Fully polished TuRD

Awesome infor thanks. I saw Amazon had a bundle so I ordered that. Interested how that stubby antenna works, already debating weather to go all in and punch a hole in the roof or mount it to the hood up by the front pax side. I will 100% break it off where you mounted yours now, and I doubt it would work right mounted right behind the cab like my current CB antenna is now.

For shits and giggles, my current free cb setup that sqweals insane loud when I transmit.



I can't stand the radio on the console so I'll remote mount this new one under the pax seat or something.

 

No problem. I have heard mounting on the roof works out the best. @EatSleepTacos has his mounted there with good results. I remember reading the higher it’s mounted and the least amount of obstructions the best. I already had that cb mount back there by tailgate and my bumper has bars to push the rear off trees so it’s kept it pretty well protected. Yeah I never was able to get my cb right. Came through like a supercharger in the truck every time I hit the gas lol.

 

You want stupid easy? Buy this kit, slap it on your truck and you’re good to go. It’s what I did on my tundra tow rig.

https://midlandusa.com/collections/micromobile/products/mxt115vp3-bundle

I put the antenna on the passenger corner of the hood by the windshield.

 

@cynicalrider I finally played with the Bun Trail welder today. Yanked a battery out of one of the DDs and laid some beads on a rusty, mill scale filled piece of angle. This mofo burns way the hell hotter than my Hobart 140. It comes in 2 models, wire speed adjustable and non wire speed adjustable, just get the wire speed adjustable one.

Pic time




It will definitely hot glue some steel back together that's for sure!

 

I’ve got the midland 15w radio and it kicks ass compared to the handhelds. No dead batteries when you leave it on overnight, no painstakingly programming channels and no dealing with the shitty squelch in addition to the fucker flying across the cab

I mounted my antenna here and it’s fine. Unfortunately you can’t re-use the cb or FM antenna

 

Am I one of the cool kids now??


Is this type of radio as finicky as a CB where you pull power from? Meaning if I snag power and run wires past something I shouldn't I'll hear my engine reving through the speaker in static form?

 

Awesome, good to hear! Def adding it to my wish list.

 

It took me longer to yank the battery out of my Avalon than it did to hook all that shit up as well. If you have dual batteries, you would basically be self contained.

 

I have entered the 21st century with comms, installed a MTX275 GMRS radio. I have never had a functioning CB in either this truck or my jeep before this, so hopefully this works.

Installed it under my cup holders, I can flip it up for easy access if needed.


Yea it's dirty in my truck, I don't care lol

Antenna is mounted with a roll cage mount on the bed. I need to try out each type of antenna, I have the ghost (or poop style if you ask my wife) and a rugged radios "whip", not really a whip though. Going to test each one and see how they work. I was going to mount all this to my roof, but f it.



I will probably mount the mic itself onto my center console as I have enough wires and shit dangling Infront of my dash/shifters as is.

 

Got the radio working, been messing with it in the garage, I think I'm going to roll with the rugged radio antenna at first. Messing around with the truck in the garage and I can clearly pickup a weather radio station 117miles away with it, the ghost antenna doesn't even pick it up. The other weather stations come in clear with the rugged radio antenna where as with the ghost they are scratchy. I'm going wheeling next weekend so I'm going to swap them halfway through the day to see which one works better in a group. I'm sure they will both the fine, I can see this rugged radio antenna getting snagged on branches and crap though.

 

I also went to do an alignment today but the pax side TRE is seized in the tie rod. I don't know how I fucked that up considering I anti seize EVREYTHING on this truck. Buttoned it up holding my head in shame and as soon as I got the tires on I realized I could have popped the driver's side TRE off and brought the toe in as I have too much toe out right now, DOH!!

So I'll probably build a new tie rod over the winter and make this one into a trail spare.

 

Went wheeling on Saturday at Harlan. Truck worked great, ended up aligning it before the trip, truck drove awesome. The way home not so awesome so I knocked back out of alignment... Radio works awesome I can actually here people and they can hear me, unlike with my CB. GMRS is so stupid simple to setup.

 

Now you see why I threw away my cb setup years ago in favor of GMRS! It’s far superior.

 

Yea I fought it because I figured it was like CB.

I snagged that rugged radios antenna on a tree branch and it didn't break. I'm going to test that against the ghost antenna on my next trail ride to see which one sounds better on the trail.

 

Yep!

Handheld GMRS is what I've been using for 2-3 years now.

Not sure why I have CB in my rig...

I'm digging that really small-profile antenna.

 

I know right? I would borrow handhelds but was sick of them flying all over, and I hate borrowing shit.

 

Aftermath of a nice easy ride at Harlan.....

I have one more trip for the year on the book, at Harlan at the end of October actually. After that I'm chopping the ass end of the truck off and rebuilding it.

 

Got the crack all plated up, I rotated the tires since the front tires are wearing weird and vibrating and greased everything. Rear wheel bearings looked great considering they got pounded on for a year with visably out of round swampers for a while and 2.5" wheel spacers for even longer. Greased the RCVs that is made out of of unicorn spinal fluid or something that's insanely expensive. Can't wait to get some rear rails built for this and chop it up this winter. I want to redo the rear shocks so they aren't poking through the bed. Also considering Chevy 63s as these expo leafs are pretty long in the tooth.

Also found out my welder can be ran balls out plugged into the washer/drier outlet, the nice part about wrenching when my wife's out of town, I can run extension cords all over the house for garage projects.

 

Is that crack from rust or wear or both? Have your tires been doing this?

Untitled by Michael Halat, on Flickr
Untitled by Michael Halat, on Flickr

Mine like just started but admittedly I haven't rotated them in ages. My alignment cams are still where they were but def making me think I bent a tie rod or something strange for it to do it.

 

The inner lugs on the drivers side are wearing evrey other lug. I adjusted the toe and it kinda fixed it. I rotated the tires and found a big ass clump of mud on the inner side of the tire and washed that out so we will see if this fixes it. I may have a trunnion bearing (Toyota solid axle ball joint basically), but I want to eliminate everything else before I look at that.

As for the frame it's all of the above. It's old and rusty and wheeling it hard consistently the past 2yrs is taking its toll on it I think. I had a massive rust repair on the inside of that frame rail about 5yrs ago, behind the slider plates is not in good shape, matter of fact I tore a slider off a few years ago on that side and welded it back on, welds rusted and failed. There is all kinds of holes and separation where it turns up and levels out. I have frame plates on it but they are also covering up a few existing rust holes. So I'll get some mandrel bent, 2x3 frame frame horns built and stick them in where the old.ones reside. I'm also going to adjust my shocks so they aren't sticking through the bed and maybe do Chevy 63s. Then plop the bed back down ontop of it.