Monday, February 25, 2008

YBOD3 Modifcations

I thought I'd share a few photos with you of the new and improved YBOD3 following its recent face lift at the hands of the boy's down at ICON.

As you may (if you care to look carefully enough) notice I have had a new steel bumper, Alu bash plate to protect the engine/radiator and a 2 inch dobinson lift kit fitted.



And doesn't she look mighty fine with it?

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Its Offically Easter

Well it must be officially nearly be easter because as I spotted (and consumed) my first creme eggs of the year during the weekly shop at "Erm Sirs a Queen" Spinnies.

There are plenty of old wives tales and saying about when things start such as swallows and summer, The end of Halloween and Christmas etc. For me the appearance of the first creme eggs heralds the start of Easter. Now when I stil lived back in blighty it was getting quite annoying that you could get a creme eggs almost all year round. However, upon moving to the snad pit it was a great novelty to find that you couldn't buy them all year round, and that I could once again get a little bit excited in a supermarket at the first site of them......and there are not that many other situations whereby I could be excited in a supermarket without getting arrested ;0q

Anyway, I spotted the chocoloty treats this week and grab two and with giddy excitement headed for the till. While packing the shopping I put the eggs to one side so I knew where they are for the car journey home and packed the rest of the shopping. With the bags packed I started to walk away when the girl on the till called me back saying "Sir, I still have your balls in my hand".

Oh boy, another thought to be excited about in a supermarket!!

Saturday, February 16, 2008

FJ Cruiser or RC Cruiser?

On this weekends desert outing there had been suggestions that with the addition of my fishing rod and flag that the FJ now looks a little like a radio controlled car. What do you reckon? I'l let you be the judge but either way sh e looks VERY sexy if you ask me:

Donut Day - Part 2

Having now gotten over the initial excitement of the fact that the donut button now works I guess its only fair to come clean and admit that as well as some wicked kick ass donuts (which were of course much better than Mr Baileys!!) we did do a few hours of dune bashing.....and during this I may have.....erm.......come a little unstuck.

But before I go into details I feel it only fair to offer in my defense that when in the desert you don;t really learn about you or your cars limitations until you really push the envelop. Therefore if you go out every time without ever getting a little stuck, well then you are not only being very boring but you are also resting in your comfort zone, failing to perform to your full potential. So to all those off roaders out there who don't get stuck, ever, you are either an out an out lair lair pants on fire or you need to get out there an push yourself and your machine!!

Anyway, back to business. And I am proud to say that, while following Mr Bailey up a set of dunes he did in fact get stuck on the dune ahead of me, but was (VERY) lucky to have been able to reverse back out. However, as a result of him blocking the way ahead I had to break on the preceding down slope. Upshot was that once Mr Bailey had moved his rollerskate out of the way I wasn't able to get enough run up to get over the dune first time. As a result I ended up beaching the FJ a little.....resulting in her getting.......well......a little stuck........and of course me then learning and pushing my performance envelop that bit further.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it!!

Here are the pictures:



And yes, Mr Bailey did have to pull me out. I guess the two inch lift kit just means 2 inchs deeper to dig when you get stuck.

DONUT DAY!!!

Well, following the completion of the "Locker Hack" a few of us headed out into the desert for a blast. But did the hack work?




I think its safe to say it was a roaring success!!

Friday, February 15, 2008

Donuts are on me!!

Following a through read of the locker hack instructions on FJ Cruiser World I have now enabled my trucks to do DONUTS!!!!! And does she do them sweet!!

Although Regreb's instructions were clear enough for me to complete the hack I thought I'd share a few photos of the steps to help others along the way to here goes:

Step 1: Remove the drivers side sill trim - it is straight forward, jsust wiggle and pull to get it off, no screws, just clips:



Step 2: Remove the foot rest (I'm doing this in an automatic so not sure how it looks in a manual). Again, just grab it and pull. Its only cliped on.



Step 3: Next step is to take the side panel off the drivers foot well, because behind there is all the electrical gizmotry. This is held on by on screw/knob which can be undone by hand. Then pull the side panel off.



Step 4: With all the panels now removed you should be to get your head right down in the foot well and look up the inside of the panels you have just removed. You should see loads of wires and a few blue boxes into which the wires are connected. The one you are looking for is right up at the top and is about the size of a cigarette packet. Reach up inside and unscrew this blue box from the metalwork.



Step 5: Take a look at the blue box and you will see that the wires go into the bottom of the blue box via a white clip. Un-clip that and the box should be completely free now. Take it out and put it somewhere safe.

Step 6: This is an extra step we added to Regreb's method. We prepared a short length of wire with a femal wire splice connector at one end and a loop at the other. This will later become the earth. Screw the blue box back in place but with the loop end of the new earthwire you have made looped on to the screw holding the blue box on to the metalworks.



Step 7: Moving now to the plastic clip you removed from the blue box. Take a close look and you will see a white cable with a blue stripe running along it. It will be connected to pin number 8 on the white connector. This is the one you need to cut. As Regreb says, look plenty of times and be sure you have the right one before cutting. Cut it as far back along the wire as you can, away from the clip end. Cut the wire and now connect a male wire splice connector to both ends of the now cut wire.



Step 8. Take the end of the white/blue wire leading out of the white connector and clip this on to the earth wire you connected to the screw on the blue box in step 6. This has now earthed the wire as per regreb's original instructions.



