AdventureTaco - turbodb's build and adventures

Shanked.

Thanks, appreciate it! Scenery of this trip was special for sure. Not sure I did the best job in post though - most of the trip seems a bit dark to me. Tried to remedy that for the next trip though .

Rad. Slammed Mike.

 

Its always so enjoyable and inspiring reading your trip reports. I read the latest post today while on lunch at work on my phone. The pics looked really dark so I didnt look very closely at them. I just viewed the post again now that I'm home on my PC and the pics look fantastic(I'm not a photographer and know nothing about editing. I get my pics edited by someone else if I use my autofocus DSLR.)

 

Hehe nope

 

Why would you want to either, it's a fair sight more beautiful than where any of us live

 

Yeah I love it. We went for a 8 mile hike in the beartooths on Sunday. So awesome.

 

I should have exempted you, I like where you are and would happily live there

 

Thanks guys. Glad you enjoyed it. Next one isn't far out I hope.

It was taken at sunset, and completely unplanned. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time (I think I was a way behind Mike because I'd stopped to take some other photos). That was a cool photo for sure - I knew as soon as I took it that it was going to be a special one.

 

Seriously, love the trip reports. I'd love to see one of these in the Overland Journal one day! They're definitely worthy of being in there. At least on their website! (Expedition Portal)

 

Thanks, those are some kind words. I've wondered about posting to Exp Po, just seems like a lot of work. Plus, I've heard that by the time you re-write to get into the journal, it's way shorter and so you miss a bunch of the fun details. Who knows - I'm sure if they approached me, we'd work something out, even just to try it once.

 

The journal may have some limitations, but I've read some pretty long trip reports on Exp. Po! Maybe it's not worth the work, but it would be awesome! You're definitely on par with some of the better articles I've read on there.

 

Eh I post all mine there. I've been featured once(the SOS trip) and they Edited the crap out of it. It basically felt like they edited out...me. My voice wasn't there anymore, the energy wasn't there, it was boring.

Least to me.

It is also SUCH a PITA to post there long form reports like these now. Each post is limited to only 20 photos, which I think I use up to 200 photos a chapter now so you have really break up posts, and limited character count. Which shouldn't be a problem, but all the hyper links to photos take up a lot of characters so then you add in your own word for the story and some times you have to work around that. AND you can't make a post until after 20 seconds of your last post or 30 i can't remember. So it slows down the process even more.

It takes me like 5 mins to make a post on here to break it up into usually 2 posts.

On ExpoP it takes me between 20-40 mins to post the exact same thing.

Dan has a lot more free time than I do. But still. That a lot of annoying work to go through.

 

Rig Review: What worked and what didn't on the Re-Tour?
Rig Review is a new type of post that I'm going to try to write up after most trips, where I'll note any things that worked really well, or could have been better. The idea has always been to optimize the Tacoma build and setup over time, so there's nothing really new from that perspective.

I won't talk about everything I've got going on - just new equipment to the trip and/or any outliers that deserve a mention. At the very least, I figure that long-term, real-world reviews of the products I use are good for everyone!

September 8, 2018.

The Re-Tour was an amazing trip. Sure, it had a bit of deja-vu with 2017's The De-Tour weather wise right at the beginning, but by the end we had sunny skies during the day and cool nights - a great combination if you ask me. All in all, the truck worked wonderfully on this trip, with just a few things that deserved a bit of discussion.

The Swing-Out Table (new this trip)

TL;DR - conceptually the fold-down-and-out table is cool but I need to rework how the far corner is supported for it to be useful. Oh, and it can't have any wooden components, since they swell up in wet weather.

It was just before The Re-Tour that I fabricated the fold-down-and-out table on the swing-out. On the trip, it sort-of-worked a couple times. However, there were two fatal flaws:

1. It was never really level - the weight of the stove caused the far (unsupported) corner to sag. Note the rocks supporting the stove in the photo below.
2. It never worked after it got wet (the third night) because the wood supports swelled up and were "stuck" in the closed position.

​

I've got ideas about how to fix all of this with a second revision of the table, but for now, the initial prototype has served it's purpose and is coming off the truck. Or at least, I'm not planning to use it as-is anymore.

The Coleman Classic Camp Stove and Lodge Cast Iron Grill/Griddle (new this trip)

TL;DR - There are pros and cons to this new system, but it's not quite right for me so I'm changing it all up again.

The Coleman Classic Camp Stove and Lodge Cast Iron Grill/Griddle were new to me on The Re-Tour, replacing the Weber Q100 grill that we've used for the last 5 years. My hope was that these would pack better and take up less room than the Weber, making packing of the bed easier.

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They did a great job at that, and I also loved how little propane the stove used, and how quickly the grill/griddle heated up.

However, I grill almost every night when I'm camping, and I really missed the easy (read: none) clean-up of the Weber grill. With the cast iron griddle, there was real cleaning involved, and it was big, heavy and awkward to clean. Plus, due to the size of the grill, I couldn't use the it and a pan at the same time on the stove - something I could do on the Weber.

