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Joel's multipurpose XJ build (rocks/boulevard)

By the way, the aisle in the first pic is so I could bench press a king sized mattress aft 6 inches at a time.

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That ended up on the roof of the cruiser (followed by bikes and surf boards), then a second level of crates went in, followed by plastic tarps. Fun fact, humidity differences inside a contain can make it rain inside nightly. There was only about 4 inches clear to the roof by the time were were done.
 

Damn, yeah that woulda helped... We ended up OK (maybe partly because we didn't have much free air at the roof) but it just goes to show as much research as you can put into something like this their were always ways to improve.
 
So the 50,000 lb forklift shows up to pick up the container. It goes for lift…

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And promptly pops a nose wheelie. They have to bring a separate forklift with a massive counterweight to increase the capacity.

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At this point I’m kinda freaking out at how heavy the container is... Although the container is rated at 67,000 lbs gross, DOT regulations in CA you’re only allowed to haul 44,000 lbs on the highway. If this gets flagged we’re screwed. I’m beat up... Running on no sleep and my head is exploding with all the ways this could go wrong.

Well, with the added counterweight, Dunkel Bros (the heavy equipment guys) get it picked up and hauled back to their yard. We had 3 semi trucks/trailers in our little culdesac…

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However, when they put it on their uncertified scales and it comes in at 52,000 lbs. CRAP!!! But then the driver from Matson sea freight lines shows up to drive it to the port, doesn’t ask questions and just grabs and goes. Turns out, since the container hadn’t been “officially” weighed yet, he wasn’t “officially” restricted in driving it.

The port accepts shipment and we’re off to the races.
 
With the container away and nothing left but suitcases, it was time to say goodbye to our home. Pretty tough on the kids.

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Hell, I choked up big time while taking this next shot and comparing how much their little hands had grown since we poured this concrete.

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Hopefully I can pull off a bigger better garage someday, but this one was pretty sweet.

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I had even managed to finish closing out all the gaps around the edges with stained boards sometime the month or so prior.

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Man there was a lot of work into that attic…

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Lil throwback to slinging 21' long 2x10's back when... Same daughter in the blue shirt above. Man, it goes fast...

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SoCal gave us a killer sunset on the way to the airport.

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We actually spent the night at the LAX Hilton to be sure we were rested and to be able to land in daylight so the girls could get their first view of an island.

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When you plan to live out of suitcases for 3 weeks in an otherwise unfinished rental home, you end up traveling a little heavy.

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But then this view greets you:

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And a buddy is waiting at the airport for you to help shuttle the bags and presents you with leis.

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And you get to start work on a maintain top

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And life is good.
 
Moving in from the container 2 weeks later was the reverse of out with the exception that you have to pay for all profession labor since you only know one guy on the island. Conen’s Freight Transport does have a bad ass device that’s actually made for setting containers on ground (Hamer Lift).

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Big ass compressor goes in the closest under the stairs.

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Metal to the backyard to be tarped for later.

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After all that our only casualty was a busted TV. It may have even been cracked during packing rather than transit. Oh yeah, we caught it just in time for Black Friday.

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It probably helped that every last dresser got wrapped in cardboard and saran wrap to keep things from chaffing against each other. My buddy Ander built me something like 7 wood crates for saws and heavy tools. I also used a metric ton of plastic banding wrap. This stuff is SOOO good!
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004OR1CR0/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It turns out Hawaiian sunsets are pretty good too.

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So that’s how you move to Hawaii… By the way, apparently I set some sort of all-time record for Keck regarding heaviest container. Conen Freight Transport (who did the unload) said it was the densest packed container they’d ever seen!

Aloha from the Paynes!

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Our three running vehicles (XJ, RX7, and a family hauler Mazda5) all shipped loose via barge. It costs about $1100 per vehicle to ship one out of Long Beach. Not too bad and since cars are more expense here, we brought them all.

And… here we are in the new digs. Time to get back to work.

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Man that was a hell of a move!! congrats on your new job, enjoy Hawaii!

I certainly will use your container idea if some day I have to move!
 
Little flavor of Hawaiian wheeling. I've hooked up with the Big Island Jeep Club and started running with them. Solid folks and seems like a good place for me relative to the crazy/controlled spectrum of 4x4'ers.

This run was up on Mana Rd which wraps around Mauna Kea (mountain with telescopes) on the green side. I headed up putting kids to bed Friday night for a weekend of camping at Ranger station bunk house.

Drove up in the dark and first time I'd been on this road (but man what a road!).

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Only minor issue was a loose radiator cap on arrival (that's what I get for topping of fluids in the dark right before I left). Thankfully I got spotted a gallon on arrival and I was good to go.

Night wheeling was rad.

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Next morning and yep, I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact I'm going to have mud in places I'll never get out. At least not without hours and hours of detailing. I'm calling it a Hawaiian rig and moving on...

