AdventureTaco - turbodb's build and adventures

https://youtu.be/Z4heNb3rKGw

 

Uh oh ...

 

Ew is that a Ryobi?

 

Crazy.

Here's a random video I found in a very brief search... it's in, like, some kind of language, but it shows the kind of RC helicopter flying I got to see up close. With absolutely no idea what to expect, it was just wild.

https://youtu.be/AXSfFLGeVZA?si=zE2FsO-Dbps3nV3w

I'm still catching up on trip reports... but damn, that's a very thorough approach to repairing a broken spare tire carrier.

 

To the End of the World, and Beyond | Snow in JTNP #1
Part of the Does it Always Snow in Joshua Tree? (Feb 2024) trip.

With the Pacific Northwest winter in full swing, both @mrs.turbodb and I were itching for warmer temperatures and a bit of sun as we planned our trip to the far southern reaches of California and Joshua Tree National Park.

I'd visited for my first time almost exactly a year earlier, and this would be an introductory visit for my companion, one I hoped she'd enjoy given the heavy emphasis on hiking - and the nearly-complete-lack-of-driving - that I had planned. Plus, with surroundings composed of rock wonderlands and sunny skies, I was reasonably confident that we'd be pleasantly entertained.

As our departure date neared, everything looked great - the low probability for a few showers seemed to dissipate, and daytime temperatures in the high 50s-to-low-60s °F seemed perfect for an active adventure.

Off to a bad start...

Unlike most trips where we leave the Pacific Northwest mid-morning on a Wednesday and arrive in Las Vegas right around lunch, we decided that we'd fly in out on Tuesday night so we could get a full day of hiking in on Wednesday. Our flight - from 10:00pm to 12:30am - meant that the usual folks wouldn't be around, but they'd assured me that they'd have the truck parked outside (as usual), and that the night security personnel would be happy to hand me the key upon our arrival.

Everything was going smoothly - not something to be taken for granted when flying on Spirit Airlines, mind you - until our Lyft dropped us off at the storage facility and we noticed that the Tacoma wasn't waiting in the usual location. Not only that, but the night watch - with less than two weeks experience - had no idea that we were expected, and had been given no instruction on what to do should a situation like this arise.

It would take 3 hours to unwind the fiasco, and we finally climbed into the Tacoma about the time we'd expected to arrive in Joshua Tree. Exhausted, we decided to open the tent and sleep in the parking lot, our plan for the following day in jeopardy, half our night's sleep lost to one of life's little mistakes.

Later that morning...

After three hours of sleep, we were up before the sun in an attempt to salvage as much of the day as we could. I knew this would be a challenge, but hoped that the three hours of driving between Las Vegas and the trailhead for our first hike, would give @mrs.turbodb a chance to catch up on some of the sleep we'd missed, while I steeled myself to push through on a few hours of shut-eye, as I used to do on a regular basis when we'd begin every winter trip with a long drive.

And so, after a quick fuel and provisioning at the local Albertsons, we headed south. Headed through terrain we'd recently traversed several times while completing the East Mojave Heritage Trail, a light rain began to fall as we gained elevation along the eastern escarpment of the Ivanpah Mountains.

By the time we reached Cima, we were in 4WD and moving at a much slower pace than we'd planned. And we were both hoping that the weather we'd encountered was not indicative of what we'd find at our destination!

We weren't expecting the white stuff on this trip to the sunny desert.​

The Joshua Trees were looking celebratory with a white coat.​

Eventually - as we neared the southern border of the Mojave Preserve - clouds gave way to sun, and once again it seemed as though we were in for the good weather we'd been expecting. With the road clear of the slippery slush, we picked up speed and had nearly arrived at our destination when we spotted it along the side of the road.

Flat earthers, eat your heart out! And please, ignore the reality that continues beyond.​

Our desert art quota filled, we were soon on our way into the park, through the north entrance - the only paved entrance I'd not experienced on my first visit.​

Having hoped to start our first hike at 7:00am - only a half-hour after sunrise - the early morning fiasco meant that it was noon when we finally pulled into the parking lot for our first hike. Knowing that it'd be impossible to cover the 11-miles of hiking that I'd planned for the day, we called an audible and headed to a hike we'd planned to do the second day - a seven-mile loop to the Lost Horse Mine.

