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Backstory. So in 2016 I had this bus. and it needed a support vehicle. So I bought this lovely old farm truck to support it. The bus went away, I made some changes to the truck, threw a turbo on, big brakes, etc. Then 2020 happened and my husband and I bought this rolling disaster.Then proceeded to polish that turd to a high luster and drop it on the other extensively polished turd. This thread is picking up after where the last two left off. I'll share what we've put the truck and its camper through, what we've gone through, what we've learned, and of course the occasional instabooty worth photo while the shitter's backing the gently caress up over the 13 month and 15 thousand mile long road trip. I'm a data junkie and have tons and tons of spreadsheets and photos of the trip. I may throw some python together and graph some of it for posterity. At the time of this post, round t w o is a go. No, not with blackjack and hookers. An intercooler and motos. Sorta the same thing you could argue. No end date set in place but an end point. The point? a piece of dirt with a shop. More on that later. The last two threads left off at Trona Pinnacles  And this bolt rattling out of the transmission bellhousing to engine, getting wedged between the bellhousing and downpipe, causing a rattle.  This bolt is going to come into play later. One of its neighbors almost took out one of my eyes. But we're not there yet as that's still almost a year and twelve thousand miles away. First we stayed at something called the LTVA. It's Bureau of Land Managment land with a set area set aside to camp on long term, hence the name Long-Term Visitor Area. BLM will let you camp for 14 days in a 28 day span on undeveloped public lands. after the 14 day limit you'll need to hitch up your wagon and travel 25 miles outside of where you were camped. The LTVA is a little different. A $180 permit gets you six month access (from September 15th to April 15th) to a spot to park your rig, trash service, potable water, a place to dump your tanks, and sometimes a pit toilet/shower. The amenities depend on the site, not all sites have all amenities. For us, this is akin to a port to dock a ship. We're fresh out of the gate and there's a few dozen things to figure out before pushing the throttles into the firewall. A ship is safest in port but that's not what its for. Right now the camper is a great big unknown and so staying stationary for a few months will allow the time to carve out those unknowns. Also there's a global pandemic going on and f u c k being around other people. drat four wheel drive is handy. Camping spaces we took over the 3 months we were there. Each one progressively further off the beaten path. "Midlands" LTVA. First time we put the awning up. Someone cut it down that night. We left the next day. [img]https://i.imgur.com/s7KXJbU.jpg[/timg] "Imperial Dam" LTVA.     The bunk's forward window sprung a leak while we were at the LTVA, the above photo of the rainstorm actually. I had sikaflex along so after that passed I pulled the window apart and rebonded the glass. The generator just did not want to cold start. Found the mixer's proportioning adjuster and got that sorted. The Unifi AP had to come out to apply a software update. Which in the build, we put it behind the pantry on the ceiling. Except we didn't notate its latch and unlatch point. Cue unloading the pantry and pulling it out. The Sierra modem was good for internet with about a 15 mile line of sight from any one tower. This was very much akin to when the TNG's Enterprise first set out and there's ten billion little gremlins to chase down and while everything works, its not polished like a machine that's been running for decades. Dust storm:  Old mining remnants:  Lots of MTB around the same old trails. Some of them donkey paths.    Imperial dam   Life at the LTVA is kinda boring. Makin cookies for heat and well, cookies.  Lots of stew.   Yes, homebrew sourdough. It sucked, but it was still bread.  banana bread.  I was an 'ok' cook before. The road really taught me how to prepare food and to make ingredients last. I didn't really know how to bake anything prior to 2020, and what I could bake was either a science project or a wheel chock. Also turns out I really enjoy baking. To add to that. The solar on the coach isn't enough to fully recharge during the winter months so going through winter means powering the freezer down and only having the fridge. I burnt a lot of propane till that problem was figured out. The fridge is incredible but it burns through electrons like the truck does diesel. No end of projects that we brought along. The coach does weigh thirteen thousand pounds after all. Got the rover up and working relatively well here.   In stark contrast to the truck's replacement onboard computer. Or the old Alienware next to it that one night got stuck in a power config mode over windows update where it depleted the camper's 3.6kWh battery array. That tested the low Voltage cut outs.  That is now on like revision 5. However while kind of boring in that it was the same sights every day it provided us the ability to figure out the thing we'd just built. It was also extremely cheap to stay here. Like a little over a thou a month all in kind of cheap. That's like sofa surfing at age 20 cheap. Also helps that we're driving an average of 250 miles per month while at the LTVA. Provisions runs take about half a day, and around 50-70 miles round trip. Its exhausting. Pack up. Dump/fill tanks. Run to town. Get LP if needed. Get groceries. Run back. Unpack. While here we developed a system. To where we could pull the coach from camping to transit mode in under twenty minutes and be rolling and have it from transit to camping mode in about half that. A little more if I wanted to evict the washing machine from the shower. Things that we didn't know was the ideal position of the coach for photo-voltaics to work at their best. The coach' power consumption at basline, and all of the projects we brought along. How long the fresh and holding tanks are good for. How much food can we stock and how long can it last? Propane and propane accessories? The generator is having fits, it doesn't want to start annnnd the batteries are dangerously low. cursedshitbox fucked around with this message at 20:51 on Aug 12, 2022 |
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Aug 6, 2022 19:34
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Ground floor. I love your threads.
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Aug 7, 2022 00:33
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Your truck owns stew is good get a biek out there FFS ground floor
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Aug 7, 2022 01:54
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Did you ever see any donkeys on the trails?
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Aug 7, 2022 03:58
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Can’t wait to see updates of how it went. Amazing!
