New England B.S. Thread

Hey Rick, IDK if anyone has said anything yet but sorry for the loss of your hero.

RIP EVH!

 

Thank you sir I’m still pretty messed up about it I plan on putting together a little tribute guitar thing if I can actually get the video and get it online for you guys

 

That sounds cool.

I was blown away when Neil Peart died. He was the reason I started playing drums.

 

That was me. I went from 18.9-19.0 to 17.9-18.1. I don’t ever remember being that low before.

See what happens when I shed the weight of my BFGs in a few weeks.

 

Could be wrong but I think someone was selling one on the BST thread

Ozzy..he's a total people cat, catches mice, plays fetch for 20 minutes on end like a dog..what's not to like?



I get it though, litter boxes are a pain but other hand I don't have to walk the cats.

Thug Rose is bigger than your dogs

Just filled up at 23mpg, so let's see what this tank does

 

I’ve dropped from 21.8 to 20.2 average last 2 tanks. Been using 93 since new to reduce pinging and it still sputters between 46-54 before kicking it to downshift on rt 70 along the wachusett reservoir.

 

Tonight was an epic, epic fail.

As some of you saw in the 3G HID / LED thread, I decided to upgrade my wife's Jeep to H9 bulbs from the stock H11. I also purchased some extension harnesses to make the swap easier in the future and remove the heat off of the OEM connector onto those. It should have been simple, right?

On the WK2 Jeep Grand Cherokee, you need to access the headlamp bulbs from inside the wheel well through an access panel. You remove a rubber cover over the back of the assembly and stick your hand in. It's not a straight shot, but with some finagling, I was able to get my hand in there to get the bulbs out. I realized there was no way the extension harness inside the boot area, so I would just take my chances that the H9 bulbs wouldn't heat up the stock connectors too much.

I get the driver side in without issue after modifying the tabs. I go to put the passenger side bulb in and I miss the bulb opening and the bulb falls down into the opening. No biggie, I'll grab it. It falls into the GD headlight, under the projector where there's absolutely no way I can access it. I grab my magnetic grabber and I just simply cannot find it. So I give up and put the stock bulb in. Knowing there's a difference in wattage between the bulbs, I pull the H9 out of the driver's side and go back to the original bulbs. I figure I can order another H9 for $10 and be done with it. I refit all the sealing boots and whatnot and go to shut the hood, right onto the H9 from the driver's side.

So, that's how I ruin $20 worth of bulbs with nothing to show for it. My stupid problem was putting the bulbs in without the pigtails connected. Had I done that, I wouldn't have lost a bulb. So now I don't know if I want to buy another pair of H9s, a set of high efficiency H11s so I don't have to worry about bulb modifications and heat, or just saw screw it and just run the stock bulbs until the burn out and deal with it then.

So much fail, so little time.

 

GGGRRRRRR

IDK for sure but I have a set of HIDs I got here a while ago, not sure what the bulb size is but LMK

 

I've heard the nightmare stories about how much fun it is to change the bulbs in the new Grand Cherokee. I really don't understand why manufacturers do shit like this, make the maintenance crap accessible. Changing a fukin headlight bulb shouldn't be a production, it should be a 5 minute job. You shouldn't have to pull fender liners or batteries. It's getting obnoxious how intentionally difficult modern vehicles are becoming to work on.

My vote, drop in a set of LEDs and never change them for the life of the vehicle.

 

Morning, all. Happy Thursday 2.0

I'm down around 10 right now
I've been doing so much towing the last few weeks that I'm kicking myself for not buying the diesel. Realistically I don't need one; They're a BIG expense to upgrade to and even with the small Hemi my truck will get a 15k load rolling and keep it at speed without too much trouble. But it'd be a lot easier with 800 ft/lbs.

Drove past a newish F150 Lariat the other day that had a burnt LED. Passenger side low beam

 

Probably even easier if you get the Ford with over 1,000 ft lbs, just sayin

I'm sure that LED is expensive as hell to fix. I'm not sure the LEDs come out, I think it's all integral to the housing. I very much prefer my drop in kit to that option!

 

When the headlights are rated for 250 hours or so, yeah you should make that accessible. Blame Fiat, my 2004 GC was wicked easy to work on. I ripped out and replaced a radiator, took me 30 minutes.

