Archive for the ‘family’ Category

« Older Entries

The Legend of Eagle Down

Monday, January 23rd, 2012

The Legend of Eagle Down

While traveling across Monteagle Mountain I noticed that the signs of an old Indian story that my Grandfather once told me are still there alongside the roadway. Some of them even looked new.

My Grandfather told me of a beautiful Indian maiden of the Cherokee tribe who was betrothed to the son of the Great Chief who had built the stone forts on the west side of Monteagle Mountain. Eagle Down was known for her sharp features and soft copper colored skin. She was delicate and empathetic as young maidens were trained to be. However she also possessed the passion and tenacity of her namesake.

The stone carver’s son was a handsome lad who was also very clever in the ways of carving and stacking stones. His father proudly referred to him as a “chip of the old block.” He greatly respected his father and the traditions of the Indian tribe.

Eagle Down loved him greatly even though she was more progressive in her views. Her passion burned inside her and she did not understand why they needed to wait until the Summer Solstice to marry. She knew what she wanted and she wanted it right then.

On day in late spring her impatience and passion burned inside her. She began teasing her betrothed and questioning his virility. She went so far as to assert that his brother Pebbles might make a more suitable mate for her.

She walked off holding Pebbles arm but dashed off to her family’s hut when she was out of sight. The next morning she awoke and went looking for her betrothed. She was told he had gone hunting in the mountains. He planned to bring back a huge buck to prove his virility.

Eagle Down went out to the edge of the camp and waited. She waited all day for her betrothed. She began to wish she had not been so cruel in teasing him. She had only hoped to get his attention not send him on a fool’s mission.

At supper time her parents came to get her. She refused to move. She waited all night for him to return. When he did not return the next day, she decided to go looking for him. She had heard him talk about the large deer that grazed about the cliffs of Mount Eagle. She packed a bag and set out in search of him fearing that he may have been injured or was too embarrassed to come home with out a prize deer.

She searched and searched for him but could not find him. Eventually, she returned home to see if she had somehow missed him on the trail. She was told that if he did not return that she would marry Pebbles on the solstice instead. She slipped out in the night to continue her search.

After many days of searching, she was tired and hungry. She came across a settlement of white people in the forest. They took her in and taught her English. They agreed to help her in her search. They helped her make signs and placed them along the main paths, trails and eventually roadways.

These signs are still visible in the mountains today. As you travel, you will often see the bright yellow signs that Eagle Down put up in her search for her beloved son of Chief Rock Carver: “Watch for Falling Rock.”

Posted in family, Life Lessons, Travel | No Comments »

Jeep Cherokee Power Steering Hose Replacement

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012

Jeep Cherokee Power Steering Hose Replacement

I have replaced several power steering hoses on various Jeep Cherokees. It has gotten to be a pretty straight forward job. See this previous post on how to replace a power steering hose.

Janice’s 1999 Cherokee had been emitting a puff of smoke each time she turned her XJ to full lock. Although there was little sign of a leak on the hose, our experience with the Green Jeep catching fire due to a power steering hose leak made me extra cautious.

I got a new hose and then pulled the electric fan and the air box to make room. I tried using the various 18mm wrenches I had to get the hose loose from the steering box. I have always been successful in the past using an open end wrench. However, this one refused to budge.

I picked up a set of crow foot flare nut wrenches from my local NAPA store. They have a great set of tools in a nice case for around $20. Unfortunately I forgot that the bottom is an 18mm and the top is a 5/8 inch. I bought only the SAE set. The store was closed for the holiday by the time I figured out I also need the metric set.

Jennifer rescued me by searching until she found a set at O’Reilly’s. It is still a nice set for about the same price as the NAPA set but does not have the nice case.

I used the 18 metric crow foot flare nut wrench to break loose the lower line. It took a lot of torque but it eventually broke free. Janice and Jennifer were able to finish taking it out using the 18mm stubby wrench.

I used the 5/8 crow foot to pop loose the upper hose. It was not nearly as tight. I showed them how to put on the O rings on each end of the hose and let them get the lines threaded into place. The lower one always seems to be difficult and takes some patience to get it started.

After the new line was installed, I had them add some fluid and jack up the front of the Jeep. They turned the wheel from lock to lock to bleed the air out of the line. After that, they started the engine and repeated the process.

Once most of the air was out, she turned the wheel to one of the locks and listened for the pressure relief to open. There was a noticeable change in sound as the last of the air purged.

I rechecked the level of fluid in the power steering reservoir and checked for leaks again. Now we all feel much safer driving the Jeep.