Into the yonder.​

Hoping that we'd avoid the crowds - or at least, people walking with us for extended distances - we set out in the opposite direction than the trailhead signage suggested was the "usual" clockwise route to experience the Lost Horse Mine, Valley, and Mountain summit. Turns out we're not that original, as we'd spend half - or more - of the hike within a few hundred feet of several groups of hikers, all of them moving at in the same direction and at approximately the same pace we were!

Still, by watching our pace, we were eventually able to space ourselves such that we were all out of earshot, and it was easy to get caught up in the surroundings, which were beautiful, if a bit on the chilly side.

All these funny looking trees; guess we're in the right place!​

This was a great little Purple Prickly-pear Beavertail Cactus (Opuntia santa-rita) right beside the trail.​

One of my favorite cacti in the Park, this Common Fishhook (Mammillaria tetrancistra Engelm.) always fascinates me with its intricate spines. (We didn't see any this time, but the blooms are beautiful.)​

At approximately the apex of the loop, we rounded a bend in the trail as it meandered through the Lost Horse Mountains and caught sight of an old rock chimney, some scattered metal debris, and a couple of small waste rock piles. These, it turns out, were the ruins of Optimist Mine. Unfortunately, positive thoughts aren't generally the path to riches - you need actual gold for that - and the Optimist Mine was a bust.

All that remains of the old bunkhouse at the Optimist Mine.​

We'd packed sandwiches and grapes before heading out, so after poking around the ruins, we made our way over to one of the waste rock piles in hopes of finding an adit to explore. Long collapsed - or perhaps always just a surface digging - only a small depression remained, but with a few boulders to sit on, we zipped up our windbreakers and hunkered down for a chilly lunch.

Mostly sunny skies might have meant that temperatures were somewhere in the 50s °F, but with 20mph winds gusting into the 30s, it felt much colder, and we didn't dally after devouring our meal. Anxious to get moving again, we soon found ourselves winding our way east, towards the increasingly stunning views of Pleasant Valley.

Even the clouds were looking fine as we got a peek into Pleasant Valley.​

Don't be fooled, she was having a hard time maintaining her balance as the wind huffed and puffed at her back!​

After soaking in the views, the loop headed north on the final approach to the Lost Horse Mountain summit - a small side spur - and our first glimpse of the Lost Horse Mine.

From the summit, we had a nice view of the granite wonderland we'd explore for much of the following day, near Hidden Valley, Barker Dam, and the Wall Street Mill.​

There you are!​

Johnny Lang began development of the Lost Horst Mine began in 1894 when rich ore was hand cobbed from ore-shoots in the Lost Horse vein. A year earlier, he'd met up with a man named Frank “Dutch” Diebold, who'd who had discovered likely-looking gold-bearing quartz near Pinyon Mountain but he had been driven away from the site by a local gang of cattle rustlers, the McHaney Gang.

Lang offered Dutch $1,000 for his claim if it proved out, and began developing the property under the ever-present threat of being killed by the McHaney outlaws. To reduce the chances of being killed, official county records indicate that Lang took on three partners in December 1893 as rich outcroppings of gold were found, some of it large enough to be sold as specimen gold. The richest known specimen of gold found near the mine was picked up by Jim Fife. It was a mass of gold the size of a man’s fist; the grade of the ore estimated to run 4,000 oz per ton.

In the early stages of development, the high-grade milling ore was processed by a two-stamp mill at Pinyon Well. This soon proved to be unsuitable causing Lang and Fife to erect their own two-stamp mill at Lost Horse Spring. In 1897 the mine was patented, a new ten-stamp mill was installed at the mine and a five-mile water pipeline built to the site from Lost Horse Spring. Soon, Sampson and Tucker report the development of the mine to include an 80-foot tunnel driven on the Lost Horse vein, and a 500-foot shaft sunk on the vein with drifts at the 100, 200, 300, and 400 levels.

Over the next several years, more than 10,000 ounces of gold and 16,000 ounces of silver were pulled from the mountain. The booming of the ten 850-pound stamps could be heard echoing across the valley 24 hours a day as the ore was crushed before being amalgamated with Mercury in order to separate it from the waste material.

As the story goes, the day shift was producing an amalgam the size of a baseball while the night shift, supervised by Johnny Lang, recovered a mere golf ball. One of Lang's partners - Ryan - hired a detective to investigate and discovered that when Johnny removed the amalgam from the copper plates, he kept half for himself. Ryan gave Lang a choice: sell out or go to jail. Lang sold, then moved into a nearby canyon where he continued to prospect.

