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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Liquid Communism posted:Pretty choice for what I'm sure is not a place of honor. There's a theme here so far.. Fornax Disaster posted:Found a highlight reel of that DUKW in action, dead tourist attractions make me sad. Have you ever ridden one? they're like the worst of every world. I got to ride in a dukw as a kid. There's a contemporary version here in San Diego called the SEAL built on a hydra-terra chassis. Being foam filled they're less prone to going down like a brick. Since it's a long weekend for me and I've already put this post together I'm gonna go ahead and  I carry a cheap tarp on board, and now a 5 gallon bucket. The coolant in this thing is specialized and in the low triple digits to replace, plus its all brand new thanks to the coolant pump(that's still leaking). The tarp gets replaced when its ratty or too filthy. They're cheap poo poo from HF and here to help prevent loving up the area. The door cards go in first. Clean work before dirty. Every time. The haul. Complete with printing in good shape.  And the old ones. Most of the clips are broken. When the bodyshop repainted the truck they got all kinds of overspray and blocking solution on the door panels.    These look better in person than they do in the photos. Alright now that the clean work is finished. I'm gonna bang out the quarterly chassis service. Greasin' the shaft. Gotta drop both pinion side drivelines to get at the zerk. (I literally got a new tip for the grease gun two weeks ago that should fix this hassle, thanks Motronic)  Pull the fan which spins off, four bolts then the shroud lifts out, 2 hoses, 4 bolts that secures the radiator, and the rad lifts out. Draining it takes longer. It weighs far in excess of 100 pounds. It sucks to deal with. We team lifted the new one in so that it would not at all get hosed up.  This core owes me nothing. However I'm going to save it for whenever it is time to build the next radiator.   While I'm in here. New belts and hoses.  Assembly is the reverse of disassembly. Except you swear in different places. This vehicle is simple. No fancy bleeding procedures or the like.  Shouldn't need to deal with this again for a good long while. Since the spot is shaded and killing PV production, moved to a less shaded spot. It's still not great but at least the coach is getting closer to charging everyday. We'll take this spot till the coach runs low on water.   Now that I'm done playing fleet mechanic, go beat on the mtb a while. So far this bike is the most reliable thing I've owned.  Free range artisanal Mitsubishi. Pretty much stripped though nobody wanted a single cam Mitsu engine. Probably a ten thousand dollar car now. The road in the background is the same road from the last post. Could have made it had it not been late afternoon.  Same road little ahead of the Mitsubishi and after a few good climbs.   This section of the forest burned back in 2017. My husband and I almost got caught in it had his bike not picked up a flat.  There's some juxtaposition about riding an S-works through a burnt out forest.  Found some dozer parts. Useless for a donkey.   Speaking of. The truck is making forest frens.  And side car Ural frens.  The truck definitely runs cooler now. The pump still of course leaks. Fine. I'm not putting another timing cover on this engine during this trip. That's entirely too much work and I really don't wanna do that. However there's less coolant loss now. With this project completed and still a few weeks to our second vaccine we're off to the coast for a couple days with full hookups.
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Sep 2, 2022 00:31
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BuckyDoneGun posted:I know the photo isn't close up, but drat, this must be great, because in the first pic they look almost new! They're good. So good. It's next to impossible to find XLT door cards in tan. It's the one with the pocket. The pocket is super useful and I didn't want to lose that. What good is being from California without bumming it on the beach every now and then?  Ok maybe not roughing it tooo much here.  It's a cool little campground near the beach with everything from tent spots to cabins that are available for rent. There's no cell service here too. Disconnect. Go play in the ocean. The cabins are quirky and awesome. This one is right infront of us.  A more traditional type of cabin secluded deep in the back of the campground.  Nearby to the tent spots is a stream. Definitely coming here to motocamp just to camp next to this stream.  The trails are pretty wide here. Easy to hike. Being on the coast it also gets foggy which adds to the ambiance.   The fog really changes the feel of the beach.   Chorin' done then made a pizza.  And from the beach we go up into the mountains to camp in the snow in early May. This is at 5500' altitude in the Sierras due east of Redding.  Cold beer via snow.  Big dead tree with warnings not to approach it.  Another dead tree. Recently felled.   After four days near Chester, CA we moved to a new spot in Lassen National Forest but near some active logging. Pacific Crest Trail is nearby which provides for some awesome hiking. We'll wait out the calendar here until it is time to get the second round of shots.  I may have picked the wrong time to camp in the mountains. Everything is pollinating. This is misery on glass.  The fog followed us into the mountains however.  Making friends with the local deere.  ...And goatheads. Should convert to tubeless eventually... 
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Sep 7, 2022 17:12
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Post round two and full 5G capable now we're camping at Orland Buttes. Here's a random placard to a historcal bridge.  The riding here is pretty so-so.   Birbs!  Over in the corner. Sunlight is 'ok'. Afternoon coverage happens and that's not great for polishing off the battery array.   Round two, not much reaction other than some sore arms and lethargy. Fine enough to do some grillin'.    And then uhh a flat tire. We were headed out to run to the storage unit. On the vehicle's pretrip inspection I caught the valve stem had been hosed with and was leaking air. Not cool, someone hosed with the rig. Luckily the tire didn't go totally flat and ruin the camper as it was sitting on its jacks. I don't have the spare. I was actually planning to go get it today.  I reinflated the tire, taped the valve stem over which stopped the leak and gently drove it into town.  New valve stem installed. All is well.  Got to storage. Took the hitch basket apart. Flipped the frame that the tire hung off of and stabbed it into the receiver. This biases the rear of the truck around 150lb. It's a massive dingleberry that's probably going to drag on everything.  Shortly after, we're outta here and onwards to Oregon. But not before the tanks are taken care of.  This is roughly six months into the trip. We've put down 3100 miles and barely left the state of California.  The camper's tanks last around 10ish days.  Propene lasts a lot longer when chasing 70F and warmer.  At the total opposite end of the spectrum. This truck doesn't miss a fuel stop. Especially when it is hot and hilly.  It also doesn't miss a parts store and takes every chance it can for a little lovin with a wrench. Each dot represents at least one entry for the mileage. It can be maintenance like zerks or something more fun, like coolant pumps and radiators. The consensus here is to never track costs on a project car or a hobby. Yeah well, I'm gonna.  I should also note that this subset of the spreadsheet isn't really designed around issues per mile | cost per mile | maintenance minutes per mile or the like. It's structured more like a log book so there's not a lot I can do here with visualizations unless I build an entire new spreadsheet to structure the data that way. This is getting damned close to using a proper db and python. I don't have the camper's power stats. That doesn't happen until August 2022.
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Sep 9, 2022 18:25
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This camping site is far from remote and it's square in the wannabe breakway state of jefferson. It's the Alabama part of California. Much like the discussion going on in another thread right now, blue state isn't blue, red state isn't red. Nothing like this will be homogeneous. One of the undercurrents for this trip was to see how things have gone structurally, politically, and socially in the country since my last round in the late 2000s. I need to put a shop up somewhere. I'd prefer not to set up shop next door to people that want my head on a spike. the TL;DR of it all is that the datasets are actually out there now on the internet and you don't even need to road trip it to see for yourself. I don't really want to get into the nitty gritty of these details outside of isolated incidents. To illustrate how not-remote this campsite is. While there I rode to the Pilot just off of I5 and back a time or two just to do it. https://goo.gl/maps/S1fwV8SQv6NHQnYz7 As to why? beats me. Two bald dudes in a tiny assed camper? Jealousy? There's no bumperstickers or any signal that would link an affiliate to anything on my rig for a reason. The moto is plastered in stickers and it never gets hosed with so YMMV. The truck hit firmly into nostalgia with locals the entire year. With the camper on the truck it was a hit. Consistently. Even when things were at their worst. We never once got turned away from a campground despite strict vehicle age restrictions. People were very positive about this setup. It surprised us both and in a way has us second guessing ourselves in rolling this camper into a newer truck or going back to a bus. The rig got hosed with a couple times last year. This was the worst of it. Mr. Wiggles posted:I cannot count on all the digits in my state the number of times I've had a tube puncture from a goathead. Truly the most devilish of plants. Tubeless helps. Somewhat. There's no less than 3-4 goatheads/glass shards in both tires right now... and picked it up on the first ride after spooning said tires on. But hey. tubeless. Pour more sealant in, pump it up, and go shred.