Go check out the headlight thread, LEDs aren't bad in projector housings but a halogen bulb is still better. I am currently running 3000k HIDs dropped into projector housings on a stock 3G, decent setup but will probably sell these off on facebook for a few bucks and just put in halogens. They're getting better and if they're "good enough" for you, awesome. Someone blew one out wheeling though because the dust borked the fan on his, so they have their minuses too.

Yup. Blew my mind that LEDs in the 3G tacoma were only a 500 dollar thing from the factory. They don't go out as much but when they do, it's the whole housing that has to be replaced. My lights are 20 bucks for a pair (and decent halogen lights are similarly only about 20 bucks for a pair). I have burned out ONE HID light and I've been using them for about 5 years between my mazda and now my tacoma (both H11 )

 

Hopefully that's uncommon! One of the reasons I wanted a Lariat this time around was because of my horrible XLT headlights. These are so much better.

The girlfriend's Mazda is part of a recall for the LED headlights because the DRLs are known to fail. She had it looked at months ago and they said the lead time on new headlights would put her into October or November, so they should have them soon. Hers are both really dim and flicker but the low and high beams are fine.

 

Manufacturers know that their money is now in the service dept and making vehicles impossible to do basic stuff just guarantees a steady flow of income

 

I have a BSME and 90% of my work on a vehicle is figuring out how it comes apart and/or breaking it loose (that part is thanks to New England). 10% is actual work, 90% is "HOW THE HELL CAN EVEN A ROBOT ASSEMBLE THIS!?"

That and when I did a new faucet in my kitchen, genuinely don't know how that thing went in or was supposed to come out, I used a sawzall eventually, and still even after getting it out there was no "AH! There was a notch there" moment. Genuinely, no idea how it was installed, unless the granite countertop was formed around it over the past 3 million years.



It's also consumer driven, not all on the manufacturers for designing it that way. We want giant touch screens that control climate and LED headlights and computerized this that and the other thing.

 

Yes, we need those things, why, I don’t know.
It’s like the computer/tech industry. Make it so the end user can not work on.

 

I tried changing the headlights in my wifes outback. Struggled for a half hour trying to figure it out. Went inside and did a quick google, and the tech instructions say to turn the wheel, remove the wheel well liner, and access it through there. I attempted and struggled, and said fuck it. Had the dealer do it when they were fixing a recall on it.

 

I have a TRD OR 2020. I wanted bell and whistle 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and etc. I didn't get any packages but I have the Android/Apple HU, auto high beam (I have used those ONCE as a gimmick...)

BUT after this truck, I'm going for bare bones everything. As long as it has heat and air conditioning, and windows go down, I'll be happy.

Credit where it's due. That's how my Mazda 3 fogs were, I can reach down through the bay to get to my Tacoma fogs. Thank god. Those took 2 minutes to do both.

 

Appreciate the offer, but I'm not interested in doing an HID in a non-HID housing.

Until an LED bulb can outperform a performance halogen bulb, or even an H9, I'll stick to halogen. Jeep has an HID option for the JGC which I'm kicking myself I didn't do back when I bought it (but if you remember the story of how I ended up with this one, it makes sense). I looked into how much and how plug and play the setup is and it was something like just under $2,000

I love my LED headlamps on the truck. I'd do it again in a heartbeat, cost be damned. The output is that much better. I have to believe with OEM quality barring an outlier, I'll get at least 10 years out of these. I've still got my OEMs in a box if I need to swap them in temporarily.

You've had a good run with HID. The only HID I had good luck with was the OEM HID in my STi. The retrofitted projects in my C5 came out and got sold because they never worked how I wanted them to, the HID kit in my fogs didn't work out of the box and causes interference in the radio now that they're installed, and the HID roof lights have been nothing but a PITA since Day 1. I'll never go near non-OEM HID again.

 

Honestly if I went back to a Ford it'd probably just be the 7.3 Godzilla motor. It's only an extra $2k to get into one vs $10+ for the diesel, and the videos I've seen of it towing heavy indicate that it's a beast. I saw the TFL truck guys did an Ike Gauntlet run with it and it had basically a perfect score up the hill. Towing this frequently is a fluke for me, so if I wasn't doing it at the very moment that I went in to trade up I'd have a really hard time justifying that extra cost for the diesel.