2009 Jeep JKU Rubicon

24,423 miles: Autohome Columbus Rooftop Tent

2010-05-05T19:23:00.000-06:00

The tent I ordered a couple months ago finally arrived. Medium Autohome Columbus Variant tent, it's about 56" wide and 84" long. Here's more pictures of the tent.

19,023 miles: Uniden PRO520XL CB Install

2010-03-07T14:15:00.006-07:00

I finally got around to taking some pictures of the CB install. After screwing around for years with FRS (the Motorola "talk-about" radios), cheap CBs and antennas with magnetic mounts from Radio Shack, etc I finally did what I should have done from the beginning. I actually did this install a while ago, but I never got around to putting up pictures.

I picked up a Uniden PRO520XL CB from Amazon.com for $48 or so, this is a great little unit. The extra $6 over the 510XL gets you a receiver gain control and a PA output, well worth it. The mounting bracket is from Quadratec, and secures the radio right next to the transfer case shifter. It's generally out of sight but you only need to look at it to change the channel, the rest of the controls are easy to operate without looking at the deck.

The antenna is a 3' top-loaded antenna I picked up at SBS electronics (can't remember the brand), and the mount is the Teraflex spare tire bracket. You have to run the cable through the tailgate, under the plastic cover, across the gap with the cables for the above-the-spare brake light. Once inside the jeep, the cable runs under the carpet on the passenger side, under the passenger seat and then across to the CB. I think the cable I bought was 18' long, and I ended up using every inch of it.

Because the CB sits right next to your leg, I ended up using an external speaker. I bought a "big mouth" 3x3x3" weather resistant speaker from the same CB store I got the antenna at, I think it was $15 or so. Added about 6' of mono headphone cable to what comes with the speaker, and I was able to put the speaker right next to my ear. I carved a recess in the hard foam that surrounds the roll cage. This works really well and is easily loud enough even if you have the radio turned up too.

18,274 miles: Kargo Master Congo Cage

2010-02-22T21:25:00.005-07:00

I finally bought a rack for the jeep -- a Kargo Master Congo Cage, bought it from 4wheelparts.com and they had free shipping to a local store. Nice deal on a rack with a 500lb dynamic (!) load rating. I also picked up the "utility crossbar" kit for the rack, it adds two 66" x 2" crossbars, very sturdy.

The rack itself goes together pretty easily. The brackets bolt onto the top of the windshield hinges and where the rear bumper attaches to the frame. Both appear to be very sturdy attachment points. You have to use a lot of silicon sealant in the process, and it's very messy to be sure to pick up some surgical gloves. The instructions are not bad, I basically put all the brackets on and then assembled the rack from back to front. It took me about four hours and I feel like I took my time.

I've got more pictures at my smugmug site, here's a few:

The rack attaches to the windshield hinges in front:

and to the rear bumper where it meets the frame. It's a little hard to see, it's the bracket in the center of this image:

The bracket lets the rack attach just above the rear bumper. It looks like it rests on the bumper, but it doesn't.

After crawling around on a trail, I noticed that the rack has a tendency to rock front to back if you're juddering along in low range. It seems like this is OK, hopefully it won't stress the welds too much... I decided to put some rubber stoppers on the front support pillars, this should keep it from rocking too far and from hitting the windshield frame.

This is a rubber stopper I bought at Lowes, size #9-1/2. I drilled a hole through it for the zip tie and cut out a bit of a channel in it so that it would sit on the cage frame better. I applied a healthy coat of RTV sealant to help keep it in place and cinched down the zip tie. If the cage rocks too far back it should just push the stopper against the top of the windshield frame.

11,220 miles: First trip to Moab with the new Jeep

2009-11-30T15:58:00.010-07:00

Took my first trip to Moab in the new Jeep over Thanksgiving break this year. What else can you say, there's always something fun to do in Moab. More pics over at smugmug.

2,187 miles: Boreas Pass and Georgia Pass

2009-09-20T21:52:00.001-06:00

I took a drive with my sister up to Breckenridge and drove Boreas Pass out then came back on Georgia Pass. There's a SmugMug Gallery up with pics now.

Here's the route as a GPX file and a Google Earth file. A minor rant about my Garmin GPS (60CSX), when you save a route (as opposed to just downloading the "active track") it will cut out most of the detail, and removes timestamps from each point. So, the GPX and Google Earth files aren't very detailed (but they sure are small).

1,493 miles: Breaker, breaker

2009-09-17T20:10:00.000-06:00

Mounted a CB antenna today using a Teraflex mounting bracket.... which appears to be about 50x stronger than necessary, but at least I know it's not going anywhere.

The only problem is that the antenna touches the spare tire, so there's not any room if you get bigger tires. Not really much of an issue though. Going to tune the antenna tomorrow, hopefully this will fix my CB reception issues.