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Good group albeit I was the only XJ representing. Apparently there's one more in the club but I haven't meet them yet.

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I did manage to rip off my cool muffler bearing though. Working theory is that I lost the bolt then the exhaust bounced hard enough to snap the mount. Bailing wire for the win.

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I can't even get over how rad the terrain is around here. The hill climb we were queue up for was rad (if quite the slip 'n slide)

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By the end of day two, you couldn't tell what color my rig is.

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The stoke is real.
-Joel
 
Few more pics...

Another shot of that slip 'n slide...

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If your underside got too dirty, you could always go rinse off.

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A few folks decided to drive the remainder of Mana Rd (~40 miles) to try to catch the sunset from the Mauna Kea summit. I warned folks the rangers might not let us up with muddy vehicles but apparently we'd rattled enough off on the way over (it transitions back to dry side in route) that they let us up.

View from the top was good but kinda cloudy.

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Then suddenly the sun breaks through and the world turned insanely red. Like "Eye of Mordor" the world is one fire red...

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Camera couldn't keep up with the color above, but this pic might give you a better idea.

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So neat! Back at camp, much fireball was drunk, much meat was BBQ'ed. Let me tell you that a big Hawaiian man playing Adele's "Someone Like You" on a ukulele while folks sing along at the top of their lungs in the middle of nowhere? Yeah, good times indeed.

Maybe you had to be there but it was fun, I promise.

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I'll close this round with a few shots of the main Mana Rd from the way back into town.

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This island is rad.
-Joel
 
Arriving home from Mana Rd, I found I apparently wheeled hard enough to jam some wood in between my tire bead. I only dropped down to 18 psi or so, but there's a lot of throttle involved when you go wheeling deep in the woods. ;-)

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Thought I got it all but actually managed to give myself a leak so I got to pull the tire and clean more thoroughly.

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I also had a heck of filthy rig that I didn't want to just take a wash cloth to and scratch the hell out of everything so I also started researching pressure washers (duh!). Once upon a time a harbor freight "1400 psi" unit that died, but having been spoiled by a friend's big gas powered Dewalt while in SoCal I wanted something better--while staying electric for size and simplicity. Turns out there are metric ton of options, half of them look identical but perform differently, how you set them up matters (IE nozzle flow sizes), and ratings are only marginally meaningful since how manufacturers rate these things varies widely.

Don't know about you guys but with tools, I'd rather over-research and be sure I'm getting the right thing.

Findings:

If you really want to understand pressure washers the best resource I found was Obsessed Garage. They tested 50 some units to validate flow and pressure. You need both criteria to be effective. Here's the massive playlist.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG_BGdABDC9s97iOZTLJVO3TF-K3fx99g

Obsessed Garage then sells upgrades for every common type of pressure washer to get max effectiveness out of any given unit.
https://www.obsessedgarage.com/collections/pressure-washing

Brass tacks... I ordered the Greenworks 2000 psi variation sold via Lowes.
https://www.lowes.com/pd/Greenworks-2000-PSI-1-2-GPM-Cold-Water-Electric-Pressure-Washer/1000731276


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Here's a shortcut to the review of this specific machine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNPzIFBW5sI&list=PLG_BGdABDC9s97iOZTLJVO3TF-K3fx99g&index=5&t=469s

I like that the unit has a stainless steel wand, a quality hose, uses generic interfaces (as opposed to proprietary versions), and generally punches above it's weight. I did not want the built in hose real as apparently those all suck. I did buy bigger 3.0 nozzles per G.O.'s recommendation but skipped the foam cannon and all the other adapter options.

A few other purchase recommendations:

I really dig the option to washer undercarriages so this was a big help and adapts fine to the end of the Greenworks wand.
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07K22DGRY/

Pressure washer specific soap. (Two "loads" per water tank gets a happy level of foamy IMHO)
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BMB48X0/

Pump protector (apparently a typical reason why washers fail)
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B01CNRSUJK/


So all that said, a week later and I was in business. It all works. My girls think it's a big game and are asking to use the thing.

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...and here we are back to "boulevard" status for a run to the beach.

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Anyways, hope the research helps some other folks.

Cheers y'all,
Joel
 
99% of the time I love our new home. It's unbelievably gorgeous on the Big Island, amazing weather/sunsets all the time, so many things to see and explore, a job where I'm getting to do some pretty neat work... Kinda a fairy tale as evidenced by the crazy rainbows we seem to get several times a week.

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That being said, real-life smacked me in the face the other day and ended up in a bit of a fabrication saga.

A while back I mentioned something about Hawaii's safety check program, and guys running garden trim to get fender tire "coverage," right? Unfortunately, when I setup my jeep that way I don't have enough clearance for proper tire flex and I end up ripping the flares right off.

