Wow, it's been around six months since I've shared any updates about the truck. There's nothing terribly exciting to share but there are a few things worth logging.
We certainly haven't traveled as much for the past year for all the obvious reasons. We used to do a lot of camping nearby (just normal campground stuff in the Santa Cruz mountains), but many of our favorite spots have not reopened after last summer's fires. Bummer. Work's also taken up more of our time which isn't necessarily a bad thing. We've been sticking closer to home than usual — day trips and quick overnighters to Hollister Hills, Big Sur, SLO, Ojai, Tahoe, Santa Cruz, etc.
I couldn't make Cruise Moab due to a wedding, but
@codyaustin5 and I took advantage of the awesome spring weather in Moab to break in his 80-series driveline upgrades on the trails and to do some LCDC planning. We hit Fins 'n Things, explored Sand Flats Rd out to La Sal Pass, and wound our way down to Onion Creek via Thompson Canyon / Polar Mesa. We also did Poison Spider (well, as far as we could go before a massive traffic jam where we decided to turn around), Top of the World, camped near the Delores River at Robert's Bottom, and capped the trip with Sevenmile Rim including all the fun side trips off of that route. For future reference, Sevenmile Rim was an incredible trail that offers a bit of everything.
Some very boring but scenic footage (this is essentially raw footage that I haven't had time to edit down and don't expect to edit):
Sevenmile Rim and Poison Spider - https://youtu.be/JEUCPfHsqdE
What about some actual 200-Series tech?
The truck's at an age (68,000 miles) where I'm putting more time and energy into refining and preventative maintenance over further modification. I was pretty rough on the truck in Moab and spent a few weeks inspecting, fixing, and maintaining after the trip.
- Skids: The BB skids saw some action on this trip and held up very, very well. The aluminum fuel tank skid caved in a bit around the middle and had some galling. I straightened it out with a hammer (had to remove it to do so, obvi) and ground down the areas that got snagged. Some of the hardware also needed to be replaced so I took this as an opportunity to remove all the skids, steam-clean the undercarriage, replace and reapply anti-sieze to the skid hardware.
- Bumper: Not surprisingly, the rear bumper experienced some cosmetic damage (mainly along the lower lip) from ledges and scraping, but it was easy to grind down and touch up. I really enjoy wheeling in Moab with the Trail Tailor bumper much more than I did with the plastic.
- Frame/Undercarriage: The rear diff drain plug got hit pretty hard and the metal of the plug was essentially "blended" into surrounding flange. Fortunately, it neither loosened nor was overly-torqued so I touched it up with a die grinder and will replace the plug the next time I change the fluid. I also took some hits on the frame that required attention.
- Fluids: Oil change! Power steering looks good. Brake fluid looks good. The coolant needs replaced soon-ish as it's running a little acidic based on the uber-accurate $.10 test strip.
- Driveline: Checked fluid levels and greased the driveshafts.
- Aux Fuel: Replaced the charcoal canister (I flooded it last summer, oops), upgraded the vent line (kudos to @TeCKis300), replaced the VSV, and blew out the line leading to the VSV
- Rock Lights: I installed rock lights a couple years ago and never got around to installing waterproof connectors (I like Deutsch connectors). They were all hardwired. I ended up replacing a lot of the wiring as some (but not all) of the split loom essentially disintegrated. Gotta love installing the same mod twice.
- Interior/Exterior: Full at-home detail including applying Leatherique to the Terra seats, and clay + cut + polish + wax on the exterior.
Upgrades
- Electrical: I cleaned up my aux wiring using some of Slee's new fancy bracketry. This should make maintenance and testing a little easier. (photo below)
- Spare Tire Storage: A friend came back from J-burg with some gear from Camp Cover for me. I've been wanting to try these for a while... tire storage bags with a bit of protection on top of the tire. The bags are pretty amazing. My complete Snow Peak fire pit setup fits in the back-most pocket in one bag and I keep a utility mat in the second bag. The main storage area on each bag is completely empty and will be used for trash, dirty recovery gear, etc. on the trail. (photo below)
- Gear: A good friend of ours picked up an 80-Series as her first off-road vehicle and she's essentially starting from scratch when it comes to gear. I took this as an opportunity to donate a bunch of recovery/emergency gear and tools to her cause and upgrade my own kit. Perhaps I'll cover this in more detail in another post, but it's been like Christmas receiving boxes from my favorite recovery and tooling product companies.
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More Maintenance...
Ahead of the Moab trip I replaced my serpentine belt and tensioner. I had also planned on changing the idler pulley but encountered a bit of surprise. Even after application of PB Blaster and heat, I was unable to remove the bolt from the pulley. Ugh. I didn't have a ton of room to work and I was worried about rounding the head of the bolt. I decided to check the torque and stopped at 100 ft-lbs (the spec is around 30-40, if I recall). I aborted at this point fearful that I'd break the bolt head off at home and that I'd be unable to replace it.
Long story short, the truck is going to Valley Hybrids in June to do the typical 75/100/125k maintenance items way ahead of schedule. Here's the punch-list so far...
- Replace alternator (will keep the old alternator and replace the brushes as a spare)
- Replace radiator
- Replace fan shroud, bracket, clutch, fan itself, and coolant
- Replace heater hose Ts
- Replace water pump
- Replace starter
- Address idler stuck bolt and replace the pulley
I'll be curious to find out if there are more bolt issues with those other components on the front of the engine. I blame the Glenwood Springs Toyota tech who likely took parts off my destroyed engine and attached to the replacement engine with an impact disregarding torque specs and the dynamics of steel bolts in aluminum.
What's Next?
Well, each of my BP-51s is leaking to varying degrees. As far as I know ARB isn't servicing yet and stock is in short supply. I put in an order a few months ago with Filthy for a King 2.5 suspension. ETA is currently late summer but who knows. Along with the Kings...
- 6 x Heritage bronze wheels are incoming
- .75 inch spacers from Bora
- Body mount chop
- KDSS component replacements/fixes - the swaybar bushings aren't doing well so I'm going to replace those, do the KDSS relocation, replace the endlinks and attach on the outside of the arm thanks to the work from @Willy beamin, @Atwalz, @linuxgod
- I'm doing most of this to simply make 34s fit better but I'm not ruling out larger tires in the future
- I'm also looking into replacing the main FLA and aux AGM with lithium
Me too as the Ridge Grapplers have been pretty much perfect aside from losing chunks of rubber here and there.
