Last night I built this stabilizer for the D3100. Its a simple design that I saw on the Frugal Filmmaker. It looks like a bunch of PVC pipe and it mostly is but the important parts are under the camera where a t-joint hides a bolt, two springs, and two nuts. The springs provide the stabilization by counteracting jerkiness (that’s the scientific explanation). Here’s the video:
But does it work? I took it to the cemetery to find out.
The answer is… sort of. A solution this simple isn’t going to work magic. Getting a smooth pan is as much technique as it is equipment. I thought my panning was nice and slow but in the video its way too fast. There are also a couple of things I need to correct with the stabilizer itself. One is that I had a very limited selection of springs at the hardware store I went to. I ended up using a pair of the tiny springs that go inside a faucet handle. With a better spring the stabilization should improve. The second is I accidentally bought a threaded PVC plug instead of the fitted one. The result is that the camera will swing around on the screw if rotated too far up or down. It seems to work ok. Its not Steadicam but for the price its performance is pretty good.
Friday night is when Land Cruiser owners begin to consider what projects they need to tackle to maintain or improve their mall marauder over the weekend. Since nothing leaked, caught fire, or fell off this week I turned my attention to beautifying the beast. I had been thinking about replacing the slightly corroded factory wheels with a set of black FJ Cruiser 17 inch steel wheels but I like the 80′s Star Wars look of the wheels I have and I couldn’t find 5 FJ Cruiser steelies for $55 each which is the most I was willing to pay. And then I found this…
Such poise. Such grace. A factory set of wheels just like mine except they look fantastically clean and are a really cool color. That color is Rust-oleum Graphite. I ordered it from Amazon. It arrived Wednesday.
To make sure the wheel would look good I would have to use sandpaper and steel wool to scrub off the corrosion and smooth out any blemishes. The perfect first wheel to start with is the spare tire which is housed under the rear of the truck and been subjected to 100,000 miles of salt and grit. It is the worst looking of the 5 wheels. If I can make this wheel look good I knew I could get the others looking good too. The picture above is after endless scrubbing. I used 220 grit sandpaper and 000 steel wool. You can see the large blemish where a bunch of crud was. I sanded that down until was smooth and did the same in all the nooks and crannies on the wheel. I wasn’t aiming to make it perfectly clean but it needed to be pretty close to perfectly clean and feel smooth to the touch.
It takes a long time to cover the sidewall this way. Maybe I can think of a faster way for the other 4.
Notice the blemish to the left of the Toyota label is a lot better looking. This is after one coat.
After several coats of graphite and an initial clearcoat. Looking pretty good. Can’t wait to do the rest and get them on the Cruiser.
This is the weekend for a Land Bruiser owner. Hood up, gate down, tools out. Today’s project is to quell the screaming riot in the dash. As its gotten colder the Sloth has developed a squeal in the dash that varies based on speed. The speedometer would also wobble a little bit. The sound varies but its generally high pitched and present from 15-20mph on up to about 80. A little research online and at ih8mud indicated that lubricating the upper end of the speedometer cable could fix the issue. Otherwise it might be some components in the speedometer itself that needed lubrication. In either case, to remove the gauge cluster you have to remove several components of the dash which is what I have done this afternoon. It doesn’t take long and all you really need is a screwdriver or two (preferably the magnetic tipped kind and one or two of varying lengths). I found this video very helpful for getting started on the dash:
Before you begin, disconnect the battery. You’re going to be yanking on a bunch of wires. Best that no power being running through them.
Here’s the dash. It has two separate pieces. The lower bezel is held in by 3 screws.
Two are behind the cigarette tray.
The third is down and to the right of this plastic circle below the steering column.
Once the screws are removed I started on the left hand side of the dash and carefully pulled it outward until the snaps popped loose.
Then I made my way across to the right. You will need to unplug all the switches, the cigarette lighter, and the light in the ash tray to remove the dash bezel. For the switches I pushed them from behind so they popped out of the bezel and then unplugged them. Its easier to do that than to try and undo the plugs with the switches in the bezel.
Here the lower bezel is removed. Looks like somebody’s been in here before.
Here it the left side.
Put the bezel somewhere safe.
Next remove the top dash piece. This is held on the same way. There are two or three screws along the bottom and then several under the lip of the dash facing down. Once they’re out I again released the snaps from left to right, pulling down slightly on the right so that the top of the bezel could come away from the lip of the dash.
On the left side part of the vent tube will come out with the bezel.
Here both of the dash bezels are removed.
And the left side.
Now you have access to the 4 screws that hold in the gauge cluster. Remove those.
Once the screws are removed, you can pull the cluster forward. You might want to adjust the steering column down to make more space. I started on the left, reaching behind the cluster and blindly removing the multi-pin connectors. There were 5 of them. If you peek in there you can also see the speedometer cable. As you disconnect the pins, the gauge will come free. Its a tight fit but you can work it out of the dash by moving it through the space to the right of the steering wheel.
With the gauge cluster out of the way, you’ll see all the pins you’ve just undone.
You’ll also see the speedometer cable.
On the back of the gauge cluster you can see the round hole where the speedometer cable plugs in. I sprayed a little bit of lithium grease on the end of the speedometer cable and a little in the hole you see here. Seemed like the right place to lubricate it since that squared pin sticking of the cable is what spins the speedometer.
I’m not sure if this is the before or after shot but reassembly is the reverse of disassembly. I only ended up with one extra screw!
