A new product from concept to finished parts ready to ship. We started making drive shaft spacers for the Toyota trucks many years ago due to customer request. Lately, we had similar requests for a line of spacers for the common Ford axles. So we picked up a Ford 8.8" pinion and u-joint flange, measured some dimensions and worked up a design. Flange is 5" in diameter, with 3"x3" and 2.5"x2.5" bolt patterns (in 12mm dia.) and a 2" diameter pilot hole and ring. Big thanks go out to my dad for modifying his CNC program used to make the Toyota spacers for making the Ford spacers. For example the 11mm hole size was bumped up to 12mm. The 66mm spaced holes were changed to 2.5", 77mm to 3.0", and so on. Also, thanks to my buddy Aaron for snagging a used flange off a Crown Victoria that was headed to the junkyard. Was good to have a used OEM flange to test fit the spacers with. The OEM flanges seem to also have a set of 7/16" NF threaded holes along with the M12-1.75 holes. The spacers will work with either size hardware, although we supply the M12 bolts. Ford drive shaft parts from: http://www.drivetrainamerica.com/driveshaft/ And if you are looking to add a spacer to your Ford and you don't have a pinion flange, you should be able to order a pinion flange and matching u-joint flange from the above web site. Then swap the pinion flange on your differential and fit the u-joint flange to the end of the driveshaft. This will add some length to your shaft, if you need more, measure up the difference and order one of our spacers. Obviously lengthening your existing drive shaft is a good option as well. However, if you don't have a local drive line shop, factor in the cost of shipping your drive shaft to and from an out of town shop. Plus account for the transit time there and back as well as the time for the shop to modify your shaft. A spacer can be bolted into your vehicle in 30 minutes or less. Our Toyota drive shaft spacers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCCbnkAshB0 Link to more information, including dimensions and how to determine what size spacer you might need, below: https://www.4crawler.com/4x4/ForSale/DriveshaftSpacer.shtml Be sure to rate, comment and share And as always, thanks for watching ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6clHnfo8n4

Based upon viewer feedback from the initial testing, I added a mono to stereo adapter for the external microphone and wanted to test how that works. I picked up a Radio Shack 274-0069 adapter kit which includes the above adapter as well as L+R to stereo, dual stereo to mono and dual mono to mono adapters. I already had a dual stereo to stereo adapter, so I should be set up for 3.5mm audio adapters now! For testing, I had the solar heating and inverter fans running in front of the camcorder. I had the external mic facing back and then tested the various mic settings with the high ambient noise level. I found the camcorder's auto audio level control was boosting the background noise level during breaks in narration. So I switched it to manual level control and retested the external mic with various audio level settings. The default level setting was around 70 (out of 100 I assume?) and for the omni wind settings, 30 seemed to work well. For the higher gain uni-directional setting, a level of 16 seems to work best. So I think the rear facing mic on the omni setting with manual level control at 30 works well for eliminating noise sources in front of the camera. However, it also cuts out any narration sound from in front of the camera as well, so I'll need to make sure and stay behind the camera if I have the mic facing that direction. But this was the whole point of selecting a camcorder with an external mic input. It provides a lot of flexibility in picking up sound from where you want to and cutting out sound that you don't want. Let me know if you have any likes or dislikes on the mic settings. I think for future videos, I'll use the built-in mic for general shooting in quiet locations. Then switch to external if there is ambient noise or if I need to be farther away from the camera either to the back or front, orienting the mic accordingly. As always, comments/questions below. Thanks for watching! ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbfynGUHTLA

The 1895 topo map shows the old Stevens Canyon Road continuing beyond the location of the modern Grizzly Flat Trail. I had always seen what looked like an old road on the far side of the canyon when dropping down the stream crossing on the Grizzly Flat Trail. This is the first time I finally took the plunge and ventured up onto the old road shelf. There are a lot of fallen trees across the old road and with the steep slopes, a lot of debris has fallen down from above and covered much of the old road bed. I think this road continues up at least a ways past where I got to in this video. Two plans of attack are to side hill down from the portion of Grizzly Flat trail where it runs up the ridge above this point. Then there are also 1 or 2 old roads I've seen dropping down off Grizzly Flat Trail (south) that seem to be heading into the same canyon as this portion of the road is heading up. It's hard to be certain of any of this as the old and new maps seem to be very inaccurate in this area. They show the Branch D canyon starting about 0.1 miles further upstream from this location. I think the modern maps make use of much of the topographic information on the older maps and thus if the old map was off, then new map is off as well. This area is not amenable to aerial surveys as the tree cover is so heavy. In order to see where all these old roads actually go, the only way is to hike them, recording a GPS track then upload them and view the tracks on a larger map. About the USGS HTMC: https://www.usgs.gov/programs/national-geospatial-program/historical-topographic-maps-preserving-past View/download maps on the TopoView site: https://ngmdb.usgs.gov/topoview/ I used the 1895 Palo Alto quadrangle or the 1900 historical topo as listed in GaiaGPS: https://www.gaiagps.com/ More to come... Subscribe for more content like this Comment, rate, share & click the bell icon And as always, thanks for watching ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Eab_bgtBsQ

Unboxing an AC Power Panel Meter. After using the isolated variable AC power supply a bit, I decided it would be nice to have a digital meter readout for voltage, current and power. I could plug in my P3 Kill-a-watt meter but it's display fades out below 100V or so and it doesn't seem to read accurately below 120V. So I found this nice LCD panel meter with 4 readouts of volts, amps, watts and KWH based off a small current transformer. Product details below: Model: PZEM-061 Size: 90x50x25mm Working voltage: 80 ~ 260VAC (reads to ~58VAC) Max. current: 100A, 0.01A resolution Max. power: 22000W, 0.1W resolution Max. Energy: 10,000KWH Working Frequency: 45-65Hz Measurement accuracy 1.0 May be manufactured by a company named Peacefair. Ebay listing: http://www.ebay.com/itm/100A-AC-Digital-LED-Power-Panel-Meter-Monitor-Power-Energy-Voltmeter-Ammeter-New-/400985840771 In countries with split phase (120 + 120 = 240v) systems, see the video below for how to hook up a meter like this for split phase 240v operation: https://youtu.be/LhR-Z6lBeZw In the next video, we'll see if we can fit this meter to the isolated power supply: https://youtu.be/vn0o0fieU-4 And a follow-up review of the meter: https://youtu.be/MRu8zwFSBE4 Soundtrack: Magic Marker by Silent Partner https://www.youtube.com/audiolibrary/music ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X0eyY7TcM4