Icom F5061
I reinstalled my Icom F5061 VHF land mobile radio this weekend. A big thanks to Paul for letting me use his garage and helping out with the mounting bracket that had to be modified to fit the space.
The 2012 JK has a small coin tray behind the shifters that is the perfect size for the Icom remote head. It also has a little rubber tray that sits in the bottom that will easily cover up the holes I drilled should I decide to remove it in the future.
I neglected to take many photos of this install but it involved removing the drivers seat to mount the radio. I used the rough side of adhesive velcro and just stuck it directly on the carpet. It made for a secure attachment without damaging the carpet or drilling any new holes. I ran 12 gauge zip line back to terminal 1 of the sPOD and connected everything securely. I used Anderson Powerpoles for the radio connection and ring terminals for the sPOD.
Finally one of my six sPOD switches has a job.
I have plans for a more permanent antenna solution but for now a mag mount will do the trick.
One final touch. In order to have the radio automatically switch on when I toggle power I needed to set “Power SW = Enable” and “Ignition SW = Inhibit”.
Mopar Accessories
Just a few little add-ons from the Mopar catalog.
Locking Gas Cap (keyed to ignition key)
Hood Lock (keyed to ignition key)
Door Seal Guards
AeroForce Interceptor
When I ordered my sPOD I decided to get the model that had a cutout for installing a scan gauge. After hearing a few other JK owners complain about how prone the auto transmission is to overheating I thought it might be nice to monitor the temp (at least until I can install a transmission cooler). When ordering you can specify the LCD color you want and of course I picked green to match the sPOD switch color.
I should have waited on the gauge to arrive before installing the sPOD but as evident by my previous post I got impatient. Today I added the gauge to my already installed sPOD. Here is a photo of the unboxing. The unit comes nicely secured in a paperboard box with the cables and accessories underneath. This does a good job of protecting the screen. The paperwork claims that the unit ships with a silver replacement bezel but it was missing from my order. When I contacted the seller they informed me that they had stopped including it but would offer me free shipping if I ordered one. I suspect the black with chrome trim would look better in the JK anyway so I didn’t press the issue.
The install was fairly straight forward. Remove most of the same trim pieces as when installing the sPOD.
After installing the unit there were some basic setup instructions to follow. I picked a handful of parameters to scan and set the startup logo to Jeep. I also set a few warning thresholds for low battery voltage and high RPMs. Unfortunately the transmission temp doesn’t appear to work in the 2012 JK… oh well.
AEV JK Heat Reduction Hood
On March 23rd a group of kids decided it would be a fun prank to jump up and down on a few of the neighborhood cars. Unfortunately my JK was one of the targets. As someone who dedicates hundreds of hours and over a thousand miles a year on my personally owned vehicle in support of King County 4×4 Search and Rescue, I find it absolutely crushing that there are members of the very same community who would do something like this to my vehicle that was clearly marked with KC SAR volunteer logos. The total damage for my vehicle alone came to just over $2000. The story was also covered by My Ballard and I gave a report for Q13 Fox.
It was originally pretty low on my list of upgrades but due to the fact that I’ll need to replace it anyway I’ve decided to go for the AEV JK Heat Reduction Hood. It has a much more aggressive look and can help keep the engine compartment a few degrees cooler. It also sets me up nicely for a snorkel if I decide to add one in the future.
This is still a project in progress and I won’t be doing the install myself. I’ll be working with Northridge 4×4 to order, paint, and install the AEV. I’ve also ordered lime green replacement Rubicon decals from pixeldecals.com.
Until I get photos of my own feel free to drool over these…
sPOD
Before I installed any other electronics in the Rubicon I wanted to make sure I built a framework for a clean wiring system. Based on very positive reviews from other JK owners I decided on the sPOD. The sPOD consists of a central wiring and circuitry box called the sPOD Source and an overhead mounting box containing 6 switches. The switches are connected to the sPOD Source via a single cable and all accessories are connected directly to the sPOD Source resulting in a cleaner installation and fewer cables coming into the cab.
