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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February 21, 2018. How many miles do you have on your truck? If you're anything like me, you'll answer this by looking at your odometer, reading a number, and concluding that you have that many miles - 83,078 miles in my case. Like me, you're wrong. Your odometer is lying to you. And so is your speedometer. I covered why that is here - go read it. I'll wait. Speedometers, Odometers, and Gas Mileage – All Lies! OK, welcome back. Or not if you're like me and just skipped over that last link. Let me try to recap: The reading…
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February 21, 2018. I've had a rattle for a little over four months. I first heard it (I think), when returning from The De-Tour at the beginning of October, or else maybe a week or so after that. It sounded like a loose heat shield, or other piece of sheet metal, rattling away under the back half of the truck. But I knew it wasn't a heat shield - it only happened at speeds above about 15-20mph, and changed when under load (vs. coasting) and there were certain throttle/speed/terrain combinations where I could almost get it to go away. Of…
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February 13, 2018. Ever since installing the bed rack and CVT the truck has been in "adventure mode." I don't mind that so much when I'm just driving around (though - it'd be nice to not haul around the extra weight all the time), but it does make me nervous to park it unattended/unsecured overnight. As such, I've been trying to come up with a plan to remove the rack and RTT (ideally at the same time), and store them. In our barely-1-car garage. At any rate, I knew the solution was going to involve either a winch or pullies…
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It's not uncommon to be asked the question: I'm about to upgrade my rear suspension. Should I get an AAL (add-a-leaf) or a whole new (possibly custom) leaf pack? Since there's never an easy answer, here's what I'd say... it depends. Actually, there are two easy answers: If your existing leaf pack is in reasonable shape and you're not regularly hauling heavy loads (several hundred pounds) in the back of your truck, go with the AAL. It'll give you a lifted look, will work fine for the occasional load, and will be the most economical option. If your existing (probably stock/original)…
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January 21-22, 2018. It was a clear, snowless night - a big chilly out, but cozy under the down comforters in the tent. Morning light gave us a chance to explore our site a bit more - a big cave carved into the sandstone that had clearly been used by previous campers as well. The sky was clear of all clouds, so there was no dramatic sunrise, but after a bit, the sun was still low enough to paint the far wall of the canyon a brilliant orange. We set about making breakfast, packing up camp, and exploring the cave…
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We were glad to have battened down the hatches on the tent, because the heavy winds continued all night, literally shaking the entire truck as though we were in a series of mini-accidents. Needless to say, our sleep wasn’t as great as it'd been the previous night when we were sheltered in Racetrack Valley. And then, around 1:00am, the wind got significantly colder, and we started to feel moisture in the air. We didn't realize it at the time as we zipped up the remaining windows, but the moisture we were feeling was snow. By the time I rolled out…
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We slept soundly through the night - it was the perfect night really - quiet, a bit of a breeze, and chilly but not too cold. I'd set my alarm for 6:30am, since I wanted to catch the sunrise. The atmosphere over Death Valley makes for stunning shots and though I knew I wouldn't get anything like @DVExile, or even Ben (@m3bassman) had a few weeks earlier, I really wanted to try to get something! I wasn't disappointed. Sunrise seemed to pick up just where sunset left off - amazing pinks and purples, mixed with a cool blue sky and…
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The alarm woke us at 6:00am. We were cozy under the covers but it was cold. It hadn't rained or snowed overnight, but dew had covered the tent and frozen, so the tent went away wet - not ideal, but we had places to be and weren't about to wait a few hours for the sun to come up and dry things out. We decided to forego breakfast for the time being, and were on the road by 6:38am, heading south. After a quick breakfast stop in Luning, NV - a town of nothing except the Wild Kat brothel, and…
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Death Valley: Intro and Day 1 - A Day of Driving Winters in the Pacific Northwest, (but perhaps especially this one) are tough to swallow when you like to get outdoors to explore and experience new adventures. The weather gets cool and wet, and it often takes a multi-state trip south to escape the gray. No different from a weather perspective, this year is different for @mrs.turbodb and I from a availability perspective. And, because of that, when we heard that Ben (@m3bassman) and Zane (@Speedytech7) headed to Death Valley for New Years, we were immediately jealous. We'd been wanting…
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January 16, 2018. The Kenwood D710GA has been working well since it was installed. Transmission and reception seem good, the APRS has worked as expected, the display is nice (but not quite as nice as the Icom 5100A), and it's great having it securely mounted under the passenger seat. But the built-in speaker - that leaves something to be desired. With the Icom, I had no trouble hearing what contacts were saying, but even with the volume turned all the way up on the Kenwood, it's just slightly too quiet for me to parse what's being said. Luckily (and of…
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Fixing the IFS Skid Mounts January 14, 2018. "That's strange." I thought as the guys at JT's Parts and Accessories took my IFS Front Skid off to replace the gears in my front diff. "I don't remember the guys from @RelentlessFab putting any clips behind the middle bolts. I wonder how those help hold the skid on?" A couple hours later, the three of us realized that in fact, there were no clips installed by Relentless - rather, the OEM mounts had broken off! I probably shouldn't have been surprised - the skid is beefy at 3/16" thick, surely stronger…
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January 12, 2018. The day has arrived, finally. For three months, I've had a set of SCS Stealth6 wheels stacked, in the boxes they arrived in, in the living room. @mrs.turbodb has not been happy. In that time, I've been trying to decide what tires I want to run on those wheels. I knew I wanted 33's, and I knew that I wanted as little rubbing as possible, but that left me with three options: BFG KM2's or KM3's @ 255/85R16 - these have the right profile (tall and skinny) for less rubbing, and a nice aggressive tread pattern, but…
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Having travelled the requisite 500 miles to break in my new 4.88 gears (you may want to read "New Gears - 4.88's and an ARB front locker" and "the first 500 mile break-in" if you haven't already), it was high time to change the oil in the rear diff - hopefully uneventfully - to clean out any metal and other gunk that may have been present as a result of the break-in. Toyota conveniently calls for 90W oil in the differentials, and that's hard to come by - at least for me, locally - so I decided on Lucas 80W-90,…
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