Hey guys, I know we can all use the little bit of extra power or mileage that we can get, and for the cost of around $20 (seafoam only, does not include other supplies) there is really no reason to pass this maintenance tip up. The only things you will need are 2 cans of seafoam (for my Canadian residents, I am told that ONLY napa stores carry this product, if you can confirm another company please let me know), and a funnel that will fit inside your brake booster line (see second picture), you might also want to get some heater hose that will fit into your gas tank filler spout so you don’t spill seafoam on the side of your jeep. (NOTE: This can be done on any vehicle, but for this writeup I am explaining in detail for a fuel injected YJ only).



So, first step is the vacuum line portion, I decided to use the brake booster line as it was the easiest and most convenient. Bring your jeep up to operating temperature (a short drive around the block should do) and park it with the garage door open, or outside. Go ahead and pop the hood, locate the brake booster vacuum line, and pry it off. Now grab your funnel and push it into the hose (the tighter the fit the better, if you can’t afford a funnel, or forgot to buy one, heavy paper will do in a pinch). Open the can of seafoam in preparation and place it somewhere easy to grab (like on the fender), now go ahead and start your vehicle, don’t be alarmed, your RPM’s will travel up dramatically from idle, this is because you have created a vacuum leak. Now go grab your funnel and opened can of seafoam and SLOWLY start to pour the seafoam into the funnel, you will soon find out how fast you can pour the fluid in without choking out the engine, for me, it took about 10 minutes to empty the entire bottle (if you do accidentally choke out the engine, quickly go start the engine back up again, and continue pouring). When you get to the last little sips, pour the remainder of the can down the funnel (this will choke out the engine hopefully and now you can go shut the ignition off, and if it doesn’t, go turn the ignition off quickly). Make sure you go plug the vacuum line back in. Now you have about 10 minutes to waste while you wait for the seafoam to soak in and penetrate, so head on to the next step.



The next step is the easiest, and the quickest. You will only need a half a can of seafoam for this step (approximate is good, but try to be close). I would recommend filling your tank before you pour any seafoam in, don’t fill it to the lip, or you wont have any extra room. If you decided to use heater hose for this, go ahead and put the heater hose down the filler neck, once the hose is in, and facing upright, put the funnel in the heater hose. If you chose not to use the heater hose, just place the funnel in the filler neck (For a YJ, I would recommend you use some heater hose, or you will be pouring at a very weird angle). Now, go ahead and pour about half a can into the gas tank. If you don’t have a full tank of fuel, that should be your first stop after your test drive.



Now, if it has been 10 minutes, do a quick vehicle walk around, make sure you didn’t leave any tools, empty cans, cell phones (doh!) or gas caps laying around. If you are ready to go, close the hood, hop in, and fire it up. You will notice LOTS of smoke from your exhaust pipe, this is a good thing, as the seafoam is working. Go ahead and drive it to a road where you can let your right foot and the gas pedal become “one”. When you have taken about a 10 or 15 minute drive (longer if you are still smoking) either go to the gas station of your choice, or go park it at home if you are already full.



The third and final step I have not completed, because I changed my oil about 500 km before I added the seafoam, and I didn’t want to change the new oil so quick. This step will also use a half a can. Since I have not done it yet on my jeep, I will only do a quick outline. You will pour the remaining half can straight into your oil, and drive around about 50-100 km. After the 50-100 km are on, change your oil, you will notice the oil is very dark and possibly thick, well, it did it’s job.

I havn’t driven long enough, or with fair enough conditions to tell if this helped my mileage or power, but after a quick drive up a hill where I can usually hold 80 km/h, I can still hold 80 km/h, but, with my e-brake on (oops, bye bye e-brake). When I start driving the speed limit and with my hard top on again, and have done the oil step, I will update this post with my findings.

It all started out as a good muddy and snowy day at the Alberta Safari Park on St. Patty Day weekend when EdmontonJeep had a run out to our local offroad park owned by Lee. On this specific trip out to the park, I had said at the morning meeting to a few EJC members standing by, that if I wrecked before lunch, I would never go to ASP again (To make a long story short I have been at Lee’s one time without wrecking something, and man am I glad this happened about half hour after lunch)!



So as the story goes, I was on my 28″ all seasons all morning sort of keeping up with the bigger boys (33+ Mud Terrain tires) with only the occasional tug or winch up a glazed over hill climb. We started an obstacle, which is a series of 3 valleys and peaks about 10 feet total from top to bottom. I had made it to the middle valley, where I figured I would try to at least make it into the last valley so I didn’t have to winch out so far, and that is where the fun started.



I started my climb, and had my front tires settled on the top of the peak, and was trying to get a little traction with my tires to push me over the top, but instead me rear wheels started to spin, which eventually led to my rear end sliding back and forth, and when I finally caught a patch of traction, I was aimed to the right a little bit, which sent my front passenger tire right onto the bank, and my front driver tire into the hole. Needless to say this is the point at which I rolled, some even say its the “Slowest ever roll seen at Lee’s” so I guess that is something to be proud of. Also I was the 73′rd rig to roll out there, which happens to be my lucky number.