I ordered my sPOD with all green switches and a hole for mounting an Aeroforce Gauge (future project). I was fortunate enough to get one of the new revisions that has the low voltage cut off built in. Previous revisions offered this as an add-on option. The LVCO protects you from a dead battery by killing power to accessories if the voltage drops below a certain threshold. The sPOD arrived after only a few days and the first thing I noticed was the remarkable quality and attention to detail. I did have an issue with one of the legs of the mounting bracket arriving slightly bent but it was easy enough to bend it back into place and I didn’t even bother contacting sPOD for support.
I started by mounting the sPOD Source. The instructions were very clear and I had the box mounted right next to the ECU in a few minutes using existing screws.
The overhead switch box was slightly more difficult. I removed the Freedom top for better access and then carefully disconnected the windshield trim according to the instructions that came with the sPOD. The instructions said that you MAY have to trim a small amount of material off of the windshield trim and in actuality I had to remove quite a bit. I cringed a little when dremmeling into the brand new plastic but the results were very clean.
After installing the switch box there was only a single cable to route to the sPOD Source. JKs have a convenient access port in the firewall that made this an easier task than on any other vehicle I’ve wired before.
The finished product. There is still a hole where the Aeroforce gauge goes but that will be the next project.
2012 JK Project
This week I traded my ’02 Jeep Liberty with 117K miles in for a brand new 2012 Black Forest Green JK Rubicon Unlimited. Today she is bone stock and I plan to start an ongoing series of posts to track the mods and accessories as I build her into an off-road machine.
Bonal & Rye
I was looking for a cocktail that would feature the Bonal and Bulleit Rye I had and stumbled across this article on SFGate.com. I didn’t have any Cointreau so I substituted Grand Mariner.
- 2 ounces rye whiskey
- 1 ounce Bonal Gentiane-Quina
- 1/2 ounce Grand Mariner
- 2 dashes orange bitters (I used my home made Orange Bitters.)
- 1 dash Angostura bitters
- – Orange twist, for garnish
The Angela cocktail
- 1.5 oz Plymouth Gin
- .5 oz Bonal
- 1 dash homemade orange bitters
- garnish with a twist
Create Task from Email in Microsoft Outlook for Mac 2011
Now that iOS 5 can sync Tasks from my exchange server to the new “Reminders” app I decided to give it a try and see if I could replace my existing to-do manager. The app is actually pretty slick, offering reminders based on either temporal or location based info.
In addition to manually created tasks, I wanted to be able quickly create a task based on email. In Outlook 2010 this is done by dragging the email to the task icon. Unfortunately that same technique doesn’t work on Outlook for Mac 2011. After poking around I eventually discovered that in the menu bar there is a script menu (it looks like an S shaped piece of paper) that includes the workflow “Create Task from Message”. This did the trick. It creates a task from the selected email and that gets synchronized to the Reminders iOS app. To make it just a little easier I added a keyboard shortcut so I wouldn’t have to click through the menu each time. To do this open System Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts. Select Application Shortcuts in the left window. In the right windows add a new Shortcut. Select Microsoft Outlook as the application (you may have to browse for it). For the Menu Title type the exact text “Create Task from Message” without the quotes. Next pick a keyboard Shortcut. I decided on Command+T. You can verify it is setup correctly by going back to Outlook and clicking on the script menu. You should see the shortcut tip Command+T next to Create Task from Message.
Windows OS Internals for IT Professionals
Today is the last of a week long study of Windows OS Internals for IT Professionals lead by Dan Pearson. The class has been a lot of fun but also very intense. We’ve used at a lot of the Sysinternals tools to research just what goes on behind the scenes of Windows.
As a compliment to the class I’ve also picked up a copy of Windows Internals 5th Ed. and look forward to spending some time reinforcing some of the concepts I’ve learned this week.