Gasoline power was substituted for steam in the 1920s, and the last work appears to have been done in 1936 when the Ryans - then leasing the site - removed the supporting pillars of ore from the upper levels of the mine, and treated approximately 600 tons of tailings with cyanide. Despite all of the work done in the 1930s, only a few hundred ounces of gold were recovered during the decade.

The Lost Horse Mine was acquired by the NPS from the Ryan descendants in 1966. The mine road was closed to vehicles, the mill restored as an interpretative exhibit, the head frame taken down for safety, and the mine shaft sealed by a concrete slab.

Geology and History of Mines of Joshua Tree National Park​

and Lost Horse Mine​

​

An old winch that once pulled ore from the shaft at the Lost Horse Mine.​

The 10-stamp mill installed in 1897.​

The steering for an old mine truck slowly rusting away in the wash below the mill.​

By the time we finished poking around the old mine site, it was a few minutes after 2:00pm. The winds were picking up and running on only a few hours of sleep, we were tired after covering the first 4.5 miles of the loop. Luckily, it was downhill from here, and we resolved to take a quick nap in the warmth of the cab upon our return!

Just a couple more miles to a nice warm nap.​

Back near the trailhead, we were back in the familiar scenery the defines this National Park.​

After finding a place to park that was in - but not facing - the sun, it took mere minutes for each of us to nod off. With the cab acting as a cocoon, the warmth was welcomed by our weary bodies, and by the time we awoke, we were in much higher spirits. A perfect time to explore the Hall of Horrors!

The clouds added a dramatic flair.​

A cluster of rocks favored by climbers, except for the name and a reference I'd found online to a slot, we didn't know much about the Hall of Horrors - not even which of the dozens of paths we should follow to see whatever the main attraction might be.

The clouds to the west weren't looking promising from a "no-precipitation-in-the-forecast" perspective.​

Somehow - which I'll attribute to sheer luck - we stumbled on the Hall reasonably quickly as we wandered around the cluster of granite. Filled with water from rains earlier in the week, we weren't going to be wandering our way through, but we did watch a more prepared couple - each of them wearing Muck boots - as they sloshed and squeezed their bodies between the boulder walls.

Not too Horror-ible of a squeeze, really.​

As we made our way back to the Tacoma, the sun was racing toward the horizon and the view to the east was starting to cloud up as well!​

We still had 45 minutes of light - probably enough for a final quick hike to Barker Dam or one of the dozens of popular rocks along Park Blvd, but we were both tired and ready to be done so we beelined our way to the Jumbo Rocks campground. To say that we're not big fans of camping in a campground is an understatement, so I'd booked what I hoped was the most private site - away from the main loop - so we wouldn't be disturbed once we settled down to sleep.

Before we could do that, however, there was one last thing I wanted to do. In my pre-trip planning, I'd found a nearby rock-and-tree formation that caught my eye, so we wandered amongst the rocks, hoping to catch the pair just as the sun broke below the clouds and settled along the horizon.

I think my favorite is this shot with just a light glow.​

Playing with scale. Penguin Rock and the Bowing Tree from a couple more angles.​

In the end, there wasn't much light to be had and with temps quickly plummeting into the 30s °F, and winds that only seemed to be increasing, we were both ready to pull on our new electric socks before eating a quick hot dog dinner. Then - and most importantly - we could and snuggle down under our comforters - our earplugs inserted to dull the thwapping of the tent all around us - and drift off to the first real sleep we'd had in 48 hours!

Not really, but the rest will have to wait for the next installment!




.​

 

I generally avoid developed campgrounds but on our last (and only second in my long lifetime) visit to JT in 2022 we stayed at Belle Campground. 1st come 1st served, found a good site, and much quieter than Jumbo Rocks. We hiked near there and even if I had had a reservation, I probably would have left. No offense to any climbers on this site, but some of your fellow boulderists are LOUD and leave a lot of traces. Alabama Hills is positively peaceful by comparison.

 

The climbing community has changed a lot in the last 10 years.

 

Wonderland in White | Snow in JTNP #2
Part of the Does it Always Snow in Joshua Tree? (Feb 2024) trip.

Having climbed into the tent by 7:30pm, exhausted after nearly two days without sleep, we fell asleep quickly despite the tent flapping wildly in the wind, the entire thing swaying - as I imagine a train car might - with each gust. Still, with warm feet and ear plugs, everything was dandy until just after midnight when I heard the pitter-patter of rain.

