lurch

Yuri, What exactly is wrong with you, anyway? I can't figure it out myself, but my first guess would be, A Lot. I mean really...back when you were a wannabe wingsuit pilot you had such a positive attitude. Now its like I wonder did you have some traumatic flock experience, went to Florida and Chuck Blue pissed in your wheaties one day or something, (an act that, now that I think about it, I wouldn't put past him if you fucked with him). I mean what was it? You got gangraped by a bunch of wingsuiters dressed in pony suits? Play under powerlines too much as a kid? Late night sneaky uncle? One too many servings of paint chips with extra lead? Reading your stuff is kind of gruesome but entertaining, like watching someone repeatedly stabbing themselves in the forehead with a dull pencil. I know its not going to be fatal or even do all that much damage really, but I can't help thinking "God, thats gotta hurt..." -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Jarno, putting my arms behind me wasn't enough. Not from an Otter at 140. I'm not a heavy guy, 135 lbs average, call it 70 kilos. Like I said in that post from a year ago, I worked my way up to those speeds gradually. I was also far from being a beginner when I was doing those exits. I would not train a newbie to exit that way. I'd started off with my wings simply pulled back, but even that was too much drag and too much lift. I got unpredictable results that way and sometimes went up during those exits before I'd cleared the tail. Not up very far, but up enough to spook me. Arms across my chest was far more controllable and the closest thing to "balled up" I could do for an exit while still "flying" the exit enough to take advantage of the speed and fly up after I'd cleared the tail. Exiting with my arms at my sides or behind me makes me about 6 inches wider than having my forearms in an X in front of me and at 140+ knots it made a BIG difference in the manageability of that exit. The point of the X style was that it allowed me to not just have my wings back, but actually pulled tight around my sides and front-no loose fabric at the sides at all-making me as dragless and narrow as I could possibly get with a front profile no wider than my ribcage itself. I found the conditions of a 140 knot Otter exit so extreme there was a big noticeable difference even if I just allowed my elbows to stick out to the sides. I wanted to make sure I didn't gain ANY altitude until I'd cleared the tail and the X arms thing was the only way to guarantee that. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Thanks for the positive responses, all of you. Guess I'm not the only one feels that way. Kralovec, just you wait. If its your ambition to get into wingsuit, well, you got no idea the adventure waiting for you. It does take time to learn the ninja tricks needed for some of the more surreal experiences wingsuit flying has to offer, but its worth the wait. The first time you exit, spread your wings and just...stop...falling is beyond description. The first time you fly up to a cloud and surf the entire 2 mile high wall of it, ducking in and out of tufts and canyons as you go, will blow your mind. To this day I still come down jumping up and down and screaming sometimes. Its that good. I'm told they call it the "Lurch debrief." Its the one time I lose my cool and I'm ok with that. And of course theres "Quiet Mode". Lowest possible fallrate. You'll know it when you hit it...it feels exultant. The windblast dies off to nothing in your ears. If you jump a camera it will show on tape as nothing but a quiet hissing sound. You just sort of hang there. You won't cover 6 miles that way but you can have a ridiculously prolonged cloudsurf if you set it up right. Enjoy the next hundred jumps or so. They'll be a hell of an adventure in and of themselves. Fly a slightly oversized canopy. You won't regret it. I spent my first 700 wingsuit jumps packing a Sabre2 170 loaded at .9 and that huge security blanket saved my ass, got me back from more impossible long shots than I can tell, and bought me time to figure things out when my judgement sucked. Fly safe. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Exactly. If I only flew with people who could stay with me when I'm flying maxed out, I'd be flying alone. I'm just a skinny critter so thats how it is. I LOVE flying maxed out. I do it every flock... at breakoff. Ask me if I give a damn about the performance I might not be using on any given flock or the freefall time I'm missing. One of the things I love most about the experience of flying with a whole bunch of birds is seeing their faces lit up in flight. "Look, there's a puffy to surf, LETS GO GET IT!" It is possible to both be inclusive and elite about it in the same flight with the same friends depending on how much hardcore flying they are ready for. One by one I see our new flyers go from 70 mph bricks to world class birds pulling 2.5+ with ease. We've got a bunch of elite birds around here. If you're an up-and-coming bird, you know you've made it into the elite when you get the invitation: "Hey... at breakoff? Come play." I guess I just don't understand where the negative attitude comes from and I'm getting annoyed with it. Are we such a bunch of skygods we can't back off the gas pedal a bit to include everyone? If we want to go off work on our leet skillz fly legs out and gloat over how well we fly we can go do a freakin' solo. We're flying with our legs bent so everyone gets to participate. I enjoy a good maxed out flight, whenever theres nobody else around to fly with or I need to get somewhere in a hurry. Some flocks, I've got my armwings almost behind my back so I can keep up. Why on earth would I give someone a hard time about that? Hell, my crowd gives ME a hard time about it...all in good fun. If I start to go skygod my friends will put rocks in my pockets and laugh at my arrogant ass. I can indulge myself all I want at breakoff. Flocking is all about being with the group and making sure as many people as possible get to enjoy flight as much as I do. I couldn't give a damn WHAT the fallrate is when I'm flying with some newb or midrange bird whose face is so lit up about the cloud we're going to surf they look like they're gonna pop. THATS flying. