Builds Another Prado in Montana

[AirheadNut]

We had planned on making it to Cooke City on the NE edge of the Park by early evening to make camp, but the traffic and crowds slowed us down considerably. Dinnertime rolled around and we had only made it as far as Lake Yellowstone, so we found a picnic area and made dinner. To our surprise we had the entire picnic area to ourselves.

As the sun started to set we continued on our way toward Cooke City, stopping occasionally to marvel at boiling lakes and steaming cauldrons of mud. The sulphur smell was pretty strong around some of them!

We finally arrived in Cooke City at around 10:30pm, picked our way through a network of Forest Service roads in the dark and found a spot to camp for the night. We crawled into our sleeping bags and crashed.

 

[AirheadNut]

After a rather chilly night (9000' elevation, almost got down to freezing during the night), we awoke to pleasant sunlight warming the inside of the tent. Having arrived well after dark, the view that greeted us in the morning was excellent.

During breakfast a brand new LX550 rolled past, presumably a press car given the lack of plates or temp tags. We hit the road and headed for the Beartooth Highway.

Driving Beartooth Pass has been on my bucket list for a long time, and exceeded expectations.

 

[AirheadNut]

Up on Beartooth Plateau we took a short hike around Island Lake to Night Lake. The wildflowers were in full bloom.

Redpod Stonecrop:

Elephant-head Lousewort:

Sticky Jacob's-Ladder:

 

[AirheadNut]

The highway kept climbing up to Beartooth Pass at 10,948ft. The pass is closed for 7 months or so due to snow, and when it opens in the late spring there is a little ski hill that operates for the summer months until the snow melts. We were a little late in the season for any skiing, but that is on the docket for next time!

There are several trailheads along the highway, but few trails penetrate very far into the Absaroka Beartooth Wilderness. I need to go back for some proper backcountry backpacking as well.

 

[AirheadNut]

The first cool day toward the end of summer I drove up into the mountains to enjoy the weather. As with most places in the mountains of SW Montana, there is evidence of mining history all around.

This was a collapsed mill site complete with air compressor and a stamp mill.

The "road" continued up the creek past the mill...

...and ended at a beautiful mountain lake. Perfect way to spend an afternoon.

 

[AirheadNut]

In preparation for winter, I made a quick weekend trip back to Whitefish for some maintenance and a bit of hiking in Glacier National Park. Maintenance mostly involved a thorough cleaning of the undercarriage followed by a thick coat of WoolWax. First time using this product, and initial impressions are good; it seems to be holding up well.

Nice fall weather for hiking, but the wind got a little cold.

 

[pradoblivious]

awesome updates.. we were also up on beartooth pass this summer

Where did yall camp outside cooke city? Is that the road up to grasshopper glacier? 563?

 

[AirheadNut]

Where did yall camp outside cooke city? Is that the road up to grasshopper glacier? 563?

I don't remember the road number, it was in a saddle on the side of Henderson Mountain.

 

[janyyc]

The winds in Waterton/Glacier are a force to be reckoned with! Beautiful pictures and adventures - thanks for sharing.

 

[AirheadNut]

The winds in Waterton/Glacier are a force to be reckoned with! Beautiful pictures and adventures - thanks for sharing.

This was the second time calling off climbing that particular peak due to wind, and by far the strongest wind I'd ever experienced. One gust very nearly blew us off our feet while already braced against it.

 

[AirheadNut]

Mid September found my brothers and I heading up into the mountains for a weekend of camping. We planned our first night at an abandoned mine on a ridge at 9000'. The road up the ridge was just a little crazier than we had expected, and the addition of rain and some snow made it even more fun! Front and rear lockers in @SnowVersion's HDJ81 and the winch on my Prado got us up the rock ledges and by late afternoon we had made it to the mine and set up camp as the snowstorm set in.

After a chilly dinner we bundled up, sat around the fire and enjoyed the first snow of the season.

 

[AirheadNut]

We all slept quite poorly that night due to high winds, which eventually died down towards morning when the storm broke and the skies cleared. When we finally crawled out of our sleeping bags we were greeted by gorgeous sunlight, which was already burning off the night's accumulation of snow.

After cooking up a hearty breakfast we packed up camp and hit the trail again. Snow stuck around at higher elevations all day despite the sunshine.

 

[AirheadNut]

We took a different route down off the mountain, stopping at a an abandoned mine camp with a large, hewn log building on a stone foundation. Like many of these 100+ year old buildings hidden deep in the mountains, it will not last many years more. The roof was missing and most of the building was leaning heavily downhill.

After exploring the remnants of the mining camp we had to make time down the steep, narrow trail back to the main road. Numerous downed trees slowed our progress, but we finally made it out, stopped for lunch and to air up the tires.