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Sep 10, 2022 17:49
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The Royal Nonesuch posted:Thanks again for posting this stuff, definitely enjoying coming along vicariously. Where/what's the name of that little coastal cabin camp, if you don't mind? You can PM, or just ignore if that's your secret spot I fully understand. Riiiight heeere. https://www.casparbeachrvpark.com/home I highly recommend them. I don't mind sharing GPS coordinates privately. Some of them can be found via campendium or ioverlander anyway. Don't leave a trace and we good. Parks or the like? sure if you all would like I'll leave links to them. People suck. But nature is good. It's pretty ironic in that people love the Ford because it's a classic truck still at work 30 years on that was built in America! It was built in Canada and it was the definition of disposable truck.. The Ford doesn't stop with its antics. It's hilariously consistent in this way. The truck is an order of magnitude improved in September 2022 than it was when we launched in November 2020. It's nearly* ready to deal with two ADVs now and all of the supporting components they require. The thread is almost to where it really kicks off shenanigans that chase us to Philly and back. I was thinking about this just a few days ago. The only major assembly that is original or I haven't been elbows deep in is the steering box. Guess I should prepare for that at some point. *It's getting intercooled and probably 13" discs put on out back, fronts will go from 13" to a 14.5" if the current ones will ever wear out. I suspect the tires will wear out before its brakes do.
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Sep 10, 2022 20:43
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Mount Shasta. Host to everything from fun twisty roads to skiing. Currently the A10 line in is closed at the Bunny Flat Trailhead to cars but you can still hike your way in. Lots of snow still on the ground. And I stumbled on a skoolie get together of some kind. With the advantage of four wheel drive, no need to camp right next door.  It looks flat but it isn't. It alllways looks flat. Mount shasta in the background.  This spot is suitable enough. Good solar and a bit out of the way.  With skiing here, in the off season they double as mtb trails. Some trails are better than others.    Should also mention that the soil here is hell on the equipment.   And since A10 is closed, the bike is recently tuned up, go climb? Bunny Flats is where the gates are down to prevent motorists from crossing as this section of road is unmaintained during the snow season. It's mostly melted now but still closed. Bikes ok? Bikes ok.  Last bit of glorious switchbacks to the end of the road at 7840' elevation. The trip back down much faster than the trip up. 4.5mi ride from camp to the trailhead, 1658 feet of elevation gain, 10mph average. Not bad on a mtb.   Wine or Coffee? You Decide!  A post without the 7.3? Nah. It's still there. Still leaking coolant.  We've nearly run out of water staying here on the side of Shasta. In the week that we were here we noticed a visual change in snow melt on the mountain itself. The temperatures went from brisk at night and chilly in the mornings to downright hot. This is A10 headed towards Bunny Flats. We're not going that way.  Instead let's go camp amongst some oil burning ancestors in Dunsmuir at The Railroad Park Resort.  Parked out front is a snow plow and an old Shay style Willamette locomotive.  These specifically are a knockoff of the Shay built after the patents expired. They're built in Oregon by Willamette. One of six survivors this is CN-21. These run superheaters unlike their Shay siblings and in general are a little more refined. They excel at pulling mountains. The cars are converted and you can rent them to camp in for the night. What a novel idea. I want to come back at some point and camp in one of the cars. The caboose retained the lookout.  This park started sometime in the 70s with all of the leftup scrap around. The dining car itself is built up of old carriages.  Here is an entire album to The Railroad Park itself. A creek runs adjacent to the park.   Walking into Dunsmuir itself I spotted a creosote soaked wooden bridge on the way.  Really cool to see these still in action in 2021.   Some old-school cool that I don't see often anymore. Rail is still prominent in this little town nestled in the mountains of northern California.  Their yard even has a turnstyle.  Visited Dunsmuir Brewery Works. Neat old automotive service garage converted into a brewery. Chatted with their brewer for a bit. He worked at Russian River prior to Dunsmuir.  Cool old chapel.  And a mural of the city.  Walking back to camp I found a late bay window VW Transporter. Solid thirty thousand dollar truck these days.  And their neighbor that should totally have an account here.  Shop ideas...  Let's go explore OREGON.
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Sep 19, 2022 16:09
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Yup. The thread at the moment is right around June 2021. I plan to run it up through now 9/2022 and into the future. Just gonna take us a lil while to get there.
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Sep 23, 2022 22:15
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My last stop in CA is a random bikeshop that just so happens to have the brake parts I need for my bike.  The bike parts shortage is so bad I'm still on the lookout for tires after 800 miles of driving. Driving towards camp. Nobody around, though the forest canopy is concerning for power.  Not the greatest of camping spots but it'll do for a couple of days. This is Near Odessa.  Swapped the pads. These are fairly easy to do at least compared to say, old Jag brakes.  And found a little water crossing.  It was around two ish feet deep. Oregon has tons of Sno-Parks. These are incredibly useful for transit days. Sometimes they have some bike trails around that are off season snowmobile/skiing trails.  I did not try to climb this hill with the truck. I did however climb this gorge.   As it's on the way to Crater Lake.   It's ridiculously busy. The hike down to the lake is closed this year and the lodge is booked solid. Pity. I'll have to go back.  And a wicked awesome old dolphin still at it.  Not gonna camp there though, but rather next to Chemult at the Corral Springs Campground.  While here, I'm gonna address the annoying backup cam that is no longer working because of the spare.  It's epoxied to the bumper. Chiseled it off, put a big magnet on it, and extended the cable.  The camper's rear bumper is metal, and so is the trucks. It works out, and works again.  The down side of being at this easily accessed camping spot, is that its easily accessed.  Pop it in 4wd then take the soft sandy roads to move a few miles away. The solar and hiking is better here anyways.   Okay maybe not always.  The riding near Chemult is pretty good. Still snow on the grounds and slick in some spots.    Where I called it and turned around after a couple hours of climbing this fire road.  It was b r i s k on the return. This is also where the 900W PV system hit a high point.  I stumbled on a xc race. Didn't see anybody or any details so I have no idea what was going on.  and some excellent technical singletrack. This is mostly a OHV(River's South) area for quads and dirtbikes but mid week it is pretty safe to mtb around.  By now I've condensed riding food into these veggie fuel rod burritos. 
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Sep 26, 2022 17:36
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Bend! We spent like six or so weeks in this area of Oregon. Bend, Sisters, Portland, the coast, you name it. The surrounding cities of Bend are so not to my liking but Bend itself has this chill laid back mountain resort town kinda vibe without the whole rural Alabama feel. The gorbage is good, the breweries are fantastic. The trails even better. The time here I put over 200 miles on the trails in the COTA network. I have yet to find another trail network that compares to COTA's. There's tubin' and all sorts of hobbies around to do. It's an excellent little spot for hitting the parking brake and going outdoors. On landing. a swing through a bike shop and get the bikes up to snuff. Tubeless + new tires all around + new chain on my pos. Also picked up an ant+ sensor and a watch to work as a cockpit for the bike.  Funner indeed.  What I couldn't get in tools, I made. Two spoke wrenches for Mavic wheels, two chain link tools, a disc brake tool, chain checker, and cassette holder.   I've no idea what these are but they're gorgeous and smell nice.   Visiting 10barrel...  Some other gorbage around Bend.  Despite all the goony eats and beer, This was the fittest I had ever been. Down 85 pounds from my heaviest. Living in this camper has had one benefit on our health despite our lust for garbage. Sourdough blins that I make semi regularly in batches way too big.   With plenty of solar comes plenty of shenangians. Sometimes even shunting excess solar into generating hot water.   This is about the time I popped one of the rear air bags doing what my spouse calls a "Turkish Slalom" through the roundabouts. Bend is full of these things and well this is a big heavy slow pig. But! If you take it right about the top 2/3 of 1st gear, on the turbo on entry, brake moderately heavy to weight transfer to the front. tip the front end to the right, power on, straighten up, roll into the roundie at the halfway point keeping the same power, then one final steering adjustment and roll on the power. hit 2nd by the end of the roundy then power the gently caress out. Can navigate roundies a lot quicker than anybody would reasonably think a tc would. First ends at around 15-17mph. Boost is on by 10ish. Between these shenanigans and the Jeep trails we've been driving on, the right rear bag has perished. But because we're bad at navigation. We've made a series of wrong turns and wound up on even more primitive Jeep trails and steep power line runs.  Same intersection in the above photo. but crosswise in it.  Our follies in navigation continue to compound against us with light running out.   Which this was just setting us up for the masterclass in amateur hour trail clearing and logging.    Temp spot while I figure out logistics of parts and where to install them.  La Pine State Park.  The river is around 65F while everything else is in the triple digits.  With parts comes a poo poo job playing equpiment mechanic.  The place of dishonor.  To replace the spring both the upper and lower plate need to be unbolted. Unbolting the wheel isn't happening when there's a 3 ton camper over my head and only a jack for support. I'll take the secondary risk of all four camper jacks failing crushing my arms.  This is where I learn something is off. See for yourself.   $120 airsprings aren't gonna fix this. Till then. Outdoor. Shower. Beer. 
