Hammerhead - the 4x4 DCLB tow and trail rig

I spent the afternoon today doing the 55k maintenance on Hammerhead.

I did an oil change/filter change, tire rotation, checked all the fluids, checked all torque specs in drivetrain and suspension, and checked the brakes. I'm still shocked at the durability of this truck. All torque was still in spec and the brakes have a lot of life left.

I wish I could say the same for the tires. I seem to eat tires fast. I have ~22k on the current Pathfinder ATs and they're a bit past halfway worn. I guess it's all the weight and towing. I think I'll get around 35k on these before I have to switch.

 

We took a quick ride over the Winter Solstice to get out and enjoy nature. I didn't take a lot of pictures though.

We started out on a forest service road. The road was a mix of gravel and clay, with some areas completely covered with leaves. This was near Rich Mountain, in the shadow of the mountain in the middle of afternoon - it was surprisingly dark in the shade.









After the forest service road ended, it became an unmarked trail. That was fun, there were a few more technical sections, but nothing bad at all.



The ride home was actually the most eventful part of the trip - we had a flat.


The culprit... Looks like a roofing nail.


The boys had snacktime while I just plugged the nail and used the OBA to reinflate the tire. I was done before snacktime was over.



I could have swapped on the spare, but it's honestly faster to pull a nail and plug a hole than jack up a corner and swap out a tire.

A couple of days later, we took the camper with us to my in-laws for Christmas. Since we live a bit away, it was nice to have the camper available to sleep in out on the driveway instead of crashing on the couch. No pics, but as always the Taco towed it great.


Here's the ride GPX track summary...



And the GPX file is attached below!

 

What is the distance between your rails on the MX? I am looking at putting a Baja on my MX, but the Baja website states that you need between 35.5" - 44.5" on center between the rails. Mine comes in at 34.5".

 

Mine is also at 34.5".

What rack are you looking at? My rack's a Megamule. https://bajarack.com/products/the-megamule

I'm currently using the top half of the brackets that come with the Megamule - they're designed to clamp around SUV or truck crossbars. Instead of using the lower part, I have a bolt that I cut to a flat profile down in the track, then tightened it down onto the upper bracket.

 

We are looking at the same rack. Actually either the mega mule or the Baja standard camper shell Any chance you can send some close up pics of your mounting solution?

 

Sorry for the delay, I somehow missed this.

These are the top half of the MegaMule mounts. The lower half is removed and unused. The bolt is flipped from how it's usually used and the heads are chopped slightly so they can insert into the channel, get turned, then tighten.

 

The last few months have been full of big changes for us.

The first big change is selling the RV and upgrading to a Super-C. The travel trailer was great, but my wife and kids can't go for more than an hour without stopping, which is solved by getting a driving RV. We had no issues selling the travel trailer - it sold for a bit more than we bought it for new. I did take a small loss counting mods, but still, it was a great and worthwhile introduction to RVs. No regrets there. The new Super-C is a Thor Magnitude RB34.



The Thor Magnitude has been great - the Ford 10 speed trans is silky smooth, delivering over 10mpg. Our worse tank towing was upper 9s and the best without towing was through Texas all at 80mph at 11.2 mpg. This is about the same as the Taco towing mpg wise, but diesel is more costly. Plus the rig has 4x4, which has already proved useful when we got lost and had to back uphill a mile on a gravel road. That would have been a costly tow without the 4x4. That said, it's way too big to actually offroad with - it's a 18k lb beast, not an earthroamer. I can post more pictures if anyone wants.


The next big change is a big move - from Atlanta to New Mexico. We moved from the suburbs of Atlanta to downtown Atlanta last year and it was awful. City life was NOT for us. A great opportunity came up in New Mexico, so I jumped on the opportunity to start a new career in a small town. We listed the house for sale, and the new employer packed our stuff. We opted to drive the RV cross-country and have the new company pay for shipping.

The movers determined the Taco was too big to put on a hauler, and our new employer had reserved a whole semi for our move, so they asked if we could load it into the semi... But they were afraid to back it up, so I volunteered to back it into the trailer for them. Ever seen a Taco wedged into a semi?



We drove cross-country to New Mexico and I met the movers in Albuquerque two days later. We've been in Santa Fe ever since.


Here's home in Santa Fe while we look for a house in Los Alamos:




Once we were settled in at the campsite, I wanted to take a quick trip to get out in nature to relax a bit. Santa Fe has a lot of gravel trails to the Northeast. This is a big change for us - in Atlanta we'd have to drive over an hour to get anywhere with any gravel, with most trails over 2 hours away - especially if there was traffic.

I figured we'd just head towards state land and see what's out there. We ended up driving up to Caja Del Rio Plateau. It was an uneventful, but scenic drive consisting mostly of gravel and dirt roads. I didn't have GPX tracks going for this ride. Most of the trail looked like this, with small spindly cactuses and shrubs.



The clouds were looming overhead and we got to see a bit of rain. There were a bunch of stray / feral (I think) horses and a couple of cows just roaming around. We also saw a huge hare. Wildlife is just bigger here than in Georgia because of the conditions.



There was a small hill climb off one of the trails, I drove up it to my wife's dismay. I had to engage 4x4 to turn around - without it I wasn't able to back up to get the turning radius needed to turn around without running off the trail.



It was getting dark, so we headed back and got burritos on the way home. The food in Santa Fe is awesome. I'm a big fan of spicy food and all the chiles here are a new and exciting culinary experience for me.

 

We've been busy getting settled into New Mexico. The move has been great. We love it here compared to Atlanta.

We are under contract to finally buy a home here. We got outbid the first 3 houses we offered on. That turned out well though - the house we're buying needs work but has great potential. I'm may be less active on here over the rest of the year as I update the house and get us settled in.

We've been able to go hit the trails in the Santa Fe National Forest a lot. We have been out 3 times so far, so this post is just a dump of some random pictures from the rides.










moo

There's a ton of feral cows out here.






Indian dwellings carved into the cliff in the background:

 

Epic build and post. Thank you for sharing.
Zim

 

Almost to 80k miles, still going strong. The build's in maintenance mode now.

I need to touch up ALL the sliders and skids, they're beat to hell from all the wheeling. We go out as a family into the National Forests around here at least monthly - a lot more in the summer than winter though.

I need tires and an alignment soon.


I have a trip up through Uncompahgre Wilderness planned for May so I'll post pictures of that. It should be epic. We're also taking my wife's Jeep through Moab in June. We are having lots of fun out west - I don't miss the east coast at all.