Powercraft Power Steering Pressure Hose – 80290

Powercraft Power Steering Pressure Hose - 80290

Tags:, ,
Posted in Car repair, family, Jeep, Safety | No Comments »

A Trip to Mississippi

Friday, December 16th, 2011

A Trip to Mississippi

I made my annual trip to Pontotoc, Mississippi to pay my land taxes this week. The reason I pay the taxes in person instead of just mailing them in reads like a John Grisham novel. He lives just up the road between Pontotoc and Oxford. It is easy to see where he gets his story ideas from. I have not read any of them but having lived the situations, I know all too well what they must be about.

I took my Jeep Cherokee this trip instead of Dad’s more fuel efficient Mazda so that I could do some exploring. I had also hoped I could drive to the lake on our property.

I arrived in Pontotoc late Monday afternoon and the majestic old courthouse was still open. I paid the land taxes without incident and made sure my receipt was printed from the computer and signed by the clerk. We found a few years ago that is important to have both along with the cancelled check when someone alters the computer data base to make it appear that you have not paid your taxes.

I then made my way down to the farm. It was not as could this trip as it often is in December. The little space heaters warmed the bath room up right away while I went outside and turned on the water.

I considered meeting my cousin at the Masonic Lodge but I decided to go for a drive instead. I drove south to the Chickasaw Wildlife refuge. There is a maze of very well maintained gravel roads in the woods there. I went in across the levee of Davis Lake. I love the way the road comes up on to the levee and then disappears into the woods here.

I enjoyed the roads as it began to get dark. I made a pass by Witch Dance Hill. Supposedly this is where Indian Witch Doctors danced rituals in some distant past. All I saw was a lookout tower and a cell phone tower. I made a big loop and came back out of the woods across the levee.

The next morning, I decided to hike to the lake and see how the road was. I had decided not to bring my canoe since I was not sure the road was passable.

I took a short cut through the woods and intersected the field road about a third of the way in. It was in great shape there. At the bottom of the hill there were two quicksand mud holes. They would have been no problem for Scuffy but I was a little concerned about my street Jeep.

The rest of the road was in great shape. I will defiantly bring the canoe next trip. I hiked out to the edge of the lake and enjoyed the silence and the still water. There were deer, raccoon and beaver signs everywhere. In fact the beavers had cleared a spot on the bluff that made a nice scenic overlook of their expansion of the lake.

I hiked back to the house and took another long look at the big muddy spot. Being alone and with minimal recovery gear I decided not to try it with the Jeep this trip. When I bring the canoe, I will have sufficient reason to tackle it.

Later in the morning, I met with my cousin Millicent who lives next door. She told me about the attempted theft of some equipment down the road.

Luckily for the owner, someone was staying at the farm that night. The caretaker heard a noise and grabbed his shotgun. When he went outside he found that two young men had already moved the goose neck trailer from the farm’s truck to their truck and were attempting to load the skid loader onto it. He held them at gun point until the sheriff’s deputy arrived.

They told the deputy that they were give information about equipment along the road by a truck driver who ran that route daily. He would place his order and they would go pick it up for him. I hope our tractor is not on his list. That is part of why my family makes random visits to the farm to check on things there.

After taking with Millicent, I headed south to see what had changed in Aberdeen. I had not been there in a while. The Tennessee Tombigbee canals have really changed the area from what is was like when I grew up there. And the recent rerouting of the highway made it even more different. I drove around and found most things I remembered.

I stopped by the old shop in Gibson. Most of the equipment abandoned there after my grand father died is long gone. The shop building has collapsed but the welding jigs for the bulldozer blades he built are still visible in the floor.

In the vines and underbrush I found out old winch truck. I called it Rackety Boom as a kid and the name stuck. It was made from a Ford Hay truck. I am not sure what rear axle is in it. It looks larger than the Ford axle. It had road grader wheels on it so it may have come from a grader. It is mounted solid to the frame with no springs. The driver seat and steering wheel are reversed sop that the rear of the truck it the front.

A cable winch was drive off he truck PTO but it looks like some one had scavenged it. The boom was a truss made by my grandfather apparently out of scrap steel since it has some odd shapes in it. The hood and fenders are all that remain of the original truck body work. I would have loved to rescue it but there are trees growing up through the frame and I have no idea who even owns it now.

Back in Pontotoc, I made an attempt to find a WiFi spot. I normally use the one at Hardees. I first tried to connect from the parking lot but I could not get a signal. Next I packed up the laptop and charger since my battery is shot and went in side. I found a table by an outlet but the outlet did not work. There was a Christmas tree there but I was surprised to see the tree was plugged into an outlet in the ceiling.

When my food arrived I asked the girl about the outlets and she suggested that I plug in to the ceiling as well. Rather than climb on the tables, I fished around in the tree for the end of the strand of lights and plugged in my charger there.

I enjoyed my Chicken sandwich as the computer booted up. I had no trouble linking to their router form inside. However I was never able to get on the internet. I just got DNS errors for every site I tried to visit. I gave up and headed back to the farm.

