AdventureTaco - turbodb's build and adventures

Dang, dude, those pics are awesome, but I bet not as awesome as being there! Love the open space pics with light and shade and rain showers. Thanks again for sharing.

Back on Day 8, the mines -- that looked like a well-kept ghost town, and those cable clamps on the barrel hoist looked new. Do they maintain that or something? Really cool, but struck me as odd.

 

Thanks. As I look back on the pics, I sort of cringe at them - these were mostly with my phone at the time, and I've since moved on to a dSLR that I feel like takes much better shots; but it was definitely great being there for sure!

At Kirwin, the town isn't maintained, but it's remote enough that I don't think many folks make it back there to screw it up. And I think there's snow there a good 3/4 of the year, so again, not a lot of time to destroy it. Was totally awesome to see such a well preserved place. They were logging right up next to it though, so hopefully that doesn't entice the riff-raff out there.

Edit: I stand corrected - see Monte's next post. Apparently a nearby town of Meeteetse and the USFS are working to restore parts of it.

 

Meeteetse is pretty proud if it. They have done some restoration to some of the buildings in the area actually to help perserve it. We didn't go back to the other big one with the boiler I posted last summer but it had had the roof redone.

 

Dang!... turbodb
Thank-you for sharing the vast adventures!
So Beautiful to see, So far off the beaten path.

 

Might be the best thread on TW!

 

Thanks both of you guys. It's great fun, so glad you're enjoying!

 

Was the ashtray guide rails easy to get out?

 

I'm planning to install a Cobra 19 Ultra III CB in the same place. I appreciate this excellent writeup and pictures. I'm still waiting on all my stuff to arrive, including a Kenwood Excelon DNX994S, so I haven't taken apart the dash yet, but I'm just wondering exactly what piece needed melted and deformed to fit in the CB?

 

Yes, they are. Once you get the black center console piece out, it was just a couple screws as I recall... There other thing about the center console is that once the ash tray rails are it, I think I also cut the plastic in the back, so the CB could "slide through" and sit back further. I probably need to update my post to show this...

Once you have everything out, you'll see the AC housing back there. Even with a 90 elbow on the antenna, my Uniden stuck out from the dash an inch.

I wanted it flush (as you can see in the photo)...

So I heated up the AC housing and pushed it forward with a screwdriver handle. Be careful doing this - if you over heat or press too hard, you could punch a hole there, which would be bad!

You should check if you need to do this (test fit it) with your CB before you do it...

Thanks Ben. Wish you'd been here! Back in 2 days... Mike and I are taking the scenic route...

 

Awesome.

No good alternative that I found on Amazon. However if you use that link to aircabinman's eBay auction, he was great and I've heard he's got a great reputation if you find anything wrong in the package.

 

A bit did come out of Dan's @drr when he took the radiator out. I don't recall if he topped off, but I would. So I would get a bit of ATF for the automatic - was less than a quart came out.

 

Yes, you can totally use the breaker there. The thing to be careful about is that the cam pulleys do not turn, so you can use the SST cam tool to hold them steady.

I think that's even how I describe it in the step by step write up.

https://adventuretaco.com/step-by-s...r-3-4l-v6-5vzfe-also-4runner-tundra-and-t100/

 

@m3bassman
You’ll lose a small amount of ATF when you pull the radiator out, although it might also be a good time for a drain and fill if you haven’t done it in a while.

 

Yeah I wouldn’t do a power flush or anything like that. But draining the pan and cooler is fine. You’ll need about 6 qts of fluid to replace.

 

If you watch his whole video without skipping (which I know I did the first time - it's a long video), he says you can do either. I actually did both at different times. It turns out to be easier to use the cams when you have the crank pulley bolt out already, esp. since a crank pulley bolt is a single-use bolt (according to Toyota) and once you have it tight enough to turn the crank, it's a pain to get it off again without changing the crank position.

Since the timing belt is still on, the cams and crank pulley all move in sync. So, turning any of them turns the others the same. That's why you can do either.

 

The De-Tour: Day 10 - The Final Three
September 26, 2017.

Derp would never see the sand dunes, even though it turned out we were camped at the base of one nearly 200-feet high. Having set three sequential alarms "just in case," when his first alarm went off at 4:00am, he bucked his usual trend and got up and out of camp relatively quickly. It was still dark, but we could hear him reving along the muddy roads for a good 20-30 minutes, so we were pretty sure he made it out alright.

