Car Camping / Trip Reports / Photos / Buildouts / “Overland” / Expedition Rigs Area (homeless?)

"Just in case, case"

I mean if you have 4WD do you need to have a spare drive shaft? Just pull the bad one and head home in 2WD?

 

Yes but that also means it's potentially cutting a trip short, and I feel like I would be asking a lot from a front diff driving 2000 miles back home. This way even if I heavily dent a drive shaft (and don't pretzel it of course) I can finish out the trails in Moab with the shit drive shaft, and have a smooth drive back home with my good one. Of course I can get a new shaft or have my shaft re-tubed out there too, but would prefer to have an on board plug and play solution. I'm a man of redundancy. I mean my OBA supply is CO2 AND a compressor. My water supply is gravity AND pressurized. I also plan on having another CV. Basically I don't want anything to get in the way of my trip out west. I have been wanting to do this trip for a couple years now, and I am not going to let some trail damage keep me from fully enjoying it.

 

Absolutely. Here comes Day 4.

 

OBDR Day 4: Flying Debris Ahead
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We slept soundly through the calm night and woke up just as the sun was painting the sky the next morning. Well rested, we were excited for the coming day of travel - the plan was to reach Seneca, the town where we'd set off on what turned out to be Mission Impossible: OBDR, back in May.

--- read on: OBDR Day 4: Flying Debris Ahead ---​

--- read on: OBDR Day 4: Flying Debris Ahead ---

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Looking great Mike! Did that jerry can come with all the fittings for hose and air? You have a link to that?

 

No, the jerry can does come with a gravity fed spout, but not one that can be used for a hose application. All the fittings I got from home depot and the valve stem was from advance auto:

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...-01-build-thread.290011/page-47#post-15826970

The parts used were a 6ft male to female leader hose, a male to male adapter, a standard hose nozzle, and a screw in male to female ball valve. I also got a bunch of extra hose gaskets, like the one used on the jerry itself. All parts are found in the garden section, only part I needed from plumbing was the male to male adapter.

Jerry can from here:

https://www.jerrycan.com/product-category/plastic-jerry-water-cans/

But it looks like some of the nato water cans are stronger and bulge less.

 

@HeliMedic and @ROK-NJA at offgrid engineering do some awesome work! Just got the truck back from them last night and it looks awesome! Very well done, and i never knew you could have shoved a group 34 and a group 31 in that engine bay

 

So the gravity spount unscrews and then you just thread in the hose fitting? Drill hole in the top for one of the tubless air valves and done? Seems easy enough. I need to do that.

 

Yup. Was way easy, and hopefully the black tank will make the water nice and warm for showers.

 

Thanks mang. Gonna order mine.
BTW what tire filler fitting are you using on the air hose? Mine has failed already and I like yours.

 

$23 Tire Inflator, 3-in-1 Inflation Gun, with Gun, Locking Chuck and 2" Gauge, ¼” NPT and Flexible Hose (Campbell Hausfeld MP600000AV), 3-in-1 Tire Inflator w/Gauge

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007ZJ1IK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Day 5 was the day we'd been looking forward to - the run from Seneca to Granite was what we'd tried to accomplish in May but had been foiled, clearing dozens of down trees and ultimately running into two water crossings that we couldn't ford. Would our trip, three months later bring us redemption? Yes, yes it would.

Read on for OBDR Day 5: What Were We Thinking in May?




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catch up if you missed [Day 1] [Day 2] [Day 3] [Day 4]
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OBDR Day 6: Lookouts​

... "Within 20 minutes, we arrived at what would be our first extended stop - Desolation Butte Lookout.
And as we pulled up, we each looked at each other knowingly - parked there, under the lookout, was another Tacoma." ....

read the full day




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OBDR Day 7: Out of the Mountains.

... And then, we arrived at the end of the OBDR and the Oregon - Washington border.
A non-descript section of road, where the gravel transitioned to pavement, we couldn't believe we were done.

850 miles of Oregon backroads, less than 50 of which were on pavement, and with relatively few problems.

- - read the last day - -


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catch up
[Day 1] [Day 2] [Day 3] [Day 4] [Day 5] [Day 6] [Day 7]


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I've done a little work to my truck recently. My goals are to make it as functional as possible, keeping it lightweight, keeping it relatively low profile, and building it on a tight budget.
I know, first strike against low profile goes to the snorkel, but I did say functional, right?






Oh, and how many EAF points do I get for having both Expedition Portal and Expedition Overland decals on the truck??

Long term, I want to get the Tacoma as capable as (if not more than) my first ExPo build:

 

Nice looking rig, is that the Hilux snorkel? Also not to bash H2's but depending on your definition of "capable" I would say out of the box the Tacoma beats the H2 hands down on size alone.

 

Having a spare drive shaft is sort of along the lines of having a winch. You NEVER need it until you REALLY need it. I once drove a CJ from Moab to Salt Lake on the front end because I snagged my rear drive shaft on a rock up on Golden Spike trail. That sucked!

 

I carry a spare shaft for my crawler any where it goes. I like the fact that on it I have it set up I have 1 spare for both front and rear shafts. Both shafts are the same length-/+.5"

 

It is a HiLux snorkel. The beauty of the H2 was it left the factory on 35" BFG AT's (I found a guy on Expedition Portal that wanted AT's to replace his MT's, so I swapped him), full time AWD with electronic locking center and rear diffs, and OBA. Granted, it was a beast, but the chassis was built like a tank, and the 6.0 V8 had a lot more grunt than I expected (it would actually chirp the tires). And the interior was massive. Sitting in the driver seat, if I stretched my right arm out, I could barely touch the passenger seat headrest. If I folded down the 2nd row seats and pulled out the third row jump seat, there was plenty of room to sleep with all of my gear stacked to one side.