Family Time Overland

08/23/2025

Can you tell we've been to ?

03/23/2025

On the road with the family this afternoon. Not exactly an overlanding trip. We're headed to Sevierville for a few days for a water park vacation for the kids.

01/26/2025

Today's project was installing a dashcam on Amanda's JL. We went for a A329. Pretty simple install. Hard wired with the Viofo hardwire kit to the constant and ignition wires in the interior AUX switch bundle.

01/01/2025

11/09/2024

That moment you realize you've spent a fair amount of money upgrading your Jeep radio and speakers but you have a toddler. At least sounds good?

10/20/2024

It was a bit of a rough weekend at Overland the Red 2024 for the family. Finn was sick and did not want to sleep. After two sleepless nights, Amanda took the boys home late Friday night. I can't thank Coddiwomple Overland and several other friends enough for helping me hastily pack up camp this morning so I could get myself back home while they were also attempting to get ready to leave to hit the trails for the day. Thank you all!

Even though it did not turn out as planned, it was really great to get to spend some time with everyone. Hoping for more and better adventures together in the future!

10/05/2024

We didn't get to attend Expo East this year, but we did spend some time at today.

09/17/2024

I am working on a little experiment... Taking a deep dive into a JL/JT "digital dash" (not Carobotor) and radio. I've installed many Android head units. The digital cluster is ARM32 Linux as best I can tell at this point. The hardware on these things is usually fine. Problems tend to arise from the software. That just happens to be my area of expertise. More info to follow when my hardware arrives this week.

09/01/2024

Some interesting observations from recent AUX battery work on our Gladiator.

I initially deleted the AUX and put in a single larger H7 battery. Everything worked as it did before.

Now, both before and after the AUX delete my Yaesu amateur radio would shut off while starting the truck and when restarting after an auto-stop start. The voltage was dropping low enough during cranking to cause the radio to reboot. I just assumed that was probably just how it was going to be since it had been like that for several months. Likely not great for the radio, but they're built pretty well.

Out of curiosity I decided to install a Braille Battery, Inc B14115 as an AUX battery. Braille claims 360CCA and 15Ah vs 200CCA and 12Ah on the typical replacement AUX14 batteries.

Cold starts and stop/start restarts are smoother than they've ever been and my Yaesu radio stays on consistently.

Longevity of the Braille battery? That's always the concern with these small batteries. We'll see.

08/31/2024

I have my doubters out there who think I don't work on my own Jeep. Well, I built my own Jeep! It required minutes and minutes of work.

08/26/2024

I didn't really need a new compressor. However, the folks at were super kind to us and our kids at . Sometimes that's the important thing. Also not mad that I ended up with what seems to be a pretty awesome product. 🙂