Just the two following updates tonight.  I’m gonna fix some food and relax tonight!

Today, May 15th, the Boise Foothills gods opened the gate at 8th South, which allows for four wheel drive vehicles to head up into the Boise Hills from 8th Street.

So, with the 82 degree weather, it seemed liked a perfect day to drive the mountain. Besides, my new tire carrier needed testing.

Taking off about 2pm, it took about a half hour from the base of 8th street to get near the summit, where a bypass road allows travel along the mountain ridge both east and west.  Along the way, at one point I heard the passenger front tire collide with portion of the fender that sticks out too far.  It make a very loud crunch and I saw the entire right side of the front clip lift a few inches.  Clearly a design flaw!  I got out to check out things out and my initial assessment was that nothing got damaged.

So, I hopped back into the jeep, drove upwards and, instead of reaching that bypass road,  I chose to take a mini 4×4 trail off to the side to checkout the vista that is right before the bypass.  That’s when things went a bit awry.

At this point, I got out and checked the fender more closely.  You can see in the pic that a crack has appeared across the fender … oops!  Moreover, there was some damage underneath the fender.  No worries though, I can repair it all; it just accelerates the need to fix the ‘header bumpout’ on both fenders.

So, after checking out the fenders, I snapped some pics, got back in the Jeep, and, to my amazement, had a problem getting it started.  The engine that was running perfect up to that point chose that moment to suffer some altitude sickness (it’s about 6000 ft there).   It just stopped starting and running normally.  And, without a clutch to feather, I had to rev the engine, drop it into reverse, and try to spin the jeep around so that I could point it down the tricky hill.

To make a long story short, I restarted the engine many times and feared the battery would die before I could get the engine working long enough to spin it around.  However, I did manage to get the jeep pointed downhill and, thankfully, did not kill the battery; but it was far too close.  So, I need to develop a strategy for managing the carb at those higher levels as there are many places at that altitude left to explore.

Here are some pics from where I stopped.  You can see how the trail disappears in back of it. I had to spin the jeep 180 degrees and get it pointed down the steep incline.

Here’s the crack …

Here’s a shot of the carrier with the jack tied on to the back.  I’ve got a solution for bolting the jack onto the carrier, but I’ll highlight that in an upcoming post.

Here’s me with some seriously ruffled hair enjoying the view.  I have yet to discover the jeep won’t start easily.

Here’s a panorama.

Among those odd-n-end projects I’ve been meaning to complete is the tire carrier.  Since I don’t foresee installing a rear seat in the near future, I decided to build a carrier that would blend in with the roll cage in a way that the tire would be inside the rear area when I install a top (another odd-n-end to-be-done project).

My first decision was to utilize the same strategy for the carrier I used for the rear view mirror:  cut a piece of roll bar tubing in half and use that as a mount to tie into the roll cage. I also wanted the carrier removable in case I wanted to add a rear seat and put the spare tire on the rear bumper.

In this pic I cut a section of tubing in half and then cut one of the halves into two pieces:

After widening them slightly, I have tested all three pieces on the roll bar:

On the longer of the three pieces, I have fashioned two sections of tube that will attach to the piece:

This tire mount was in terrible shape, so I decided to cut off the top piece and work from it:

Here, I have cut the mounting plate and have prepared some rectangular tubing for attachment to the plate.

You can see here that I have welded the tubes onto the half tubing.  I also ground the square tubing pieces and welded those onto the round tubes.  In addition, I welded the carrier plate onto the tubing pieces. Finally, I have added the lower bar and cut the tubes so they will conect to the bar:

Here are some pics of the finished product.  Again, the carrier plate isn’t perfect, but I saw no need to waste it and it works perfectly fine.