1,132 miles: Pole Hill near Estes Park, CO and NF-105 near Rollinsville

2009-09-13T12:26:00.007-06:00

Went back to the Pole Hill area, just north of Highway 36 east of Estes Park, CO. This is a nice area, lots of primitive camping sites spread all over. Shown as NF-122 and NF-247. The entrance off of Pole Hill road has enough rocks to scare off most people, though it's not that tough.

Camped in an aspen grove for the night, I think I was about the only person in the area.

Sunday morning I drove around the area, then headed back toward home. I took a little detour and drove around on NF-105 from highway 72 near Magnolia (just south of Nederland) to the Rollins Pass road, just west of Rollinsville. A few challenging sections on 105, it's a nice drive.

948 miles: Airaid Cold Air Intake

2009-09-11T21:28:00.002-06:00

I installed an Airaid Cold Air Intake -- trying to squeeze a little more power out of the engine. Just a few miles on it so-far, but it does seem to pull a little better on hills. Certainly make a throatier sound when you get on the throttle. Not sure how it'll affect gas mileage, hopefully it'll also improve.

834 miles: Lots of improvements from TJ to JK

2009-09-09T13:36:00.005-06:00

So-far so-good, the JK seems to be a really nice machine. After a couple hundred miles of screwing around, here's my impressions:

New engine (3.8 liter V6 vs the 4.0 liter inline 6) is fairly similar. Torque was available at about 12 rpm with the old engine, now it's more like 900... I've stalled it quite a few times, still trying to get used to giving it some gas to get going. Overall not bad at all. Not exactly an overabundance of power, but I don't feel like it's any worse than the TJ, and it's probably a little better over all. Maybe someday I'll go insane and get the AEV V8 HEMI package.
The JK is way, way quieter on the road. I have a 26 mile each way commute on highway 93, and it's nice and quiet now. Still some road noise, but drastically reduced from before.
The doors shut with a reassuring thunk instead of a rattle. You can still remove them, but they are more like "real" doors now.
Power windows... good and bad. Good in that with a 4-door I'd be annoyed trying to open and close the rears if it's only me in the Jeep, bad in that you need to have the key in the ignition to do anything, for instance if you're sleeping in the back and want to open or close a window at night. Seems like a good trade-off though.
The headlights are great. As most people know, TJ and prior Jeeps had pretty poor headlights. There's a bunch of upgrades that help, but they still suck. The new fog lights (which I think look like the headlights on the Millennium Falcon when they're escaping the worm on that asteroid.... anyway...) are nice, they only light up about 10 feet ahead. Low-beams have a nice wide pattern and are very bright, and the high-beams are, well, high. The three sets of lights work together very well.
Freedom Top is great -- you can remove the area above the driver and front passenger easily, and the panels fit in the back. No more suckering friends into helping you remove the top just to get a little sun. Ideally there would be two more panels over the back passengers, but oh well.
Keyless entry... really getting spoiled now.
Air conditioning is a separate switch from where the air is going. No idea why it took so long to fix this, but you used to only be able to have AC work on the upper or upper+lower vents. Now there's a dial for where the air is going, and a button to make it cold. Nice.
The back seats fold down flat (or at least pretty darn flat). And there's enough room that if I slide the front passenger seat forward a little I can lie down and stretch out in the back. I slept in it two days over Labor Day weekend, it was great.
The 6-disc changer can actually read burned CDs. My TJ would only play the first few songs on a burnt disc, then it would freak out and eject it. The new one even plays MP3 files, and can read DVD-R (didn't try +R but they might work too) discs with MP3 files... and I can get about 800 files on a single-layer 4.7GB disc at 192Kbits, so that's 4,800 or so songs if I actually stuck 6 DVDs in the changer. I have not tried a dual-layer DVD yet. This and free Sirius/XM satellite radio for a year.
A few mpg better gas mileage. So-far I'm getting 18 or so mpg, with a mix of highway, trails and in-town driving. Still not fantastic, but it's better.
ABS, traction control and anti-roll programs, apparently from Mercedes (like the 6-speed transmission for the last few years). Havn't really had a chance to try them out, other than weaving around on dirt roads, but hopefully it'll help in the winter.
No limited slip diff in the back (which the TJ Rubicon had), though the new diffs and axles are supposed to be stronger. LSD would still be nice, but in theory traction control should do essentially the same job, and non-LSD diffs are simpler and should last longer.... we'll see I guess.
Still drives a lot like a tractor :-)

Overall I am really happy with the new Jeep. Sure it's less Jeep-like in some ways, but it's just as capable and does it with more comfort and safety. Just a great improvement over the TJ.

29 miles: New Jeep!

2009-09-05T14:54:00.001-06:00

Well I took the plunge -- I traded in my 2006 TJ Unlimited Rubicon with 62,000 trouble-free miles on it for a new 2009 JK Unlimited Rubicon with 29 miles on it. Same dealer as before, Pollard in Boulder, CO.

2009 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon
6-speed manual transmission
Side-impact airbags in the front seats
6-disc in-dash CD changer