murphy's '07 work in progress.

Update; 20k miles on my jwt setup.

Since I don't remember seeing a post reporting mileage over 20k I am going to try to continue updating this thread with mileage milestones. Since I am already 'stuck' with this setup I feel like it is important that there is a log of its lifespan and how I've used it, until it's dead.

I am not a 'super fan' or blind advocate for the jwt product. I AM a fan of the idea of the solid flywheel, larger disk surface and greater pressure that jwt reports. I don't feel like an expected life that is less than 1/4 of stock is a fair tradeoff for these qualities.

My stock clutch was changed at just over 72k miles. 41k of those belong to me.(second owner) I feel like this is important to note. I'm not sure how it was driven for the 30,850ish miles before I owned this truck, but it is the only baseline I have.

It has been on my mind to do ToddG's clutch throw mod for a while, since before the 'new' clutch was put in. I'm going to try to do this soon. I'm not sure what effect, if any, this is going to have on the clutch's life. I am sure that I am in little danger of 'dragging' the clutch after this adjustment.
Here; http://www.clubfrontier.org/forums/f23/clutch-throw-adjustment-how-6-speed-50112/

I would also like to find a CAT scale, I'm interested to see how much over stock my truck, armor and usual gear weighs. I'm sure extra weight has an effect on clutch life.

i had a few minutes today, so i went to get the truck weighed. i cleared most of the snow off, 3/4 of a tank of gas, driver, no passenger. these are my results;

actual weight, front. 2900 lb.
gawr, front. 3296 lb.

actual weight, rear. 2740 lb.
gawr, rear. 3331 lb.

actual weight of truck. 5640 lb.
gvwr. 5600 lb.
curb weight. 4323 lb.

it looks like i am over my gvwr by 40 lb. this is with the tools, cap, and armor i usually have in the truck. i think this is a good average representation. sometimes i have more, but i rarely have less. in addition to this, soon ill have a hefty skid to replace the oem one.

i tried to find front axle/rear axle curb weight but couldn't come up with any numbers. im not sure if they dont break it down like that, or if i was just looking in the wrong places. if anyone has these numbers i would really like to know what they are.

This afternoon I pulled a guy in a Colorado z71 out of the snow. He decided to follow me out to where I parked in an unplowed dirt parking lot. There was roughly 10 inches of snow on top of a packed down layer. He got about 50 feet in before he beached himself. I noticed what was going on when I was retuning to my truck after taking the pup on a walk in the woods. I looked over to see two ladies and a guy pushing while the truck's owner(a male) was driving.

I was pulling him forward while he was in reverse. I had a little difficulty to begin with, until I realized that he had his wheel cut all the way to one side. It went way better once he straightened it out, until somehow he managed to maneuver into a 3 foot tall, 9 foot wide snow bank. By that time I was onto a semi-plowed part of the parking lot. Since he couldn't pull forward another guy and I shoveled through the snow bank so I could yank him out the rest of the way.

Looking back, it could have gone better in a few ways. The other guy had a receiver, but no way for me to attach my strap that has loop ends. Luckily someone nearby had a strap with hooks, so we were able to hook onto the chain loop on the hitch. I'm not a fan of the hook type straps, so I'll go pick up another hitch pin, so if this happens again I can at least use it as a last resort. Another thing i could have done differently is lowering my tire pressure. I was at 38psi in the front and 36psi in the rear. The pressure was this high because the last time I aired up after a drive on the beach I had a 3 hour trip ahead of me. I was trying to get better mileage. This evening I dropped it down to 33 front and 32 rear. We are expecting 6-12 more inches of snow tonight and tomorrow. I think it would be better to have the traction now instead of the mileage. It would have been good to have the extra traction to pull the truck out also. Because of being 'overweight' when I went to the scales earlier this week I pulled some of my tools out of the boxes in my cap. It would have been better to have had that weight over the rear axle.

Live and learn. Needless to say there was a lot of clutch work involved. There was no burned clutch smell afterward. No difference in clutch feel either.

murphy said:

Another thing i could have done differently is lowering my tire pressure. I was at 38psi in the front and 36psi in the rear. The pressure was this high because the last time I aired up after a drive on the beach I had a 3 hour trip ahead of me. I was trying to get better mileage. This evening I dropped it down to 33 front and 32 rear. We are expecting 6-12 more inches of snow tonight and tomorrow. I think it would be better to have the traction now instead of the mileage. It would have been good to have the extra traction to pull the truck out also. Because of being 'overweight' when I went to the scales earlier this week I pulled some of my tools out of the boxes in my cap. It would have been better to have had that weight over the rear axle.

Click to expand...

I would recommend against over-inflation. Studies have proven over&over that mileage is increases by a fraction (up to 1MPG when aired to 50psi on a tire normally aired to 30psi) however tractive forces are lost in multiples of 10% (in above scenario they lost close to 30% coefficient of friction in one study). Then there's the increased tire wear.
best recommendation is to do the chalk test if you are significantly changed from stock size tire&rim. rub chalk across the treadwidth and then drive forward a bit and check the wear pattern of the chalk. it should be uniform wear on the chalk. You may have to drive a few vehicle lengths. Be sure to drive straight ahead. You want to do this on a hard, flat surface.
The few $ you save by running over-inflated is far overshadowed by the $$$ lost in treadlife and replacing expensive offroad tires.
-by the way, great truck, I like the stance!

So a lot has happened on the last year. I just rolled 128,000 miles. So I have over 55,000 miles on my JWT clutch setup. I'm not sure why people with their equipment get only 20k miles before they change it because of slipping.



December started my current phase of modding the frontier. Tire Rack had a sale on 285 Duratracs. For $205 a piece I couldn't pass them up. Next came Ride Rite air bags. It was a little bit of a pain filling them with a tire pump, so I picked up a Viair 450c kit with a 2.5 gallon tank. I moved the battery to the bed and I placed the compressor where the battery was. I did not want all of the heat of the compressor in the bed. The reason why will follow. I installed OTRATTW switches in the console next to the 4wd selector. (Compressor on/off and airbags up/down)



Next was a call to Alcan for some +600 pound at +2" custom leaf packs.



Radflo helped me select a coilover and shock package to suit my needs and directed me to Nisstec to purchase them. I ended up with extended travel 2.5 coilovers with 650 pound springs and +2" 2.0 remote res. rear shocks.