Back to sleep for a few hours, when I woke again at 7:00am, it was cold. 24-degrees cold. Ice crystals inside the tent cold (from my breathing). Of course, there was ice outside the tent too, from the heavy dew.

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But the sun was out, and that was great. So, all bundled up, I grabbed the camera and headed out to explore. I wondered how close we'd gotten to the sand dunes the night before, and whether I'd see any of the 50-or-so coyote's we'd heard. It turns out that we'd just reached the edge of the dunes, and it was time to climb them!

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I ended up walking a full circle around camp checking out the situation. To our north and east were the dunes; south and west was sagebrush. Everything frozen - covered in ice crystals that sparkled like fleeting diamonds in the morning sun.

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As the sun beamed down and I climbed up and down the surrounding dunes/hills, the world began to warm. As I looked down on camp, I realized two things: First - that those three trucks were the three that we'd see each day for the rest of the trip, everyone else having come and gone. Second - dang, those trucks looked good.

Monte would - later the same day - capture it well: "No better sight than a first gen's butt." Mostly right, if you limit the statement to trucks I guess.

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For two hours I continued around camp. Each time I thought I'd head back, there was something "just a bit further" that seemed worth checking out. I was never disappointed. A mallard, sparkling green in the sun. Grand vistas of our camp site, CVTs perched on top of Tacomas. Flowering sage, covered in crystals. And finally - just as I was heading back in - a coyote.

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Back at camp, I felt like maybe I'd already used up my picture quota for the day. Lucky for me, there was no such thing! We got to putting away camp as a Cessna flew low overhead, and headed out relatively early - to make sure that Mark had made it out safely and to visit the Boar's Tusk - the remnants of a volcano some 2.5 million years old.

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As we reached the "main road" to Boars Tusk, mud conditions had improved dramatically from the night before, so we knew Mark had made it out. We'd later find out that he made it to work (bummer for him!) with no problem.

Shoulda held out 'till daybreak Derp! Could have seen those dunes .

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At Boars Tusk, we considered a hike up to the base of the rock, but decided against it. We had a long day ahead of us and we were excited to hit our next stop - the petroglyphs (and hand imprints). So we booked it back out Boars Tusk, enjoying the badlands and some of the muddier spots on the trail!

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Only a few miles away we reached the petroglyphs, which were about a quarter mile away from the end of the road. While it wasn't too steep, it was at 7100-feet elevation, so Mike got a head start up the trail as the rest of us took photos.

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The petroglyphs themselves date back 200-1000 years, and depict bison and elk hunts, horses and more. Even more interesting are the hand marks - rubbed into the rock over centuries, they're eerie and cool at the same time.

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As we wrapped up and headed back down to the trucks, we decided it was time for and early lunch. It turned out to be a fun one too, as we each had various bits more easily accessible than others. Happy to share, everyone ate a bit of their own, and a bit of everyone else's stuff as we lounged in our chairs in the sun.

And then we were off. A quick stop in Rock Springs for fuel and a CF card reader for Mike and then it was into Flaming Gorge, Igor piloted by a new driver!

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Eventually, we came up on the Flaming Gorge Dam and Visitor Center, which we hoped we'd be able to get a tour of (but unfortunately had missed the last tour of the day). While there, we did get to see the largest fish ever caught in Wyoming however - a 54-pound lake trout pulled out of the reservoir!

Seriously, what is a trout doing at 54 pounds? Probably something nefarious.

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By now, it was getting to be mid-afternoon, and we all knew that meant Mike was getting anxious about camp - specifically, would we reach it before dark?

We started giving him a hard time about that, until he asked a question we viewed as suspicious: "Do you eat pork?"

Now - of course we eat pork. We'd all thoroughly enjoyed Ben and Kirsten's breakfast-in-the-snowy-sunny a few days earlier. We'd all been eating meat at lunch and dinner the days before… So we wondered, "What's going on Mike?"

And then he said, "If we get to camp before dark, I'll make carnitas tacos."

And then he added, "With my salsa."

There was suddenly a new urgency to get to camp, and fast. Or at least, relatively fast and definitely before dark.

Around 6:15pm we found ourselves in BLM land once again, and we took a spur road off of the highway outside of Dinosaur, Colorado to look for a spot. With a few roads to explore, we split up and within 20 minutes we'd settled on a flat area that was sheltered and "meh" far enough from the highway.

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We setup camp and then did something we weren't all that familiar with at this time of day - we relaxed and enjoyed the evening! It was a beautiful evening and a fabulous time.

Plus, there were tacos. With salsa.