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Oct 3, 2022 17:18
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Suburban Dad posted:I saw the first pic of the bag and thought it looked like it was rubbing. Something shifted here. This photo is from the time of install.  That something, is the axle. Probably from the not-fire-roads. DS outer  PS outer  DS inner  PS inner 
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Oct 4, 2022 00:52
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This part of the country is where cars are enshrined the day they're sold and never fall to old age. In the southwest the interior and all the plastic melts. Elsewhere the metal melts away. Here? somehow everything survives. I mean. Just look at it.  It even happens to campers to some degree. Though their truck is fairly modern.  Sporties cost that of a house did in 2012 though this person's living the dream.  Others aren't from around here originally.  Then there's the really weird poo poo.  Bend's riding is top drat notch. The best I've been on so far. They don't do ebikes, the trails are well maintained, documented, and classed, there's an active community around it all, and it's drat engaging. This part of Oregon is also pretty good about forestry management. It's a good thing with annual fires.  "the chicken". Stopping to take this photo put me just out of a group's ride where a guy fixated into a big root and broke his clavicle. Really put a color on the whole ride.  Slipped on new pedals with metal studs since the nylon ones just won't hold my shoes in place on the trails here. Bonus in that they'll hold your shins really well.  They work awesome.  There's lots of technical drops here. Most anything intermediate can be done without a dropper.  Sisters area, still in the COTA.  Black diamond trail. I called it quits without a dropper.  Of course this decade old bike is like the three decade old truck in that there's always something to fix.  Speaking of the truck. It has been hard starting when it is over 100F out. But screw dealing with that right now, less go tubin' on The Deschutes.  Hilarity ensues. Group of early 20 somethings chugging the gently caress out of cardboardeau directly out of the bag. mild rapids on a tube. Husband was yeeted from his tube.  And back to the truck. Grabbed a few new glowplugs just in case. It's missing on a couple cylinders when "cold" and in general being a pain in the rear end.  Nope, the glowplugs are fine. But in touching such, the old crispy wiring disintegrated. This plugs into a thermoswitch in the head that determines when the glowplugs, fast idle, and timing advance is needed. It's quite important.  New "connector" and pigtail generated and spliced into the harness.  And it goes here, in Satan's rear end in a top hat.  It would run cold on 6/7 cylinders for a good thirty seconds before all eight came around. It's just being a cantankerous old piece of poo poo 7.3 they're all like this. Oil consumption hasn't changed, coolant hasn't increased, fuel economy, intake restriction or exhaust temps haven't changed outside of its norms. It's just being old hardware. Backhoe near a fish migration channel off of a nearby stream near Sisters. The water is relatively cold and good for a swim, especially on a hot day.  And our '4wd required' camping site. This is where I'm starting to line up the logistics to get This Old Truck's suspension fixed and correctly set up for the camper.  This is kind of a pain because: I don't want to unload the camper. While the jacks can hold it, I don't really feel comfortable living in it while it's on the jacks, and all of our poo poo in it. It is twenny plus years old and extremely heavy. This drastically reduces the number of shops that'll touch it. While they're in there, they need to correct some things I never corrected from a few years ago. The rear pinion angle is incorrect for its new driveline and wears diff side U-joints at an accelerated rate. The air bags need to gently caress the hell off. All of it. I don't want em on the truck anymore. All the rest of its suspension needs to be relatively intact and it needs to stay within an inch of its current ride height or the camper can't be loaded/unloaded + it screws up the sway bar end links, steering/panhard linkages, and the driveline angles. This means we'll need to secure a temporary place to stay, this needs to have a temporary safe space to stay in, and it'll need to be handled by a competent shop that knows how to deal with old weird poo poo. Deer! Oh dear!   And because I'm in the west. It's now the 5th season. Fire Season.  I can't breathe this stuff at all or I'll get sick from it. This is the worst time in my life to get sick. So we pull the jacks up and run like hell to the coast. But first, supplies, like water.  The spot next to me is blocked off because bees have taken up residency in one of the trees. Rather than kill them there's a specialist that has come out and is slowly persuading them to leave the tree. This is really fascinating to me. An awesome high clearance setup.  Another but it's 2wd. It can probably go most anywhere if it has a locker out back.  And someone else that knows how to truck properly without paying the little truck tax.  The smoke continues to follow so onto the Ray Benson Sno-Park.  The Ideal Shop.  This is not the riding I seek. Soft sandy pumice. hard on me. hard on the bike. Big ring. go up an extra gear. stay light on the bars and heavy on the pedals. Go fast enough to float the front wheel above it. Can't produce the power required to float? well it sucks to suck.  Rock gardens is more like it. These are snowtercycle trails in the winter. However they're all in hiding right now. Presumably getting fresh topends and turbos for this coming winter.   Annnnd the smoke is creeping in again.  We converted the rooftop into a makeshift air filter using a generic hepa filter from a hardware store. The solar can run this for a few hours at a time. The camper is air tight enough that smoke won't ingress if the hatches are closed. It was built this way for this reason. And we got to test it before we left the bay area. However we can't always keep the hatches closed when its so drat hot. The smoke also really cuts into solar production. It'll kill the air filter of the truck and the generator.   So we run again. Really slowly. Behind this big guy.  For what seems like forever.  Because there's road construction. And traffic goes on forever behind me.  We eventually pull the parking brake after driving through the various winerys of rural Oregon. At this giant building.  It contains a bunch of old hardware. Namely. This.  It's the Evergreen Museum.
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Oct 6, 2022 19:23
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builds character posted:Go on... No idea what it is other than 'want'. Hey, no starting fires. Nature is precious and should be preserved. There is a couple undersized(imo) couple pounders onboard should this thing ignite. I'd be more comfortable with 3-4 10 pounders but there's no good place to stick em. An announcement?  (I've known about this for a while and ironically forgot about it) Welcome New People!
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Oct 7, 2022 00:56
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Rick posted:So glad I looked at the sticky and clicked to this thread. I envy your adventure, this all looks so fun! Also bonus TownAce spotted. E: or maybe a different type of Toyota minivan? I often confuse them, despite it being my favorite car as of six months ago. I've always wanted one. Small funfact here, if covid and 2020 didn't happen I was kinda planning to sell the truck or trade it for a 4wd toyota van/hiace/delica star wagon. Yeah so Evergreen is pretty awesome. I skipped the water park for obvious reasons. You must go and see for yourself. This is in the like top three of air museums I've been to. They'll even let you camp in the parkinglot provided your poo poo leaks less than theirs. I've just under a thousand photos, a highlights album is here. Spruce' power plant cutaway. Wasp Major.  My other ride is also a composite boondoggle.  Cutaway of the aircraft's structure with the visible layering. Technology way ahead of its time.  The goose is a gargantuan bird. Hughes was a madman with a vision when he created this thing.   Looking up from a DC3  There's more here than just aircraft. Early space race Vostok capsule.  V2 and its subsequent engine.  Titan II with control room buried down below.  The F1 rocket engine  And one of the intact intstrument units it worked under on the Saturn V.   It wouldn't be an air museum without The Sled.  This one complete enough that the docents didn't know the complete functions of its modules laid out on display for those details aren't public domain.  Pointing out the three massive OpAmps here. They're a staple of the electronics world today. In this era? That's the technology of space programs.  Of course it even has the Buick Wildcat powered start carts.  They unfortunately wouldn't let me take it out for a spin. It was part of the way through an engine swap, provided my husband could distract the docent for a few more minutes I could wrap this up and jump it off of a couple power tool batteries. We could be outta here and down the runway before they'd slug down their BC powders to be able to chase after us.  The blueing of the compressor blades is gorgeous imo. That's in a nutshell, Evergreen Museum.  Post camping out in the Evergreen parkinglot we took a little drive towards the coast to stay near Southlake for a week. We're killing time till we drive into Portland to get the truck's springs overhauled. I found a shop that has a proper lifting system capable of lifting dumptrucks by the chassis, works on everything from classic Rolls Royces to construction equipment, and can even forge their own springs in house. This is going to cost that of a space programme but it will be right.   Till then I can go ride bikes.   In the area is a really good climb. I ran this climb several times. It was just too good not to.  This was my turn around spot at the Mount Hebo station.      It's about time to drive to Portland and hotel it! The shop said two maybe three days. Dropping it off on thursday, should have it back by saturday at the latest. Clinical job, unbolt old, bolt on new, build up new blocks for the rear axle, all the required parts are ready to go. However everything is one broken bolt form being an ordeal. And my sinuses are acting up big time.
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Oct 13, 2022 17:05
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RIP Paul Walker posted:Love that air museum, really need to make another journey out there. Is the SR-71 still chillin’ there? It was as of July 15th 2021! Related. Map as of right around Evergreen. 5190 miles, 9 months. 
