NW WA Meet / BS Thread

Ordered my Front Runner rack and front, rear, and cargo mat (weather tech) just now. Need to offload this damn 4Runner so I can buy wheels/tires/suspension/sliders without Emily castrating me.

 

Catching myself up...

You should have seen what they did at Naches. There's an area where you can take a super long gravel road back to camp, or you can go on another that's about a 5 mile straight shot to the highway. However, a portion of that road near the beginning is washed out and takes a bit of maneuvering. Still, much faster to do this if you have a small group. No signs at the time saying it was closed (hopefully there's something now). After you get past that obstacle, it's smooth sailing up until 50 feet from the highway - where there's a metal gate. This becomes very upsetting when the sun is coming up and you've been wheeling since 10am the previous day.

what's the cost of material? Probably more than I care to do, but it's interesting to know.

I think the Taco was an IH8MUD person from what they said

I finally got my enginaire on last week I tell people that it's for warming hamburgers.
I did have to get a 4" to 3" rubber reducer from Home Depot to make it fit... so my hamburger warmer is sitting on top of a sewer pipe

USPS person keeps sending me other people's mail. I live on a numbered street, so I get anything where the first two numbers of the address match (for example, let's say my street is 10th street, so I'm getting mail from 1044 Sequoia street). I've invested in a rubber stamp that says "NOT AT THIS ADDRESS" that I carry with me to the box every time.
Other than that, knocking on wood, I've only had good experiences

• In college,
  • I bought a spendy keyboard. Never showed up. Filed a claim with Newegg, and got a replacement fine as you please. Several months later, I'm digging around in my tool shed and find a cardbox box... If the driver had left a note, I would have congratulated them; my neighborhood was sketchy AF and that was about as secure a location as you could hide things.
  • back before Amazon Prime was a thing, we sent everything through USPS ground, received everything as slow/cheap as we could. We were a central shipping location between Oregon, California, and Nevada, so things would still arrive 1 day, 3 days at the latest, no matter the carrier.
  • We lived in a city that was basically all welfare and college students, with a low population. Longest line at USPS was 2 people near Christmas.
  • We sold a spendy computer process to a guy on Amazon. The guy ended up cancelling payment after we sent the tracking information, so we sped down to the USPS to cancel the package. They were super helpful, and managed to capture the package just as it was being put on the plane.
• When Treadwright was just starting out, I bought a spare tire from them. FedEx guy shows up and tells me, "I hate you" , as he starts wheeling out 5 tires I called up Treadwright, they didn't even know there was a mistake, so they sent me a return label. If I had kept my mouth shut, I probably could have kept them, but at least I did the right thing.
• Not really a shipping story, but somewhat related... earlier this year, I bought some Gorilla lug nuts. I bought the wrong quantity, so I filled out the return process for Amazon. I packaged stuff up, sent it off. I later realized I had packaged up a set of standard acorn lug nuts. By that time, the package had already made it to Hermiston. I called up Amazon, and they sent me a return label and told me they'd return my incorrectly sent stuff. I'm still waiting for that stuff to arrive, and I won't send out these Gorilla lugs without that. I'm giving it another month before I make my own 'statute of limitations' and put these Gorilla lugs up for sale.

 

OK I can think of one bad 'shipping' experience in college. Not really shipping, other than it involved a mystery package.

I used to see a cat wandering around the neighborhood.
The cat eventually had kittens.
I eventually stopped seeing any cats, I don't think anything of it much.
Then, one day, a plastic bag shows up, off the side of my shed. The shed sits next to the house, to the left of the front door. The walkway to/from the house is along the right side of the house, parallel with the house, so that if you missed the door, you'd walk into the shed. This bag is behind the shed, so I rarely would see it, unless I'm taking a shortcut to get to the corner market, which I rarely do. Regardless, I'm not surprised that the bag showed up. There's always litter showing up randomly around in this town. I was busy and had my hands full, so I don't throw out the bag. It slips my mind.
We hit a heat wave through the rest of the week.
As the week goes on, I get hit by this super bad smell every time I'm walking into the house, but I can't figure it out, because I can only smell it when there's a breeze.
A few days go by, still hot out, and the smell is getting bad. Really bad. Still can't find the source.
One day, for whatever reason, I'm headed around the shed, and there's the plastic bag, and holy hell that's gotta be the smell. It's a brown Fred Meyer plastic bag, and it's just translucent enough that I can tell there's a dark, lumpy liquid inside. I wheel over the garbage can, and it takes everything I've got to pick up the bag and dump it into the can without barfing.

I never looked in the bag, but I'm pretty sure I know what happened to at least some of those cats that went missing.

 

$525

 

Need to find a job that allows me to bring my box home, I'm sick of lugging around a bag of tools every weekend

 

Interesting concept... Might be a solution to some of these 20 rig runs.

 

Need a fork lift. Wait, don't you have forks for the backhoe?

 

Sliders are on their way from BAMF. :woohoo:

 

I'm ordering Bp-51's this Wednesday. Uni-ball or ball joint uca's?

 

Ya, need to start looking for shop management positions

 

@Usethe2nd I see your cousin has a full size bronco....

 

Yep, hopefully she'll be able to keep this one away from the fence/ gate

 

Dibs on the rear axle!

 

Depends, are you looking at the Light Racing UCA's for the ball joints? I'm not sure I'd recommend them anymore. I went with them originally because of the promise of low maintenance, adjustability and quiet operation. After 13,000 miles, the ball joints were shot and had to be replaced. And that's with very little "serious" off-roading beyond poorly maintained green dot roads in E. WA.

The new ball joints are greaseable, so I'm hoping they have longer life now, but the new maintenance schedule is about the same as uni-ball ones. Given that, I'd opt for a uni-ball variety today instead of the LR UCAs. LR's customer service is fantastic, and they did send me new ball joints for free even after nearly 3 years.

 

I have a sterling 10.25 up for grabs

 

Was considering SPC and Camburg for ball joints. Camburg, icon or total chaos for uni-balls. But if the maintenance will be the same I should just go with a uni-ball.

 

Wait, what?!?!? SAS project part #1?!?!?

 

Its a ford rear I'm trading some work for a 60 front 70 rear

 

I had the same issue with my Light Racing arms. Granted, I put them through the paces on the WABDR, but with just a few thousand miles on them the ball joints were SHOT.

I took them off, sold for $100, and replaced with uni-ball.

I need to figure out which uniballs to get for the GX...

Do yourself a favor and skip the ball joints. Any big name uni-ball will be better, though quite a bit more expensive. I had Icons on my 4Runner with no issues.

 

just got the diffs back from nitro gear, a few odds and end from mule yesterday and the rest of my skids showed up. should be a good weekend installing shit hope to be back on the road soon.