After I put the dash back together and reconnected the battery, I started up the Sloth. At first I was saddened to see that the tachometer didn’t jump to idle though all the lights in the dash worked. However, after I put it in reverse and started backing out of the driveway, the speedometer and tach came to life again. I’m guessing the tach was briefly affected by the ECU reboot since the battery was disconnected…
The squeak was still present at the beginning of my test ride. I expected this because I had read that the lubricant needs to make its way to the right place. I took the sloth around the neighborhood, hopped on the interstate and got up to speed. After a few minutes the noise started winding down. Then it would chirp every so often. Then it went away completely. I still have a fainter lower note whirling sound somewhere further away. I’m not sure if its the speedometer cable but its barely noticeable. The high pitched speed-varying whine is gone… at least for now. I’m marking this project a success.
Total time invested: about an hour, maybe a little less.
The slider covers the pinch seam all the way back into the wheel well. This seam is sometimes trimmed back or folded to make room for the largest tires. Might end up cutting these down a little later when the tires go on.
They turned out great. You’d never know they didn’t leave the lot on this Jeep. With no step and 2.5″ of lift I’ll have to get some “You must be this tall to ride” signs.
These are going on Craigslist if anyone is interested.
My Craigslist vigilance has paid off. Finally a set of rock sliders from a Rubicon appeared for sale. I had to drive all the way to Lawrenceville to get them but it was worth it. They’re off a 2009 Rubicon which was sitting in the seller’s garage. Nice 8 inch lift, 35 inch tires, etc. These had been swapped out for some factory chrome sidesteps. Now they will replace my factory sidesteps and offer a bit of body protection because it sucks to get a shopping cart or pedestrian stuck under there. One second you’re cruising the mall lot, next thing you know some old lady’s walker has dented up your undercarriage. We can’t have that!
Here’s a 4-door Rubicon showing off its factory rock sliders. Once installed mine will look similar (minus the extra doors).
They are “gently” used and not new out of the box so they have some love bites.
And a bit of rust but I have sandpaper and some black paint left! The guy was happy to sell them to me because they had been sitting around his garage. I was happy to get some ever so slightly used ones for almost 1/3 what they cost new. I’m hoping to sell the sidesteps for about the same price to break even.
A little manual labor and they look almost as good as new. I need to add another coat or two and do the other side but I ran out of paint.
Decided today was the day to refurbish the F800GS primarily to clean up all the little bits that have started to rust. She’s a 3 year old bike but is heading towards 40,000 miles (39,532 right now) so you can imagine she’s not quite a garage queen and has various bumps and bruises. How?
Beats me.
What irked me most were the simple things like the SW-Motech luggage mounts. These have served me well for thousands and thousands of miles so they deserved a little attention.
A simple fix too. Just sand and paint.
Then there’s the Barkbusters which were apparently a good purchase! I can’t do much about the scratches but I was always annoyed that they proclaim “BARKBUSTERS!!!!” so I figured I could fix that.
The center stand too has seen better days. A lot of this is orange mud, not rust, but it has its fair share of oxidation.
Other stuff will have to wait til another day. I’m thinking about plasti-dipping these. Not sure how that would hold up to the heat though.
A light sanding and a bit of black and these look almost new again.
The centerstand was little more work…
With several coats of paint its looking great again.
The Barkbusters results weren’t quite as impressive but at least they look refreshed and don’t have those ugly rusty screws. The black lettering turned out pretty well.
I also got rid of the old GPS mount. Notice its missing the left flange. That simply fell off somewhere between here and Montana (or New Mexico or Utah). Cleaned up the bolts too to get rid of the rust.
Doesn’t it look so much better? All that was really just another excuse to ride (“Try out this new paint. See how it performs”).
Standing 2-3″ inches taller makes it nearly impossible to put a 14′ kayak on top by myself without messing something up. This will require some engineering…
I took the Jeep over to my friends at Fortec this morning to prep it for larger tires with a 2.5″ suspension lift. Here it waits its turn next to a TJ with 7″ of lift and 37″ tires, a Rubicon with no lift and stock tires, and a sport with 4″ of lift and 34″(?) tires. The guys at Fortec run an awesome shop. They got the jeep on the lift just after it arrived and were done when they said they’d be done, all the while talking jeeps while I was there. I got there right as they were opening and each employee pulled up in their own custom Wrangler.
Hard to tell in this pic but the ride height is much improved. I was worried the ride would be harsher but I can’t tell a difference. Its either as good or better than stock. The one thing that is definitely improved is the brake dive. With an 80lb winch and a big metal bumper forward of the front axle I was getting a lot of nose diving under heavy braking. I rarely use the brakes so it wasn’t a big deal but now it is much better.
With the stock 32″ tires on it looks a little like this at the moment but its not as awkward looking as I imagined it would be. The sticking point now is figuring out which combination of wheels and tires to get.
For practical purposes (yeah right!), I’m aiming for something similar to this setup. That’s a 315/70R17 sized tire which is between 34 and 35 inches in diameter. Perfect for trips to the grocery store with stops for gas each way.
Lots of turnover lately in the fleet. Clyde Jr.’s role as haul-about has been superseded by the arrival of my Universal Appliance/Italian convertible/Jeep. Therefore Clyde Jr. has moved on to a new role… in the movies. We wish him well. No doubt there will one day be a Clyde Jr. II and maybe the 460 project will then be resurrected. Until then the focus is on the remainder of the fleet.
Earned my merit badge today in bamboo lashing to fix the roof of the coop’s rec room/basketball court which has now been destroyed twice by falling limbs. I find that given nine places to lash, I can come up with 9 different lashings. Those Scouting years really paid off. That said, I don’t recommend you try standing on this nor count on it to float downriver without breaking apart.
Also, this is genuine Grant Park bamboo grown right here in my backyard. Here you see the medium-sized variety. Green Living merit badge, check!
The Foreman oversaw progress… until he saw something more interesting and ran off.