Or was it?

Rain, it turns out, isn't so bad as long as it stops early enough in the morning that the rain fly can dry out by the time we need to put the tent away. So, realizing that we had six more hours of sleep and winds that could dry the tent in a matter of minutes, I snuggled down into the comforter and smiled my way back to sleep.

Well then, I guess it wasn't just windy out; it was cold too!​

It was @mrs.turbodb who noticed that the rain fly was pressing down on the top of the tent when our alarm went off in the morning, and I chuckled out loud when I unzipped the door to a blanket of white covering the ground. Talk about Deja Vu. Luckily, this time we weren't huddled in the cab trying to stay warm all night, but we were definitely going to pay for it with a tent covered in frozen rain and snow.

While @mrs.turbodb set about her morning routine and made breakfast, I wandered to The Penguin and Bowing Tree to see how it'd fared overnight.​

The sun hit the tent just as we were wrapping up our cereal, but temps in the mid-20s °F mean that there melt-and-dry time was going to take hours rather than minutes, so I braced my fingers for freezing and stowed the tent for a short ride to our first trailhead. There, I redeployed, hoping that sunny skies would prevail, and that by the time we were ready to go, everything would be dry.

This Ladder-backed woodpecker was soaking in the sun just like we were. (Picoides scalaris)​

Luckily for us, our first two hikes could be accessed - with an extra mile of footwork - from a single parking lot, so with the tent squared away, and the solar panels charging our socks, we headed for the shorter of the two loops - Barker Dam.

In the morning sun, it didn't take long for the granite to shed its white coat.​

We decided to hike the loop in the opposite direction than I'd done on my first visit, and soon we were wandering by a jumble of rocks with a couple petroglyphs that I can only imagine were added in the last 20 years or so.

Hello, ladies.​

The second set of petroglyphs we came to were old - likely Serrano in origin - but had been irrevocably defaced when, in 1960, a film crew - contracted by Disney to produce a TV episode entitled "Walt Disney Presents: Chico the Misunderstood Coyote" - painted over the original faint petroglyphs in order to make them more visible on camera.

I can only imagine sitting at this window as a kid, chipping away at the granite as part of my "homework."​

It was about this time that the first snow flurry blew through. It was a quick event - lasting no more than about five minutes - but nearly sent us packing to the Tacoma in order to put away the tent and ride out the storm in the cab.

So much for the weather forecast. This is definitely not 60°F and sunny.​

Luckily, we pushed on, because a few minutes later, it was as though the sun had never stopped shining.​

A few flakes were still falling - carried in on a swift breeze - as we neared Barker Dam.​

In the early 1900s, ranchers, needing water for their stock, searched for ways to supplement natural water sources. They dug wells, improved springs, and expanded natural catch basins in drainages of canyons and rock formations by building small dams.

This area began as a natural tank, a catch basin for rainfall and runoff. It was expanded into a dam by the Barker & Shay Cattle Company, and later enlarged by Bill Keys, owner of the Desert Queen Ranch. At its maximum it encompasses about 20 acres. A pipeline once carried water to the cattle trough in the wash below the dam.

​

Despite the rains of the previous week, there was no water behind the dam.​

Cattle ranching was a short-lived effort in this area. When the rainfall decreased in the early part of this century, grasses declined and many springs dried up. Cattle raising gradually moved farther west to greener pastures.

NPS sign​

My understanding is that Barker Dam is one of the more popular hikes in the park, but just as had happened on my first visit - perhaps due to the ambient temperatures on both occasions - we nearly had the loop to ourselves as we headed back towards the parking lot.

Glancing over our shoulder on a regular basis, we kept a keen eye on the next wave of approaching weather.​

It'd taken us less than two hours from climbing out of bed to wrapping up our first loop. A combination of the early hour and blustery conditions - that would keep sane people confined to their RVs - we were unsurprised to find the parking lot exactly as full as it'd been when we pulled in: one vehicle, including the Tacoma.

Somehow - and to my relief, since I knew that we'd probably have to scratch our plans if the white stuff kept falling - the next wave of snow avoided us completely. A northerly wind blowing it to the south, bright blue skies prevailed overhead. Still, cool conditions meant that the tent was far from dry, and I set about reorienting the truck while our personal chef assembled some more turkey sandwiches and grapes for our next outing.

