The plan

[fabiodriven]

If it were 4wd I'd probably cut the crossmember. With the way the suspension mounts to this crossmember I'd be very nervous about cutting it out.

[fabiodriven]

By the way, if anyone needs anything moved up or down the East Coast next week drop me a line.

[captainweezy]

Yo faaaaaabio, they had B and J's on sale at the grocery stoo. I grabbed you a couple milk and cookies to keep on hand. Better hurry though uncle weezy like Bj's too.

[El Camexican]

Funny thing is, I was driving the truck yesterday and the leak seems to have nearly diminished.

I had a gas tank like that once. Leak like a son of a gun, but would always stop right about the same time as I ran out of fuel.

[fabiodriven]

The long term plan-

https://youtu.be/8B6xR3T37gI

[El Camexican]

That's pretty cool! I believe it was Bugs Bunny that first said "There ain't no place like a hole in the ground!"

[ironchop]

Thanks for that video.

I've actually got that very book somewhere in the spare bedroom. I've had it for a long time. Nice to see the guy who wrote it and the houses in color instead of black and white

Sent from my Z958 using Tapatalk

[Jd110]

If you find yourself with some spare time, here is a good story. http://www.si.com/vault/1966/10/03/6...Q37hibg&sns=emhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K75sQ37hibg&sns=em

http://www.si.com/vault/1966/10/03/6...e-mountain-men

[hublake]

I like your plan. Sounds great. I will offer one suggestion. Don't ever become an absent landlord. It just doesn't work. My sister who lives in Idaho and owns a home in Michigan had it rented out. Well the renters left unpaid rent, didn't tell anybody, water was not drained and the power went out for about three days a couple of winters ago. When the power came back on so did the flow of water through broken pipes. End result damages amounted to $68,000. They did have insurance thank goodness.

[fabiodriven]

If you find yourself with some spare time, here is a good story. http://www.si.com/vault/1966/10/03/6...Q37hibg&sns=emhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K75sQ37hibg&sns=em

http://www.si.com/vault/1966/10/03/6...e-mountain-men

I just watched this! You hit the nail on the head JD!!!

[fabiodriven]

A about a week ago I was planning to head out to Georgia to pick up my new trailer. Before I even got to the highway I had an issue with the valve stem on my left front tire. This issue had been ongoing but had been behaving itself up to the time I went to leave for Georgia. Ten minutes from the house I stopped to get some food for the road and I could hear the stem leaking. I turned around to go back to the house and change the wheel there and I encountered another surprise.

Two weeks prior to this trip I had jacked the truck up to check and grease the whole front end. I did have an inclination something was wrong because I was having some wandering issues as well as bump steer. Everything tested fine which was surprising to me, as well as confusing because now I didn't know why my truck was driving the way it was. I used to perform federal and state vehicle inspections for over five years, so I know what I'm looking for.

So back at the house I jacked up the front end to swap my spare on, and wouldn't you know I had a tie rod end that was smoked. I have a feeling the grease "loosened up" whatever was allowing my tie rod end to act as if it were up to snuff. I was confident the spare wheel would do the trip to Georgia and back no problem, however the tie rod end was absolutely not going to make it. It was not an option for me to fix the truck Sunday so the soonest I could leave was Monday. I had a doctor's appointment Wednesday that I didn't want to miss so I figured I'd delay the trip. It's very nice having an open schedule. Everything happens for a reason and I find it best to follow the path suggested to me rather than cutting my own sometimes. There was a time when I would have been bent out of shape by these circumstances presenting themselves, the tire, then the tie rod end, the doctor... I have learned that all events such as these which impact what I may have otherwise been "planning" are in no way able to be predicted, therefor cannot be treated as any sort of anomaly or a reason to be upset. Just because they were not part of my plan does not make these occurrences unfortunate. They dictate the schedule at times, not me, so these is no reason to fret about them. There is no way I could live my life with this train of thought if I had to be back to Massachusetts to work. It is the lack of a schedule which has turned me from a ticking time bomb into the best version of a functioning adult that I can possibly be. I feel very strongly that we as a culture are worked far too hard with not nearly enough gratification or time to enjoy being a human being. I've said it before and I'll say it again; catch Michael Moore's "Where to Invade Next". That was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. That summed things up in my life at a moment when I had a head full of questions and next to no answers.