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Aug 7, 2022 04:16
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Gorson posted:Your truck owns stew is good get a biek out there FFS ground floor Round two! Motos didn't happen during the first year. After all the bullshit leading up to this we'd taken a year off and were coasting on savings set aside for this road trip. A trailer would have cut deep into that runway. There were so many unknowns with the truck and how it would respond to such a load long term. Some of its already been posted on the forums and it'll be written about in this thread later on. But for round two we're going back out while working, with the experience and knowledge gained from 2021, and with a mild refit to the vehicle. so yeah, trailer and motos. Then I can post about c a r b u r e t o r s. builds character posted:Did you ever see any donkeys on the trails? Yes! One of the highlights of this whole trip was getting to see all of the wild life in their homes just living their day to day lives. It was incredible to be a part of it as an outside observer without getting involved. I'm not a biologist nor can I really identify many types of plants. Its humbling to live among the wildlife while they're still here. The donkeys would serenade at night, I do miss that to this day. While out hiking He and I ran across these burros.   Of course they're also not afraid of people, or rvs for the matter. donkeys making friends with donkeys  They'd wander through camp at night when people turned in for the night. I moved from the first spot at Imperial when someone's dog had an interaction with the burros. The whole scenario was preventable. Dog heard the burros, got out, burros weren't having it. Guy came off to me like his cheese slid off his cracker. I mean he was wheeling a 20-30 foot 2wd econoline class C back where we were. Sure my cheese crumbed right the hell off the cracker long ago so I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. At midlands, we were there for about 9 days. We moved around a bit, caught up on some chorin' and eventually found a place we thought we could pull the parking brake and sit for a few weeks. Up goes the big tent for the first time on setting out. The next morning, I raised the shades to see it laying over against the ground. 4 of its paracords cut.   The best I could tell is that someone was trying to send a message. Yeah I'm used to this, I also really don't appreciate having my equipment screwed with. So ya release the parking brake and go to the next spot. Another cool aspect of being on the road is seeing what other people have cobbled together, or bought, or taken a fat loan out for, and sent to their comfort levels.  I'm always a sucker for a clean brick.  This person gets it. Its always better to have too much tow vehicle, than not enough. Also peep the freightliner moto hauler.  PPPPrevost. Probably a diy build given all the windows.  Columbia + Ambo build  Really stubby cute winnie. This thing would own with a solid front axle under it.  Every time I walked by this shop I was like goddamn. If I had this to work with I could build an empire.  And of course, the desert will always claim a few as its own.     That was once a vista cruiser. It no longer has the burden to haul families, groceries, and rear end. Though out here, it might still haul rear end. Just not the kind of rear end it was hauling forty years ago. And then there's the chores. To get the maximum out of solar, the panels have to be cleaned on a regular basis. The panels get excruciatingly hot during the day up there so mornings and evenings are ideal.  We found that setting the heading with the tail towards the morning sun and the nose towards the evening worked out best for PV production. Deviating from this heading roughly in line with how the sun rises and sets, adversely affects PV production. A bad heading when parking can prevent the coach from fully charging every day, and one bad day can prevent a recharge for days. By that point we call it and top off with the generator. Good thing it was retained in the build, despite being good for only 1850 Watts and not 2300 like it says. With the freezer on it takes around 4-5kWh of solar to recharge. That's.. not ever happening in the winter. Shutting the freezer down is enough to compensate and still be able to have morning coffee and run high current devices like the instant pot. More water for another ten-ish days. During this period 15 days was our max. Fill up on potables. Drive over to the dump station and dump. Out at the LTVA people use IBC containers and the like. Some residents make egregious jokes that they can use one whole container for both duties.  This happens often...  Laundry really blows through water and holding tank capacity. We're talking around 6 gallons per wash and rinse. A sink of dishes takes maybe a gallon of water tops for cleaning and rinsing. Granted the sink is tiny, but still. Showering? 3 gal tops. Typically two ish. Yet another place where I've put a system together. This one spanning a decade or two though. A couple times during the summer we could have free electrically heated water courtesy of the sun. Of course for a few grand in infrastructure up front. Laundry and dishes and cleaning. It takes like 10 minutes to tornado through a coach this small and polish it back up to presentable condition. Laundry though, can take a day or two.  An early shot of provisions. A system here too was built up that drastically reduces sort time. Yea, we're goons. Judge all you want, I'm still going to eat trash. A system I implemented back in prior to 2020 was if there's one of something not-super-perishable, have two. If we want to do this once every two to three weeks, have three or four. beast of burden bears more weight as always but we're not going far so the vehicle can just deal with it.   I chuckle at this now. garbage got a lot costlier over the trip to which they were no longer purchased. Reconfiguring our unifi at Midlands. Kept getting some strange interference knocking out our wifi disrupting services so we attributed it to a lower end signal booster from somewhere else in the LTVA. Which meant gaining physical access to our AP to reset it. Which the login was long lost. Cue getting the software tools up and running. Removing the 100 or so pounds of food from the pull out pantry, then undoing all four 100lb slides to get at the AP. It had no markings on the release tab or which direction. Protip: BE NICE TO FUTURE YOU, THEY'RE HAVING A poo poo DAY. In writing this... I wonder about the above awning and this interference as this happened three days prior.  And the generator that wouldn't start unless I did it at the generator itself over riding the governor and manually throttling it up by hand. This thumbwheel hidden behind the silicone cap adjusts the baseline mixture on starting. It was too lean. On cranking the thumbwheel is on a solenoid and plungers itself in. Crank it down till it can reliably start cold on its own.  I almost fell out of the entry way four feet down over lack of shoe organization. Amazoned a shoe rack that turned this disaster of a dead space into something useful.  Every RVers worst nightmare is leaks. After an eight-month overhaul he and I were especially in tune with leaks. Like if we heard a drip while dead asleep we were up with all the interior lights on tracking it down. Somtimes it was the coach' water pump fittings leaking a little. The pump's valves can bind in such a way when on Shore Water that the pump isn't able to pump tank water so you gotta pull the pump down and reset its valves. Its happened a couple times. Like three. The pump is diy serviceable and field rebuildable. That's important.   But this. This was the first real real leak. It was easily rectified. Hard rains and high winds can cause water to blow in through the storm window drains and the stove hood vent, throw down a towel and wait it out. Things to think about for the next build. An active prospect going on. Always neat to see these in action. Few interesting bits in the local soil but from my amateur eye not a whole lot going on.   They're mining zipties!  This vertical stripe however.  When I say we packed some hobbies. We.  Packed.  It.  All.  Ok not really all of it because there's a shop's worth of tools, fusor, sem, motos, and 10kW of solar in storage, we'd need a damned train for all that stuff. Ideas... The 3d printer cab is a never ending shitfest of everything falling down no matter what organization system I try. With the fridge the 3D printer pretty much was printing parts when in campgrounds only. The road itself was not kind to the printer resulting in half a day of tramming it back in then getting to work. A serialized bin system was built some months later with all of the onboard storage bins so he and I wouldn't spend an hour and a half looking for that one part for our project. Hunting for something for five minutes is enough to stall the easiest of projects, let alone a dozen bins and an hour. Just search a spreadsheet instead. A good bit of the projects pile was utilized to a high degree, some of it was weight we hauled around waiting for its five minutes of glory. More of it waiting on that one part that's backordered till... 2023. For round two It can live in the trailer. I wanna put garlic, onions, and potatoes in that cargo bay. So far at the LTVA everything is coming up millhouse for a brand new build. The bunk hasn't broken off from all the epoxy work, the truck is still in one piece, the roof doesn't leak despite all the holes poked in it, he and I became pretty comfortable in living in such a small space. In something with 160 square feet patience and communication is paramount. The coach so far has only needed small little piddly things to care for but outside of that, its all working well. The truck is fine enough though its radiator is leaking a little more than it has been and the left rear airbag has a slow leak. This is annoying to need to pump the bag up every driving day. This moldy mess is looking like a moldy success however its odometer only has 1100 miles on it. Nowhere near enough miles to call it a success. Its one thing to build something. Its another to use it and take down observations. cursedshitbox fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Aug 12, 2022 |
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Aug 7, 2022 17:19
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Every word a gem, as always. I love these threads.