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Life doesn't get all that much better than fresh tacos eaten around a campfire, and so we each enjoyed several of the delicacies, with many thanks to Mike!

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Talk that evening was mainly about the following day - we'd reach the head of the Kokopelli trail in Loma, and then make our way towards Moab. And, as we went to bed, we marveled at the night sky. Full of stars and the moon, that meant it was clear. And that meant we were likely to wake up in the morning dry - it really was coming true… "go to Moab; it's always sunny in Moab…"

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- - - - -

Enjoying the De-Tour story?
There's more - @Blackdawg also wrote up a version. Check out his version of this chapter here: [Chapter 9]

or, check out the full story with these links:

As told by @turbodb: [Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] [Chapter 4] [Chapter 5] [Chapter 6] [Chapter 7]
[Chapter 8] [Chapter 9] [Chapter 10] [Chapter 11] [Chapter 12] [Chapter 13a] [Chapter 13b]

As told by @Blackdawg: [Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] [Chapter 4] [Chapter 5] [Chapter 6] [Chapter 7]
[Chapter 8] [Chapter 9] [Chapter 10] [Chapter 11] [Chapter 12] [Chapter 13]​

 

Great reading your reports as I preparation for my trip to the Beartooth area in Oct.


Also that's a Piper PA-18 Super Cub, not a Cessna.

 

This is an interesting photograph. Is it from your phone? Who pressed the shutter button?

 

Thanks, glad you're enjoying. A Super Cub, huh? I guess I just always call small planes Cessna's - probably like "Kleenex," sigh. Beartooth's are great. Just got back from another trip out there. Amazing place, really.

You don't carry a body for every lens?

...me either. Yep, that's from my phone, which has a timer I guess (I'd have to go routing around to find it now, probably). I think I had one other of these as well some other morning. Was a fun way to capture the "concept" of what I was doing each morning.

 

The De-Tour: Day 11 - Unescapable Rain
September 27, 2017.

It was a wonderful night. There was no rain, no snow, and no ice on our tents as the sun rose into the sky. Having seen our campsite the night before, this morning was more about getting new perspectives and enjoying the sounds of the world waking up around us.

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I headed up onto the rock outcropping south east of our camp and waited for Mike, Monte, and Devin to get up and meet the day. Mike was first out to make his hearty breakfast - two cups of coffee, followed shortly by Monte and Devin who munched on a couple of granola bars; not a whole lot different than the bowl of cereal I was eating as we all enjoyed the warmest morning of the trip so far.

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Enjoying ourselves and taking it easy, we finally headed back to the highway around 10:45am and turned to the south. We hit Dinosaur, Colorado within minutes, but had another couple hours of driving to get to our destination: Loma, the start of the Kokopelli Trail that would take us to Moab.

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Refueled, we continued on. CB chatter ranged from completely silent as we each listened to our own tunes to downright chatty, all of our spirits raised, and us looking forward to the Utah dirt. Monte, Devin, and Mike had all been relatively recently, so a combination of "remember" and "we need to" hit the airwaves.

And of course, along the way we stopped a few times for photos.

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When we got to Loma around 1:00pm, it was time to refuel - which was unfortunate. Because, you see, there was only one Conoco in our path, and it was one Mike recalled from their last trip as, "being expensive, not having any firewood, and as only having a honey bucket out back."

Monte suggested that he was just a grumpy old man - did he want to drive 40 miles out of our way to a different gas station? "Sort of," Mike said.

I could tell he was "sort of" joking.

In the end, we paid outrageous prices for gas, and used the honey bucket. The day was saved however when we discovered that they now carried firewood, so we stocked up on a couple bundles for the nights to come. And then, we were off to the Kokopelli, where we ate lunch at the trailhead parking lot before airing down and heading out.

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The beginning of the Kokopelli is cool because you first drive through a tunnel that goes under the highway, and then you start winding your way pretty quickly through some cool rock formations (and definitely different than we'd seen in Montana and Wyoming)!

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And then, not long after, we got away from the freeways. We had 136 miles (ok, probably 130 now) of dirt in front of us, and we were all looking forward to it more than I think any would have admitted. Even Devin was in better spirits with the "no rain" weather, and riding in Igor.

OK, let's just admit it - it was the lack of Frank that was raising her mood.

Whatever it was, we bumped along taking in the amazing views, and soon we started to get into some more "fun" parts of the trail.

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And then we heard Monte over the radio, "Well, that's narrow! Might be the end of our trip!" We couldn’t believe it - we'd come so far, what could possibly cause us to turn back now?

