How's the Jeep doing these days?
Has anyone turned up yet to make the adapter plates to order?
There is a guy on the Diesel Bombers forum that's making some plates. I know he's made some SBC pattern plates, and was at least planning on doing the Jeep pattern, but I'm not sure if he's built them yet.
The Jeep is doing great, no major issues. I took it on a 1400 mile round trip drive to Northern California and back a couple weeks ago, and it performed flawlessly. Freeway mileage was 27, the same as always, for the trip down. It did that leg on one tank, fueling up to begin with in Everett, WA, with the fuel light coming on right as I pulled into the gas station in Yreka, CA. I think it was something like 530 miles off the top of my head.
Before the trip I had decided that I didn't want to rely on my phone for the Torque Pro app so I could keep track of intake air temp, and a few other things that are nice to see. I recently replaced my old Nexus 7 tablet, so I loaded a lightweight ROM onto it set to boot directly into Torque, and made a mount. I also mounted a Mobius Action Camera (seen below the tablet) as a 'dash cam'. It runs continuously with ignition power, and makes 5 minute hd video files with a slight overlap, overwriting the oldest file when the card gets full.
My parents came along on the trip driving their '00 TJ 4.0 auto, and fuel was always a concern. At one point we had about an hour drive to the point where we were getting off the highway followed by somewhere around 50 miles of back country roads. It was a bit of a nail biter getting to a town with gas before they ran out once we got back on the highway, but my gauge had just dropped down to the full mark IIRC.
Here are the two Jeeps. In case you can't tell, mine is in front. I had an issue with my winch a day before leaving, so I removed it for the trip. I liked the way it drove without it so much more that I may just leave it off and figure out a different recovery option.
For the way back up I took the tires up to maximum pressure and it made a huge difference in power at speed. It pulled all of the passes in Southern Oregon at 65 or 70 with power to spare. I wasn't able to get an accurate mileage for that leg of the trip though, because we ran into a massive windstorm in central Oregon that I fought all the way home. That made for an exhausting 15 hours of driving! I was about 1/4 tank below where it would usually be for the distance when I got home late on the 11th, but it was actually catching up during the remainder of the tank commuting between then and when I filled it on Sunday 11/23. End mileage for that tank was 25.8MPG.
Here's a picture I took of the tree debris from the windstorm at a rest area just south of Portland. It was mostly headwind with some strong side gusts thrown in to keep me on my toes.
And just for fun, here's a video I took this summer. I was playing around and mounted the gimbal from my drone to the windshield frame. It makes for an interesting effect.