So Wednesday arrived and Dave Little from the boards here arrived at my home to come along for the trip to Georgia. He's a commercial fisherman so he's on for a few weeks and then off for a few. Dave's a wanderer as well. It felt right this time. When I had left my home the time prior, I could tell something just didn't feel right. Now I knew we were going to have a good trip. I asked Dave if he'd ever had Waffle House or Chic-fil-A to which he answered "Like twelve years ago" and "No". I drove for about 15 hours the first day I think it was, then we slept at a rest area for probably two hours in South Carolina. We continued on from there with me driving for a good part of day two and Dave doing his best impression of driving for a bit as well. To Dave's credit, the steering was off from the tie rod replacement and no alignment. We got off the highway for about four hours in Georgia to see some sights instead of just the sides of the highway. We found no 87 250R's, but it was cool to see the pecan farms and tree farms. We stopped in a podunk town to wash the salt spray off the truck which was extremely heavy and unsightly.

The appointment to pick up the trailer was for Friday morning and we arrived Thursday evening, so we figured we'd pop over to the trailer place before we hit the hotel and have a gander. The workers were just leaving but we were able to poke around the yard for a few.

Now for anyone who is interested in these "discount" trailers from Georgia, this will be some useful information. To sum it up in one sentence, these are the Harbor Freight of trailers. Now that doesn't mean I'm disappointed in any way, that just means you have to know what to expect. An equivalent sized and equipped trailer from a more reputable builder would be twice as much money if not more, and just like anything else you get what you pay for. The fit and finish on these trailers is obviously not a concern, nor is attention to detail. They do appear a bit wavy in places and appearance is not exactly paramount I would say, haha. They do things such as bending the trim around the outside edges rather than notching it. Hack, yes, but cheap trailer. One of the stick on reflectors blew off on the way home. Hack, yes, but cheap trailer. They might miss a little something here and there with the caulking gun. Hack, yes, but cheap trailer. I've already seen seams underneath that I'm going to continue welding with my welder and I might even add gussets based on my experience with my last enclose trailer, the tongue of which we had to straighten and then strengthen. I was well informed about how these places work ahead of time by Eric Barton who also bought a custom made trailer from Georgia. We had a very long phone conversation ahead of time which really helped me out because I was planning on buying the cheapest plane-Jane trailer I could find and outfitting it myself. After talking to Eric I realized these kinds of trailer places exist for the customer just like me. They can literally build it whatever size or shape you can imagine with a huge menu of options available to the buyer. It would be very easy to turn a $4000 trailer into a $10,000 trailer. I ordered mine 18' x 8.5'. For optional upgrades I ordered 3/4" plywood on the walls (instead of 3/8), upgraded axles and springs from 3,500 lb to 5,200 each, insulated walls and ceiling, extra ceiling vent for a total of two, six place electrical panel inside with removable exterior cord, one exterior outlet and two interior, side cross flow vents, interior 110v fluorescent lighting, and a set of small stabilizer jacks in the rear. The extra thick plywood walls are key for me, as I will be mounting a ton of things to the walls inside of this trailer.