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Oct 13, 2022 18:33
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Portland Portland Portland Portland Goodbye fucker, see you in a better place in a few days.  Ok this city is cool as gently caress. Rolled through the musueums of fine art, the zoo, wandered public transit, almost got involved in a naked bike ride, etc. Found a whisky bar  With this delicious stuff.  Powell's books is incredible. Go there. My only regret is that I could only carry so much. Titles I should have bought.   Titles that are probably appropriate. For I am firmly in the last category.  Titles that I resonate with.  I found my next car while here.  Parked behind this old rear end bearing shop.   This was around the time I get sick as a loving dog. Awesome. It's probably covid. Zoom call from bed to describe symptoms. All the classic poo poo of a sinus infection that I get at the drop of a hat. Worst timing ever. Into the quickcare I go. Negative covid test but my sinuses are pissed off 6 ways from sunday. In with the Z pack and I'm good to go. Later on. I get a call from the spring shop. The front end went together easy and without a fight. They slipped the rear springs in, built up the blocks to get the driveline angles right, then sat the truck back down, and promptly ate all of the primary leaf pack sitting the truck on the bump stops. They're at a loss. They're polling the resources of every person in the building to figure this out. It's no longer a two day job. What does this thing weigh again? They're going to need it beyond the weekend and probably most of next week. Oh. gently caress. This is about to get exponentially expensive. I hope they shove it back out in the yard for the weekend, the batteries won't last that long. Oh well problem for future me. Cool old rail bridge  I wanna build my next camper on one of these. They're not as confined with weight.  Thirteen Letter represent!  What I should have put this camper on was a medium duty 4wd International. Probably not with the maxxforce 7 or VT365 this thing would have though.  The real Ideal here is this van. He really wanted one, and before Covid happened, so did I. Shoulda made it happen. Especially since this thing is being a massive pain in my rear end right now.  Honda  My uncle had one of these. Great trucks.  Almost bought one of these in this color. Should have done it. They're now worth that of a house in some parts.  In boosted v8 we trust.  It's nice to see Portland has some car culture. It's not common. And of course, there's the cars intermixed with resturants. Oh god the food trucks. It's easy to put on 10 pounds in a weekend here. I mean, just look at it.  Coming from a food truck whose owner reminds me of my own mom, just a lot less crazy.  FoFo makes delicious food holy hell. Monday afternoon rolls around, the truck will be ready first thing tomorrow they figured out a fix. Hell yeah. It's been almost a week and this is getting pretty expensive. Let's go retrieve the prize first thing in the morning. The Old Ford I should have brought back from the dead. Powered by an old L10 Cummins so it wouldn't be a lot better than what I'm already dealing with.  In the spring shop they have a cutaway of the exact frame used on my truck as a diorama. Hindsight, I shoulda added it to the tab.  Miscellaneous class 8 truck parts.   They're in a hell of a hurry this morning. They just hauled the truck outta the shop and have better paying gigs to deal with so they rush through the transaction and send me on my way. drat it definitely sits higher now.  The fronts? F53 motorhome spring with an added overload. The makeup of this new pack combines to a total of 9752lb capacity.  It sits a little higher now, you can see that the front shackle is being pulled out of line because of it. This needs to be fixed.  The rears are a combo of F-superduty primary packs (F450) and actual Superduty F550 overloads. it's good for 8600lb on the primary and 4000lb on the overload.    This is how they fixed it eating all the travel. They doubled up the blocking between the Primary and Overload packs allowing the overloads to engage a lot sooner. They actually are nearly touching with the truck unladen. It's not good for ride quality buuut it's stout.  They reground the blocks and corrected for the pinion angle. No more 65mph vibes!  With this it pushes the spring cap of the truck into class 7 territory at 26372lb in spring cap On class 4 worth of axles at 14250lb. On class 5 worth of tire capacity at 17200lb. However its still just a little class 3 truck with some stout legs. I'm elated. Thrilled. Stoked. Worth every dime. It drives better, corners better, handles bad roads a little better. Though it's rough as all hell on washboard. It does still have a vibe though. Probably the axle side Ujoint failing. I'll deal with that later.  I'll need to retorque all of the spring U-bolts in 150 miles anyway else risk breaking one of the brand new springs so I can fix the Ujoint then or whenever. Back on hookups. The batteries died 36 hours prior to pick up. The VE-Protect stepped in and shut everything down so the batteries were at least safe. Everything in the fridge including the starter died.  The crew in the stickerless class C next to us we made friends with. From here, back to the Ray Benson Sno park and let the cards cool the hell down. But the vibe continues to gain in intensity. To the point. When I pulled into the Sno-Park it is shaking both shifters violently at low speed. what in the gently caress? Oh son of a gently caress. The driveline is not supposed to be pulling away from the flange.  That's bad. I don't have a 12 point 12mm socket for those bolts. Nor do I have all of the tools should I need to repair the differential or transfer-case if any damage has occurred. The transfer-case is one of one that I custom built a few years ago but at least those are all generic parts within it. The differential is junk-class at best that I brought back from the dead. I'll have to unload the camper, find a shop to regear it, and do a break in on new gears if it has been damaged. it too is full of one off custom parts, with the required supporting parts a thousand miles away. This loving truck does not give me or anybody a break ever.
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Oct 16, 2022 22:21
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Great question. [one-hundred-thousand-yard-stare] *annoyingly high pitched whining noise* Edit: haha, at this point. Yeah the wheels fly off this bus soon enough. Some little bit of spoilers below but they're common knowledge in AI anyway. As of now, right now. I have not replaced the steering wheel, the power steering pump section* itself, or the power steering gear, I have not pulled the dash itself but major parts of it. Everything else I have been into, replaced, repaired, improved, or removed. I haven't pulled the transmission but it is from 1996 when I assume its flywheel exploded destroying it and the transmission itself and largely a wreck. I'm gentle with it. Things like axles and core supports, yeah those are original. But they've been doctored like everything else. Its at least on its second rearend rebuild, which as of the above Portland post, is on notice. The LSD is very active which... they fail early and often. It's fresh. The front differential is more or less also on notice, I've had to dig in it a few years ago to hand correct for bearing wear. The truck was sold and listed with the dmv as having around 134 thousand miles. seven years later I estimate 434 thousand or 834 thousand based on the wear and issues I've experienced. Probably even 1,134,000. I'm getting a lot of weird issues that I only see in extremely high mile and or high abuse vehicles. I've put almost 50,000 miles on it since 2016, 20 of that with the camper loaded on it. about one third to one half of the original camper remains. about 15% of its original electrical system Around 2/3 of its original plumbing system. nearly all of its LP system is still there. fwiw the starter sucked anyway and I shoulda dumped it in the black tank long ago. spoiler: the one that comes next is a fighty little bugger. Powells owns. They're best experienced in person imo. My uncles 720 was the same. Total trooper. It took a full size sedan in the passenger door at 50ish or something. Put him in the hospital. That was two ish decades ago. * Ford power steering pumps never die, they just sound like they are. I estimate another 2-3 ish years before the steering gear needs to be replaced. It leaks a little but not enough for me to care. cursedshitbox fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Oct 17, 2022 |
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Oct 17, 2022 01:29
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This was through like urban cores and less out in the sticks. It was to quote the local reddit "keeps Portland weird". anchors down, ready to do the deeds the shop didn't do.   Alright for this next bit I'm gonna draw on a few images from the old truck thread. The BorgWarner 1356 uses standard boring roller bearings, preload on the flange nut doesn't matter a lot. In the rear housing off at the bottom right of the photo you'll see the roller bearing.  That rides on the stubby shaft on the left. The nut that holds the flange on? yeah it's been knocked free.  But as you see. It won't hurt anything. So I just torque it back down to 2/3 of a hernia till I can get a proper torque wrench on it. The sterling 10.25? It's a different animal. Differential pinions use tapered roller bearings and *something* to set the preload between them to keep the bearings happy. Ford used what's called a crush sleeve. Torque the pinion nut down to the predetermined specification and it figures everything else out. I replaced it with a stack of shims because the pinion nut has a penchant for backing off and the sleeve doesn't take side loading all that well. The shim stack and its housing is the shiny pieces of machined metal in this photo, the crush sleeve is the filthy oily thing adjacent to it on the shop towel.  The spare shims, are what's in storage. I find the pinion nut loose, and when I torque it back down, there's too much preload. This will ruin the bearings and subsequently the differential in a hurry. I left the nut loose and called it good. Since I've still a mailbox in Bend, I ordered the parts to build up another shim kit and will point the nose in that general direction. There's an ACE in Sisters I need to visit anyway to get a 12pt 12mm wrench and a properly sized torque wrench for this and the springs. To get us there, I wrapped an imperial 12pt wrench in a shop towel, and canted it off center to get a good bite on the bolts. You do what you need to in the field. Props to the company that I used to build this driveline. They said if I could break it they'd fix it free of charge. The custom turned flange and the driveline itself, survived this adventure. Of course it gets rowdy when the neighbors are pouring fireball so it's time to fuckoff.  Waypoint near RoundLake Oregon.  This is where I pulled the ujoint down to inspect it and check the differential. Pulling grades the diff oil temps stayed under 200F so eh, send it.  Doesn't look like its eating itself.  Topping off the diff without a fluid pump using the abs sensor hole as the fill port.  We're parked here as it's on the absolute fringe of cell reception. Nice spot at least.    Went out for a gravel ride and noticed south of the christian camp the traffic upticked by a lot in a short amount of time. Got dusted out several times by people flying by which was pretty rude. The dust here is extremely fine and very sticky. Camper headed to the campground just south of me but where there's no cell reception.  Then OHP shows up.  The gently caress? This is twenty miles down a primitive rutted hosed up fire road, why the hell are you here bothering me. Litany of questions. The truck, its camper, us, why we're there, how long we've been there, when we're leaving, where we're from, etc. Oh you're techbros? Eyes glaze the hell over, have a nice day, bye. Cool. gently caress your state. I was vehemently pissed about it then. Still pretty sour about it over a year later. This was the one and only cop interaction on the entire trip. Back towards Sisters I find yet another cool old van. Sheesh this might as well be the 'csb and old vans' thread.  In transit the latching system for the pantry broke and wouldn't unlock.  The latch pin bent.  It's a royal pain in the rear end to work on this mechanism. Especially with the pantry loaded down.  Some breakfast.  More riding on the COTA trail network.  A dead Ford Explorer. Did not find this one on the road dead.  The smoke catches us yet again.  And a field mouse found a home in my truck. This truck has had a history of being a rodent condo. Not this time.  The required shim parts have arrived in Bend, I'll swing through there then finally get the hell outta this region of Oregon after six ish weeks.