I returned to my study of Napoleon Hill’s success course and enjoyed the quit of the old farm house. Well except for the trucks on the highway outside.

The next morning I headed home. I took a detour through Greenwood Springs, Ms to check on our family’s other piece of property there. I hiked up to where our house trailer had been. I used to find some of my old toys there but all that was left this time was some of the porch rails and some bricks. I explored the woods until I found the old well house and then headed up the road. I stopped at the other end of the property and explored the power line cut that looked freshly trimmed. There is a new fire station that was not there when I lived there.

I slowed to take a look at the old haunted house that we had lived in for a time. I did not see any ghosts so I continued on up the road.

I cut through Hamilton, Alabama drove toward Russellville. I was shocked by the devastation in Hacklelburg due to the spring tornadoes. There were downed trees for miles and plenty of foundations where homes had been. It appeared that the entire Wrangler jeans factory was gone as well. Maybe that was the source of all the new pairs of jeans found downwind.

Posted in family, Travel | No Comments »

Adding Shoulder Belts to the Rear Seat of an Early Jeep Cherokee

Monday, December 5th, 2011

Adding Shoulder Belts to the Rear Seat of an Early Jeep Cherokee

Shoulder straps were not available in the rear seat of a Jeep Cherokee until 1991. However the engineers who designed the body must have had them in mind from the beginning.

Scott decided to add shoulder straps to the rear seat of his 1989 Jeep Cherokee. He used belts from a 1993 donor. Removing the belts from the donor involved heating the under body nuts with a torch to allow the torx headed bolts to come loose. PB Blaster just did not loosen the rust and locktite enough to get them out with the limited torque of a torx bit.

After removing the interior panels, we found that the lower mounting points are all there in the exact same place as the 1993. The reel bolted right up and even the stabilizer tab hole is punched it the right place.

The slot that the belt passes through is there as well, however, we had to open up the front of the hole to allow the bolt to pass through without rubbing and to line up with the holes in the 1993 interior panels.

The anchor points at the roof were a bit of an oddity in this Jeep. On one side, the entire anchor point was welded in place but never tapped for threads. On the other side, the hole was punched in the sheet metal and the two plug weld holes were there, but the backing plate was not mounted.

For that side I fabricated a plate from ½ inch steel and tapped the appropriate hole in it. I also added a bolt hole to bolt it in where it would have originally been plug welded.

The mounting points under the seat are in a slightly different place than the 1993 donor. However, simply bolting the shoulder belts in where the original reels were mounted worked fine.

I was amazed that we only had to fabricate one plate and tap one hole to make this update. I really don’t understand why AMC did not offer rear shoulder belts in the early Jeeps since all the mounting points are there. Just for curiosity, we checked our 1984 parts car and found that it has the mounting points in it as well. So Jeep planned for shoulder straps all along but did not actually offer them until 1991.

Scott used the interior panels from the donor Jeep which matched the color of his older panels exactly. He had to cut two holes in the head liner to allow the roof bolts to go in but that was easy to do. He now has a nice safety update to his older XJ.

Posted in Car repair, family, Jeep, Process Improvement | No Comments »

Tracy City trail ride

Monday, November 21st, 2011

Tracy City trail ride

This weekend we attended the Damn Locals 4×4 club annual toy ride. We did not know what to expect but we loaded into Jennifer’s Jeep and took along a toy to donate. We had considered meeting the group leaving from Coalmont since we had heard about the weekend from their Facebook posts. However we passed the meeting point of the Damn Locals along the way and saw several interesting rigs about our size so we decide to just join in there.

No one jumped up to greet us but the people were welcoming enough when we approached them. We talked with a group of XJ’s and had made tentative arrangements to ride with them. However, a large group headed out and the XJ’s seemed to be waiting on someone who was still along way off. We dropped in at the end of a long line of various sized rigs including a stock TJ on street tires and several on Rockwells and huge boggers.

We dropped off the pavement near Pryor Ridge Church. We really had no idea where we were going or what lay in store for us. At various stopping points folks waved us around and we ended up in the middle of the pack. Directly behind us was another red XJ except his had leaf springs all around and full size Ford axles. There was another XJ behind him with tall control arm drop mounts. They were very friendly to us at the various stops.

We were directly behind a group of Toyotas that had come up form North Georgia. We could not see the front of the line. And since we did not have a CB radio, we had no communication with the group while moving.

We crossed a creek several times. There were several challenging rock ledges to cross and some mud holes so deep that we had to bypass.

Jennifer got hung once when she slipped sideways and hung her rear diff on a rock. Just a couple of stacked rocks and some side to side shaking got her moving again without any assistance from the others. They seemed to be willing to help but were nice enough to see if we could get ourselves out before offering to help.