Friday morning we arrived and the place was bustling. There was a tractor trailer being loaded with multiple trailers heading out to wherever. They pulled my trailer out and the guy Matt from the trailer place was looking over my ordered options list and checking it out. They had forgotten to put the cross flow vents in, and he said give them five minutes. I figured it would take a lot longer than that but it really didn't. Maybe 15 minutes. Dave and I used that time to align the steering on my truck a little better. The workers blew holes right through the trailer and slammed the vents on there like nothing. After that they brought it back out for my final inspection. Every customer has to inspect every trailer and sign off that they're happy with it after their inspection. When it was ready for me to look at, the first thing I did was find a seam to see the thickness of the walls. They were not 3/4, they were 3/8. At this point I would highly recommend to anyone who might buy one of these trailers they consider this option. The 3/8 looked very chintzy and wavy. I informed the representative of the mistake to which they checked their paperwork and confirmed that yes, they did mess up. I waited by my trailer as the guy who fixes stuff came over and checked it out. "How can we make this right for you?" he asked me. What that translates to is "How much can we knock off the price to let this go?" I told him "You can pull all that out and make it 3/4. This trailer is useless to me as it sits, that's why I ordered it the way I did." We all knew that pulling all of that plywood out was going to make for a very long day, and they were aware how far I had come and that I wasn't paying for another night in the hotel. Also, it was Friday. This had to be fixed now.

Little Dave suggested to me maybe they'll clap the 3/4 over the 3/8 which sounded like a great idea to me. Not two minutes later the trailer guy had come to the same conclusion and asked if I'd be happy with that. I said sure, sounds great! So the trailer company gave us $30 in cash to go get some lunch. I texted William Golightly just on the chance he was available. I hadn't made plans ahead of time because we were planning on turning and burning once we got to Georgia. As it turned out, William was available so we bee-bopped down to Live Oak, FL to have lunch with William. Worked out great!

When we got back to the trailer place, my peach was all set and ready to go so we got hooked up and ready to drag north. Not long after we left the trailer place, it was quite obvious that the brakes on the trailer were not working. I wasn't extremely concerned and was just glad to be on the road home. I brought my entire electrical toolbox with me and I knew there wasn't anything on that trailer I couldn't fix. At our first fuel stop we opened the battery box of the trailer to find all the harness connections. Inside that box were four connections all done with Scotch locks. Scotch locks have no place on any vehicle of mine, so without testing I cut the four of those right out and replaced them with butt splices. There will be many more cut out and replaced as I go. We then moved back to the axles where we discovered that nobody had terminated the connections between the axles and the brake wiring on the frame. They just never hooked up the brake wiring to the axle. Minor detail... That obviously didn't take much time or effort to fix and we were on our way, now with trailer brakes.







Now once again I should say, if I'd not found this new relaxed version of myself, or if I had a schedule that I "had to" adhere to, I'd have lost my mind multiple times by this point in the trip. I would have been flipping my shite at the trailer place because of how they operate rather than just laughing and taking it in stride like I did. I really did have a great time dealing with them, they are great people, and I'm really glad to have the ability to enjoy so many aspects of life that I couldn't before. This whole trip was a total hoot and has me truly looking forward to this type of experience being my every day life. Dave's a fantastic travel companion as well, just make sure his window rolls down. He has a minor gas leak. Friggin guy brought his own tools and items he thought might come in handy, which incidentally were almost all the same things I loaded up, haha. He did bring a torch which is one thing I did not, and that came in handy for heat shrinking.

Friggin west coast mirrors are absolutely fantastic as well, just great. I added a couple of spot mirrors to the bottom which you might be able to see in the pics here. I am extremely happy with the mirrors. They are loud as frig with the windows down, the wind howls through them, but it's a very worthy compromise. You must take care to take your time and peer around them when pulling out of intersections as well, as they create a huge blind spot while pulling out of roads. That's nothing I'm not used to though.

We stopped off in South Cackalacky on the way up to grab some 19.5" Alcoa's for Dave that he'd found on Craigslist, so that worked out really well.



