Sheridan to Charleston the long way

[lawdawg]

Woke up to a good bit of rain all day today, but wanted to keep pushing through the Ozarks. The good news is that other than a few leaks, she was pretty water tight. I have read some other stories on here where the first rain storm brought some unwelcome surprises, but a leaky glove box, slight windshield leak and back corner was about all the major issues. We rode about 125 miles of trails with a pit stop at a gas station for a burger, about all there was around and it was pretty good. Unfortunately with the rain and fog we missed out on a lot of the scenic views.

 

[lawdawg]

Eventually around Clinton, AR we had to head off the trail and head down towards Greenwood, MS to meet up with a land owner. I work in land conservation and we are looking at putting an easement on his land. We tried to hit up Ground Zero, Morgan Freeman's blues bar, but they must have heard we were coming and weren't open. We made our way to the Crystal Grill in Greenwood, great southern food, and had some oysters on the half-shell, fried catfish and blackened redfish, not a bad end to the day and about 350 miles.

 

[Tin basher]

It's awesome that you are taking these side trips
And driving it off pavement
Rather than just pounding down the interstate
Keep the story coming cheers

 

[gcrump01]

@lawdawg Awesome trip & beautiful cruiser. And Go Dawgs!

 

[Varty Yo]

The lack of updates and pics is sad....

 

[70fj40]

Oh my...........I'm having flashbacks to the Rustbucket thread, I was depressed for weeks when it ended abrubtly. This can't just end here can it? We need more!

 

[CruiserClay]

Oh my...........I'm having flashbacks to the Rustbucket thread, I was depressed for weeks when it ended abrubtly. This can't just end here can it? We need more!

Hahaha my thoughts exactly now that this thread has been dormant for a few days. I need my fill of Land Cruiser adventure stories!! And they can't just keep drying up halfway through!!!

 

[Flatlanderfj40]

The lack of updates and pics is sad....

Could still be fixing that brake light

 

[iptman]

Should we send out a search party?

 

[dad4x4]

Should we send out a search party?

Road Trip

 

[Adams77]

You're killin me smalls

 

[ginmtb]

Good news at least @lawdawg was seen yesterday so that means they weren't involved in a serious accident that was preventing him from posting updates.

 

[FJ404345]

These oysters had to be really bad !!

 

[AlaskanWheeler]

Really enjoy these travel logs...

 

[alabamatacomaguy]

If I read correctly the last post was in Mississippi. Alabama has a history of people having a hard time crossing our lines. He probably met a similar fate to penn st in 1979.

 

[lawdawg]

So I have clearly done a terrible job of updating....
We left Mississippi after checking out a mining property and headed over to Alabama on the way home. We decided to stop in Birmingham and I violated one of the cardinal rules of culinary cuisine, you don't eat sushi from a strip mall restaurant. Needless to say, I ended up with food poisoning and the next 36 hours was fairly miserable!
While in Mississippi, one of the coolest things about the property is that they are timbering old cypress that they turn into beautiful 16' boards, along with up to 50' beams. He was in the midst of building a custom cabin that had some massive timbers. Unfortunately, on the way across the border they were doing construction, so couldn't get good pics for the trip.

Unfortunately, Sweet home Alabama wasn't so sweet to me....

 

[lawdawg]

We got into Atlanta and started working on maintenance on the truck. It was amazing to be going through things, everything was original and had the old school toyota symbols on it, from the belts to hoses and everything else. One of the guys in the shop that worked on a lot of classic cars mentioned it looked like a time capsule. We started digging in and replaced tie rods, water pump, belts, gaskets, radiator,

thermostat and a bunch of other stuff. I was amazed to see the old school model T style crankshaft bolt on there.

 

[lawdawg]

 

[lawdawg]

Seeing as this is a technical section, and we haven't been touching on technical in this thread, any advice would be appreciated on the steering aspect. It was pretty tight the whole way home, but we swapped out all the new tie rod ends, including the one that includes the new rod and goes from front to back. It was a little longer than the stock one. After swapping things out, and getting an alignment, the steering is surprisingly looser. We were thinking of cutting that rod about a 1/2 inch on each side to get closer to stock to see if that helped with the loose steering, probably picked up 3 inches on each side.

 

[lawdawg]

I'm looking forward to seeing some of the guys in Charleston and getting some thoughts on how to improve the truck, but honestly, I have been so impressed with how well she has done. My wife and 4 month old daughter has decided that she is taking dibs on the 40 if she wants to run to the store, which is fine, seeing as she drives a stick shift and shoots better then most men I know. So if you see two good looking blond girls running around Charleston in an old mustard 40, give them a wave, they are pretty cool chicks