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Yuri. I met you once. You treated me with respect. I appreciated that. I thought you were an ok guy. Since then I've watched you trash talk most of the people events and activities I respect and care about and I have tolerated it in indulgent silence. Why don't you shut the fuck up? Those who know me know I'm never this rude to other wingsuit pilots but if you are one at all you do not deserve to be. I just spent thousands of dollars, tolerated the near certainty of serious health problems from the environment and risked everything to participate in the flocking you attempt to mock. I am prepared to lose my life for the privilege of doing it. One of my friends and flockmates just did. Got news for ya. Wingsuiters are an inclusive group. Flocks are often flown with wings half shut down so we can stay with the weaker flyers. We don't just say tough shit, I'm a skygod and I only fly legs out, then take off and abandon our friends in the sky. We fly with wings at less than maximum so we can enjoy the company of and fly with our FRIENDS. THAT is the "American way of flying." I would LOVE to see you try to keep up. We have a real kickass flock up here where I live. If you could outfly the least of us I'd be shocked. Steve was a dedicated flocker and could have outflown you with one wing behind his back. I just test flew an S-bird and pulled 3:24 from 13.5 to 3 covering roughly 6 miles. The plane took me 1.5 miles out, I waited till 1.9 miles, exited, flew to twice the distance outbound, turned around on about a 1 mile radius and covered all the distance back to the airport easily. That was with a looping flightpath, multiple turns to avoid a nearby aircraft the pilot had warned me about, an asymmetrical suit fit that forced me to fly with one leg slightly gimped to fly straight in a suit I'd never flown before all working to COST me performance. If I'd flown a straight line path, known all the ninja tricks for flying this suit to its limits and stuck to just flying the suit at the one best glide I could find I could have done much better than THAT. I just won one of these suits in a raffle and I'm beginning to think I might be able to pull 4+ minutes and 7-8 miles from normal altitude with it once I really learn how to fly it and have my own suit instead of a demo. And you know, one of my prime concerns with choosing exact model and fit of the suit is, can I still fly it in a flock with my brother and sister birds, or is it too much wing? The people I care about and want to fly with enjoy flocking and come to these forums to exchange information and learn. Some of them have forgotten more about flying than you will ever know. Your posts in this forum are like having a child show up at a champagne party and start throwing dogshit at the guests. You do not converse. You gibber. You have no style. You have no delivery. You come off as a clown but you aren't even funny. You constantly try to bash the achievements and passions of others and have nothing constructive or useful to offer in exchange. Get some new material, champ. Show some fuckin' respect. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I'm unimpressed. Yours had wheels. Besides, I was smuggling midgets from Abu Dhabi for the porn industry in upstate New Jersey and couldn't afford to attract attention from airport security with excessively bulky baggage. Dufflezilla is camo and goes unnoticed. Amateur. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

You mean I've been demoted? (mental note: my scariness is slipping. Wear more black.) I would have thought the duffle alone would guarantee my supremacy. For the amusement of all Dufflezilla fans, I now present, an amusing fact: Dufflezilla weighed in at 47 lbs at the airport. The limit is 50. If I'd brought so much as an extra t-shirt or a bag of Funyuns they would have had to ship it as freight. BTW I suppose the mask thing does deserve an explanation. I use it to control a skin condition involving a violent allergic response to proteins produced by exposure to sunlight. In other words, for me direct sunlight exposure is corrosive and can produce blisters rapid swelling and outright tissue destruction in as little as 15 minutes. It isn't comfortable. Sunblock doesn't help much. Last year we spent an awful lot of time standing in very harsh sun during dirt dives and the mask was necessary but annoying...produces repetitive awkward social encounters, having to explain what its for, over and over. I leverage this into an endless series of vampire jokes, figuring I might as well get a laugh out of it. I regard this as a comic challenge: Do you have any idea how hard it is to come up with an original vampire gag? Its been done to DEATH. This year the dirt dives were more efficient and the sun less intense and I tried skipping the mask for most of the event. I shouldn't have. The effects are cumulative and my face looks like tuesday pepperoni again, but what the hell, we can't all be beach gods.

