92Shawman's 1992 3VZ-E SR5 Pickup

Thanks, Ben! Yours, too!

 

Haha, I need a photographer! This last trip was just my buddy and I in my truck. The last trip out there was with two other trucks and that's when they got some pictures of my truck!
This is the best I could do...The visible truck is Border Patrol. My truck is hidden behind the biggest boulder in the middle of the picture:

DSCN8538_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

 

Views in Valley of the Moon:

DSCN8543_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

Gravity Wall. Lots of 5.10+ crack climbs. I think some or most are bolted, though. I'd have to look at the book. You can scramble around into the cave up high after climbing the wall on the other side.

DSCN8530_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

Clouds were amazing!

DSCN8528_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

 

Super green for this time of year!

DSCN8529_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

Sunset from the Leaning Tower formation:

DSCN8534_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

Sunrise:

IMG_8293_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr


IMG_8297_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

 

Yeah that's one of the things a lot of people say about VOM, that it looks just like J tree, but with ZERO people In the last 5-ish years I've been going I've only ever seen ONE other group of climbers that never even set up a rope!

Also,

 

I've never been climbing in J tree but I've heard of that as an issue. Definitely see that at Mission Gorge.

For sure for sure. Haha, speaking of things I've never experienced...Pliny is one of them. Gotta have one of those sometime, too! I haven't looked around here but I hope someone has it here in San Diego.

 

Yeah I'll get out there sometime! Hopefully I can get a trip in with my buddy who has a lot of gear so we can go everywhere

Oof, that sounds like more work than I want to put into it I'll get it sometime when I'm up in the bay area again. Maybe Burgers and Brew in Davis will get it on tap sometime (according to their website, it's on the list of goals). One of my favorites is the Rapture Imperial Brown by burgers and brew. Had it once with an amazing burger, easily one of the best meals I ever had eating out in Davis.

 

Subbed! That's rad you and the truck go way back, haha. I'm down in San Diego every so often, if I am, I'll let ya know. And if you come up LA/LBC way, let me know too!

 

Yeah definitely! For sure, man! Sorry, but I'm not too familiar with LA areas/acronyms...LBC?

 

I figured that's what it was, but the C was throwing me off

 

I just pulled out my shifters to check the seats and sockets before ordering new ones. The transmission shifter socket and seat actually look pretty good, but the t-case shifter seat is broken so that needs replacing for sure. I guess I'll replace them all at the same time? Haven't decided on that yet.
I did find a lot of gunk inside...looks like old grease, but I'm not sure. It actually feels like hard rubber that's been broken up into bits, but I can't figure out where there might be a piece that disintegrated. The little rubber boots that cover just the top of the transmission and tcase are coming apart, but it looks like there's more material than what might be missing from those rubber boots.
For now I'm just gonna regrease or whatever (gonna look that up in the FSM) and put it all back together and then order stuff.
I'll post some pictures later

 

Pictures:
Before cleaning up:

Gunky transmission shifter seat by 92shawman, on Flickr


Gunky transmission shifter by 92shawman, on Flickr


Transmission shifter by 92shawman, on Flickr

Cleaned up:

Transmission shifter seat by 92shawman, on Flickr

There's not supposed to be anything between the spring and the top of the ball, right? That's where all the gunk was.

Transmission shifter by 92shawman, on Flickr

Broked:

Transfer Case Shifter seat by 92shawman, on Flickr

 

Parts arrived today!
Pretty fast delivery, good job, Marlin Crawler and Fedex!
Gonna go install now, hopefully it comes out well!

 

Yeah I ordered and replaced everything. Install was pretty smoothly, just forced the rubber boots over the wider part of the shifter stick, which was the only thing I was worried about. Seemed to be fine, though!
Drove it around for a little and it feels a bit easier but there's still some resistance that I don't remember feeling years ago. I also want to give it a few drives because sometimes it shifted really easily and sometimes it was impossible. Tonight's test drive seemed about the same as the easy times before I replaced the parts, so I'll wait and see if it stays like that.
The shifter socket was a little tough to get on the shifter, and it's so tight that it doesn't really move around. The old one moved around pretty easily on the ball at the end of the shifter, so I'm wondering if that was part of what was worn out or if the new one needs to be used a bit to break it in and loosen it up a little.

 

Weeeelllll the shifter seems to be about the same as before... I think there might be something up with the syncros, unfortunately.