As Dave and I traveled up Rt 85 in Virginia, Dave got his first taste of Chic-fil-A. Friggin guy is nuts about Chic-fil-A now, as I suggested he might be after trying it. Not long after Dave's first Chic-fil-A experience, we were traveling along Rt 85 again when the tread on the left front tire of the truck decided to part ways with the carcass of the tire at about 75 MPH. That was my spare wheel that I had put on the truck before I left. It appeared fine prior to grenading. Good tread, no vibration or anything. When it let go it was violent and it was loud. It took out the front of my step and destroyed the lower rear part of my fender. It let go and the truck lunged to the left a bit, but I wrastled it back over into our lane and onto the shoulder. The spare was the tire with the leaky valve stem, but my truck has on board air and I brought an air hose, tire plugs, etc... So did Dave, haha.

Dave leapt from the truck and went right to action. We got it jacked up and while he removed the old wheel I began filling the other one with air. We got it swapped out in no time flat and got on the road to the nearest tire shop, which happened to be in Podunk, VA. We pulled in to a local tire shop unannounced that Dave had found on his phone while I was driving, purposefully looking for a "run down" tire shop away from the highway a bit. This is how we travel and find new and interesting things and also find good deals and real people rather then taking a number at the local conglomerate tire mega warehouse. These were real people in a real shop and they took really good care of us. Guy had it fixed ten minutes after we pulled up and wanted $5. I gave him $20. Where I live it would have taken a lot longer and cost a lot more so it was greatly appreciated.







After the tire debacle we didn't have any more mechanical issues. We gawked at some wimmin in traffic and exchanged some smiles and waves, as well as scaring a car full of college girls with the air horn. I took it really easy on the go pedal this trip, a new venture for me this is. I wanted to see how we did on fuel economy, and I'll figure that out later. Empty we felt like we were getting huge mileage, but you could feel the trailer back there once we got it. We hit very little traffic overall, and I flew low through NYC. That was the one place our fuel mileage will have suffered. I got on the go pedal hard from the top of the New Jersey Turnpike, clear over the GW Bridge, and right out the other side. It was congested, but the left lane was going fast. About the time we got to Baltimore and into Jersey the driving changed. That's when we got into New England style driving again, and I hadn't missed it. Friggin people up here drive like a bunch of tit heads. ESPECIALLY those with NY license plates, you people are the worst. Up and down the east coast, even outside of your state, you take your awful driving habits and subject the rest of us to it. Boston people are bad, don't get me wrong, but your style is just rude and stupid. You guys have a thing about not using turn signals and lane hopping across four lanes, absolutely asinine. When we got up near NYC I wanted to blast right through if I could, and I did. It's kind of like a rough whoop section. You keep on the throttle, front end high, point and shoot. It's bumpy as frig, narrow, it was raining a little, and we ed the left lane hard with inches to spare. My truck is wide but the trailer is even wider. It was fun shooting through the city and not sitting in traffic though.

So all in all, great trip and so much to look forward to. Daviel-San was more than a passenger, he was an asset as well. I've really got a lot of work ahead of me on the truck as well as the trailer and I'm looking forward to jumping in head first. Oil leak fared really well on this trip, I didn't see anything on the ground any of the times I checked, but that whole issue still has to be dealt with as well as many, many more. Not really worth listing at this moment. I'm ecstatic about one simple mod that I should have done when I first got my truck. Where my truck is a 99, it had a regular gasoline filler neck from the factory, which means you cannot fill up at a high flow diesel pump, only a small car diesel pump. This situation was exaggerated and made far worse with the installation of my flatbed on the truck and subsequent tucking of the filler neck up under the body wherever it would hang. It made out of state fill ups nightmarishly long time wise because a lot of out of state pumps are different than the pumps we have here in Mass and create more foam or just don't pump as slow, thereby triggering the safety shutoff on the handle every ten seconds. It took me a half hour once in Arkansas to get almost a half tank in the truck and my arms were sore from holding the pump in an odd position and trying to carefully eek fuel out in a trickle that wouldn't stop the pump. With the replacement of my filler neck I can now fill up with any pump at a very respectable rate. I have no idea why I waited seven frickin years to fix that, but the buildup has led to me getting excited to pump fuel now, haha. Simple minds...