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Oct 19, 2022 18:02
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Can't say I've had a good time with any cop. It was BLM land with the standard 14 day allowable stay. Was there for three days and I hosed off the next morning. No thanks. Pretty sure camp christ called us in.
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Oct 19, 2022 18:21
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Rick posted:Also love the Evergreen picks! You should check out the Pima Air and Space Museum outside of Tucson if you haven't yet, and maybe even set up a tour of the boneyards. Both are good. This sounds really dangerous since I'm payload limited and I'm pretty sure my husband wouldn't say no to me dragging home a half dead APU or a CFM56 for that matter. SpeedFreek posted:I'm picturing the next bus having a deployable 4wd camper van like a star trek shuttle. Complete with shaking camera effects and alarm noises whenever something breaks.  4wd bus that drops an aerostar or dustbuster van.Not gonna lie I have dirty for turning a front engine wanderlodge into a six by six. There's one on RVTrader now that's an 'ok' candidate. It hinges on having a shop to do it in. Garbage class land is a joke right now, with 90 thousand for almost an acre with septic and a cement pad. The troubles can be fun. Working on poo poo is cathartic for me.... most of the time. So far things have been pretty reasonable. Once I get into the midwest is when this fucker stabs me in the side and starts putting the hurt on me and it doesn't let up.
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Oct 20, 2022 16:33
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Wandered one last time through Bend to pick up supplies then head for the Washington border. Getting LP topped off at Uhaul. With smoke means reduced solar. Good thing I kept the generator.  Making friends with Discovery IIs  And we're off! With the intense headwinds the truck wants to do about 55 and not much more.  We're arrive to a place called The Dalles. There's numerous people camping out here and windsurfing. Would be awesome to take this up someday.  Rode to the dam and back. it's quite huge. There's docks near the riverside for the natives to fish from.  Cool FWD GM RV. These run independent air rear suspension, a 455 big block and a chain driven TH425 from the Eldorado/Toronado platform. They have a cult like following.  Then there's this econoline using every ounce of its ability to tow ten thousand pounds.  It wouldn't be a transit day without something breaking. A total rebuild of the locking mechanism is required. Using a crimp ferrule to reinforce the wood and a wheeled robot axle made from tool steel a new locking pin is built. The gearbox moves around too much, a 3D printed housing is printed and screwd into place.  This all needs a minute for the glue to set. Which means the camper looks like this. The pantry swallows a lot of food.  I've had this gripe with the mountain bikes obscuring the left rear tail light. Especially when I have the bike cover on which means I can't use the bike cover while under transit. I took the mount apart and moved it higher one rung.  That's better. While faffing about with rv accessories designed by first year graphic design interns some kids were being kids and shot the coach with a bb gun. Right in one of the electroplated windows. The largest one. Somehow it didn't shatter. That would have been a solid $1500 fix if not more. My spouse got their parents involved, we all had a chat about it. His parents were ex military and pretty cool about the whole thing. After this we decided to move closer to the water since most of the people had cleared out. Bunk windows have kinda gone away as they're maintenance intensive. I'm fine with that.    Post swim beers.  Dam looks gorgeous with the ambient lighting as the sun drops over the horizion.   The bus behind the blue and yellow one wouldn't start the next morning. Guy thought batteries were dead so he asked us for a jump. 7.3 Powerstroke. Neutral safety switch or something near it is playing up. Battery voltage is good, all its various systems power up as required during key on engine off. Yeah here's how you jumper the starter relay and get it running. Key on, gear in park. It immediately lights off. Success. The next morning I roll the shades up to find a mammoth parked next to me. We hit it off.  The rearmost door on their rig? It hides a crane and a fuckin dual sport motorcycle. They're from Brazil. With a custom built truck that they put together. It's an ex Brazilian VW Worker with a MWM engine, 5 speed, and Marmon-Herrington awd hardware. The military ordered them then didn't pay the bill so they were sold off to the public. They bought it and had a German refrigerated truck box company build the box for it. They've taken it across the Americas. They were as curious about our rig as us about theirs.  They didn't have a winch and were wondering about which one to get and what size and the like. Then came lithium and generators and modern MPPT controllers. Got to fly their DJI drone (and get the above photo). Holy poo poo have those things been refined. I'm used to flying bare metal drones where you have to manually keep track of which way is forward and do all the transforms yourself. This fucker is like a video game. While we're chatting after dusk a giant class-A comes in driving kinda lost like, slowly and stopping often, swings nearby to us, makes a U-turn, and sinks it up to the axles in the sand bar behind us. I couldn't pass the opportunity to pull em out since I infact do have a winch onboard. They were in a panic about the whole thing thinking they'd need a large tow truck. Haha nah. My antique probably weighs more than the class-A, don't sweat it, we'll help you.  After these adventures we're ready to part ways with Oregon since it's pushing triple digit temps outside. Our brazilian acquaintances jetted south and east, we're going north. Dropped by The Hub Brewery. The bike frames above the bar is awesome.    We arrive to literally the side of Mount St Everest.   The snowmelt is still draining off and a solid mid 30s in temps. It is loving cold. I dunked in it several times.  The forest here is dense with bushes that produce berries, but not very many berries. There's also a fair bit of bear scat around. The berries are delicious though. The generator no longer wants to charge. It'll start and run, it's generating power, but the power isn't making it to the transfer switch or the Victron. gently caress. And the batteries are low. One of these crimps went bad. This is not our handy work. We've never done anything in this bay.  Got that fixed with the supplies we had on board, it's back to topping off batteries. As the sun goes down for the evening some people park right on top of us and wander off into the woods.  That evening, we start smelling smoke. Strong. Smoke. gently caress. gently caress gently caress gently caress time to get outta here. Walk outside, and it's our intrepid explorers have set a bonfire during a fire ban, next to a bunch of driftwood.  Hiked over, informed them of the fire ban and they have a very short window to put that poo poo out before it gets called in to the local station. They oblige. We hosed off to yet another spot before they had the chance to burn our poo poo down. Washington's back country is stunningly beautiful. There'd be no way a class-A is getting back here. At one point I had to navigate around a boulder at least three feet in diameter while also driving precariously close to a cliff edge that would roll us down several hundred feet. I do not like this kind of thing. At. All. Some partially downed trees meant clearing trails to make it into the backwoods.        But as our luck would have it. Despite looking peaceful, it's not. We're next to a major trail network and there's a hiking endurance race going on. Which turns into a missing persons search. Someone woke us up yelling in the canyons at around 0700 hours. We meet up with them, they seem spastic as hell and kind of off. We helped out for a couple hours before calling it quits. This area is densely overgrown and there is hostile wildlife.  One of the issues the camper has is that it can slide forward and backward on the truck. It'll actually rip the tie downs out if I'm not careful. It slides backwards on steep rocky climbs, and back forward descending. This mass shift can really screw with the truck and cause it to jolt and bounce. This is bad if I'm running near its tipping point. TCers get around this with a horse stall mat. Those fuckers are like 1" thick rubber and weigh a lot. This truck has a 5th wheel and there's a hole for it. we can add some lumber to the bottom of the camper to interlock it with the 5th wheel plate and it'll stay put. Like so.  From there we head to the Goose Egg Sno Park.  The river is cold of course. I didn't get a chance to dunk in this one. The guy in the camp next to us is having a moment. We're pretty frazzled and over Washington at this point. In the span of 5 days we've found someone trying to burn the forest down, a missing person's search, and now someone going full methy in the forest. The smoke caught up to us too. The AQI is north of 200.     Sun setting and peeking below the smoke layer.  Ok we're going to jump on I90 and try and outrun the smoke, whatever it takes.