I re-wrapped my winchline today, though! It was a little messy and loose, so I wrapped it up nice and tight and shifted the "heat guard" sheath to the thimble end as opposed to the drum end of the line so that it protects the line from sun instead of the "heat" of the drum. From what I read online it sounds like the drum doesn't really heat up enough to be an issue and you actually don't want to have any sort of sheathing between the drum and the line because it could reduce the friction that holds the line to the drum. Makes sense to me! Easy enough to do, too. Too bad the sheath isn't long enough to cover a full wrap on the outside to protect all the line. Maybe I'll look into doing that in the future. For now, I'm happy with it

 

Dang, I was hoping it would do the same for you that it did for me.

Hopefully it will still be a fairly easy fix.

 

Yeah I was hoping, too! Ah well, we'll see what happens.

Finally replaced the gas struts on the side windoor of my camper shell today! It stays up and even goes up on it's own! No stick mod required anymore

 

This last weekend I went on a trip through Anza Borrego Desert State Park with Pliny. Here's a bit of a trip report, mostly consisting of photos

We met up in Julian at around 8pm on Thursday after Pliny had a terrible time getting through LA traffic. Without traffic, the trip should've taken about 4 hours and 15 minutes, but with the traffic it took him over 6 hours . We gassed up at the one gas station in Julian and then ate burritos that I brought from my favorite mexican food place in Encinitas before heading down the Banner Grade to Bow Willow campground, our planned camp for the night.

When we got into the desert I hit some huge flying thing and thought it was a giant moth or something until I hit another one that got stuck in my windshield wipers...Bats!
I flipped on the emergency lights and slowed down to a stop. Pliny comes on the CB..."You alright there boss?"
I was busy jumping out to look at the bat, sorry for not responding! He told me later he was thinking, "Man this cannot be a truck failure this early in the trip!" Especially after Monte's LBJ failure and Mike's Morrison incident on the SOS trip...
Pulled the bat off the windshield and put him on a sheltered branch off the road so he'd hopefully be sheltered enough to recover, but I doubt he will, he seemed in bad shape after a head-on collision with a 55mph piece of glass.

And we headed on to Bow Willow just a little farther down the road. We pulled in and saw it was $20 for a night there in the primitive camp, which seemed ridiculous, so we drove out of the fee area and found a nice spot off the side of the road. Parked, set up the beds of the trucks for sleeping, bs'd over some brews and hit the hay.

The next morning I walked around to the top of the neighboring hill to get a nice view of the rising sun and our campsite.
DSCN9232_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

We packed up our stuff and set off for the day after figuring out the plan. Pliny was pretty much up for anything so I picked some places with some good sights to go visit. It was already pretty warm out...it was going to be a hot day!

Started off airing down at the Canyon Sin Nombre trail entrance. Pliny busted out his brand new ARB deflator that he got after seeing Monte air down his 35s with it. Took some getting used to but it went so freaking fast once he got it going! I'm jealous but we'll see if I decide to get one if I stick with 31s. We set on through the Canyon and came out to Vallecito Creek Wash.
Didn't really take pictures through there 'cause it's a short road, but this is in the wash on the other side:


Then we continued up to Arroyo Tapiado and went up to check out the mud caves. We hiked through one pretty good long one and found a neat crawly one that was fun to explore through until it got too small to continue. Then we ate lunch in the big cave, a huge cavern with a tiny, unsuspecting entrance. It's been around for a while, too, which is pretty cool considering they change pretty frequently! One of the caves I remember exploring three years ago is now completely filled in with mud.

We then drove up Arroyo Tapiado to a cross-over trail that connects to Arroyo Seco del Diablo and then went down the Diablo Drop-off. The book lists it as a "Difficult" trail but it's really not as long as you have low-range in the soft sand.
DSCN9235_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

The wash at the bottom is pretty fun, too.
DSCN9238_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

DSCN9240_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

Plus a fun little boulder at the very end to exercise our sliders while pivoting around it. I did it first and was super surprised with how well it went! Pliny came on the radio, "Duuude that was perfect!" It was cool to watch him do it, too!
DSCN9243_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

Then we drove out through Fish Creek Wash with a little side detour on Loop Wash for a more scenic bit until we got to the Wind Caves over near Split Mountain. My thermometer said 98F outside and it felt even hotter, so we stopped in the shade for a siesta before hiking up to the wind caves.
They're super strange sticking out against the water-worn hills!