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Aug 7, 2022 19:15
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cursedshitbox posted:Reconfiguring our unifi at Midlands. Kept getting some strange interference knocking out our wifi disrupting services so we attributed it to a lower end signal booster from somewhere else in the LTVA. Which meant gaining physical access to our AP to reset it. Which the login was long lost. Cue getting the software tools up and running. Removing the 100 or so pounds of food from the pull out pantry, then undoing all four 100lb slides to get at the AP. It had no markings on the release tab or which direction. Protip: BE NICE TO FUTURE YOU, THEY'RE HAVING A poo poo DAY. In writing this... I wonder about the above awning and this interference as this happened three days prior. most of the ubnt gear i have experience with is airmax, not unifi, but my recollection is that the power injector also has a reset button to save you the trouble. does the consumer stuff not have that? i guess it's less of a hassle to pull a uap off the ceiling than it is to go climb a mast or a roof to get to a bullet or nanostation
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Aug 7, 2022 19:59
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Raluek posted:most of the ubnt gear i have experience with is airmax, not unifi, but my recollection is that the power injector also has a reset button to save you the trouble. does the consumer stuff not have that? i guess it's less of a hassle to pull a uap off the ceiling than it is to go climb a mast or a roof to get to a bullet or nanostation AFAIK none of my APs have a remote reset button. The ceiling mount vs in wall APs like what CSB has has a pinhole near the POE port. CSB are you running a POE to the unifi?
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Aug 8, 2022 00:33
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Nystral posted:AFAIK none of my APs have a remote reset button. The ceiling mount vs in wall APs like what CSB has has a pinhole near the POE port. i know that they do have the reset button on the device, but some ubnt gear def does have another one on the injector the one that came with my nanostation looks like this:  and has this lil button on the back:  i would assume they would do this for other models, but perhaps not
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Aug 8, 2022 01:18
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Yeah its POE however the POE injector does not have a reset button. Its... a dumb one. And very accessible compared to the AP. TBH it hasn't been touched again till like... two months ago. And there's now starlink on the fucker and there's plans to upgrade from a cat 15 to the cat 20 dual wifi Sierra modem which obsolesces this entire thing.
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Aug 8, 2022 04:42
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New donkey thread!
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Aug 8, 2022 10:36
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I rarely check for threads outside my bookmarks. Glad I did today. 
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Aug 8, 2022 14:27
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Suburban Dad posted:I rarely check for threads outside my bookmarks. Glad I did today.
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Aug 8, 2022 20:53
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Ah yes a new CSB thread, excellent.
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Aug 8, 2022 21:35
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Suburban Dad posted:I rarely check for threads outside my bookmarks. Glad I did today. Bookmarked.
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Aug 10, 2022 18:15
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So far in our journey we've been about this far. Which isn't far at all. With the coach more or less running itself there's no need to stay at the LTVA till April. Plus its best to chase 75 degrees Fahrenheit and sunny forever despite having a coach built for ski season. Its been a while since we last visited Vegas, three years now, let's roll that direction. First night's layover is near Camp Ibis. Woke up really early to catch the sunrise, wander the place, and get rolling.  One of the things I learned at the LTVA is that if it takes two hours to make coffee every morning when its cold and the coffee by then is cold, why bother getting out of bed. Enter the automatic cheap coffee maker. The only way I'm getting up before the sun rises. It was worth the early morning though.  A cement pondering pit in the desert.   Placard for Camp Ibis  Rolling into Vegas from the south side. First camping spot out near GoodSprings.  Camper swayed too close for comfort near the power pole driving over some ruts. Looking back it looks mild. At the time it was hair raising. First night set up. Out with the Sous Vide then some cookies    There's a couple filled in mines around in the general area but there's not a whole lot going on. Areas pretty trashed. Lots of broken glass, tvs, and boolets.  Truck has been leaking coolant consistently like it always has since I've owned it. It would be nice if it stopped though. Taking a wire brush to the radiator tank shows that the tank is beginning to delaminate from the radiator core.  Resoldering it will work though I don't have my torch. Two part epoxy will do. But we're rolling out today so I'll do it later and just keep topping the coolant up. More garbage and house cut fries.  Most of the time with line of sight the internet is better on the road than Cox was at home. The system runs off of two networks and it takes about 5 minutes to swap between them. It can be a pain in the rear end to bounce between both carriers. To test service he would run speed tests while I drove. Our phones and one of the two carriers are the same so that cut down on rebooting the modem to run the alternative carrier. Sometimes we'd need to pick between solar yield or bandwidth. That's what the generator is for.  Provisions run. Trader Joes actually. No bus conversion or giant toyhauler is pulling this kind of parking shenanigans off.  Lake Mead, woah what happened to you. Oh right. Drought.  Night in a campground. No hookups, its just a layover. Packed in a little hiking, and of course beers and cookies. Saw a brand new Nissan/Cummins rig with a huge dent right about where the bed is where they caught a pole with it. Gotta watch for those things.  HOOKUPS. Unlimited length showers. Free electricity. Time to scrub the coach from ceiling to floor.  Nearby marina with more really low water levels and the sunset   Since there's hookups. Designed and printed a shelf for the bathroom. This little modification really improved counter space in there. Not that there's much.   Boondocking  Got to see some cool stuff while here like an aerial drop into the water by the military. Lots of speed boats and the occasional jeeper looking quite lost. Since we're not in a campground we can do a round of maintenance on the coach. The brand new "Fantastic" Vent is squealing like a banshee. It uses generic skateboard bearings, in sizes we actually have! But the motor assembly is spot welded together. And the squealing bearing is in the top, and sealed. Cue drilling a hole in it and dripping the finest Rotella in there. I have a spare fan motor, its in storage, I'll grab that later.  Lamb Gyros for lunch.  Alright let'sdo the quarterly service and check up on the radiator. Every quarter I drop the rear driveline and hit the far side joint with grease, and the other two zerks on that shaft. Front one has three zerks to be greased though I do the axle end one once a year because its a ten of ten pain in the rear end to drop. There's 4 rod ends, 4 knuckle joints, and 2 axle u-joints to grease. Hub lockouts are tested. Belt tension and condition is checked. So is clutch/brake fluid levels. Steering linkages and rag joint is checked for play and integrity. Brake pad life, hoses, and rotors are inspected. Diffs/tcase fluids checked. Transmission fill is rounded-the-gently caress-off by the original farmers so that one is uncheckable. Yolo? General chassis inspection from bumper to bumper with a flash light to look for damage or any fasteners vibrating free. It takes a few hours to knock out however it results in worry free operation. You don't know till you know. And if you know, you know. But you can also forget, so put that poo poo in a spreadsheet.  