And that's it, job done. You can put everything back together, reversing Steps 3 to 1 and go out donutting!! Just get to your favourate donut place. Leave it in 2WD, hit the Rear Diff Lock button and floor it!!!

Thanks to Regreb for your original post, and Richard for your help putting it all in to action and look forward to out donutting you tomorrow in the desert!!

YBOD.

P.S. In case you were wondering, the reason we put a mae splice connector on both ends of the white/blue wire when we cut it was so that in the future, if i want to change the wiring back to the original arrangement all I need do is disconnect the white/blue wire from the earth and plug it back into the other part of hte white blue and hey presto you are restored to factory default.

Sunday, February 10, 2008

Early Dawn Rise

Now I'm not one to turn down a chance to go off roading so I hooked up with Bob-down-under to head into the desert for a bit of fun around pink rock. I was really looking forward to this until Bob mentioned the start time.....6am and DragonMart Eppco!!

Still, off roading is off roading so up we got and off we went, and I have to admit, it was worth it for the breakfast/coffee on the dune watching the sun come up:


Although as I am sure my co-pilot will verify it was fairly chilly at that time in the morning even here in the sand pit. After coffee we headed off for a few dunes:

and we even let Brendan have a ride in the YBOD3.......only for him to get it VERY stuck:


But after recovering brendan from the truck (Prising his white knuckles off the steering wheel), and the truck from the dune we carried on. We made it across to pink rock


and on to a run up big red, which of the course the FJ handled with ease:

but wait, not everybody made it to the top of big red, did they Mr Head?


The Wireless Wide World of Webs Access – if you have a card.

I was off work sick today but due to demands from home I had to leave the house and go and work in the Emirates Tower Shopping Maul coffee shop for a few hours while I acted as waiting chauffeur service for the hairdressed to be.

While there I took along my lap top so that I could carry on working while there. I sat down for a bucket of sweet caffeineness and looked forward to using their wifi connection to the wide world of webs. When I asked the log on detail I was told about a Fantastic Service Introduced For My Benefit (FSIFMB) whereby Etisalat provide a WIFI hotspot in the Maul. Brilliant!! I thought, a FSIFMB that actually was a FSIFMB…….or so I thought.
“What is the cost” I asked,
“Oh, standard charge sir”.
“What is that standard charge I’d like to use it”.
The seller looked confused and said
“Standard Etisalat charge”
“Which is?”
“I don’t know sir you would have to check on their web page”
“What, the web page I could look at once you have given me access to your Hot Spot?”
“Yes sir” [big cheesy smile designed presumably to make me feel I have been helped]
“Erm….if you don’t know how much it is how do you know how much to charge me?”
“I don’t charge you sir,
“well who does?”
“Etisalat sir”
“OOoookkkaaayyyyyy…..erm…..so how do I get on-line”
“With your iConnect account”
“And how do I get one of those?”
“Simple sir, from Etisalat”
“Aaaahh, so can you sell me one of Etisalat’s account cards?”
“No sir, from Etisalat”
“But do you sell them, or do they have a desk here in the Maul?”
“Oh no sir, you must go to Etisalat and sign up for an account”
“And where can I do that?”
“At any of their offices, Defence Roundabout is the nearest”

So this FSIFMB turned out to be not so fantastic. In order to use the FSIFMB I need to drive about 10km up the road, take out an account, await my card, card credit on to my card and then come back to the caffine emporium…..all of which would take hours at the very least.

Yet again another case of a nice idea killed by being converted into a Dubai FSIFMB.

Suffice to say I took my coffee and worked “offline” of the wide world of webs.

Saturday, February 9, 2008

Donuts!!

Well, with the Tiger n my tank project abandoned time to turn my attention back to my faourate toy of all....the FJ Cruiser (YBOD3)

Now, when we go out into the desert the best end to teh day is to pop a few donuts on a gravel pan, and boy is it fun.















However, since buying YBOD3 I have had to watch with envy at the Jeeps doing this because YBOD3 has allsorts of whistles and bells that make it all safe a stable and won't slip and slide. We have ATrack, VSR and traction control.

However, I have jsut been reading with interest on FJ Cruiser Owners.com that there is a way around this. Details are at:

http://www.fjcruiserforums.com/forums/4x4-off-road-tech/15923-rear-locker-modification.html

Apparently it works by allowing you to engage rear diff lock in any mode (normally only available in 4WD mode). By activating this you lock the rear diff thus allowing the back wheels to spin and has the added advantage that it automatically disables all the other whistles and bells so taking the machine back to its base model set up.....sweet

Watch this space for lots of pictures of how I am getting on and donut pictures.........or maybe pictures of a huge repair bill 'cos I've broken stuff.

Who knows

Sod it, I'm buying a Mac

I'm sure nobody actually reads my blog, its more a place for me to dump my thoughts and save my links, but hey ho. On the off chance somebody actually reads this; I have decided to scrap the silly idea of putting Mac OSX on to my eeePC - I'm sorry, but its just too much faff and I can't stand the hours it requires......I'm afraid I just like the sun light too much.

Next time I am in the UK I will just grab my techy spod brother, take away his teddy bear and lock him in the cupboard under the stairs until he does it for me.

In the meantime I have decided to throw caution to the wind and just buy myself a Mac laptop.....and what a beauty she is......if all goes to plan (and it is a convoluted plan therefore likley due to failure) by the middle of February I will have a lovely Mac Book Air!!