We eventually stopped for lunch at the mouth of Peter Cave. We had elected to take the more challenging entrance down the creek bed. The Toyota in front of us lost a taillight that I returned to him when we stopped at the cave entrance.

We explored the cave which is large enough to drive a truck into. We had lunch and began to join some of the conversations going on around us. We learned some of the history of the area and plans for the future. I still had no feel for where I was and we had made too many turns to keep track of.

The group of Toyotas left to go their own way as did the two other XJ’s. We finally met our trail leader and tucked in near the front of the line. We also figured out who was running tail gunner so we knew when our group was all together at the stops.

We watched while some of the taller rigs played in a creek bed. We then ended up at a Church in the middle of no where. There is a small concrete block building marked Bryant’s Cove Baptist Church. I am not sure how the church folk get there because the way we went was very challenging. There seemed to be about a hundred rigs parked in the church yard.

After Janice and Jennifer made use of the church outhouse, we followed our leader up out of the cove. Our next stop was a huge mud hole. Actually it was several mud holes. The area appeared to be the intersection of at least three trails and there were rigs scattered in the trees as far as I could see. Every trail was blocked by something going on. It looked like a three ring circus.

A Full sized Ford had tried the deepest mud hole and may have popped bead on his huge tire. From the commentary and laughter, I think he had just re seated the bead using ether with the usual fire and excitement. I noticed his truck was held up by a bright pink Hi Lift.

The exit we wanted was blocked as far as I could see and our trial boss walked forward to clear a path. There was more commotion gong on down another trial with several full size pickups doing lots of tire spinning in the mud. The other group of XJ’s could be seen through the trees. They seemed to just be stuck in the traffic jam.

Eventually we had a path but not an easy one. Jennifer had twisted her ankle so she asked me to drive from that point. I had to negotiate a very deep mud hole with a step exit and then work between some trees with a scary off camber toward the creek below. I made it fine with both mirrors intact. Her Dick Cepeks gripped well, even though we had only aired down to 20 psi or so and never disconnected the sway bar.

A huge Toyota Land Cruiser was in front of us so we knew that if he fit we could too. The two of us ended up a bit ahead of the rest of the group as our trial leader had stayed behind to make sure people knew the way through the confusing set of bypasses. We stopped at the first wide spot which was a good ways up the trial. Once we had all lined back up again, dusk was settling in fast.

We arrived at a choice of exits from the cove. The trail we chose to follow the Land Cruiser on is called Parson’s. It is a step rocky climb. I slightly under estimated the difficulty from the bottom however. Next time I will air down and disconnect the sway bar.

The Land Cruiser was doing well with his spotter stacking a lot of rocks to get him through. I did pretty well as long as I kept moving. The trail was a lot like rail bed in Harlan except that it goes on forever. Like most it gets more challenging as it goes up.

For most of the trail I drove loaded with people as well. Janice, Caleb and Hunter were in the back seat and Jennifer in the front. With he ankle hurting I hated to ask to walk and spot much. Eventually I made a mistake and got hung on both diffs. I could not move forward or backwards. Everyone bailed out and as I was about to get out and see if I could jack it up and get a rock under a tire, one of the Other trail leaders showed up and began helping me work through. The Truck behind me had caught up by this point and gave me a slight tug backwards to get me off the rock. I was then able to take a different line and make it over the obstacle.

My guide stayed with me and helped me over the next difficult section. I was getting nervous because the trail was getting harder and the daylight was gong away. The Land Cruiser kept getting hung in front of me as well. I seemed to do fine until I would stop. Each time I stopped, I had trouble getting moving again. Also, the brakes had gotten spongy and at times non existent. That made backing up to take a different line very scary.

It was really getting dark when the Land Cruiser got hung on the last obstacle of the climb. My guide went forward to help them and I went up to watch. After a lot of rock stacking and maneuvering, they finally got out. Not before dislodging all the rock bridges they had built however.

I followed my spotter’s advice as best I could but I could not really get lined up like he wanted me to due to the scary lack of brakes in reverse. I was able to make it up the last rock in just two or three attempts however. I pulled to the side and popped the hood. The master cylinder chamber for the rear brakes was empty and had been sucking air. Jennifer asked around and got some brake fluid. Adding it brought the brakes up to full pedal immediately. For that I was very thankful.

I was congratulated on my climb by several in the dark. There were several groups mixed together at this point so I am not sure who was who. There were some big tube buggies that took the even more difficult upper climb in the dark. I ended up in the lead of my sub group and followed the winding trail through the trees to a wide spot where those who had not take Parson’s were waiting for us.

We regrouped and headed out of the woods. Back at the High School where we had met we said our goodbyes and headed home.

I hope to go back soon, but I will still have to have a guide. There are just too many side trails and loops for me to keep track of after just one ride along.

Posted in family, Jeep, Travel | No Comments »

« Older Entries