However, I think I have a solution. I'm going to get the Coleman Camp Grill/Stove, a combo unit that has a burner for a pan and a burner for a grill. I didn't get it the first time because I thought it was a bit kitschy, and that the burner for the pan would be too small. But now, I think it might be just right.

The Electrical System (long-term)

TL;DR - Though it's a great battery, my days of running a single Group 24F Toyota TrueStart battery are numbered; I'm moving to a dual battery system. And, I can no longer recommend the DBPOWER 600A 18000mAh Portable Car Jump Starter, since it failed to start my truck when I had a dead battery.

To date, I've run a single battery - the main starting battery - in my rig, and it's worked great. The battery I've been running (since 2011) is a Group 24F Toyota TrueStart, and it's done everything I asked of it - started the truck, run all of the communication equipment (Kenwood D710G dual-band ham radio) (Uniden Pro 520XL CB radio), charged phones and tablets, powered the ARB on-board air compressor, kept the ARB 50qt fridge at 35ºF, and even powered the Warn M8000 winch a couple of times.

​

On this last trip though, I had a bit of trouble on at least two separate occasions, where the fridge went into an error mode overnight due to lack of battery capacity.

This issue was compounded by the realization that the DBPOWER 600A 18000mAh Portable Car Jump Starter I carry in the truck doesn't have enough power to start the truck when the battery is really dead - something I found out after I returned and tried to start the truck for the first time.

I don't blame this on the battery at all - quite the contrary; I think the Toyota battery has probably performed better than it was ever expected to perform. That said, it's time to make a change - a change to a two-battery setup, so that I can run the fridge at night without worrying that I may not be able to start the truck in the morning.

Likely I'll go with two Northstar Group 24F sealed lead-acid batteries, but I still need to do some research into exactly how I'll setup the whole system. Suffice it to say, this will be a winter project for me this year.

The Ham Radio Antenna (long-term)

TL;DR - I'd like to find a ham radio antenna that is more flexible/floppy than the one I've currently got, and that doesn't have a small section of wound metal in the middle, since that gets stuck on trees and pulls at the roof mount.

I've been running a Diamond NR770HBNMO mobile antenna since I got my ham radio, and from a Tx/Rx perspective, it's awesome. However, I'm always worried that when I hit low-hanging branches, it's trying to rip itself out of my roof. Evidence of this is often clear, as it was on my last trip to the Pryor mountains.

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I'd like to find a whip antenna that I can replace the Diamond with so that - hopefully - when I hit a branch, it just flexes and scoots by, rather than catching itself on the foliage.

The CVT Roof Top Tent (long-term)

TL;DR - I continue to be really happy with the main tent, for the most part. I am not however, happy with the rain fly on it due to the "stargazer" windows never ever drying off.

The @Cascadia Tents Mt. Shasta Pioneer tent has been a game changer when camping. Being up off the (often wet) ground, having quick setup and tear-down, and just being all-around more comfortable are big pluses in my book. However, since the beginning there's been a problem: drying the rain fly.

When I ordered the tent, I splurged and extra couple hundred dollars for the "stargazer" option. These are two "windows" in the roof of the tent which allow you to look up at the stars as you fall asleep. However, they've never really worked, and now I hate them - for two reasons:

1. The plastic they are made of is not clear enough to actually see the stars. I mean, you can tell there are stars in the sky, but everything's blurry because the plastic is all "warped." So, they fail at their reason to be.
2. The bigger problem however is that they never dry off. Unlike a normal rain fly that heats up in the morning sun to evaporate any water (rain, dew, etc.), these plastic windows either reflect all sunlight/heat or just let it pass through, and so they never warm up. As such, any water on them (and water droplets form on both the inside and outside of them) takes forever - literally hours and hours - to dry.

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So, nearly every morning I find myself balancing on the edge of the truck rails with a beach towel in my hand, toweling off the sopping wet stargazer part of the tent - while everyone else (with normal rain flys) just let their tents dry out in the morning sun.

#fail

Unfortunately, I don't have a solution to this problem. Really what I'd like is a non-stargazer rain fly. However, I don't know if CVT even makes those anymore since stargazers are now "standard" on all tents. Plus, I bet they are expensive.

My recommendation to anyone else getting a tent: do everything you can to avoid the stargazer (or similar roof-window) option.

 

Dang, I had no idea! That's a bummer.. Well, now I'll have to go find your report haha.

 

yeah kind of blows. So I gave up.

Several there(also on here btw) so enjoy reading all...5..i think..something like that.

 

Are they separate from your build pages? I'd love to check them out!

 

Yes, I'll tag you in them to not clutter up Dans thread.

 

Seeing all your trip reports pop up on my list again makes me wonder, when's the next trip???

 

The next trip, or next trip report?

A few more reports stacked up for me to post, thinking I'll start the next one in a week or so. Strangely, for the first time in nearly a year, I don't have any trips actually scheduled. I'm sure that'll change soon after the holidays though!