Back to the radiator. Oh. Yeah that's getting worse. Good thing I brought five pounds of two part epoxy.  timg]https://i.imgur.com/NnTAr4jh.jpg[/img] Oh that's much worse. And a lot faster than it was historically. Cleaned and primed.    You came from a farm I can fix you like a farmer. I'll chisel this off later and just solder it. No biggie. The system barely runs at pressure anyway. While hitting the almost dozen zerks up front. Wait.. That's not near the radiator.  Ok its just an extra oil leak. Or is it?  Ohhh poo poo. I'd warned that I never did this stupid coolant pump before setting out and its original and welp here we are. Its dying. There's a buncha caveats with replacing one and it can turn into a big hairy mess at the best of times facilitating dropping the oil pan. Call up the Ford dealer in Las Vegas. Yes! They have a pump for the old IDI! Cool, I'll take it. Two thermostats, and like 5 bottles of coolant additives. I'll drive right over when its ready and pick it all up. Why a Ford pump and not aftermarket? Well. Look at the giant load its carrying. Its been there for 30 years and got me this far. OEM parts for OEM quality control. haha. Not on a Ford/Intertrashional but whatever you get my idea. Parts are ready for pickup. Swinging through the dump station since its on the way to Vegas, met this awesome skoolie conversion.  And the pump exploded right before the ranger station at the park's entrance. With another 27 miles to go. Its absolutely howling when running like the fan is eating the radiator. Power assisted brakes and steering are gone, and the alternator has dropped out. Temp gauge immediately pegged itself. At almost seven tons it will proceed no further with a critical hit. Its too hot to open up or risk getting burned.  Let it sit and cool off. Drove it out of the park and parked it. Options are. Get it towed as is. Find a shop to work on it. Drop the camper here or somewhere and get the truck by itself towed, also find a shop to work on it. Fix it here where it failed. It's mid day and I'm now on the clock. The truck can't sit here more than twenty four hours and if I get it towed, sitting somewhere will also cost cubic dollars by the day. We will also have hole up in a hotel while its being repaired, however long that will take. cursedshitbox fucked around with this message at 20:43 on Aug 12, 2022 |
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Aug 11, 2022 00:39
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cursedshitbox posted:You don't know till you know. And if you know, you know. But you can also forget, so put that poo poo in a spreadsheet. I like this. Sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for the next update 
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Aug 11, 2022 01:37
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I am glad you've started a new thread, your last is one of my favorites on these forums. Thanks for the updates, definitely bookmarked.
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Aug 11, 2022 02:16
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In on the first page. loving this so far.
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Aug 11, 2022 19:42
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cursedshitbox posted:So far in our journey we've been about this far. Which isn't far at all. First, ending on a cliffhanger? Nicely done. Second, just wanted to point out that I see you having a tray of cookies for each of you and this is a genius level move. Also well done.
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Aug 11, 2022 23:27
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This is the best thread.
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Aug 12, 2022 00:22
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Nystral posted:AFAIK none of my APs have a remote reset button. The ceiling mount vs in wall APs like what CSB has has a pinhole near the POE port. I think I'm running that same one. I'm pretty sure they only get power via POE, but I'm doing mine via their little POE injector dongle thingy. Definitely no remote reset. Do to similar previous challenges to CSB, I have moved my AP out of my crawl space under the stairs. That said, like CSB's AP, my AP has been bullet proof. The EdgeRouter X I had however, that thing bricked itself when I tried to reset it. It is apparently not an uncommon issue. Great thread as always CSB, fantastic seeing both the sights and your process.
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Aug 12, 2022 16:27
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There's going to be many, many cliffhangers. I promise to not end this post on one though. As for the AP. Its days are numbered. Two? months ago we figured out that the modem we purchased wasn't the modem we got and installed. It lacks internal wifi despite we purchased one with wifi. It took us two years to catch that. Anyway I'm going to upgrade to the dual 5G Cat 20 modem with built in wifi. It'll reduce the number of moving parts in our infrastructure. I'm also gonna use imgur's image sizing rather than timg to be kind to limited bandwith browsers starting in this post. Hood up, its cooled off enough to not burn me. There is coolant on everything.  Two thirds of a six gallon system spread across nature. Eh gently caress it, its just a coolant pump. How hard could it be?  Ugh Navistar. The four bolts that require permatex only bolt into the timing cover with a little captive nut spot welded on the back side. Too long and it contacts the timing gears. No permatex and you mix coolant/oil. They also strip really easily. Eh whatever I've done much worse in situ. If I'm gonna fix it where it broke we need a ride. But vegas is 15 miles away. Cue BIKE RIDES   Get to the rental car place, van isn't ready, had to wait an hour. Time is running fast waiting for others. Need to hit the dealer, a parts store, and a hardware store. Food would be good. drat I'm hungry from the ride. Finally get the van, its mid afternoon. Dealer here is a bit stuck up their own rear end. I'm a dirtbag that's bothering them by not taking a 144 month note on a new f-250 or gargling their balls with the new red Mach-e, etc. Grabbed the parts, got on the road.  Coolant, some service parts and tools, check. Grab some wrenching fuel.  Back to the truck! First up, the thermostat. Pull the alternator, vacuum pump and its right there.  The one in it? its not genuine. There's part of the trucks issue with running too warm for the given conditions. Genuine is rubberized because it seals cooling passages off depending on thermostat position, high flow when open, and uses a bypass bauble in the water neck. Causing any one of the three to not work as designed results in an engine that won't cool properly.  Next up, the pump.  Pretty sure Navistar OE is not ACDelco. The farmer strikes again. I am the town jester here and beginning to feel like a fool for buying this thing. It fell apart when I pulled it away from the block.  No seriously, it fell the gently caress apart. And then I inspect the timing cover. Oh dear.  Significant cavitation damage to the timing cover. This engine wasn't taken care of and I'm probably an idiot for buying this truck let alone putting this much work into this engine. It runs pretty alright though so I'm probably safe. It doesn't make enough power to break itself. Grab the new coolant pump from Ford. Its... what? Its for a 7.3 Powerstroke. Its... almost 2100 hours. I looked at the pump a few hours ago but it was pre lunch and I was just [dazed.] The PSD pump integrates the thermostat with it and a water neck. It at all will not work. Husband calls every parts store in town. Finds one with the pump, they're open just a little longer. He jumps in the van to get it before they close.  The pump let go with such vigor there's coolant leaking in through the firewall.  A new correct but disturbingly cheap pump has arrived! The farmers legacy lives on through me.  When I rebuilt the bed in 2019 I added these toolbox lights. They were instrumental tonight.  