Woohoo! I made the top of the list! I think it must have been Dufflezilla that did it. Dufflezilla is a big, round, camo pattern dufflebag that measures roughly 48 by 20. Acres. Depending on how full it is. Which cannot and has not been precisely defined since its actual internal cubic volume is unknown and can only be estimated with partial differential equations I don't even know how to read. To be full implies that you have run out of space. To date this has not happened. I tried a laser rangefinder in there once. I never did get a reading. The device was still waiting for the beam to bounce off of something when I got bored gave up and closed the bag. I'll check back in a couple of months. That bag makes me the coolest kid on my block. Everyone's going to want one soon. I'm very proud of it. Dufflezilla is actually big enough that I could zip myself into it and airmail myself to Abu Dhabi with room to spare inside for an espresso and a bag of Funyuns to get me through the trip in comfort and style. Nobody bothers you when you're travelling in a duffle bag. Its comfier than flying coach, and you don't have to listen to that speech about exit row seating and oxygen masks and stuff. And you don't have to deal with that annoying talkative seatmate trying to strike up pointless conversation so they won't feel isolated while packed into an aluminum can with a bunch of total strangers and some pretzels. Who talks to a duffle bag? That bag is so big when I showed up at the airport with it they mistook it for me and me for it, and put a baggage claim tag on my ear. You have no idea how strong that adhesive is. It stung. That bag is so big it has its own gravity field. There may be a pocket singularity buried in its depths as a power supply. One of those little antimatter powered infinite-density space-warp portable black hole thingies they use in starships a lot. This is also handy because when its empty it collapses inward under its own gravity to a single point of pure neutronium nylon, which then conveniently fits in a pocket. And it won't upset your stomach! It also has beneficial effects on the gas mileage of my jeep when I'm driving with it so long as I put it in the middle for balance. If I don't get it just right the tail kicks out on the slightest of corners and the oversteer is a bitch to deal with. Total pain in the ass, but with gas set to hit 400$ a gallon, the savings are worth the hassle. That bag is so big it has its own area code and is classed as a landmass in certain states for tax and zoning purposes. I wanted to put up a steel mill in there, but I'm still waiting on the permits. Something to do with industrial land-use issues and environmental concerns. If my phone rings while I'm digging around in it for a toothpick or a bag of funyuns, it shows up on the bill as an overseas call. From Abu Dhabi. That bag is so big the only reason I'm still allowed to fly with it is because the FAA and TSA still can't agree on a set of rules to apply to a commercial passenger travelling with a portable landmass. They've both been reluctant to give a final ruling on the topic because of the little-known fact that the duffle can and has been used as an emergency airbag to cushion the landing of a 747 suffering hydraulic failure in a nosedive with 2638 passengers on board. The last time this happened the 747 was undamaged except for some camo skid marks on the belly from contact with the bag. The passengers were unaware of the event except for noting a softer landing than usual and a slight smell of scorched nylon. The contents of the bag were slightly squished but intact and usable. The bag picked up a few scuff marks but nothing worse than could be expected from being handled as checked luggage once or twice. I've seen samsonites in worse shape from just one trip. I didn't complain to the airline. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Believe it. I tipped em an extra 20 bucks. So far as I was concerned the suit was destroyed. When the dry cleaners were done with it there was no trace of oil visible in it, plus they'd gotten out every scuff, dirt and grass stain in it. Even the patches were gleaming white. Aside from still being a bit frayed and tattered in places the thing looked brand new fresh out of the box. The process doesn't seem to have harmed the suit's structural integrity any either. Hasn't torn anywhere since, and I've put another 300+ jumps on it since then. Should be good for years, yet. The results the dry cleaners delivered were unreal. I would have thought it impossible to get the oil out of oil soaked ZP, but they did it. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Take it to a dry cleaner. A year or so ago on my way home from a boogie I had to make a violent evasive maneuver in my jeep to avoid a car accident. I dodged the crash but the violent bouncing of the jeep dislodged a container of oil in the back, which ruptured and got all over my gear. I have a bright white and blue S-6 which was completely saturated in motor oil. Washing it repeatedly was useless. I eventually took it to a dry cleaner hoping they could save the suit. When I got the suit back, it looked like it was NEW. That suit is old and tattered anyway, but I got it back looking so bright white I couldn't believe my eyes. Dry cleaners can work miracles. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Nothings wrong with it, I just think predefined and regular works better with sushi, and salads don't really lend themselves well to structured presentation. If you were going to try to do it anyway strictly for the art of it, I'd suggest predefined regular tomatoes or radishes instead. The color would make the pattern stand out better. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Champu, thank you. Thats some seriously detailed birdwatching there, and I agree- its conclusive. My only remaining question would be, were there any other ducks nearby, or did they move to minimum safe distance during his recent combustion? I say recent because rain or jumping in the water would likely remove the debris. Ducks are seldom away from either source of water for long, therefore I can only guess he had combusted just a few minutes before that pic was taken. Lacking any other ducks in the background I can't tell if they were accepting him or not, although the pic itself is of high enough resolution to be certain of his duckness regardless of the reactions of the other ducks to his presence or combustion. So its settled, then. He is still a duck, combustible or not.

Predefined regular lattice? That sounds almost cross cultural somehow, like something the japanese would do. I dunno if I could back something like that. I seldom eat salads, but when I do I prefer a more random distribution of the vegetables. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I am wondering however, just how well old Chuteless is handling America's stubborn refusal to end on schedule. Poor guy must be so disappointed. On the other hand, his perception of time seems a bit cracked... ("week of years"? Has anybody told him we don't measure years in weeks and theres no connection or equivalence between the units?) So maybe hes still out there standing in a field staring at the sky waiting for the rapture to happen. I'm just disappointed he never posted any followup, his rantings were so completely insane they made great entertainment. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Hey Matt. Class job, man. That is really, really cool.

You sure you wanna do that, Matt? This looks like it could be even more dangerous than that time Perry wanted you to shoot a porno at the Sebastian invitational. During the debrief from this dive you could wind up in a poorly lit cinderblock room full of people dressed in sweaty leather straps and not much else. Next thing you know your footage winds up on CNN being used to blackmail politicians. Law of unintended consequences and all that. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

1. Lurch 2. 3. ... 100. (?) I'm going to put in an appeal here to all the top guns of wingsuiting. Guys like Chuck Blue, Scott Bland, Scott Campos. I know you guys are normally the ones running the event so playing footsoldier might not suit you. But we need every top rank pilot we can get. If the organizers haven't asked you, I am, for those of us who just want to go and make it happen. The wingsuit community, small as it is, has already broken up into something like competing camps... the Florida crowd, us Northeast guys, the west coast guys... If we could get every top rank pilot possible, all in the same place at the same time, imagine what we could do. And those of you I've flown with who might not be running your own schools or bigway events but can catch anything in the sky without even thinking about it, we need you! Gray Mike...you coming? Medusa, you crazy mf'er, come fly with us. Scary Perry... we could use ya, bro, can you make it? Zack, Ripcord, Creepy Brian, Brian Drake, Chris and Scott Gray, Juan...you guys coming back? Those of you who I've looked in the eye on the step or in flight and seen that same intensity looking back at me... you coming or what? All of you out there who are more than qualified but hadn't really considered attending for whatever reason, come fly! It'll be EPIC. Theres a bunch of you out there I know of by reputation alone. And a bunch I'd been hoping to see last year, but didn't. Last year we flew our hearts out, it was a bit ragged in spots but everyone got in and we "made it" by the somewhat fluid definition at the time. Now, its going to be stricter, and we need it tighter, more perfect, and in larger numbers all at the same time. I know its probably a bit idealistic, even naive to expect or even hope for every head honcho from everywhere to come and be "just another unit" in the formation, but it is what we need to make the formation. Now, I have no involvement with recruiting for this. They never asked me to... I'm not much for administrative functions, all I do is fly. My little rallying post here may even be interfering with the official recruitment efforts and if so, you guys have my apologies. If you see this as a problem let me know quickly enough and I'll take it down or ask a mod to do it. I'm acting on a hunch here that getting 100+ world class pilots together in under a year might not be all that easy and a broad appeal to those who fly for the sheer joy of it might help a bit. So come on, birdpeople, there are more than enough of us to make it happen, so long as we show up. This ain't about egos, or suit brand wars or whose clique doesn't want to fly with whoever else. This is about achieving excellence. I'd like to see the best...ALL of them... for one purpose...all at the same time. Whos coming? -B I'll be there the 6th. Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Andreea, define "small suit"! Theres a lot of Intros circulating out there now, and the tails aren't exactly small. I'm thinking the trouble with tacking on a "continuing education" attitude is that its making too much out of a single thing for a very specific one-solution situation. What I get from this incident is that you may not be as balled up as you think you are, even a more experienced pilot, and this kind of thing can be prevented just by increasing community awareness that when we say "Ball up", we mean really, really balled up. I mean, look at what he said and remember what he was thinking feeling and doing at the time. He THOUGHT about balling up, he ACTED to ball up, he FELT balled up, and thought he HAD balled up. But he hadn't. I think thats what we need to be aware of. We're not very specific about the ballup itself. If the community learns anything from this, I think it ought to be that we should be more specific and systematic about how that ballup is done and taught, so the next time one of us needs to resort to that ballup, the specific action they're thinking of doing is the one thats most effective to control the situation. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

I'm in yes/no agreement with you here, Matt. I also tend to customize what I'm teaching to the student. The tense ones or the 200-jump low timers, I keep it super simple and reassuring... I get it across with a nice relaxed take it easy cadence... just ball up, shut off your wings, relax and it'll be alright. But I also get a fair number of very high-timers, guys with multiple thousands of jumps. With them, I'm not as worried about giving them information overload so I give em a bit more info, options, "try this first and if it doesn't work within 2 flips, ball up" In any case, I found half the battle is controlling the student's exit. My first year or so of teaching, I had a fair number of students look down as they exit, either looking at me following me out, or just looking down and going into a steep headfirst dive. Sometimes resulting in random flight paths till they stabilize. I eventually figured out I could more or less ensure a clean head-high exit by having them look at the prop, and exit first, before me. Because if they're a bit overwhelmed or forget to look at the prop, they always look up at me for reassurance, which puts them in a neat, head-high position, they hit the air rock steady, and I'm in their field of view the whole time for the two seconds it takes me to drop in by their side. Psychology. I had one guy try beating on me for this technique with an outraged tone telling me it was atrocious and if I wasn't going to exit first and lead the student out the door I might as well not even BE there. Took me awhile to get the idea across that having a student exit a split second before me does not invalidate my presence in the skydive, and if you want to manage the potential for student flat spins you do whatever is most effective to accomplish that goal. This thread has been interesting to me for related reasons, my worst nightmare is the possibility of leading a student into a situation they can't get out of with what I've taught them on the ground. I've always known of the potential for a spin to get so far out of control that the only option left was pop-and-pray, but this is the first time I've ever seen it, and it wasn't even a newbie. After seeing this, I'm more likely to adjust what I teach towards leaving out the "track out of it" part for all but the most high-timer students. The time the student spends deciding which option to use could be enough to ensure their efforts to track out of it are wasted. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Now heres a funny... I still take up FFC students from time to time. I always teach a two step approach to spin recovery... yes you can just fly out of it, but I tend to emphasize balling up to get out of trouble. Flying it out works much of the time, if you're not disoriented and it isn't radical yet, but balling up works, even for a first timer, disoriented or not. Awhile back I had an ex-student or two hinting that I was a bad instructor for teaching this and the real pros theyd met at some other DZ all told em your instructor doesn't know what hes talking about, real pros teach that you should just arch and fly out of it. Hmmm... Still think I'm teaching substandard techniques or what, guys? (you know who you are) -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Wow. Thats a spin alright. You know, I think it sucks he got in such deep trouble. I think it sucks how close this could have been to being a major incident. And I think it sucks he had to go to reserve to get out of it. And I'm really glad his reserve got him out of it. But you know, My inner teenager is thinking, "I'll bet that must have been one HELL of a ride! Whoa!" -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Yeah, but Matt, how much did he really ball? I'll tell you this, I've had it easy my whole wingsuit career by flying tattered old Birdman gear. Legwing is harder than the arms but nowhere NEAR as hard to totally shut down as every Tony suit I've test flown. I tried out a comically oversized screaming yellow SM 1 this summer, and you know, that thing was so balloony