Off we go, through the Josuha Tree gate!​

Our first stop was at the Wonderland Ranch, where - luckily - I realized that my camera battery was nearly dead, and we were able to retrieve a second one without retracing too many of our steps.

Whether you call it the Ohlson House, the Wonderland Ranch or Uncle Willie's Health Food Store, the pink ruins near the Wall Street Mill were apparently owned for some span of time by the Ohlson family.

When they arrived and left is unknown, but photos of the property in 1975 show that it was intact with a complete roof. Perhaps it caught fire at some point and when the dust settled, these ruins were all that were left standing. Records list one "Signe Ohlson," who died - in the town of Joshua Tree - at the age of 100 in 1986. Did they had some connection with the Ohlson property, perhaps being the last resident of the house before it burned down?

​

Pink walls, not your usual desert decoration.

​

It's easy to see why the place is referred to as the Ohlson House. And Wonderland Ranch kind of makes sense, being right on the edge of the Wonderland of Rocks. But who came up with the name, "Uncle Willie's Health Food Store?" My guess ...rock climbers. They like to name everything.

Cali49​

​

Nestled into the wonderland of rocks.​

​

From the Wonderland Ranch, our four-mile loop continued north. Into the wonderland of rocks, this was one of the hikes I'd been most looking forward to, as I hoped it'd be less crowded and more lightly visited than many of the Park's trails - we were headed to the Red Obelisk.

Almost immediately, the scenery delivered.

Wandering up the wash.​

A small rock dam held back a whopping zero gallons of water.​

We continued on for a little more than a mile up the wash. This was the wettest of any hiking we'd do on this trip, a constantly flowing stream forcing one of us - the one not smart enough to wear his hiking boots - to step carefully in order to maintain dry feet. Along the way we regularly deviated from the imaginary path, a rock here or a boulder there vying for our attention.

Eel rock is hungry for some ...rock.​

A cresting wave, frozen in time.​

And then, as we turned the corner from one canyon to another, our destination - if there could be only one - was obvious. It was red, and it was an obelisk. Our only question now was whether we would have it to ourselves while we ate lunch or would have to share this slender monument with others.

First sight.​

A clearer view.​

Sure enough, we had the run of the place - the only two other hikers we'd seen - barely, they passed us as though we were standing still - apparently headed to some other bouldering destination that was even more betterer™ than this one. Not that there was any shortage of betterer places, thank goodness.

Who needs ropes? When you're my age, a fall doesn't hurt for long anyway (before you die). ​

Lunch at the Red Obelisk - sheltered by rocks - was a pleasant affair, allowing us to eat leisurely without any concern for the winds that'd howled by us to this point on our trip. That, and the fact that there were plenty of outcroppings and desert flora to enjoy made this our most enjoyable lunch of the trip!

Arches are so yesterday. Half-an-arches are where it's at!​

This Dollarjoint Prickly-Pear (Opuntia chlorotica) was a lot fuzzier than some of the others. A different variant, perhaps?​

I am not a fan of cholla, but this one was dazzling in the sun.​

From the Red Obelisk, the trail meandered another couple of miles, eventually turning south again toward the Wall Street Mill. To our surprise, this was the hardest part of the trail to follow, several sections requiring a bit of bouldering and negotiation of dry falls. In other words, fun!

Somewhere along the way...

In addition to the modern and defaced rock art we saw in the area, we also had a chance to visit the Red Lady pictograph and her nearby mortero. These were a couple of artifacts I'd been excited to show @mrs.turbodb, as I related my (disgusting) story of digging out the mortero on my previous visit.

If you know where these are, please do your part to keep their location a little harder to find, they are exposed enough as it is!

​

The Red Lady.​

​

A deep mortero.​

​

It was 1:00pm or so when we arrived at the Mill. Owned by Bill Keys, the one-man mill operated from 1932 to the mid-1940s, mostly doing custom work for other mines in the area. At times the mill ran for 24 hours per day with a maximum daily output of two to five tons depending on the nature of the ore. Keys charged miners $5 a ton for this processing, which generally grossed the miners between $35 and $50 a ton.

One of Keys' converted ore haulers.​

A one-man operation.​

Ore from surrounding mines was dumped into ore carts that would be winched up this rail and dumped into the top of the two-stamp mill.​

Keys’ operation of the mill ended in 1943 when he was confronted by Worth Bagley and ultimately ended up shooting the man. After turning himself in, Keys was convicted of manslaughter and - at 63 years old - was sent to San Quentin. He was paroled in 1948 and received a full pardon in 1956 as a result of an investigation and magazine articles written by Earle Stanley Garner (author of the Perry Mason mystery series) about Keys and the unjust conviction.