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Oct 21, 2022 17:39
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It certainly has its moments. I think IG and social media way over play this lifestyle. I went back and forth on writing this thread for months, well, a year as I didn't want it to be yet another IG like wonderfest where it's all just smooth sailing and awesome parking spots. This lifestyle only works because he and I make it work. In this phase of the trip that I'm writing about today there's some external family drama going on that's not conveyed here. That added to the already growing mass of stress with the vehicle itself. One of the things I read about from veteran fulltimers all the time is never travel too far, too fast, or too often. Little hops and staying put are key. Otherwise it wears you down, wears the rig down, and it will wear your finances like no other. Getting in a hurry is ripe for breaking something. This is where we get in a big goddamn hurry. We're talking two ish days of five and six hundred mile days in the seat. Climbing a grade I tagged behind this bobtail semi with more bodyroll than my rig. Not sure what they had for power but it wasn't a lot if I'm keeping up.  Someone's getting a new engine today.  And someone else, a dumptruck's worth of sand.  Then there's idiots you share the road with.  Montana is a cool little state. It's the kinda place where you're a billionaire or you're working at their theme park. It's an exceptionally gorgeous state. But you'd need a solid remote job or be independently wealthy to live here. Idaho was a blink, went through the panhandle. Wallace is a town I'd like to go back and spend some time in. Has some Gold Rush vibes, so much so to preserve the city the freeway is raised above it and chiseled into the mountain. Getting some 5 guys in my mouth in Missoula and it starts absolute dumping rain.  To get to our camping spot meant hours of backroads then fire roads. We're camping within 50 miles of the Canadian border. The rutted busted fire roads shredded one of the tiedowns in the process. The one corner we didn't heavily reinforce. The porpoising of the camper took its toll on the retention systems and well it's just anchored into luan anyway.   In a moment of lukewarm intelligence I reconfigured the tiedown to use the jack mount to attach the camper. This will get us to camp, and at least a parts store so that the tiedown can be anchored better.  Spoiler: there is no better solution as this worked entirely too well. This is where we're spending the week.  While here, I'm loving with glow plug power connectors again.  Due to the rains a temp seal of kapton tape is applied to the side of the camper to prevent water ingress.  To repair the corner the frame needs to be pulled back into shape, then we'll epoxy the poo poo out of it all with fresh wood to reinforce the area. Note that most everything required is onboard. This is why the rig is so heavy. I don't have West Systems with me but I do have various two part epoxies. Fine enough, it's better than anything Elkhart, IN has ever squirted out on a piece of cardboard.   The frame in place and epoxied.  The water heater and such can't come out so we're doing all of this through the electrical connection hatch. Topside with reinforcement.  Screws back in, mostly back in line with where it belongs.  Put the white trim finisher back in place and layer it all in 4200. Just like 2020.   Rearward looking forward, that's an acceptable amount of deflection in the overhang.  There's this wall paper like stuff. When the tiedown started ripping out, it tore some of it. Yeah I don't have that. I do have eternabond though. It's just not good, it's good enough.  While here we encountered *something* brushing against the camper. Something large enough to reach the sides. It woke my spouse up. Me, not so much. Some jeep showed up at 2330 one night. Probably wasn't expecting to see a camper there. The fresh connections cleaning to all the glow plug power side didn't pan out. It's still really hard starting and smokey as all get out. Kind of getting a hint that there's something else going on. Bad fuel or an injection pump beginning to fail. The filters will catch any water or debris, this engine shouldn't give a poo poo about fuel quality with a compression ratio of 21.5:1. It'll just run hotter.  Leaving through the same way in. This trail is just a little too small for this rig but we made it work.   Eastward. Montana is so gorgeous.    I'm also 12.  My next truck should be one of these.  More hills as I approach eastern Montana.  Land of the Crow. Really cool to finally get to visit this area. Back in primary school I did a pile of reports/studies/art on the Crow, Cheyenne, and Sioux nations. At one point I could even speak a little Sioux.   Then we take a little detour using highway 212 to cut a little off of I90. This was a bad idea. This is Highway 212.   They're replacing a couple mile stretch. All at once. With no water truck to tamp down the dust. What a cluster. Sign that said bump. Dropped the truck two feet. A car hot on my rear end, failed to stay hot on my rear end after that one. Back into the paved stretch then into the mountains.  The other thing that's awesome about traveling? Proper thunderstorms.  For the night I'm staying in Brodus at a truck parking area. Getting fuel I notice that the camper has been shot by a paintball gun. Little Shits.  Brodus puts the trip at 7,105 miles (11,368km). Tomorrow, Wyoming the 8th state on our road trip.
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Oct 24, 2022 17:53
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Part of the fun is building something then using the ever living hell out of it. There's no place in my heart for coveted trinkets placed on an altar to be worshiped as a heirloom. Get it out and use it. Get some dents and dings on it. Establish some wear patterns and maybe some drip pans when it's leaking everywhere. Camping out at the tip top right corner of Wyoming. Near Aladdin. Here for a couple days. Mostly to take stock and recharge from the last couple days driving.  Making some friends with the locals.  This mountain kitty is maybe a little too friendly. I was actually planning to go out for a ride but eh maybe tomorrow.  The cows are really curious.  Then moving onwards near Sundance, WY  Gonna stay here a while. It's a nice spot. Devils tower has been on my list of 'poo poo to see' forever, and it's within an hour drive from here. I think I'll swing by on the way outta this spot.  Two days later the smoke caught up. FFFFFuck. We are almost halfway across the country and still not able to get away from it.  Options from here? Go east! And drive.  And drive.  Continue driving into South Dakota.  Piss break at an old Titan site. Hubby jokingly wants to buy one of these sites. Only if it comes with the missle so I can LS swap it and turn it into an rv.        Made it to Oahe Downstream State Recreation Area in Fort Pierre, SD for the night. Cool old school ACOE campground. I love these.    After leaving Pierre we head north on Hwy 83 to meet up with I94 to take that eastward towards WI and Michigans Upper Peninsula. This stretch of the country is desolate. The fuel is lousy with the truck dropping to 7mpg. Stopped in at a Napa to get Rotella, they're out. Napa should stand for Never Any Parts Available. Somewhere in North Dakota.  We make it to Bismark and are craving a big greasy burg after a day of driving. Turning into the five guys parking lot there's a new sound coming from the truck I've never heard before. Ever since we perched the camper on this truck it's been a pretrip item to check the lower flanges. This time my check would fail.  Ford you are a loving Jackass for putting holes right there in the frame's webb.  We've broken its back. Game over. Whatever, let's eat. Anxiously and with anger. There's a nearby flying J that we can do logistics out of. Talked to the counter worker we're clear to park there a couple days.  Options. Flatbed it back home. It'll probably break more from the porpoising on a flatbed. There's no house to return to, nor a second car. We'll need to rent one. Weld it up and roll the dice with it breaking again. Find another truck and roll the dice with an in-maintenance-debt-poo poo tractor. Continue onward with the trip after these two options or turn back to CA
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Oct 27, 2022 17:23
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tryyyy here Maintenance debt has stopped us from replacing this truck several times. This is the second time on the trip where we consider such. My findings in NoDak were old trucks of the medium duty nature with many hundreds of thousands of miles on a old tired DT466 and only 2wd. There's also this GM/Isuzu cab over with airbrakes and numerous issues. And a I series International with a hosed up 7.3 that I could hang some of donk's parts on then send donk to the great junkyard in the sky. None of these options are good. Hwy 83 killed it. I checked that morning before leaving the campground in Pierre and everything was all good under there. Popping out of the thread sitting at 9/03/2021 for a moment, the passenger rail has never given up despite the hell its been put through. The driver's side has cracked three times. I'll do a mild break of the 4th wall and present everything I've learned/found/discovered from the point of this thread to the current day in the next update. this isn't a 134,000 mile truck like the state/history claims it is but more like 1,134,000 mile truck. The dakotas and the midwest I find to be some of the most boring driving there is. I made the trek across this span of the country in 2007 and again in 2021. The difference is stark. I kinda don't want to do it again with this truck.
