The Getaway...Crom's build and adventures

Thanks a ton Bruce. It means a lot. Hope you had a great time out there.

 

I did! The Laurel Lakes drive was spectacular, and I took a side trail down to the creek in the meadow and sat whittling in the shade of aspens for a couple of hours. Heaven. The Silver Creek trail is gripping, right?

 

HAHA! Pretty much how every install or situation goes with my truck! But, it's not an adventure till sh*t goes wrong.

And like always, keep up the good work. I always enjoy seeing your trip reports and installs.

 

That's great to hear. Yup! Going down Silver Canyon is more scary than going up. I made sure to have "extra grip" on the steering wheel. So far I've gone down twice, and up once. Great trail. I hope it stays open forever.

Thanks.

Yes, adventures in truck building! I really enjoy wrenching, it's therapeutic for me.

As a side subject, I have some new developments for my car. I've got one big azz project in front of truck projects, and that's rebuilding the front end.

I made a maintenance and B.S. thread for the car, just for fun to share the joy and pain of rebuilding / maintenancing it. I don't expect the thread to get a lot of traction here on TW, but I don't care, it's just for me to share.

I've been collecting parts to put in the car. lol



Clicking the pic, should take you to the car thread.

 

Eastern Sierra Summer Trip #2; Day 5, Part 1, Bishop Creek, Lake Sabrina

This was our last full day of adventuring on this trip and I wanted to see some of the lakes up Bishop Creek. The road is 2-lane asphalt CA-168. It climbs up into the Eastern Sierras west of Bishop. The road parallels a creek most of the way and there is a piped aqueduct that travels the same route.

Our first stop was Lake Sabrina









Since this place pretty much caters exclusively to anglers, so there was nothing for us here except to appreciate the natural beauty of the landscape which we did. So after a quick walk around, we backtracked down the hill a little bit to North Lake.

 

Eastern Sierra Summer Trip #2; Day 5, Part 2, Bishop Creek, North Lake, Buttermilk Boulders

North Lake has a parking lot nearby and a pack station to support the dozens of people launching off on backpacking trips into the Eastern Sierras. The lot was pretty full from what I saw.
This lake is also popular with the anglers.

I found a parking lot near the south east corner far away from the other side where the pack station was. We had the lot to ourselves. A short walk away yeilded a nearly hidden walking path to the creek which is North Lakes outflow. This is where we got to soak and cool off from the days heat.






The water temp here was very pleasant.


The only downside to this location was the mosquitoes were out. Once again, somehow my kids evaded them completely, but I did not. Flamethrower where are you?!?

After about 45 minutes or so, wife and I decided it was time to go. There are 4WD trails that connect Bishop Creek to an area to the North which leads to Buttermilk Boulders. I had no trail intelligence for these trails. I scoped out the first one and it was kinda rough and didn't want to chance it, so I took pavement over to Buttermilk Boulders just to be safe.

Vroom! Vroom! Found a fun place to let the Tacoma go WOT, and fun to let the rear end break around corners. lol


We went to Buttermilk boulders which is a neat destination for boulder scrambling.


I blew the color out of this image so I could see the rocks better in the photo. These appear to my eyes to be Monzonite Boulders. They look identical to the ones found in Jacumba, CA, and Joshua Tree National Park.


There are lots of trails around this area and what appeared to be improvised campsites. I pulled into a few because it was time to cook dinner, but every place we stopped had large red ants. After the third place, I sad to hell with this, and we went to Bishop to eat at Dennys. lol Everyone was happy.

 

Eastern Sierra Summer Trip #2; Day 6, Go Home, Keough Hot Springs, Alabama Hills

One of the benefits of going home at a leisurely pace is it allows for exploration along the way. It's something I'm trying to integrate into all future trips.

I wanted to check out Keogh Hot Springs which is just 6 miles south of Bishop. It's said that the hot spring produces 127 Gallons of water per minute. There is a commercial enterprise there that offers camping, pool services, and concessionaire. We checked it out, and it would offer a nice place to base camp from, I think.

The outflow from the spring goes onto public land very close to the commercial place, and that's where you can soak for free in the hot water.

Now I had to laugh because as I drive up I see this unmarked commerical moving truck parked in the dirt near the hot creek. The driver was found nearby soaking in the springs. I'm thinking to myself, it's 9:40 AM Thursday morning and this guy must have had a case of the F-its and said, I'm gonna go soak!

Anyways, there were other folks nearby soaking as well. It must be a popular spot. Even so, I had no trouble locating plenty of spots for kids to play in.



The next interesting place we stopped was Movie Flat Rd. in Lone Pine. The Alabama Hills.

Something like 200 Hollywood movies, westerns and historical movies have scenes filmed at this location. It's beautiful and there are a plethora of campsites scattered about hidden in the boulders. Lots of exploration can be had here.








From this location we stopped at Diaz Lake just to the south and checked it out. Kids got to play on the swings while wife and I soaked our feet for a short time. We cruised through the campground just to check it out before continuing on.