The toolboxes also make an alright work bench. Though five sizes too small. The next build? slide out work benches. Get the pump bolted in. Reassemble the engine. Belts back on. Fill it up with coolant. Start the truck and as it comes up to temp it starts leaking. The timing cover is too damaged and won't seal on its own. I only used the paper gasket to seal the pump to the timing cover rather than how it was when I took it apart with ten pounds of permatex. The bolts that require permatex won't really tighten all the way. Its witching hour and this project is trying to go sideways. Not on my watch. Not at the eleventh hour. Shut the engine down. Drained the system again. Blobed the finest quick set permatex on it and wait. I am become the PO here and I do not care. This stuff is so stout it'll work as an adhesive. Refill, restart, brought it up to temp, and its holding. ITS HOLDING. Good. Its like 23:30. gently caress this spot and gently caress this job. Midnight "dinner" at a casino/truck stop.  The next morning. The NHP car took me by surprise being right by me but some doofus side-swiped a hotshot rig.  The truck no surprise is running a lot cooler.  However. My blobular fix leaks overnight when the engine is cold. And the radiator is leaking when at operating temperature but its not the tank. The core is failing. Since the pump is cheap and I don't trust it. A nice piece of machined metal nobody but myself will ever know is there. I'll stock this onboard for when this cheap pump blows.  This pump is still in a box in the bunk. Take that with what you will. Parts returned to the dealer. Rental shitbox returned. Stock up on provisions then take a breather in a campground. Birbs!       I love the desert. Its absolutely beautiful here. Meat and Corn   I'm glad I found this fridge. We pack the hell out of it and it makes the coach, nevermind the galley. There's two ish weeks of provisions here.  Part of this adventure is to find a place we'd like to buy. Like renting is ok when you're 20 and into Rovers but we're pushing our 30s and 40s. Moving sucks and moving heavy tools really sucks. A large shop to call our own is important to us. And breathing room for Gorgeous sunset though its a boring park. This particular one sells its individual spaces which can be rented out when the owner isn't there. Also the maintenance shed is something god tier.  Donk made a brick friend for a few weeks. Gasser 250. Never spoke to the owner.  Shower beer. The holiest of beers.  I love Chinooks. Especially four wheel drive ones   Its a gas. While Pahrump is somehow more boring than the LTVA. I can at least work on projects. Like improving my ability to work sourdough and bake.   I bought a new metal pan because the silicone one was doing me no justice.  I mean just look at it. Now compared to 90 days ago.  The real test though is the sando. And yes, it finally passes for something other than 'wheel chock'.  Riding around here is mostly flat, windy, and boring.  The truck I should have bought.  Roll out day..   And that's it for Pahrump and Southern Nevada. With some new tools onboard, more supplies, and a better sense of baking, we can now head somewhere else. Some old friends of ours from the bay area were doing a adv ride out to Death Valley. Asked what we were up to and if we wanted to ride along. I don't have bikes but, we'll play camp kitchen and just so turns out we're in its backyard.
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Aug 12, 2022 20:37
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So Into Death Valley National Park. I love this place. There's no cell service. There's rarely any people. And when you do run into someone, they usually speak a second language. Its a good place to test one's methods, and the resilience of their rides. However much like Vegas, this isn't the penny slots on the way to the buffet. This is the high rollers lounge. The few resturants you'll find here like in Panamint springs have seats in the chillers to cool off tourists from other lands that aren't adapted to the climate here. The main drag through DVNP is highway 190. It was recently featured here for washing out. There's a few secondary roads and at least a few dozen non paved options. There's so much to see here it warrants numerous trips across several weeks even though some of its been closed since 2015 like Scotty's Castle. My husband has been a regular here for well over a decade with me nearly as long. The Rovers, Jeeps, all the motos, its all been here before. This is the truck's second trip here. This time however its a short quick jaunt to play camp host with some old friends then ownards on hwy 395. We rode with this same group here in 2015 and got to see Scotty's Castle just before it washed out. Like days. Unfortunately my spouse' trusty ol' Suzuki swallowed a valve right at Furnace Creek. Since then every time we've ridden through a vehicle has broken down within a mile of where said Suzuki gave up and embedded a valve into the piston. This time though the farm truck shrugged it off. 190 is glorious.   We turned off of 190 onto Scotty's Castle road for a stay in the Mesquite campground. While here, might as well get some triple-digits temps riding in.  Having not seen this group since 2015 they may have trouble finding us. Reminder that there's no cell service. Though if they had a Amateur radio license...   Then again, probably not. The big game of hurry up and wait.  The whole reason for an airbed was to create a flex space with the bunk in that it can have more uses than just a place to sleep.  Normally a get-together would be verboten with us. The group had already received their first round of covid-vaccines as its now April and generally we trust them to not be fuckwits. We were making our way towards Northern California to get ours as soon as the opportunity opened for us in a few weeks. I am pretty sure the best way to ruin someone that's been riding in 100F temperatures for days is to administer cold beers, wine, and also have not-soft icecream for desert. The Isotherm fridge really makes this coach. It doesn't care about ambient temperatures the food stays cold.  The couple in the toyhauler to the right were nice. He had a vintage Samurai that has been lovingly restored. She does her own jams/jellies. Pretty tasty stuff. One of the bikers in the group wandered over and struck up a conversation. Their bikes now several pounds heavier. The next morning one of the BMWs was exhibiting electrical problems with its rear lighting. Cue the camper's integrated service facilities coming to life.  Yeah that'd do it. After dismantling the back half of the bike then repairing its main harness it was all good again. They headed out, as did we shortly after. Backtrack onto hwy190 headed west towards Panamint. Panamint springs climb is a 9% grade and its 100F out. The truck climbed it at a leisurely pace of 25-30mph. Not bad for something with several slow coolant leaks and no intercooler. The Rovers of years past would have needed three headgasket swaps under the same conditions and a fourth once at the summit. Someone with a new-ish Silverado/Duramax 2500 pulling a 40 ish foot toyhauler passed me early on going at least double my speed. I later passed them near the summit when his Duramax had enough of their demands. The desert is no joke. This isn't the place even if it makes nearly five-hundred-horsepower. At the top of the range in an area known as "Star Wars Canyon" we caught a glimpse of an ancient CM-170 Magister trainer polished to a high shine out on a cruise in the distance headed our direction. The fucker buzzed us. It was incredible. At maybe one-hundred-feet off the ground and the throttles on. Descending into Owen's lake I took one of the turnouts at speed when I caught a Winnebago flying up on my six at ludicrous speed and making no indication of slowing down. I never saw them again. Though I did smell their brakes for a good long while. Now on Hwy 395 we're stopping for a few days at a geologically interesting place. It'll give us a few days of time to poke around in the area and see if we picked up anything extra from our get together. (we didn't)    Climbing in the back one of the two airbeds exploded from the heat and being partially inflated. Going up in altitude over pressurized it. It was mine. Fine I'm sleeping on the deck a while.