I had to make tracks back to town to meet the buyer for my old Mercedes 300D; my brothers headed north to another area where we met up later for another night of camping.

 

[AirheadNut]

We didn't spend a lot of time taking photos or video on that trip, mostly just hung out together and enjoyed our time in the woods. However, I was able to cut together a short montage of some of the wheeling we did:

 

[AirheadNut]

Spent the holiday weekend with family in Whitefish, on Saturday we took a drive up into the mountains and encountered much more snow than we expected. The plan was to drive over Red Meadow Pass in the Whitefish Mountain Range, by about 5000' elevation we were stuck and couldn't go any farther. Took an hour or more of repeated digging, getting stuck again, kinetic recovery and more digging to get turned around and head back out.

 

[Rigster]

Spent the holiday weekend with family in Whitefish, on Saturday we took a drive up into the mountains and encountered much more snow than we expected. The plan was to drive over Red Meadow Pass in the Whitefish Mountain Range, by about 5000' elevation we were stuck and couldn't go any farther. Took an hour or more of repeated digging, getting stuck again, kinetic recovery and more digging to get turned around and head back out.
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LOL!! Gosh this brings back memories... thanks for sharing. It always amazes me how quickly it changes with just a little altitude/from one weekend to the next - suddenly what was an easy trail is impassible. Looks like a lot of fun!

 

[GTSSportCoupe]

Spent the holiday weekend with family in Whitefish, on Saturday we took a drive up into the mountains and encountered much more snow than we expected. The plan was to drive over Red Meadow Pass in the Whitefish Mountain Range, by about 5000' elevation we were stuck and couldn't go any farther. Took an hour or more of repeated digging, getting stuck again, kinetic recovery and more digging to get turned around and head back out.
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Did you air down at all? I find about 12psi or so is the magic number where things really change in snow. But then it just gets you stuck a lot worse as you get to much deeper snow I guess, haha.

Looks like a great trip in a beautiful area though!

 

[AirheadNut]

Did you air down at all? I find about 12psi or so is the magic number where things really change in snow. But then it just gets you stuck a lot worse as you get to much deeper snow I guess, haha.

Looks like a great trip in a beautiful area though!

We were both running about 25psi on the packed snow, when it got deeper I went down to 15psi, but then got stuck pulling to the side to make room for passing snowmobiles. There was a crust built up from the snowmobilers and as soon as we broke through that there was no forward progress, and at times very little backward progress!

 

[AirheadNut]

I finally got around to repairing the broken turbo oil return line that failed back in May. The temporary repair was still holding, but it seeped oil and felt a bit like a ticking time bomb. The old hose was pretty grimy:

I made a new flange and downpipe, but had to get creative to add a barbed fitting on the end. Not the prettiest solution, but at least it doesn't leak and the hose routing is better.

 

[AirheadNut]

During the week between Christmas and New Year's Day I set to work on the Prado. Parts had been accumulating for a month or so and I was back at @SnowVersion's shop so it was time to get some stuff knocked out. First on the list was replacing the radiator. I was still running the original radiator, which had been worked on at least once while the vehicle lived in Canada, and then patched by myself once more. There was one leak on the bottom tank, a couple on the top tank and the upper hose outlet was starting to crack.

$300 Chinese aluminum radiator to the rescue. The first priority was to cut off one of the mounting flanges on the new radiator, reposition it, and add some extra material. I took it to a friend who builds hotrods and he got out his Heliarc welder and let me have a go with it. My first time TIG welding; the welds aren't the prettiest but will be plenty strong for the application. It was a lot of fun and now I want to pick up a TIG machine.

Added some M8 rivnuts to the fan shroud mounts:

All hooked up. I still need to make a cover to go between the core support and the top of the radiator, I suspect I am losing quite a bit of cooling efficiency from air bypassing the intercooler and radiator over the top and from the fan sucking hot engine bay air in there.

While the cooling system was apart it was a good time to plumb in my Webasto Thermo Top C. I got a remanufactured unit from Bulgaria with a remote start feature. Unfortunately I could not find the fittings necessary to hook up the fuel portion locally, so I was not able to complete the install, but did get the coolant portion done. Lack of space in the engine bay forced me to mount it next to the transfer case on the frame, but it actually turned out better than I expected.

After some research on forming heater hose I was able to put some sweeping 90º bends in the hoses that go down to the Webasto from the heater core, making the install a bit cleaner looking than it would have been otherwise. The hose clamps are still a random mix of whatever I had lying around, I plan to replace them with constant tension spring clamps next time I have to do any cooling system work.

I was pleased to find that the Webasto gets nice and hot when the engine is up to temp, which means that coolant is circulating through it even without it running. Hopefully that means that the reverse is true!