March 24, 2018. "I feel sorry for anyone who needs a cam bolt sleeve in the Seattle area this weekend." said Mike @Digiratus as he and Zane @Speedytech7 walked in the door a little after 4:30pm. See, they'd just driven a 50-mile loop to get every last one they could find - since we were in the process of destroying all four of Mike's. But we are way ahead of ourselves. For several months, Dan @drr and Mike have been planning a shop day. Mike wanted to install a new set of W53377A Whiteline LCA bushings as well as a new steering rack…
Leave a CommentMonth: March 2018
March 18, 2018. To say it was one of the more blustery nights we've spent in the tent would be an understatement. Perched on the edge of the canyon wall, the rain fly was getting whipped around, and the tent was acting like a sail in the bed of the truck - shaking the entire truck to and fro. @mrs.turbodb asked if there was any chance we might roll backwards. "Not really," I said. (and then I proceeded to put my clothes back on and get out to chock the tires - you know, "just in case." We slept soundly…
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March 17, 2018. Our night at the Doll House was the calmest of the trip. We all slept soundly and though we each awoke a different times, we all experienced a beautiful morning. Having nearly missed the orange horizon the morning before, I refrained from hitting the snooze button on my alarm, and I crawled out of the tent about half an hour before sunrise. Being up so early allowed me time to scout a reasonably good position to capture the magic light of morning, since I could see exactly where it was going to come over the horizon, and…
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March 15, 2018. Day 0. As we pulled out of the parking lot in Idaho Falls, we were already late. See, the plan had been to show up at @cbi offroad fab when they opened at 8:00am, and have the new bumper install done by 10:00am so we'd have our choice of routes down to Hanksville, UT where we were meeting Ben @m3bassman and Zane @Speedytech7 for a three-day adventure into The Maze District in Canyonlands National Park. My hope was that we'd choose the scenic route, down 191 through Wyoming to get to our meet-up and first nights camp…
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March 14-15, 2018. There is perhaps nothing that changes the look of a truck more than adding a swing-out rear bumper. Sure, you can argue for bigger tires or lift or a front bumper, but in my mind, none of those things compare to the entirely new footprint that a rear-swing-out brings, what with the spare tire and jerry can mounts that add two additional feet to the length of your truck. But as usual, I'm jumping into the middle of the story. Let's back up a bit. Since starting to really build out the truck for adventuring, I've known that…
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With summer fast approaching, I decided that it'd be a good time to take a look at the skids - so I could clean up any rust, and repaint them for the season. I'm not sure how necessary that is - I mean, at 3/16" thick, these @relentlessfab plates would take quite a while for rust to destroy - but it's an easy process, so why not. Removal was straight forward though a bit unwieldy, and I was happy to find that my re-welded anchors were holding up well. I was also happy to see that my skids had saved…
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I've never been a car guy. I can tell you all about the details of construction and woodworking - how the various bits of a house work, how to precision tune a saw or plane. But when I looked down and saw two flaking, worn bushings that were connected to "some bar" and my lower control arms, I wondered, "What the heck is that, and how screwed am I?" As it turns out, that was my stabilizer bar, and I wasn't really all that screwed at all. But I'm getting ahead of myself. See, the first thing I did was consult…
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February 26, 2018. I always dread cleaning the bed of the truck. I don't mean sweeping or washing out the bed liner - I mean, I don't like that either - but the part I really dread is removing the bed liner and cleaning underneath it. There are a couple reasons for this: first, it's hard to get the liner out; it's really wedged in there (which is good the rest of the time). Second, I always worry (rightly, I think) that when I take out the bed liner, I'm going to see how it's destroyed my bed - rubbing off…
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February 21, 2018. Not all that long ago, the truck got a gear change - from the 4.10 factory gears to 4.88's - meaning that it's now easier on the engine to turn the bigger tires as it climbs up hills, over rocks, and generally towards adventure. Within a couple weeks of the gear change, I'd driven far enough to get 500 miles of break-in complete on the rear diff and changed the oil - and everything there seemed A-OK, which was nice. And then on our trip to Death Valley, we ran as much as we could in 4WD…
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