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Aug 16, 2022 17:15
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Highway 395 is this part of the state where pretty much all of our coastal buddies have never been. They're not even sure its in the same state. We've ridden it several times in years past but not really dropped anchor and had a look around. Bridgeport was always our layover and everything else was viewed from the road without stopping. Such is endurance rides. Traveling is vastly different with a truck that can do maybe a third of the average rolling speed that a motorcycle can do. Though you're still somewhat at the whim of the elements. It's still pretty hot outside despite being at almost 4000' altitude. At least the truck has footwell vents. Lone Pine is an interesting small town. Few cool old classics nearby. Fairly sleepy like most bedroom communities along 395. This dry lake bed we parked at for a few days had some leftover mining remnants. Let's go check it out. The first up is a fallen tower. Which is fine, because there's a few more that are still standing.   This is all much steeper than it looks. The towers were here to haul unprocessed limestone ore out. I'm surprised these are still standing given their construction methods. There's also still a fair amount of tension on the primary cable.   If you enbiggen this photo the truck is a little tiny speck far into the distance left of the hill to the right.  We're nowhere near done though.   Found a chiseled out hole with some interesting striations in the rocks.    It is however, not very deep. It also experiences seasonal flooding.   Its a nice and chill 60F in here which means a nice several minute break from the heat. Onward into the climb. Wanna see where the cable ends and what is there.  The two towers from earlier are slowly shrinking behind us.  The gorge curves to the right and that's when the towers are no longer visible.   And made it to the origin point of the cable.   The rocks back here have a lot going on. Its pretty awesome though I'm not a geologist.     He did climb to the top and found a whole lot of nothing. I noped right out of the climb hence photos of various rocks.  This is where our interest in this mine weaned and we turned around for camp. It was after all a 4 mile hike to this point one way. There's several other digs around here, some of them still on going. I can get to those via bike. Jets! The pilots were buzzing us like ever 10-15 mins for an hour.  Of course they stopped for the day when I got out the real camera. Various debris left from other mining digs.    I'm alone this time so I didn't enter this one.  Which, He and I have been spelunking in abandoned mines for over a decade. We're pretty well versed in going underground and play by a set of rules. Go well prepared. Don't go alone. Know when to turn the gently caress around. If you see something like this in the wild and think that because some rando on the internet can, you can. Don't.     Active claim. I'm not passing the gate.  Oh yeah back to the jets. 
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Aug 19, 2022 16:45
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I love that area of the country. Death Valley is beautiful and awesome, but I particularly enjoyed driving my rental Sebring Convertible through the roads leading to the ghost towns. There's the one with the glass building still standing last I saw, plus the same (or nearby) ghost town with remains of a bank and other stores... crazy to think what was happening there 100 years ago.
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Aug 19, 2022 22:06
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Sounds like you're talking about Rhyolite, NV. I've been there several times and almost bought some property near there. Rhyolite has some history post its days as a mining town. Not much about that region has changed. Goldfield/Tonopah/Rhyolite was actually one of the first major trips with the truck after bolting the turbo to it. When we rolled through in 2019 there were some new mining operations going on not far from Rhyolite. Not sure about the status of it all now. Not only is the area gorgeous by day, but by night too. Its deep enough into nowhere that there's minimal light pollution.
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Aug 20, 2022 17:18
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Since the weather looks meh, I'm waiting on more truck parts, and in general we flew through this area of the state last year, have another update. Also have some fun new image formatting. Today's gonna be a long driving day. Our destination is somewhere near Reno. Fill the truck up, get coffee, fill ourselves up with garbage, get more coffee.  Things that most RVs just can't do. 395 is gorgeous this time of year. However its very windy. Windy enough I almost called it for the day. The air over leaf spring suspension while contributing to ride quality detracts a bit from handling. It's a little boaty when cross winds are pushing 60mph.  Our first camping spot turned out to not be a camping spot at all, but someone's private residence. Onwards ho.  This spots a bit trashed but it'll do for the next few days. It turned out to be quite busy on the weekends. [  Overnight its pretty chilly though it warms up nicely during the day. Heated blankets rule. The forward bunk windows have become somewhat of a rarity in truck campers. They're known for leaking and rotting out the structure, ours included. To me though, its worth the extra maintenance.  There's some riding here though not a lot.     This is the eastern fork of the Carson River. Let's hike to it.  Free range exhaust    Yet another free range exhaust.  Getting some projects time in. Adding some capability to the rover.  While here, getting the rover some more run time. This place is a lot rockier than the LTVA was.  One of the bulkheads cracked from a hard hit on the rocks.  The rover can run at speeds up to about 25mph which is abusive to these 3d printed parts. It also takes a lot more space than anticipated to fix it.   Unfortunately this didn't completely fix it. The center differential is a stressed member within the surrounding bulkheads. the differential ring and pinion were re-hobbed from damaged obsolete parts. Unloading the bulkhead damaged the differential beyond what I can repair. I currently can't get another. The proper solution is to update it to the later differentials. Right now even those aren't available. Its successor will be a generic modern four-wheel-drive chassis, not something built from twenty plus year old parts. however that day is not today. Since this place is filling up and its fairly trashed, onwards to the north side of Reno. This spot is p e r f e c t for dirtbikes. Miles and miles of trails for as far as the eye can see.  But since my chunky dirtbike isn't here. I'll take the other dirt bike out. It's also.... snowing? It's our first time in the snow with the camper. Despite not being much snow it's still snow! The truck's extremely cold natured against this kinda stuff. The last time it was in Reno in sub freezing temps it almost didn't start. The camper doesn't care at all.    The trails are almost exclusively sand but that's ok it's cold out and the ground is firmed up from the recent weather. Its e x c e l l e n t to ride on. This section is on a slight hill. Going up hill is kind of fun. Going back down is a drat blast. Its tight ish, soft ish, and technical ish with some little built up berms and surprise hairpins. Whatever the gear you think you'd need, go up two, stay heavy on the pedals, rearend out over the back of the saddle, go fast, no faster, and the bars are now the tiller of a ship. Stay light on them or crash.  This photo is just before the last hairpin, where if you picked the wrong line soup du jour is tree. A little pump track where I can practice jumps and figure 8s shoving the bike down below me more and more till I bin it. Its ok sand is soft and forgiving. Wish I had the 950.   Rollers are ridiculously hard to ride on a hard tail.  Yet another loaf of bread. Slowly improving. Being able to bake my own bread extends our run time a lot further than it should. Bread, beans, lentils, rice and we could run this thing for months if need be.  Sando!  The weekend is arriving and the atv crowd is pouring in.  So jacks up. Grab supplies, stay a KOA for the night, and then onwards into California.   Bricknose buddies. The owner has lived here for over a decade. They liked the farmtruck.  Also yes I'm gonna photograph every brick I come across. This person is living their best life.  provisions. Luxury is a half hour shower, beer, and not having to bake today's bread.  So far we've been 2300 miles across five months. 22 gallons of propane down, 250 gallons of diesel, one break down, a gallon of engine oil, and around 600 gallons of water boondocking. We've managed to not get covid so far despite having to interact with the general public that think the pandemic is no big deal.  From here our next stop is the first vaccine and camping at the tallest dam in the country.
