Chenbro's Second Silver Taco Build

Thanks. I used Autodesk 123D Design to build the model (now Tinkercad I guess?), then sent the file to Shapeways to have them print it. Turnaround was about a week.

 

Here for the part out.

 

I spent the last week slowly knocking some mods out of my pile. The biggest one was installing the dual battery system from Off-Grid Engineering. I bought this kit last year during their open house in their new shop, and it's been sitting in my basement since then. Over the winter, I filled in the engraved logo in the tie-downs with translucent enamel paint and coated with clear to give them some color.



When I got the dual battery kit I knew that I would want to hook up the Switchpro to it. The problem was that none of the ready-made trays out there would fit in my engine bay. Fortunately, the aux battery tray has a bracket for relocating a fuel resistor in new-model second gens. My truck doesn't have this fuel resistor, so I was able to fashion a crude bracket out of 6"x6" 1/8"-thick aluminum to hold the Switchpro relay box. I also needed a DPDT relay for the Baja Designs LP8's because according to the instructions, the low-beam and high-beam functions cannot both be turned on at the same time and the Switchpro doesn't have mutually exclusive switches.



Another stumbling block was that I wanted to keep my winch box in the same location. Moving it elsewhere would have taken a lot of time and probably involve removing and reinstalling my OBA. I had a piece of 14ga stainless steel plate that I was already using to mount the winch box, so I cut it to size and drilled a few holes to be able to attach the winch box (now rotated 90-degrees) and a terminal strip.



The plate is attached to the aux battery tray at two points - the 5/16" threaded rod (pictured) and a M8-to-5/16" threaded adapter on the fender bolt. The adapter is about 1.5" tall, which roughly matches the height of the original bracket, so a 1.5" tall aluminum spacer was also used around the threaded rod to keep things level and provide a more secure mount. This gives me some room underneath to run wiring and also provides some cable relief for the wires running out the bottom of the winch box.

I still need to move some accessories to the aux battery, but I was able to at least verify that the chase lights and LP8's work as expected. I'm really pleased with the light from the LP8's especially - I will need to find some time to get out on a country road to fully appreciate their output.

 

Had an epic time in Moab last week with @greeneggsnspam @TXSmiley @Sterdog @the_dau @Titus94 @Geremy and a few others.

We arrived in Moab on the afternoon of Labor day, figuring that any heavy traffic would be flowing away from the town.



Early the next morning, some of us went to Dead Horse Point to catch the sunrise.



After breakfast, we hit up Potash Road and Schaeffer Canyon for a shakedown run, then went to visit Gemini Bridges for lunch and some sightseeing in the afternoon.



On Wednesday, we upped the ante by running the southern loop of Fins and Things in the morning.



After lunch the group decided to do Hell's Revenge, knowing that some would want to take bypasses and skip Hell's Gate entirely.

Looking down at the entrance to Sand Flats Recreational Area from the top of the first narrow fin at the start of the trail.



Short stop to look at dinosaur tracks



Meeting back up with the members who took a bypass



Me going up Hell's Gate



Airing up after a long day of wheeling



On the final day of wheeling, we ran Top of the World. The trail has gotten considerably harder since the last time I ran it in 2015 and as a result it took the group a long time to complete it. The hot weather also led to some engine and transmission overheating issues that slowed our progress. Of course, the view from the top is worth it.



Before heading home on Friday, I stopped for sunrise at Mesa Arch with @TXSmiley

 

"bypass" he says.

with how hard I smucked my bumper there Im surprised I didn't set off my airbags

 

I don’t think it’s a fluke the only trucks in the group that made it up Hells Gate were 2nd gens...

 

More brap for sure.

 

I don't think it's a fluke the only truck in the group where the driver didn't get out for the Top of the World photo op was the long bed

 

Long bed, tiny penis

 

https://gfycat.com/negligibleeuphoricbaboon

 

Nice job Davis!

 

Spent yesterday wheeling with some old work buddies. The tentative plan was to run Yankee Hill from west to east, ending in Central City for a shorter drive home. When we got up there, the weather was so nice that we decided to take Yankee Hill to Miners Gulch and wrap back around to Kingston Peak.

The group at the top of Yankee Hill



There weren't many aspen along the trail but there was this one section on the way to the Kingston Peak trail that was beautiful.



James Peak Overlook



The group at the top of Kingston Peak with Loch Lomond in the background.



Of course, we all brought a rock to leave at the Rock House (not pictured, but the flag is part of it) and signed the guest book.

 

Installed an ARB Safari Snorkel with the help of @Red Baron and @YamaDirtrider over the weekend. This is definitely not something that has been sitting in its box in my mod pile since the @3378jakesr5 Snorkel Group Buy of 2016



For this installation we had to run out and get a bigger hole saw. The instructions called for 4.5", but we went with 4.25" instead. The instructions also had some strange sizes for the mounting holes that would make them much bigger than necessary, like 16mm (5/8") holes for the mounting bolts. I'm guessing it's to allow more adjustability of the snorkel once it's on the fender, but we didn't follow the hole size recommendations. The template provided by ARB was pretty spot on and no additional trimming was needed.



It's worth noting that I had to partially remove some previous mods such as the Slee ARB Twin compressor mount and my winch solenoid plate in order to get access to the bolts holding down the stock air intake tube. I also had to drill a new hole in the CBI bracket for the passenger side ditch light to clear the snorkel body.

After the snorkel was installed, they decided to play celebratory hide-and-seek for some reason. Here you see Aaron peeking Josh under my truck during one of their rounds.



After play time was over, Josh got to work burning in the Marlin Crawler LCA mount reinforcements.

 

I was able to be one of the exclusive that had caught Davis in the wild actually working on his truck! And like normal Josh is sitting in the job

 

Looks to me like he's just trying out different ways to wear it.

 

I wasn't the only one that day

 

So you finally ran out of room to pile up mods and had to install one.