Builds Big Red Toy (8 Viewers)

[The Phoenician]

This Grand Wagoneer I keep seeing around town. It's on a ram dually chassis and 5.9 cummins.

Also its the wife's birthday, had to get a manager's approval for the cake.

 

[Hojack]

This Grand Wagoneer I keep seeing around town. It's on a ram dually chassis and 5.9 cummins.

View attachment 2384908

Also its the wife's birthday, had to get a manager's approval for the cake.

View attachment 2384909

Well tell her happy birthday from the MuD family

 

[The Phoenician]

Well tell her happy birthday from the MuD family

Will do for sure.

 

[The Phoenician]

New larger pistons and cylinders are in. She'll be ready for pickup after SAS4.

 

[The Phoenician]

Loaded up and ready to head out to SAS4

 

[pistonpete]

Man, looks good !!! Lucky you, safe trails Take plenty of pic's for us that can't make it.

 

[The Phoenician]

Man, looks good !!! Lucky you, safe trails Take plenty of pic's for us that can't make it.

Will do man. Tasking my wife and son for video duty.

 

[The Phoenician]

Teaser

 

[The Phoenician]

A few poser pics.

 

[Mr Cimarron]

How’s Big Red running at altitude?

 

[The Phoenician]

How’s Big Red running at altitude?

It's really smoking at 12000 ft. But it got us here and had taken us everywhere, so I'm grateful.

 

[Mr Cimarron]

My BJ did the same thing.

 

[The Phoenician]

Back from SAS4 and I guess it's time to upload some pictures. The trip there was memorable and fun, but also really hot at times. I turned on the heater in certain places as the elevation made Big Red struggle more than usual. We spend the first night in New Mexico where I discovered I had a torn silicone coupler and the only way to replace it was to have the rig cold. It was between both turbos, luckily I happened to have a spare with me.

After replacing it , we headed north towards Colorado. Here the engine started pushing between 210 and 220*, so I opened up the heater. It wasn't bad until I lose momentum. I think I'm geared too high for the mountain, or I need a gear between 3rd and 4th and between 4th and 5th to run better. Right around 7000 ft the turbo boost begins to lower and EGTs get higher. I ran a lot of this trip at or under 10psi and 1200*.

Luckily, I married an adventurous woman, so she didn't mind the heat as long as she was seeing new things. We made good time up until one of the passes at around 1000ft. I was cut off and came to a near dead stop. Big Red started seeing temps I'd never seen before, 270* for a few minutes before it came back down to 220* Nothing I could do but pray, I thought I had blown a head gasket at least. Luckily, there was not permanent damage that I could tell.

Parked it to the side of the road a few minutes and waited on traffic to ease before reattempting the drive. Luckily it was only a few miles before it started down the mountain and all temps cooled.

We finally made it in and set up camp.

Before I forget this, I want to mention that upgrading to the 2017+ 4Runner brakes was a great idea. It can stop Big Red and the trailer in it's tracks with ease and came in handy coming down some of the switchbacks.

 

[The Phoenician]

The next day more rigs started to roll in and I began meeting folks and their cruisers I had followed for years, but hadn't yet met in person. Some of the best people you could meet from all walks of life. I decided to do easy trails for the first day, in case Big Red had some problems that weren't yet visible.

I tagged along and was the last vehicle in the stack, because I didn't want to smoke anyone out. We drove up to a spot, hiked the rest of the way, just to do to a lake that is ice cold. A much welcomed change from the previous day.

Yes Lee brought his stock TRD PRO and it made it everywhere. Kinda cheating with his crawl control.

The View from up top.

Down town Ouray.

 

[The Phoenician]

Decided to continue discovering the nearby area. Made it to Animas Forks, a historic little place that scratched a living out of mining the mountain.

There I discovered I needed a small field repair and to air down as I was way too bouncy. I relearned a lesson I had forgotten since leaving Lebanon. Tire pressures change significantly with elevation.

 

[The Phoenician]

After the initial shakeout run and nothing obviously wrong with Big Red, we decided to try the harder trails. We ended up doing almost all of them except for Black Bear and Poughkeepsie. We had just run out of time, so we'll try them the next time we're doing Solid Axle Summit.

 

[The Phoenician]

Lee was able to make it everywhere we went and he was able to do it with AC if he needed it. We were hung over most days and the air was really thin at the summits.

Big Red wanted to let other cruisers know that it was there.

 

[The Phoenician]

 

[The Phoenician]

I finally got to meet this beauty in person. The build started right around the same time I started with Big Red. Unfortunately, a day later Gossamer rolled at Poughkeepsie.

There were more cruisers than I expected. I thought with COVID-19 there would be half these numbers.

The crew having some fun with a special guest star

Packing it up for the trip home.

The way back was uneventful . Lee towed the trailer and saw how much his Tacoma sucks on gas. I think he was getting 12.5 mpg going down when I was getting 14 coming up. I had to change out the air filter which helped with boost numbers. After coming down the elevation Big Red started coming back to life. We finally made it in last night right before dark, which was good because I lost my headlights.

We have taken hundreds of pictures and tons of videos, I'll post up as I start going through them sometime this week.

 

[The Phoenician]

This pic my son took. Not sure why I like it so much.

I forgot to mention, my drive shaft bolts had backed off and were barely hanging on. That could have been a catastrophic ending had it came off on the highway. Thanks to Maguire Johnson and friend for spotting it when they did. Re-locktightened everything.