 

Eastern Sierra Summer Trip #2; Day 6, Go Home, Olancha

I treated the family to a nice lunch at Ranch House Cafe in Olancha.


We enjoyed our meal and then drove home.

This concludes my report for summer trip #2 of 2016. Another successful venture in the record books. lol

 

Post trip report. Upon arriving home, I performed the following:

• Evacuated everything from back of the truck except fridge.
• Cleaned out interior
  
• Cleaned roof rack of gear
• Washed the truck and did quick wax.
• Cleaned all of the door seals
  
• Repainted rock sliders

Other notes:

• Home made clamps for Road shower performed flawlessly
• Wire rope hanger system in truck shell got a work out on this trip, and worked great.
• Moog UBJ patched boot is leaking again.

 

Modding the ARB Fridge.

If you have ever wondered if the efficiency of the ARB fridge can be improved, you'd be right.

It's very clear to me that the fridge can't keep up with thermonuclear heat that is generated in the back of a truck shell, even with a vent in the roof shell. When it's 100*F plus all day, it's brutal.

The issue is not the main compartment of the fridge, it's the dairy shelf above it!

The dairy shelf is above the compressor / motor so it gets warm over time, especially 6-8 hours in high heat. I know this because I was able to monitor using a remote probe.

I found the mod over on Expedition Portal. The mod author is "Stumpalump" his path was sound and he did experiments and posted results, so I felt it prudent to follow.

Two things were achieved in this photo. Stock is on the left, and mod on the right.

1. An aluminum flat bar is used to force the airflow of the ball-bearing fan through all the radiator fins, instead of under it.
   
2. Insulation with an aluminum reflective barrier was used to insulate and block heat from the dairy shelf above inside the fridge.

 

I am 100% done with my factory LCA refurb project.

• Brand new
  $24 Moog K80827 Front Lower Suspension Ball Joint for Toyota Tacoma
  Moog K80827 Ball Joints, with 90* zerk fittings
• Brand new
  $146 Whiteline W53312 Front Control Arm Bushing, Black
  Whiteline W53312 Front Control Arm Bushings (Polyurethane)
• Bushings eyes greased with Prothane super grease, sleeves installed.
• Arm to eye gussets added for strength,
• All drain holes welded shut,
• Bump pad seam welded,
• Painted flat black,
• Steering stops cleaned and hand polished,
• LBJ nut torqued to 103 ft.lbs.

 

This is gonna be my winter project. I already got a hold of OEM LCA's, so there's no downtime to the truck.

 

Smart. Same reasoning I used. Refurb at your leisure.

 

With the body bushing project queuing up soon, I decided to pick up some wood, and a nice new heavy duty floor jack. @samiam

I had fun bleeding the jack, and so far works really well. I was impressed with the overall construction and instructions were in plain English.

The thumbscrew for the jack handle is really nice, makes storing it out of the way an easy task. SOB weights 74 lbs!

 

That's outstanding. I noticed we had some issues when trying to use it in freeze mode. Mainly when I was trying to maintain ice cubes for bourbon in a Tupperware bin at the very bottom.

 

I've never had issues with items in the main compartment, for me it was just the shelf. It would increase by 1* every hour or so. It was absolutely brutal heat (108* at Fossil Falls), and full sun during the drive up 395. When the shelf got to 58* I knew I'd have to mod it, upon return home. I haven't done any testing, except that next trip, I'll monitor again. However the author on Expo reported that after modding his shelf stayed consistently 17* above lower compartment which is set to just above freezing. That's how we run ours.

I'll try to run a few experiments if I have time, to compare.

Here is a link to the source of the mod: http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/threads/148730-ARB-cords-and-fridge-mods

 

I have the exact same jack. Got the extension arm doodad as well. It helped with my slider install.
The low profileness is good. But the damn thing stalls whenever it hits something on the floor that bigger than a grain of sand. LOL.

 

Great updates for your trip.
The Buttermilks are pretty tame. Very similar to the Alabama Hills. I camped there once and it was very nice.
When the girls are big enough to take on a decent hike there is a good trail near Lake Sabrina that goes up into the Sierras. Blue Sky Lake is the first cool place. There are also bald eagles that fly around Lake Sabrina. Very scenic hike that isn't crazy strenuous. Nice to see Sabrina more full than the last year. The little campground is also a nice place to camp at least for a night.

I've never been up to Keough's Hot Springs. Thank you for the intel. Thought it was all pay to play. Is there any sulfur smell to the water?

 

Sweet! It's about time!

 

Wow that thing looks great! Earlier today I cut up some 2x4 and 4x4 wood to essentially do what that thing does, spread the load.

Thanks for the pic.

Welcome. Thanks for the future adventure tips. Really nice to know. No sulfer smell that I could detect. Wish I had a photo of the commerical truck next to the creek. That guy just needed to soak.