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Oct 27, 2022 22:22
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Montana has a rusty dino! I may not have adequate internet on monday for a big dumb effortpost so you all can have one ahead of time. However, it's not going to be a direct conclusion to the cracked frame, but rather, about the frame it self. Old lovely truck frames, and Me. It's surprisingly common to break a frame. Light/medium duty plow and dump trucks have this happen all the time. Even in class 6-8 it's not exactly uncommon to break a frame in a heavy haul truck. It was a lot more common back in the 60s-80s than it is today but still. The forces they experience loaded can greatly overload the section modulus of the flange creating a riser and a point failure. Others like the GMT400 and the predecessor the C-K series had frame failures of differing types. 4wd C-K series trucks are known for cracking frames at the steering box. Early 4wd 400s will crack behind the upper control arm on the firewall side. Both of these easily correctable and they're made of regular old 36,000 psi mild steel. Let's first talk about how the frame gets its strength. A common mis-conception is that the web of the frame is where all its strength lies. Less so. First let's consider a truck frame as varying blocks of metal and its relative strength under a static load.  To further illustrate the relationship between diameter, web height, and flange width and how it all contributes to the channels strength. This diagram.   Another place you could image this diagram is your typical I beam used in construction. The "flange" there is also the load bearing component. However I beams are not practical for motor vehicle construction. Now that's not to say the web is just there for pretty. It handles dynamic loading when components are bolted to it. Loading from above primarily loads the flanges like so.  Horizontal bending from the action of steering, towing, or the suspension responding to terrain.    The same force, but with a hole in the web.  Ken also sums this up well so I'm adding this to the post. kastein posted:Another thing that I believe is being glossed over by the source material is that the vertical web's job is to keep the top and bottom flanges connected together and spaced apart correctly. The top and bottom flanges in a beam are where most of the strength is, but without the vertical web under compression in between them they're just two flat bars flapping around. And the taller the vertical web is, the further apart the top and bottom flanges are which results in them having more effect on stiffness for the same material cross sectional area. I'm not a structural engineer though, so at this point I'm going to shut up and let people who are tell me I'm right or wrong. How things are attached to the frame can make a big difference in the frame's strength. If it's bolted to the web it typically needs a crossmember behind it or as near as acceptably possible. (within 2x its flange height) Without the crossmember to resist the frame twisting the load on the flanges can exceed its modulus resulting in cracks.  And when we house all of the components of a similar style truck to mine, the strain and stress on the frame will look like this.  Bit of additional information here. 5x is your typical safety margin like used in Kenworth, in 4wd vehicles. 2.5x is your typical 2wd safety margin in light/medium duty applications. Alright now that you understand how we can stress out a frame, let's bolt an upfit to it. There's as many types of attachment as the day is long. Some I am going to ignore here as it is far outside of the scope of this truck. Tanker trucks being one of them being rigid bolted. We're going to take a look at the type of upfit that still has the ability to flex independently of the primary frame.  Take this basic box truck diagram. Now apply stress to it like so. Note that the subframe is 'flexible' where the frame sees the most stress. Note that if the frame or its upfit can't move independent of one another it can overload the flanges directly above and below where it is bolted. If the upfit can contact the frame it can cause another point overload on the lower flange.  Typically on the forward mounts springs are used to help reduce bounce. Rubber, UHMW, and even wood can be employed to add to driver comfort.  The fixed section should be bolted like so. The thickness of the assembly 2x the diameter of the bolt. Washers or flared heads utilized, grade 8 or better, The bolt shouldered to the depth of the fastened assembly, and the hole drilled to as exact of a size to the bolt as possible.  To prevent the point overload from contact, this angle is employed on the upfit's subframe as it'll allow for some deflection.  Still with me here? Good. Let's get into how do you make a frame handle more load than it was originally intended to. Here's some cross sectional diagrams of your industry standard channel reinforcements. Note that C and D are extremely common to heavy haul trucks as despite the heat treated frame capable of 110,000 psi, it's not strong enough for its application.  And a engineering statement from International on the topic.  One last quick thing. post '98 Ford superduty frames are heat treated. They can indeed be fixed. If they can be fixed, mild steel definitely can be fixed. Here's a shop repair guide from Ford themselves on how to perform a partial frame replacement on the late model SuperDuty, right down to the welding settings required.   Now that you're dutifully bored, I'm going to subject you to practical applications of reinforcements of frames. From Ford mostly. There's a dizzying number of frames for this era of truck. Let's focus on the day cab and 133" and 137" wheelbase. Mine is pre-drilled for these rivet on the flange flat strap reinforcements however they are not present. In 1996, they became standard on the 133" wheelbase. The 137"s got them on all years. For that is not just the F350 frame, but also the F-Superduty too. (F-450). Main difference between the two frames is the reinforcement, some C-Channel crossmembers, slight difference in flange widths, and over the rear axle the shock mounts have no clearance in the flange. They moved the shocks more inboard.     I'll also point out that U-bolting an upfit is incorrect. Now to turn to the late model F550. It is the standard F350-450 frame, but with an extra frame layered over it in sections as so.   But as evidenced in this earlier SD 550 frame, it's not complete to the front of the frame. The reinforcement ends at the rear of the cab.  Alright why as all of this relevant? Let's look at our sins from a professionally built truckbed from the SF bay area thirty some odd years ago. First off at the very back. The upfit is welded to the frame. This is actually very wrong and so much so it's not allowed according to the FMCSA. The fixed bolt, fine. But it is grade 5. Not fine. There is no washer. Not fine. The receiver hitch is welded and integrated with the bed which is integrated with the frame.  These are small fries. Moving on. This is the goose neck plate with a photo circa the bed rebuild.  Take note of two things. The crosswise piece of flat plate, and the length wise piece of C beam going forward. The C-Beam is welded to the crossmember, here.  The cross plate is welded to the flange, here.  Moving forward towards the cab. It is symmetrically bolted on both sides with grade 5 hardware and no washers. Note that there's no spring mount or anything of the like.  The bed's subframe is a C-beam. In the above photo you see it cut to clearance for the bed. It's pretty unprofessional but whatever. At the very front, it is cut again and the headache rack butt welded to it. Also note that there is no 25 degree angled relief at the leading edge of the C-Beam.  From the back side, it looks like this.  The passenger side, looks like this.  This matters because I learned almost a year after this frame break in North Dakota that this isn't just under compression. It is also under tension. I learned this summer of 2022 on a camping trip when I took this photo. Something looked off. More-so than the usual flex. I found the bed had pulled away from the subframe at the front corners over half an inch.  It's not just twisted, the camper's front rolling off the centerline of the truck. Not allowable. Alright so let's recap here. We have a bed that's built wrong and attached to the truck in an incorrect fashion. This is creating improper loading of the primary frame and has been for over thirty years. We have a frame that was under built by the financial department on a throw-away truck and abused by the original owners. If you look at the front end in photos the recovery point on the left side of the bumper has pulled the bumper out of shape. The core support mounts on the frame use the same shims yet there's inconsistency. I suspect the frame has reached a fatigue limit and is permanently deformed on the driver's side. In the bed rebuild photos you'll see mud caked into the top of the tanks and in the bed. This thing has been buried deep and hee-hawed on by a tractor relentlessly. I'll also point out in the original truck thread where I had to pull back into shape, weld, and glue the cab back together. The A pillar was floating cracking the windshield. Space age adhesives from 3M used to glue Teslas together were utilized in this so not like it was the latest in material science from the 80s. The grade 5 hardware is under specified for the load, and keeps vibrating loose on one side allowing for more misalignment and momentary overloads of the surrounding frame. The bed has partially come apart, and is using the three ton camper working as a hammer, of which it is acting on the forward bed mounts as a chisel, which is working on the likely weakend cheap truck frame, to create a moment load that far exceeds the flange' modulus. How do I fix this and how do I fix this proper. Here is a diagram for an improved 133"wb frame. I can find several of these for every 137" wb frame. I need three. The primary. One that dies to build the upper reinforcement. One that dies to build the lower reinforcement. 6 months to 1.5 years work depending on how much the bed fights me. The subframe/goosneck/and back of the bed is cut off and rebuilt correctly. Or since there's so much work involved, I might as well build an aluminum bed for it and gain another 700lb in payload. It's a hell of a project and really only worth doing if I want to keep it as a weekender farm builder on 37s. This effort would make it stronger than the 137" frame however there's a lot of stitching involved. Keep it's tow capacity at 12,000 and gvr at 13,500 due to the limitations in frame length vs the position of the bed on it and the capacity of the rearend/tires.  Option B. The 137" frame requires me to stretch the driveline, or convert the truck to a ZF6, or a school bus 7 speed. The last two involves two/three new drivelines, and probably a driveline brake. The Sterling 10.25 rear axle I'm not in love with. It should go for a Dana 80 from a Ford E450 passenger bus/schoolie. Time frame is the same as above since the cab/spring mounts all place nice with each other however I'm sourcing and building drivetrain components again. Which this thing has a crappy transmission anyway. For the amount of effort that is a frame swap I might as well go for the longer wheelbase and throw a toolbox for spare tire storage and the like between the bed and cab so it's no longer hanging out under the back of the camper. Set the GVR at 14-15k, towing of roughly the same since the bed is now shifted forward vs the axle. Option C. 2005.5+ F550 4x4 heat treated frame. Coil front suspension with a Dana super 60. Dana 135 rear. Rebuild the bed to work with it. Throw a toolbox and spare carrier in front of it. Transplant all the best parts of this truck on it. Right axles. Right gears. Move to the 7 speed. Run 42s. Sell off the left overs. Have a 80s truck with a GVR of 18,000lb and a towing capacity of 18,000lb. Go anywhere, do anything, haul anything. The ideal. But also, the biggest most rabbitholest of projects. New cab/core support mounts required. Little other fuckery. Single large fuel tank instead of two little ones. Probably can add secondary holding and water tanks. Custom drivelines, fuel lines, brake lines. Steering is actually one of the easiest. It opens up room to tow and keep the camper and it's properly beef and all well matched of the best parts. This is a big long term project and requires a shop like all the other options. These options are musing on potential outcomes that I've been thinking of since the frame broke in the above update. Don't expect this to happen in the context of this thread. Sources and further reading: https://transportengineer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Chassis-Modification-Guidelines.pdf https://www.macktrucks.com/-/media/files/body-builder/manuals/7-frame.pdf/ https://til.scania.com/idcplg?IdcService=GET_FILE&RevisionSelectionMethod=LatestReleased&Rendition=web&noSaveAs=1&dDocName=BWM_0000009_01 http://bodybuilder.navistar.com/general/documents/saleinfo/ct471dates/20140228/ct471/series/durastar/Durastar_frames.pdf https://www.dtwd.wa.gov.au/sites/default/files/teachingproducts/AUT035_CCBY.PDF E: post and detail cleanup, nothing to worry. E2: frame flange section cleanup, sources. cursedshitbox fucked around with this message at 22:45 on Oct 31, 2022 |
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Oct 28, 2022 21:42
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builds character posted:If the strength of the frame is in the top/bottom of the beam, then why aren’t they shorter and stouter? Just expense and easier to bolt stuff to this way? Great question and I totally missed that very important bit. I added it to the post and some sources for the material used in the post.