Thanks again for reading and I know Dave took some good pictures as well as videos. I'm guessing he'll post his version of the story as well!

[fabiodriven]

I didn't update before the trip, but I did end up sealing my oil leak prior to our departure with that Seal-all stuff. The majority of the leak was from the dipstick tube base. I cleaned it really well and applied the Seal-all to the area that seemed to be leaking most and since the truck has stopped marking it's territory. I'll still be fixing it the right way but this stuff certainly saved the day.

I wish I had taken down the mileage we drove empty so I could have seen what we got for fuel mileage on the way down, however I didn't do that. Round trip was 2,765 miles which required 223 gallons of fuel. That's 12.4 mpg. Honestly I was expecting better but I'm sure the end of the trip where I started going down didn't help.

[Dave Little]

Thanks for having me along for the ride John. It was a nice little getaway from the hard-packed snowcover of northern NH and a chance to check off a couple states off of the 'been to' list.
It was nice to meet William as well, good to finally put faces to names.

Here's a few pics of the adventure:






The tread separated so suddenly and violently it was as if we were driving through the south side of Chicago for a second there, lol. But really it was on I-85 going through Warfield, VA go figure. Thanks to the boys at All Tire in McKenny, VA just up the road a spell, and that hot black chick we should have boned in the back of the trailer

The only tire that was not a Firestone Transforce HT but she held the air, could have easily been very bad.




And finally a little auto body work so the door would open:
https://youtu.be/pKrZwF3J6IY

[fabiodriven]

Today I decided it was time to down the truck for some major surgery. I wanted to begin with the cab lift and the replacement of the factory cab mounts. There are 8 of them. I will be replacing the mounts with urethane bushings and the lift will be accomplished with hockey pucks. The cab bolts are special of course, and will need to be modified to work. I was planning on sprucing up the mating surfaces of the cab and coating them with POR 15. Not long after I began work it became apparent that the amount of rust that was developing under my truck had grown at a faster rate recently than I had expected, however it's still plenty strong to work with. I just have to do more of a "rustoration" than I was anticipating. This is not a huge deal for me as I have performed this procedure on multiple trucks over the years. I will get the cab jacked up and suspended in the air and then clean all the mounting surfaces as well as the entire underneath of the cab and the frame rails from stem to stern. I actually just de-scaled the entire frame three years ago and painted it with Rustoleum, which did nothing, lol. Rustoleum is a waste of time under a truck. I'll get under there with the needle scaler and get all of the rust and scale out and I'll be using the wire wheel as well. The inside floor needs to be cleaned up as well, but it won't be difficult. No serious rot on the sheet metal. Once everything is coated with POR 15 it will be impervious to rust and I don't anticipate nearly as much winter driving in the years to come.

All the seats are out and the rear will stay out. The rear of the cab will be re-purposed into something more useful. I'm not sure what will go there just yet, but could be clothes or anything else really. Once I decide what I want it to be I can build some shelving or whatever kind of storage situation I need back there really.

I removed the front bumper, radiator, and intercooler for multiple reasons and while I'm in there I'm going to clean up the engine as best as possible and hunt down any leaks and issues. I'll likely change the injector harnesses as well. Oil leak has stopped since I sealed the dipstick tube base so that's obviously going to need attention as well. I have to examine and diagnose the entire oil pan and mating surfaces to determine what kind of attention that's going to need. With the cab lifted I'll be able to move the engine up higher to facilitate removal of the oil pan if I am going to do that. I also have to upgrade the 3/8" fuel line to 1/2" while I'm in here. The rear brakes are smoked and the parking brake needs to be repaired as well.

For the time being I'll be on two wheels until the truck can drive again.

[fabiodriven]

These are courtesy of Dave-

https://youtu.be/EAUo2ifboHc

https://youtu.be/Lg37Cbx-kak