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Aug 21, 2022 18:06
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This is very cool and is giving me wanderlust. Nothing to add but that I'm enjoying reading this thread.
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Aug 21, 2022 18:52
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honda whisperer posted:This is very cool and is giving me wanderlust.
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Aug 21, 2022 21:47
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Yeah, love this thread. Thanks for the effortposts. 395 is such a cool highway. I was up on the Kern Plateu a few months ago, and am heading back with some friends to do Eureka Dunes/Steel Pass/Saline Valley in November. Such a great part of the state. Have you experimented with making sourdough at all? I made a yeast starter from scratch back in Feb, and have been having a lot of fun getting the loafs dialed in. It's really pretty easy, and tastes fantastic. If you already have a dutch oven I highly recommend it. ++ prospector cred if you're eating it by an old mine too!
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Aug 21, 2022 23:58
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Loving this thread. I grew up by the pinnacles, spent all of my formative years up and down the Owens Valley, lived in Reno and now in Vegas - it's like you're doing a tour of my West. I've been all over the world and I still keep coming back to this part of the country - it's nice to see someone else who loves it in the same way. Go back to Eureka Dunes in about October and record your sandboarding experiences please.
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Aug 22, 2022 02:52
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The Royal Nonesuch posted:Yeah, love this thread. Thanks for the effortposts. Mr. Wiggles posted:Go back to Eureka Dunes in about October and record your sandboarding experiences please. I haven't been to Kern Plateu or Eureka Dunes. As of right now there's another run of 395 planned this late fall with motos to get a little deeper off the beaten path. I really like this part of the country so far and despite climate change I may just buy a piece of dirt out here to drop a shop. I've never tried sandboarding, seems like it would be a blast. Not that I know how to surf or snowboard. Mid to late November would proobably be about the timeline I'm back in the area. Was out there about a month ago but as we all know the conditions aren't as favorable for outdoor sports. The Royal Nonesuch posted:Have you experimented with making sourdough at all? I made a yeast starter from scratch back in Feb, and have been having a lot of fun getting the loafs dialed in. It's really pretty easy, and tastes fantastic. If you already have a dutch oven I highly recommend it. ++ prospector cred if you're eating it by an old mine too! Yes! The cooking projects you're reading about right now are from a friend's starter given to me in 2020. I started a new one from scratch mid last year when the one I've been writing about died. It's been a lot better to bake with. I still bake with sourdough regularly long after its fallen out of popular culture and will be doing a sourdough stuffed crust Detroit style pizza later today. Dutchoven... Yeah I want to get one. A good one. I do use an ancient cast iron brought back to life that when I met my husband, was rusty and used to hold Jeep parts. 'Gear oil infused' bacon wasn't a good idea in hindsight. Garlic infused however... The pan is stored in the oven for transit. Funnily enough its been thrown across the camper a few times. There'll be an audible clang that can be heard up front over the engine and everything else with a .... ??? We throw a bungee cord on the oven door to keep the pan secured. One of the stock pots fell out and chipped the sink's enamel. All the heavy stuff in that cabinet goes in the sink now. Working on ways to improve that. Such is RVs.
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Aug 22, 2022 15:34
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cursedshitbox posted:I haven't been to Kern Plateu or Eureka Dunes. As of right now there's another run of 395 planned this late fall with motos to get a little deeper off the beaten path. I really like this part of the country so far and despite climate change I may just buy a piece of dirt out here to drop a shop. There must be systems for this that folks use in boats, no? Like built in tie downs basically?
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Aug 24, 2022 15:49
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builds character posted:There must be systems for this that folks use in boats, no? Like built in tie downs basically? They gimbal and do have latches. Which I really want one but not in this build.
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Aug 24, 2022 19:27
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cursedshitbox posted:I haven't been to Kern Plateu or Eureka Dunes. As of right now there's another run of 395 planned this late fall with motos to get a little deeper off the beaten path. I really like this part of the country so far and despite climate change I may just buy a piece of dirt out here to drop a shop The Plateu is worth the harrowing but beautiful drive up 9 Mile Canyon. You'd love it up there, and there's shitloads of motocross tracks up around the Blackrock Ranger Station. Lots of cool little properties in Kennedy Meadows too, if you're looking. Girlfriend's parents bought us a Le Creuset dutch oven a year ago and it's amazing. I've accumulated a few other cast irons of various brands over the years, and use them almost exclusively to cook. Only time I ever really bring out the non-sticks is for frying an egg. Never thought of seasoning with gear oil though!