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Oct 29, 2022 16:27
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kastein posted:Another thing that I believe is being glossed over by the source material is that the vertical web's job is to keep the top and bottom flanges connected together and spaced apart correctly. The top and bottom flanges in a beam are where most of the strength is, but without the vertical web under compression in between them they're just two flat bars flapping around. And the taller the vertical web is, the further apart the top and bottom flanges are which results in them having more effect on stiffness for the same material cross sectional area. I'm not a structural engineer though, so at this point I'm going to shut up and let people who are tell me I'm right or wrong. You're right. At least to my limited understanding of structural engineering. Rodenthar Drothman posted:Glad I ventured here from the announcement. I got goosebumps reading Option C. This truck is forever at this point. We'll see! First off though, we weigh our options. poo poo tractors? no good. Leaves me with even more problems and nowhere to get one out of maintenance debt. Especially parked in a truckstop. Shipping it 'home' to California is a 2-5 thousand dollar job based on the bids I got. That's going to sit in my back pocket for a moment. I called up every welding shop in Bismark. Nobody wants to touch it. But one old timer is getting out and has been selling off his tools. He sold a bunch of propeller jigs to an old pipeline welder about 60 miles north of us. He gave me his number. Dudes willing to fix the truck. But I gotta get it there, 60 miles away, and also there's no warranty, no guarantee, he doesn't even want to be seen welding on this old fucker. Weird opinions out here. In CA they'd just weld this fucker up and throw it back out to work. My clever husband came up with a way to pull the frame back together with allthread.  We jump on our bikes and ride over to Lowes to buy the $20 in hardware required to bolt the frame back together. Awesome old bote parked out front.  Here's the temporary fix all bolted in nicely.  Of course it wouldn't be a project unless one of the one-way-only ratcheting wrenches gets stuck in place.  And we set off! Really slowly and gently. Probably the most gentle I have ever driven this thing. Up until North Dakota and its awesome infrastructure. Has a bump sign, in a mostly blind corner. And drops the truck three feet into a loving crater. Which ruined the temp fix.  And broke the frame even worse.  He saved a little extra length of all thread on the leading edge just in case for this very reason. However, it's not wanting to pull back together. The forces required exceed the metallurgy involved in our jank rear end fix. I deployed the jacks to lift some of the weight off the frame.  While he's pulling the frame back together it's creaking and groaning like it's the Battlestar Galactica just after it had been jumped without the fighter pods pulled in. The truck is also now visibly bent.  We get it patched up and we're off again. At 15mph. No faster. Google maps in its infinite wisdom that is the internet. Routed us down a fire road. With washboard features. Twenty miles left. 2wd-low range and 1st gear. 1.25mph dancing with the clutch to prevent loading the temp fix with any more weight than absolutely necessary. We made it. Right at dusk. He happened to be there. Said he'd start the following day after he's done with other customers, 5pm sharp. Told him I'd pull the truck down in the mean time. My visibly bent up truck. Going in, if you haven't read the other threads or I didn't really put it in to them, this truck was built to be fixed and fixed easy. Everything I've done I've done it in such a way that I could maintain this truck no matter what. What happened here is proving that. Step one. Unload a fully loaded 6,000lb camper. This requires extending the jacks to their absolute maximum and hoping there is no wind. There is wind. We made it though.  Driveline and exhaust out. While I'm below deck, he is above deck, stripping said deck off.  Left flange   Right flange.  Decking stripped.  While in Rome, I'm taking the opportunity to rotate tires while the camper is off since it is less sketchy. Which allowed for shots of its new springs. Rear:  Fronts:  Also these tires wear ridiculously fast. These might actually bald out before they age out at 5 years.  Fuel tank removed. I ran this one down prior to dropping it. Since the sending unit doesn't work, I guessed. There's about 6 gallons left in it. And the sending unit retainer is rusted to the tank, so I can't fix the sunken float. This old truck.  The truck still runs and drives. Using the front powered axle and the rearmost fuel tank.  With this. It is ready for repairs. Since I have some freetime I created this diagram to give the fabricator a rough idea of how to implement a fix.  Lastly, I leave you with turbo noises. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWRs4Pwvans
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Oct 31, 2022 23:19
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PainterofCrap posted:Living up to your thread title, I see. My username is on point. I drop that mfing tank like three more times... Yes, They're nylon and go to the Fuel Switching Valve at the front end of the tank and fixed to the frame. I've never replaced any of this part of the fuel system. I'm surprised it all still works. On the gassers the FSV is a big point of failure. But in this system there is no twin fuel pumps so it doesn't really see any pressure. Dude shows up around six ready to get rolling. Drove a bobcat over to tow the broke back farm truck into the shop but much to his surprise, it's still running and moves under its own power. He's a bit off and a lot more energetic than he was the prior evening but whatever he's probably riding on five liters of coffee cause it's a long drat day.  Truck in the shop and so we begin. He's way off. Spouse and I catch onto this, and immediately jump in to help. We make the patch pieces from junk found around the facility that'll do the job, he stitches them on. He was a pipeline welder and with the whole Keystone XL thing falling apart he fell on hard times. Lost his contracts, lost his family, fell into the glass. Tonight, he's lit like a christmas tree and things are getting weirder by the minute. His welds are at least good though. There's numerous broken 6.0/6.4 Powerstrokes around. Fun questions about how to fix one and if I'm interested in doing 6.4 things for barter. No way buddy. ???  The next series of topics revolve around "Do you travel with cash and valuables"? and "Are you armed?" Buddy I am a six foot tall 200 pound ball of pure anger and muscle that can heave engines around by hand. Those that have met me know that I don't just hug, I'll pick your goony rear end up. If we could harness the anger alone we wouldn't need oil or renewables. Try not to touch my loving angry. It also seems he took note of me profiling the strap to the truck's frame by hand. He tapered off from there as he realized we probably not some people to gently caress with as there's one of him and two of us. Though I was still on the highest of high alerts like oh gently caress this guy is gonna find some friends and try and rob us in the middle of the night. It was the sketchiest predicament we've been in so far. Soup Du Jours is 75A SMAW(stick) and farmers rod. His report is that it's definitely mild steel and it welds really nicely.  The job finishes up at around the three hour mark. He wants something trivial like $1-200 for it all. Haha, no way dude. You're a pro pipefitter that fell on hard times and you gotta take care of your kids. We're fine to spend the night but we gotta be gone by end of day tomorrow. No problem. Square up. Pull the truck out back in front of the camper. Set the coffee maker for 30 minutes before daybreak and sleep with one eye open. Morning rolls around, here's the outcome. Technically correct enough that it'll get us back west and sticking to pavement. There's some issues with the flat strap but it's the best we could have accomplished. The fish plate is done correctly. The crack was relived by blowing it out with an oxy/acetylene setup then stitching it up then placing the plate over it. The flux hasn't been knocked off. I didn't bother either, it's my stress indicator now. Driver's side:    Passenger's side:   He does top end assembly, I do lower end.  Note the bow is gone. A bottle jack was used to lift the truck adjacent to the crack and push it back out. The camper is loaded in under an hour.  Back at the truckstop we started at.  The truck drives... better? No like better than the crack obviously, but it drives better than it did before it broke. It's more rigid now and the camper's porpoising is reduced. Now I understand why ford riveted the reinforcements on. loving cheapskates. Baller rig going by.  From here we're gonna drive to Fargo and decide to either continue eastward into Michigan or turn south to I80 and loop back to San Francisco.
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Nov 2, 2022 19:21
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