​

Keys placed this stone* after shooting Bagley. Guess he wasn't shy about what happened.
(*Technically, this is an NPS replacement for the original, which was defaced.)

​

Our loop complete, we returned to the parking lot where the tent - now drying for nearly five hours - had only a few remaining drops of water on the fly. It'd only be a few more hours before we had to set the darn thing up for the night, but for now I pulled out a towel, wiped off the remaining water, and got everything stowed so we could roll a few miles down the road. There, not far from the Pinto Wye, our third - and final - hike of the day would be a completely cross-country affair, no trail to be found. Perfection.

The best kind of trail is one you can't see.​

A hike into a remote canyon, we were in search of an old mine camp from the 1930s and something called a "Boulder Cabin," which I hoped might be similar to Cary's Castle, Bass Camp, or one of the other cabins-under-a-rock that we've encountered. Only time would tell; for now, we were enjoying ourselves as we made our way up the wash.

A silver cholla gleamed in the sun. The devil's plant.​

A purple pencil cholla showing off its shade.​

A green pencil cholla getting colorful with its spines.​

John's Camp was the first habitation site we encountered. Or, I suppose, it was the first one we recognized. Not much remained but the foundation for an old stove and a few metal cans, but less than a quarter mile up the wash, the tailings pile from the Gold Hill Mine was visible, so we headed that direction.

John's Camp sunstar.​

A cool old can.​

A good amount of tailings there. Perhaps we'll finally find an adit to explore!​

I'm not sure what caused us to turn around exactly, but we did - just before reaching the mine site - and there on some boulders along the side of the wash were the etchings of modern man. We don't know how modern, exactly, but I'd guess they aren't older than the early 2000's, given the lack of patina and subject matter.

Ethel and Ben must have been here on Valentines Day.​

Wilford, I hope you were a miner in the area, and not some modern day visitor.​

Our focus once again on the mine, we ascended the old road out of the wash to discover an old mill foundation. Built in April, 1931 by "ABJ," he wasn't going to let anyone forget it - nearly all of the footings carried his initials!

Perhaps this footer - once capturing the butt end of a beam - fell over.​

Apparently, ABJ had a dog named Ming.​

Sure enough, behind the tailings pile, a dark adit stretched into the hillside. Sealed long ago with wire mesh, time has rendered the seal irrelevant, a human-sized gap now available on both sides of the grate. Leaving my cohort behind as she explored the hillside looking for more workings, I headed in, hoping to find a golf-ball sized gold nugget as my reward.

Plenty of room to squeeze through.​

The 300-foot long adit ended up being completely straight and 100% boring.​

Having expected that the Gold Hill Mine was a small-time operation and that there wouldn't be much to explore, we pushed on up the canyon. While there'd been no trail to this point, we'd seen the rare footprint or two along the way, but from this point onward, we saw not a single indication that another human had passed this way.

Eagle Rock.​

As we neared the point on our map that I'd marked the Boulder Cabin, an even more prominent landmark presented itself on the hillside. Reminiscent of the Red Obelisk, I was sure I'd find some rock art along the smooth surface of the face.

The only rock art were the rocks themselves.​

Only a little further up canyon, we found the Boulder Cabin. At one time, this might have been like many of the other cabins that are built into boulders, but that time has long since passed. Today, only one of the three non-boulder walls had a few stones remaining, the rest having succumb to gravity over the decades. Still, it was fun to wonder what was, as we poked around this old mine camp.

Sole remaining low wall.​

The notch in the boulder was probably for an old wooden beam, running along the top of the stone wall.​

With not much left of the cabin, we split up to investigate some of the usual detritus that was scattered about camp, hoping that it might give some clue as to who was here, what they were doing, and how they managed to get here.

This was a cool old can we found, the "twist top" still intact, and the first of its kind that we've seen.​

Not far away, a very small old smelter - partially collapsed - showed remnants of green glazing droplets on the bricks. Copper?​

@mrs.turbodb made this discovery about 100 feet from the cabin. How in the world did this thing get up past the dry falls?​

With daylight fading, our search for the actual mine site - since surely there must have been one - as indicated by a waste pile or more machinery didn't last long. We had a little more than two miles back to the Tacoma, and we still had no idea where we'd be camping for the night.