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Aug 25, 2022 18:07
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The Royal Nonesuch posted:The Plateu is worth the harrowing but beautiful drive up 9 Mile Canyon. You'd love it up there, and there's shitloads of motocross tracks up around the Blackrock Ranger Station. Lots of cool little properties in Kennedy Meadows too, if you're looking. 9 Mile Canyon seems familiar... probably drove it with the jeeps/rovers. Teakettle junction and Crankshaft crossing come to mind with my last dirt related shenanigans there seven years ago now, ugh. Need to make it a point to get back for a few weeks with the big orange pig. I really like the Le Creusets though I'm worried about chipping em in the hostile environment they'll live in. Also watching Finex though it may not take kindly to being seasoned with gear oil. After the off-road park that is Nevada we swooped into an unsuspecting little town in nowhere CA that's pining hard to break away from the civilized world and become its own little backwater to get our jab at a CVS. After that we have about a couple hour window to get to camp before reactions start to the Vaccine. Lake Oroville is nearby, has camping, and tons of trails. Turns out we barely had any reaction at all. While in the area I dropped by Monsterzero's house to At Lake Oroville, the water is down significantly. In the first photo you can see a boat launch on the opposite side that is no longer usable. The area burned a few years ago too. This is a stark contrast to what happened in 2017 when heavy rains overflowed the dam then damaged its main and emergency spillways. I watched it live when it happened so seeing the lake in this condition is is quite the contrast.   These photos were a few months before the haul-out order as the marina would be no longer accessible. Camp set up for the next couple days. Full luxury hookups  Part of Oroville Dam visible from the trails.  Riding towards the dam's far side and a view back onto Lake Oroville.  It's about a mile to ride across the main section of the dam.  And then there's the main spillway. The rebuilt one that famously washed out in 2017.  The emergency spillway is completely rebuilt. It's enormous and difficult to put into words the scale of this spillway, and I've been all over The Hoover Dam.   Then looking the other way, one can see for miles around.   Heading back home there's this fun rocky climb with a couple switchbacks. Though here it looks flat.    Back to the lake though and since we're in the area, let's go sailing? Since Monsterzero's boat is out here he extended an offer to go out on the lake for a few hours. Hell yeah I'll do that. I've never been sailing before, this will be awesome. A shot of the new BIdwell Bar Bridge.  Another shot of the dam but from a different view.  It was indeed awesome. There's a little propane powered trolling motor to motor the sailboat in and out of the docks. It's kinda neat with a composite LP tank. But that's not the point of a sailboat. Heeling is loving awesome. Despite tacking, I didn't eat a boom that day. Sailing is awesome in that there's no engine noise. It's like a fixed gear bicycle in that it's kind of pure in its own way. This boat like all machines despite its simplicity has some personality. When at speed the winch cable that drops the keel has a small resonance that you can feel in the deck. It's how you know the boats "making power" I love this kind of stuff.  Some party barge. The water equivalent of a camper with equal parts rot and mold.  There's a hilariously massive megayacht here with its own waterslide. I sadly did not get photos of it. The original Bidwell Bar Bridge built in 1855. It's California's first suspension bridge. From what I understand when Lake Oroville is at capacity there's water under this bridge.  Oh! Deer! They seem acclimated to campers. They're around camp often. Probably to steal delicious camp provisions.  I shoulda bought a Ram 2500. Those fuckers can haul it all. Arctic Fox' are nearly as heavy as this Alpenlite plus an all metal boat behind it.  Our neighbors left in a rush with no real routine or direction other than madhouse. They took off with the jacks down.  Then threw it in reverse.  The jack did not survive. That's gonna leave a mark. Routines and checklsits are everything and prevents poor performance and damage to the equipment. Pilots know this one. At 2500 miles into our trip the truck is starting to get a little testy. It tries to eat its air filter with 11,000 miles on it. Despite documentation stating 15,000 intervals.  Yeah nah, this is a 10,000 mile service item now. These filters are a royal pain in the rear end to locate. Ordered to the store several days in advance, change it out in the parkinglot. Stock a spare on board in case of heavy dust or smoke.  The radiator's core is also coming undone. Its a 4 row radiator and the core is now leaking across three rows if not all four. There's a noticeable uptick in coolant loss, with more consumption related to all the mountain ranges we've been pulling. It's time to locate a replacement before it leaves us sitting. And I did... They tried to sell a DUKW to me while I was in there.
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Aug 26, 2022 16:50
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Man, the Oroville stuff is cool. I remember watching the disaster and some of the rebuild and thinking "wow, that's some big stuff" then you see like, a person or giant earth mover or anything to give scale and it's even bigger than you think but an order of magnitude. What a turnaround on the lake level though - I assume they would have had to carefully manage levels to effect repairs without risk of further overflow, but still.
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Aug 27, 2022 02:46
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Some of the puzzles in logistics is figuring out where to drop anchor next to figure out the replacement of the radiator. There's a half dozen apps for this but with areas like BLM land, there's no way to know if there is a spot to park till you show up in person. Campgrounds much like RVs are still rooted in an era prior to computing, the 1870s. Near Chico the 3 campgrounds and both BLM spots we picked out were full up. With this, always have a fall back. Somewhere in the mountains east of Lake Oroville  The fall back this time? A casino. I'm not into this gambling no. Gambling with shitboxes is more my style. They do however let people camp out over night or over a few days. Our neighbor the night.  Another neighbor here. we'll be fiiine.  From the casino to Red Bluff CA for a few days to sort getting a radiator and where to install it. This place was kinda cool. There's an old defunct diversion dam system and fish channels in place to help fish migrate around the dam along the Sacramento River. It didn't however work very well at its intended purpose contributing to the shutdown of the dam. There's a variety of gardens and habitats around that attract 125 some odd species of birds.   Surprise heavy rains  Fellow ancient bricknose in the correct color. I dig the two tone. I think I'm gonna do this to mine when I repaint it for the second time.  Cargo trailer behind a 2500? Good ideas are made of these. Definitely future upgrades.  The radiator is located at a yard in the foothills. Totally the opposite direction of where we've been heading. A very unique one at that. It has what Kastein calls a "lord of the flies" vibe. I called them up. They have around a half dozen radiators for this truck at $85 a pop. Yeah I can do that. On my way, do not sell the drat thing. I'll drive in, grab it, then drive towards the coast, and replace it out on some BLM lands. I'm not going to post all of the yard photos but I'll link them right here. You name it, they probably have it though. 3 DUKWs. 2 of them run apparently. They really wanted to sell one to me. Rovers that however don't, 13 letter poo poo spreaders, loving buses? Oh hell yes I'm in love. The guy that runs the place is something like 6'5" and out of a cartoon western. Giant cowboy hat. Thick Texan accent. Dressed accordingly and knows exactly what he's sitting on. I'm the sucker today needing his parts and I rolled up with something that looks like wads of money. Because when you're running a junkyard, you know what something is made of and when they were last being worked.   They bought all these M11 powered buses to strip and send engines to Central America. Their intermediary to broker this deal died and they've been sitting on them since. There's like 40 of them.  Paging CommieGIR  Anyway I found my prize and had them pull it. Looks aftermarket but it is still old. Not too cruddy inside and the core is acceptable. The proper four core rather than the cheaper three. This is where I learn it is not $85 but many multiples thereof. I'm told that I can wander the yards and if I see a couple small things I'm after that they'll throw it on the tab. Those that followed the truck's build thread know that the interior is hammered poo poo, and well I've been the hospice for a pair of door cards for the last five to six years. And welp they got me. But also. I'm not going to have rattly ratty door cards anymore.  The radiator is no way in hell going in my nice habitat.  Alright I'm squared away and gotta drive to the other side of the state by day's end so we got the hell outta there. They have the A/C compressor bracket I need to put air in the truck so at some point. I'm going back. But with a beater. Nearing Mendocino there's been a bad accident, naturally backing traffic up. We've done a lot of camping out here. Boondocking here will facilitate the replacement of the radiator.  We're burning the last of the daylight now. And driving into the sun on steep winding fire roads.   I turned around here and drove to the fallback spot. A small loading/unloading area for equestrian use.  Pulling into camp. (I linked it so it wouldn't autoplay and blow your speakers out) https://imgur.com/fKRgDB0  This is where we're gonna do the deed. Ya fix it. Where it breaks, and ya move on. Anybody that comes after, shall never know the deeds that happened here.
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Aug 31, 2022 16:34
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