So... for those of you who are wondering what's going on with this Jeep, we picked it up from the gear shop on Thursday of last week. As would be expected, they reminded me about proper break-in procedure but also the following reminder card on the rear view mirror.
Obviously, they put gear oil in the differential and being that they were clear across town, the first two 15 minute heat cycles were easy enough to do. The first 15 minutes, we drove across the city and made a stop for breakfast. Easily an hour stop and then the second 15 minutes were done driving back to our place in Boulder City. There, we let it rest for another hour.
Being that each heat cycle should be done with mild driving with varying speeds and ideally, with speeds under 65 mph, we decided to do the remaining 3 heat cycles by taking a long drive along Lake Mead.
The speed limit there is just 50 mph and it's windy so that would get us to change our speed a lot and it has tons of places to pull over where we could let things cool off and go for a hike up canyons, just like this.
After our nice hour long hike, we continued our way along the lake and made our next heat cycle stop (number 4) at a place that we wouldn't have been able to drive out to, just a year ago... maybe less.
It really is hard to believe just how low the water level is out in Lake Mead right now.
Tons... and I mean tons of fresh water mollusk shells can be found everywhere.
Once again, we hiked around the lake for about an hour and then continued our way along the lake. And, after about 15 minutes of driving, we made our 5th and final heat cycle stop here.
So much cool stuff to see and fun rocks to hike around.
With all our heat cycles out of the way, it was time to just add on some miles. Ideally, 500-1000 is what you'd want of still, mild driving only, without all the stops. Fortunately, the drive to the end of the lake and back would add on about 200 miles to the 40 we did earlier in the morning.
With that said, there was ONE thing that was really bugging me the whole day. Although the drive was significantly quieter than it was before, now that the gears weren't howling anymore, I could still hear a sound that was just bugging me. Although it was faint, it was clearly coming from the transmission tunnel and could be heard the loudest if you put your ear close to the cup holders. Sounds like this is typically caused by something in the drive train and in the past, I have found it to be caused by something like a dust shield that was bent or a carrier bearing that was starting to go bad. Long story short and being that I didn't want to be responsible for anything that may have been done wrong, we took the Jeep back to the shop just before they closed and had them give things a look. And, while they couldn't see what would be causing the rear driveline to be causing the noise we were hearing at a glance, they did notice this on the front shaft...
Needless to say, we left the Jeep with them. After talking to ACCUAIR, they gave the greenlight to upgrade the front and rear shafts to 1350s and the shop will be double checking everything else to see what's causing the sound.
Anyway, that's where we're at with things.
Obviously, they put gear oil in the differential and being that they were clear across town, the first two 15 minute heat cycles were easy enough to do. The first 15 minutes, we drove across the city and made a stop for breakfast. Easily an hour stop and then the second 15 minutes were done driving back to our place in Boulder City. There, we let it rest for another hour.
Being that each heat cycle should be done with mild driving with varying speeds and ideally, with speeds under 65 mph, we decided to do the remaining 3 heat cycles by taking a long drive along Lake Mead.
The speed limit there is just 50 mph and it's windy so that would get us to change our speed a lot and it has tons of places to pull over where we could let things cool off and go for a hike up canyons, just like this.
After our nice hour long hike, we continued our way along the lake and made our next heat cycle stop (number 4) at a place that we wouldn't have been able to drive out to, just a year ago... maybe less.
It really is hard to believe just how low the water level is out in Lake Mead right now.
Tons... and I mean tons of fresh water mollusk shells can be found everywhere.
Once again, we hiked around the lake for about an hour and then continued our way along the lake. And, after about 15 minutes of driving, we made our 5th and final heat cycle stop here.
So much cool stuff to see and fun rocks to hike around.
With all our heat cycles out of the way, it was time to just add on some miles. Ideally, 500-1000 is what you'd want of still, mild driving only, without all the stops. Fortunately, the drive to the end of the lake and back would add on about 200 miles to the 40 we did earlier in the morning.
With that said, there was ONE thing that was really bugging me the whole day. Although the drive was significantly quieter than it was before, now that the gears weren't howling anymore, I could still hear a sound that was just bugging me. Although it was faint, it was clearly coming from the transmission tunnel and could be heard the loudest if you put your ear close to the cup holders. Sounds like this is typically caused by something in the drive train and in the past, I have found it to be caused by something like a dust shield that was bent or a carrier bearing that was starting to go bad. Long story short and being that I didn't want to be responsible for anything that may have been done wrong, we took the Jeep back to the shop just before they closed and had them give things a look. And, while they couldn't see what would be causing the rear driveline to be causing the noise we were hearing at a glance, they did notice this on the front shaft...
Needless to say, we left the Jeep with them. After talking to ACCUAIR, they gave the greenlight to upgrade the front and rear shafts to 1350s and the shop will be double checking everything else to see what's causing the sound.
Anyway, that's where we're at with things.
