Kentucky at Maysville.  The nifty part is that the Commonwealth has a corresponding river road for the return trip.  The result is about 100 miles of having the river over your right shoulder.

Here’s the view back into Ohio

These pictures taken from the trip inspired me to get a cheap buffer from HF to do something about the mill finish on the body of the Jeep formerly known as WTF-J.  

Lessons learned on this trip included:

• Steering improvements are making a big difference in the feel of the Jeep formerly known as WTF-J.  Since making the steering box adjustment you can comfortably go ~10mph faster on narrow two lanes and passing is nowhere the same adventure.
• During the winter I’ll look at changing to a longer pitman. While 1-ton D60’s are required by nature to steer like a truck, it feels like the steering radius is suffering from a too short arm due to interference with the tie-rod.  It’s working great, but…
• The bikini top is a great invention, but in its natural state it literally flops in the breeze as you hit 35 mph and creates kind of a sub-woofer that increases in amplitude (intensity) and frequency as you accelerate.   Took a page from the longer safari-style tops and created a center strap out of ballistic webbing between the windshield header and the roll bar that tightens the top and damps the oscillation to ~60 mph.    At anything sub-Interstate speeds, it’s 1000% better!
• The power to weight ratio of the cammed 6.0L is such that a r-e-a-l light touch on the throttle is all that’s needed to hit max-legal speeds.  It’s actually hard to keep such a light touch on a high CG vehicle that while lots better than a typical CJ/TJ has a fair degree of bucking and tossing. This puts a real priority on fixing the cruise control this winter!