We got out to look at the narrow spot in the road, and it was eerily reminiscent of the narrow spot where Frank squeezed by and Zane had to be winched back to safety. But this time, there was no mud and with some careful driving we were able to squeak by.

And trust me - it felt narrower than it looks in these pictures.

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Our target camp site 60 miles ahead of us, we tried to make good time through the remainder of the afternoon. That meant that we only stopped about 20 times for pictures rather than the walking pace that we may have otherwise taken. And as we took pictures of our trucks and surroundings, bikers and motorcyclists would stop to take pictures of us.

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There were carved canyons and red rocks for miles. Washes and green valleys below we would take photo after photo hoping to capture the grandeur.

It was impossible. But we tried.

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Eventually, we came to a washout that we were all wondering about - Monte and Mike because they'd been surprised by and done it before, and me because I'd read about it in their last trip report, and they'd been talking about it on and off - wondering if it'd be in worse shape - for the better part of the last couple days.

When we got there, I could see why.

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A good 10 feet or more deep, sandy on both sides, and muddy in the bottom, this would have been a place (frankly of many) where I'd have been like, "OK welp, guess it's time to turn around." But not today, we were going for it!

With lockers on the front and back, Mike went first.

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He climbed right out, which raised the confidence level for Monte and I. Prematurely of course.

Monte was next. Down was of course easy. It was up that was tough.

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In the end, after giving it several goes and just chewing up the exit for the next guy (wonder who that is?! Oh, right, it's me!), it was clear that he wasn't going to make it. So we hooked him up to Mike's winch and popped him out easily.

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And then it was my turn. Again, down was easy. Essentially, "keep your foot to the floor on the brake and slide all the way down anyway." It was up that was the issue. Having just watched Monte scrape up his bumper in his attempts, I gave it two shots and then also settled for a pull from Mike.

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The toughest obstacle now behind us, and the sun getting lower in the sky, it was inevitable that Mike would start talking about whether we'd make it to our camp site or if we should look for something closer. Ever the optimists, we pushed on.

It seemed that around every turn I wanted to stop for pictures. Even as we were driving, there were parts of the trail were 100% ledge - the first time I'd driven on such terrain. Very cool. Had to take pictures.

Loved every minute.

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And then, just as the sun was setting, we arrived at camp. Nestled against a fold in the rocks (which I guess technically isn't a fold, since these were caused by erosion), it was clear that the next morning's exploration would be a fun one!

That is, as long as it wasn't raining. Because just then, as we unfolded our tents, we felt the first drops fall from the sky.

W.T.F.? Seriously?

"Just go to Utah they said," mocked Monte, "It'll be sunny in Utah they said."

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We were of course a little disappointed, but by now we were also used to the rain. As we cooked and ate dinner - this time in the dark and so taco-less - one of us smartened up and retired to Igor to read her book. The rest of us hung out by the camp fire, happy at least that the rain was relatively light and that we could talk about Tacoma's.

In this case, about tires - because after this trip it was clear I needed something a bit bigger than stock. Some 33's. And if you're going to get 33's, Mike and Monte assured me - you may as well consider some new wheels… because, you know, with some 16" wheels, you could also get some Tundra brakes.

Of course, it was easy to spend money on someone else's truck, so they also suggested a front locker, regearing - either to 4.56's or 4.88's, steel plate reinforcement for my frame ("before it gets all tweaked like ours" they said helpfully), and of course probably a dozen other things I didn't even understand.

These were my people. Or I was theirs. Or something. It was great.

As the rain started to pick up, I took that as my queue to hit the sack, saying "I'm out when that flame goes out." I think Mike only distracted me a couple times so he could throw two or three more logs on the fire (without me noticing) to get me to stick around for another half hour. But at 11:30pm, we all decided it was time, and we hoped that the rain would let up by the next morning.

- - - - -

Enjoying the De-Tour story?
There's more - @Blackdawg also wrote up a version. Check out his version of this chapter here: [Chapter 10]

or, check out the full story with these links:

As told by @turbodb: [Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] [Chapter 4] [Chapter 5] [Chapter 6] [Chapter 7]
[Chapter 8] [Chapter 9] [Chapter 10] [Chapter 11] [Chapter 12] [Chapter 13a] [Chapter 13b]

As told by @Blackdawg: [Chapter 1] [Chapter 2] [Chapter 3] [Chapter 4] [Chapter 5] [Chapter 6] [Chapter 7]
[Chapter 8] [Chapter 9] [Chapter 10] [Chapter 11] [Chapter 12] [Chapter 13]​