Northern Virginia Roll Call

It's alright, not my favorite place to be honest. I have about 1.5 years left in my contract and then I'll move outta here for sure. No biggie, just absolutely no public land to do anything and it's too fucking hot for me lol. How have you been?

 

Good man heading back to the NW next summer and can’t wait to reexplore my home state again. We loved Texas while there but yeah not as scenic for mountains and stuff.

 

Pretty sweet sale by LBT or London bridge trading if you are looking for a good day pack and or a 3 day bag. Both for $164 right now which is a steal for quality kit. I’m gonna buy both and i already Own the day pack and love it. Highly recommend for a smaller day to day bag or day hike bag.

 

We are mountain people for sure and living her solidified it. Maybe it's just Dallas we dont like? We wanna move more west next, maybe Montana, idaho, utah? We aren't sure yet.

 

Looks damn good Jacob!

 

You can snag those bags for 99 bucks during thier end of year sales

 

https://hillpeoplegear.com/Products/CategoryID/1/ProductID/5

Next bag I buy

 

My dad has that and some other HPG gear and its rock solid man. I wanted their Umlindi pack really badly but I ended up going another direction.

 

Question for both of you (or anyone running this setup), what is the benefit for installing? Dual batteries? Solar panels? Bunch of switches/accessories? Dave-level lights?

Seriously, what am I missing by not having this done already? TIA for any info.

 

If you are not missing it, you don't need it.

 

The main benefit of dual batteries is to be able to run accessories overnight or for multiple days without worrying about killing your starting battery. You can also self jump if your starting battery happens to die.

Solar is for charging/maintaining your batteries without running the truck. It's good if your truck is parked for long periods or to keep up the charge on your second battery when doing long camping trips when you're not running around.

All the switches are just to facilitate controlling all your lights/accessories. How many you need is dictated by your setup.

High end lights are nice but expensive. How much you spend is upto you. I have both cheap CaliRaised lights and expensive KC lights. Most lights will perform similarly irregardless of the price. The big difference is the level of customer service and warranty. I'd avoid the no name, Chinese lights.

 

I would say that Baja Designs is the exception to this rule. I've owned a lot of different brands of lights and BD is in a class of their own. I take apart most things I buy because I'm a naturally curious person. The internals of a BD light is really what you're paying for. They use the best parts and have a super high attention to detail. @EatSleepTacos has seen the difference too.

 

@3pooches , you are involved in a far more complex design than I have considered. My goal has been to stay as close to stock as possible while compromising and improving suspension for ground clearance and keeping tires in good ground contact. Adding recovery gear and distributing it to aid traction and keeping the weight low and secured. I have not thought about how the sprung weight interacts with the unsprung weight to affect stability. That is a very interesting topic to explore. When I drive, I keep a mental picture of the drivetrain as it transverses the terrain in mind. How do I navigate to keep maximum wheel ground contact and how is vehicle weight helping or hindering. Dynamic stability is a major problem. Tacos drivetrain design is not helpful and adding high sprung weight adds to the problem. It would be fun to have a computer program to test ideas out. My 4x4 instructor had a military program for vehicle recovery that you plug all the info in and it would give you the force info for all the parts.

 

Baja Designs makes the best light out there. Hands down. It's one of a few brands I've brought over from motorcycling.

 

Thanks, Jeremy, but I was referring to the fuse panel. I get what all the other things are for, but was asking if those items were potential reasons for installing the fuse panel.

 

The fuse panel is incase you've got a ton of wires going directly to your battery. That looks like crap. So a fuse panel organizes all your wires and prevents your engine compartment from looking like an IED.

 

I'm quite certain IED's are a far cry better than anything I would wire up.....

 

Haha! Thanks, Dave.

 

@3pooches , you may find this paper useful...


Design of Three and Four Link Suspensions for Off Road Use
Benjamin Davis
Union College - Schenectady, NY

I ordered a copy of Gillespie’s book for continued research.

 

Thank you! I will take a look at it when I get In tonight