So what was the carnage, I can just hear you asking it right now! Well, all that was broken was my rear driver side window on the hard top, a few cracks in the front of the hard top where it meets the windshield frame, and a bent over front driver side fender. So far the fixes have cost me $250, this includes a new tempered window ($150 - installed myself) and a complete new hard top missing the rear window ($100 - found a great deal on a local forum), still to be fixed/replaced is the fender which will eventually be replaced by a flat fender set front and rear.

“So, we decided to conduct the ultimate test, pitting the Prius against the devil’s own tool; an SUV. Our choice of SUV was simple. Jeep was recognized in 2007 for having the most improved fuel consumption across its model range, and has won a Green Award for the Patriot.”

“As we approached the motorway the two on-board computers were reading very different figures. The Prius was showing around 58mpg, whilst the Patriot showed just below 40mpg.”

“The result was astonishing: both cars had used nearly identical amounts of fuel. The Jeep had averaged 38.9 mpg - only 3.1 mpg less than its computer had recorded. However, the computer of the Prius appeared to be telling whoppers: it actually achieved just 39.9 mpg - a massive 17.1 mpg less than it had claimed.”

Full story at: cleangreencars.co.uk

Now this mileage is by far a long stretch from what my YJ, or any TJ for that matter can achieve, but it is nice to see that Jeep is trying to make an effort about there economic footprint, as well as trying to save people a little more money at the pumps. Now lets hope that Jeep decides to start building diesel JKs over in North America, so we can start to have some more fuel efficient wheeling vehicles over here.

So, I dug into my axle shaft seal replacement, and got everything cleaned up inside the tubes and pumpkin, but then it struck me, I forgot to clean the old gasket off the differential. I didn’t really want to have to start from scratch with the cleaning process, so I started to think.



What I came up with, was a cover for the inners of the diff made of some cardboard - corrugated or regular should work fine (this probably wont work if you still have the gears installed unless you bend the cardboard). I had painted my diff covers anyways, so I just used the blots of paint that were left on the cardboard that I sprayed onto, if you don’t plan to paint your covers though, you could just as easily get a sharpie marker, or a pencil and mark out where the holes were.



The next step is to roughly play connect-the-dots. This will give you an approximate outline of where you need to cut. Now go ahead and cut about a quarter inch, to half inch inside the line (since the bolt holes are in the center of the differential housing). Its not a big deal at all if you don’t follow the line, because you will probably have to end up trimming away some more once you do a rough fit.



Once you have your cover cut out, line it up to your diff, and mentally note what areas need to be trimmed down a bit more, for me this didn’t need to be exact, because it was only to keep the large crumbles of RTV sealant from falling in the housing. If you do end up making a tight fitting cover, you might want to poke a hole in it somewhere so you can easily remove it with a screwdriver or something. Once you have trimmed it down so it will fit, go ahead and push it into the housing. When you are done, you should have something to help keep some chunks of dirt and mud from falling in your diff housing.

One boring Sunday afternoon, my parents and I decided that we would like to take our jeeps up to the top of of Grande Mountain (near Grande Cache Alberta). We packed a supper and we were on our way. The trip was about 40 minutes to the top, with a couple picture stops. The trail to the top of the mountain is an un-maintained service road for trucks to service the radio towers that are at the top. Since there is an unmaintained road it wasn’t to difficult, Dad made it in 2 Hi, while I stuck to 4 Lo in case I found a trail that proved to be more difficult - No such luck.



Once we were at the top, we took the opportunity to wheel around a little bit more and get some breathtaking views, eat our supper we had packed, and take some more pictures and poses.



The top of the mountain is just north of the town site of Grande Cache, so from the top we had a perfect view of the entire town. In the picture shown, starting from mid way down the picture on the left and working right we have; The Golf Course and Base Ball Diamonds, the industrial area of town, The road running from the far left and out to the bottom of the picture is Highway 40 which goes South to Hinton, or North to Grande Prairie, immediately right to the highway is the mall, followed by the empty fields which is the Junior and Senior High Schools, sweeping the rest of the picture is the areas of town known as “Stages” in which the town was built, and at the right side of the picture the building that is slightly up from the town is our penitentiary.



We had finished supper and were ready to head back down the trail to the highway, but not before I found some snow and mud, all within 50 feet. Cant ask for much better conditions then that! The picture of the snow looks kind of deceiving, on my passenger side there is about 6-10″ of snow, but on my driver side there was snow up to my rock sliders 20″+. This was largely due to the way the snow had melted.

I got inspiration from Davin (raskull - http://myjeeptj.com/) to start a Jeep dedicated page. Im not sure if I will have as much time to dedicate to my site as him, but with all the things wrecking recently on my jeep after wheeling, I figured I might as well share my experiences to possibly help the next person along.