and so rigid I'm not all that sure I could have fully shut it down in a pinch. At least not with the emergency-shutdown muscle memory response I'm currently using. I put some thought into this since this thread came up, and the best thing I can think of is that radical suits may require radical recovery procedures. My ballup for flying even a hypermodified S-6 is squirrel-style, knees up, arms pulled in, elbows at my sides. Only just enough ballup involved to give me instant snap control of all surfaces. The zipon sailwings I'm flying these days make this less effective, but at worst, I get a few inches of sail loose at the corners. Its nonpressurized, so if its corners aren't pulled tight, it just folds back out of the way and flutters a little. I never have to fight this suit. I don't think this would work all that well against a Tony suit. I'm thinking the only way I could have -truly- shut down that SM1 or any suit with similar tail construction would be a much more aggressive and comprehensive ballup than most people are likely to use... I figure two major changes in technique would cover it: 1, lower bailout threshold. Be willing to resort to the ballup FAST, within one or two rotations. 2, much fiercer and faster ballup. I mean aggressive. Snap knees up to chest, wrap arms around knees or ankles if you can, and squeeze your legs into the tightest fetal position you can. Probably not easy to do, but might be the only way to truly cut off a chain of events like this one. I'm going to have to borrow one of Justin's suits just to test the theory. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

"No tears, please. Its a waste of good suffering." -Pinhead Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Cool, ain't it? I always wanted to hijack a thread. Lets put some mud tires on it and drive it to Chicago. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.

Damn, that sounds badass... Yours ought to be immune to a bunch of issues mine had that just required endless rehacking till I got it right. I always wanted to add a rear swaybar, that thing had a ridiculous amount of body roll in turns. I'd found the jeep doorhandle thing, just one problem...the only jeeps I could find that used that doorhandle, only used them in the back on the tailgate. It was the same geometry as the passenger side of the eagle. Since every jeep I found in junkyards with that handle had a taller design for the actual doors, I could never find a black jeep LEFT version. I eventually solved that one by using a dremel to machine off the hinges and internals of the doorhandle, ground it a flat spot behind it, and handcarved some angle aluminum, bolted it to the back of the door handle paddle. Permanent fix. I knew you could get a solid milled aluminum valve cover, but I never could spare the cash and eventually resorted to trying that older stamped valve cover on top of an Eagle cork gasket. Needs RTV just as insurance in a couple places where the ripples in the cover come really close to going off the gasket, but it allows you to bolt it down tightly and firmly handle that oil leak issue. You really don't want to let that slide, I had a friend had an ugly old brown wagon, kickass ride, didn't have it for long, girlfriend ignored the smoke till it burst into flames, car burned to the ground. These days I drive a 2000 Grand Cherokee. I learned the hard way that Mobil 1 can be really bad for flat tappet engines and had a lifter ground to dust a year or so ago. In the process of pulling the head off to fix it, I got familiar with how the modern version of that engine was built... the last years of the 4.0 they finally got ALL the bugs out. I found it to be unbelievably well engineered... the valve cover has built in captive grommet/cushions, and the gasket was redesigned into a rubber/steel layered laminate with grooves sealing it to the cover and bridges in it that go across the head. No sealant needed... just slap the gasket on, drop the cover on and bolt it. Utterly bulletproof, never ever leaks. Multicoil distributorless ignition rail. Old Eagle was very sensitive to wet or cold weather. With the brutal carb and HEI ignition it never failed to start but ran better or worse depending on weather. Jeep runs perfectly, all the time. And so easy to work with. When you know the tricks, the whole fuel injection system and entire top half of the engine just pop apart easily. If I ever rebuild my eagle again I'll probably upgrade the sucker to 4.0 multiport injection, just pillage a dead Grand in the junkyard for everything under the hood at once. That drive back from Cali was hell. I also broke a shock avoiding a wreck about 45 miles west of Des Moines, and the rear main seal on the engine went out in the eastern half of Iowa. Was losing so much oil onto the exhaust and making so much smoke I was afraid of fire, but thought up a neat emergency roadside Macgyver to handle it... I blocked the crankcase breather pipe on the back of the valve cover, removed the PCV valve and rerouted its line straight into the biggest vacuum port at the base of the carb, putting the entire crankcase under vacuum. Sucked air in through the oil leak as long as the engine was running. Stopped the leak cold. Resurrect this thread and put up pics when yours is done, I'm still a fan of these things, love to see em. -B Live and learn... or die, and teach by example.