It seems like everybody else around here runs tire poke, so I figured when in Rome, and pulled all that stuff back off. I prefer my rig without fender flares anyways.



Turns out the Waimea police department does not agree with my preferences... :-(

Yep, it seems the locals can do whatever they want, but if you happen to be wearing a mainlander dress shirt on your way to work in a Jeep with some tire poke, that'll get you pulled over even if you are obeying the rest of the traffic laws.

The officer pulled me over as I was turning into the parking lot of my work as well, so naturally I'm sitting there getting a ticket the cop is parked right behind me lights flashing away. Several of my coworkers are walking in for the morning and waving at me. The heckling game was strong that morning. ;-)

4x traffic infractions, one per corner, $72 per tire for $288 fine. Ouchie...

So I break out my metal supplies and a tube bender I bought from a friend before leaving and figured what the heck, I'll try bending some flat fenders.

Testing out the machine I started by bending up a stack of FD trans mounts bars (aka, development efforts in work). I know I need a bigger garage, but it is expensive over here so when the time you have to work on it happens to be raining, you do your best.

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That worked fine so it was time to try some multi plane bends. Hmmm.... This is going to be harder than I thought. Multiple bends end up being a tolerance nightmare. If you are a degree off on a bend and a degree off on rotation, the end result 5 feet later is damn hard to get exactly what you intended (much less replicated in a mirror image for the other side.)

It kind of looks okay but I'm not really that happy with it either, particularly as I compare side to side.

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More to come (a lot more).
-Joel
 
Mmmmmm... Poke. You can get epic Ahi at Costco for about the price of steak. So good!

------------------------

In a rare move for me, I actually gave up a project part way through. As much as I wanted to be a bad ass and make my own custom custom stuff, I just decided that this was likely to be hard enough and time intensive enough that I was being an idiot and should just throw down for a set of Bushwhacker Flat Fenders. They look decent, they're light, and between time and materials it was looking like I was gonna have way more cost (or opportunity cost) making my custom ish...

So I pulled the trigger and bought them.

https://smile.amazon.com/Bushwacker-10922-07-Style-Fender-Flare/dp/B003VR4CG2/

Amazon even had a coupon going and the $420 I spent didn't feel too bad vs my $288 ticket, plus fitment looked to be pretty spot on.

Result: fitment WOULD be spot on... If you were starting from a stock Jeep, but I'm not.

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The fronts might find the don't have some sheetmetal anymore.

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The fender line looks decent up front.

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But that rear fender you kissed with a tire in the whoops that's not quite perfect? Yep, that gap is almost guaranteed to suck dirt...

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You'll have to trim for your welded rockers too, but that's not a big deal...

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But now we reach the deal breaker: Bushwackers are not compatible with cut and fold rear quarters.

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No way I can live with this hanging off that far and now way to plug this in a manner that will last, look good and not suck mud.

I was prepared to weld back in some interfaces to allow these to mount (my fender lips having been trimmed and massaged before), but I just plain missed the whole "Bushwackers no likey the cut and fold bit".

Busted... So back they go. When return shipping only cost me $25 (if I'd shipped this on my own I guess close to $150) I made the call and back they went.

Sigh, looks like custom fab after all. Not the project I wanted to be working on.

-Joel
 
Dang if that doesn't sound like my life. Decide to try the easy way out for once and get bit in the rear for it. And people wonder why I just pick the most difficult path from the get-go.
 
Anak, glad to hear it's not just me...

----------------


So here's the kinda tolerances-killing-me crap I was talking about:

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Measure where you think the bend wants to be but you come up short. Learn from your mistake and you can make your other side properly, but now you either scrap tube or deal with the mismatch or something.

Dammit, I will not be defeated by metal fab! I am learning as I go, but you know what, this isn't really that structural apart so I'm just going to cut and weld this bastard to make it do what I want it to.

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V groove bevel weld just about all the way through the thickness... That's as close to a CJP (complete joint penetration) weld as I can do simply. It's not really structural so I just can't bring myself to sleeve this internally like I might on a chassis repair.

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Much closer...

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For frame interfaces I learned my lesson on the slugs that hardened on me so I figured I could go the other way and pre tap some plate that I'd them match drill and tap the rest of the way through.

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Problem is that it been so windy working on the driveway I can barely get these to tack, much less get a weld I trust. Up front I finally cave and pull off the bumper attachment plates so I can bench weld them.

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Still don't know how I can burn the rears in though. That bit of steel isn't removable and I need to move a ton of stuff (including a non running Land Cruiser), if I'm going to pull this into the garage.

By the way, I should probably mention that when you bring a vehicle to the island, you have 30 days to do a safety check for your new registration. I'm assuming that's how long I have to get these fenders flares installed and the clock is ticking...
 
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