DSCN9244_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

Afterwards we drove up the North Fork of Fish Creek Wash to look for a camp site, passing by some cool formations:
DSCN9250_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

Before settling in this nice place that Pliny spotted:


We set up camp, ate, Pliny taught me how to play dominos and I destroyed him, nbd.

Then I woke up the next morning to this stunning sunrise:
DSCN9254_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

DSCN9264_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

DSCN9267_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

Saturday we set off through Split Mountain:
DSCN9274_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

Massive hills:
DSCN9278_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr



And then we got on the road and drove up to The Slot over by Ocotillo Wells. Parked at the main parking area at the top of the canyon and hiked up to get a neat overlook of West Butte and into Felipe Wash.



Then we drove around to see how the drop-off to get to the bottom of the slot was. After much contemplation about the sand and the moguls, I ended up going down first since I had done it before. Pliny spotted me a bit but a lot of the driving was based on how the rear slid through the moguls, and with the hill it was difficult to keep going slowly. I should've tried harder to slow down before some of the washed-away bits to let Pliny get down to spot better, 'cause I ended up scratching the sidewall of my tire. Luckily it doesn't look like there's any bad damage, so I think it's okay.
After watching my slalom, Pliny didn't feel comfortable with it so he drove around using the wash between the Buttes and into the canyon from the North.
DSCN9286_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

DSCN9292_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

At the top of the hill there were these road tire marks that stopped dead right before dropping down, which was pretty hilarious
DSCN9294_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

We drove up into the slot canyon, which is definitely an amazing experience! We ate up in there and hiked the last bit. While eating lunch we overheard some hikers coming across our trucks without seeing us and they were amazed that there were trucks down there.
"How'd they get trucks down here?!"
"Did they take them piece-by-piece?!"
"Hey this one has a snorkel!"


Down in the Slot:
DSCN9299_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

DSCN9304_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

The rocky wash coming out towards Felipe Wash:
DSCN9306_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

We headed out of the Slot, down Felipe Wash, up on the Cut-across Trail over to the north end of Ocotillo Wells, and then cut north along the Fault Wash. That took us up into the Borrego Badlands, which was another awesome drive. We took Short Wash over to Font's Point Road and then took that south to get to font's point.
Welcome to tourist heaven...we came across two passenger vehicles in the sandy wash while we were driving up to the lookout. Good thing they let us pull over because if they did they would've been stuck instantly! Then we came across a Mercedes station wagon or something with everyone out milling around the vehicle, stopped in the middle of the road. Looked like they were stuck!
The driver came up to Pliny and told him there was a big boulder in the middle of the road and that, "You guys might make it." Pliny was thinking we might have to winch it out of the way or something, so we pulled off to let the guy back out and turn around.
Then we saw the "big boulder"...a rock sticking out of the ground maybe 6"... Oh we had a good laugh at that!

What an amazing view from Font's Point!


Those two dark hills are the Buttes that were near the slot. The wash that Pliny drove down is in between the two, Ocotillo Wells is to the left (East) and The Slot is to the right (West). Kinda right in between the two buttes in the hills way in the distance is Split Mountain, through which we had travelled that morning. Anza Borrego is freaking huge!

Our last stop was Coyote Canyon, so we headed out of Font's Point, aired up, drove over there, and started making our way through the wash up into the secluded basin. There was quite a bit of off-road activity in there, so we moved a little faster to get up to find a good camp spot before they were all taken.
Pretty sights even with the slight rush!
IMG_8813_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

IMG_8819_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

And we made our camp to the north end of the canyon off a small off-shoot trail. Beautiful place!
It was quite windy overnight, which made me very grateful for my hard-sided campershell, but we both were woken up quite a bit over the night. It did bring in some pretty clouds the next morning and it was much cooler, which was very welcomed!


And it was amazing seeing the green in the canyon!


And this crazy Ocotillo tree's tap root obviously found some great water!
DSCN9319_edit_small by 92shawman, on Flickr

Headed out Sunday morning, stopped by the historic marker marking de Anza's camp in Coyote Canyon and drove out!
On our way out we did a vehicle swap and tested each other's rigs. The biggest difference was the throttle. My truck is much weaker and has a much less responsive gas pedal so Pliny was complaining about having to "kick" the pedal to make it go while I was complaining that I had to barely feather it to keep from suddenly revving up like crazy!
And of course we did a slow race at the end. I went quite a bit slower with my 31's, and I think I'm going to keep 31's for a while now because they work so well.

And that was our trip! Guess I like to write...

 

Great trip report! Enjoyed the read!

 

Very nice! Looks like a good time