We'd not thought much of this dry fall - and one other - on the way up, but having discovered the old truck, we realized the canyon must have changed significantly over the last century.​

Upon reaching the Tacoma, we realized we had a few options. With no backcountry camping allowed in Joshua Tree, we could:

• head east - to the BLM-managed Dale Mining District - where there's plenty of camping, but that would be an extra hour of driving to get to camp, and then another hour the following morning before we would reach our first trailhead.
• head south - to the BLM managed camping areas just south of Joshua Tree - which would be close to our first hike, but is nothing more than a glorified parking lot with dozens of generator-running-RVs. Not our kind of place.
• head back to our camp site in Jumbo Rocks - only a few minutes away, but half-an-hour from the next morning's trail.

And so, for the 3rd time in 24 hours, I found myself snapping a photo of The Penguin and Bowing Tree. It felt familiar - a feeling I don't often experience when I'm out on an adventure - and as the sun dropped below the horizon, we heated up some of the tastiest plain-Jane quesadillas we've had in a long time.

Standing tall.​

With no dishes to do, we strained to keep our eyes open as darkness settled in. While we'd slept well in the blustery conditions, we'd surely sleep better tonight as a stary, windless sky circled slowly overhead.

The next day would be our last in the Park, and it'd be different than the rest. Not all of our miles would come on foot, and hopefully the Tacoma was up to the task.

 

Certainly I'm not that old! I remember opening a can or two with a key. I think Spam used to come in a can like that. Canned hams too, but they were shaped like a ham. The "Key" was soldered on top of the can. You pop that off and there would be a starting tab on the can. Pry that out a little and slip the tab through the slot in the key and twist away. That's also when they thought lead solder was good to seal cans of food with. Maybe some TMI here....

 

Since this is a truck site I’ll mention that the first truck you photographed, with aluminum bodywork, is based on a Lincoln whose platform dates back to before the acquisition of Lincoln by Ford. The engine is a 358 cubic inch 60° V8 that was launched by Lincoln just after World War I and kept in the lineup by Ford after the acquisition of Lincoln in 1922. The crankcase is aluminum while the cylinders and heads are cast iron. Ford kept the engine until 1930, two years before the famous Ford flathead V8 was released with a more conventional 90° angle. And no aluminum. I photographed and wrote about it (and a few other desert finds) here:
https://www.curbsideclassic.com/uncategorized/trailside-classics-a-lincoln-v8-pickup-and-more/
My photos aren’t quite up to your standard of excellence @turbodb but my camera makes pretty good phone calls and fits really easily in my pocket.

 

Pick One to Hug | Snow in JTNP #3
Part of the Does it Always Snow in Joshua Tree? (Feb 2024) trip.

It's extremely rare that we camp in the same location two nights in a row, but our second night in the Jumbo Rocks campground was - being essentially windless, and certainly snowless - so much more pleasant than the first, that it was as if we'd driven for hours and camped somewhere entirely different.

Unfortunately, that didn't mean that the tent was dry. It was still cold, so a thick layer of frost had formed on all the exterior surfaces overnight - a situation that we'd ignore as we packed up a few minutes after sunrise - requiring us to redeploy the tent before setting out on our first trail of the day - to Mastadon Peak and the ruins of the Mastadon Mine.

To get there, we'd push south - through the transition zone between the higher elevation Mojave and lower elevation Colorado deserts - along the western edge of Pinto Basin, but first we made a quick stop to check out a couple granite formations I thought @mrs.turbodb would enjoy.

One of the more popular outcroppings, there'd been so many people at this arch the last time I was here, that I'd foregone any photos whatsoever.​

Silhouette.​

I wanted this rock to be a surprise, but apparently, I was the only one who completely missed the signs with arrows to Heart Rock. ​

After the short walk to two rather popular destinations, we took a slightly different path back to the Tacoma, soaking in the brisk morning air as the majority of the campers in the park eeked out their last hour of sleep. I can only imagine that it was like the Joshua Tree of old - with less hustle and bustle; a more solitary experience.

Not far away, we visited the Queen of the Desert. We've seen other yanic fertility symbols on our adventures, and it is thought that they came about when natural rock formations were recognized - and sometimes enhanced - by Native Americans.​

After making a few off-color jokes - how could we not? - and after @mrs.turbodb indulged in a couple of "tasty biscuits" (Duet Bites) - it was back into the cab for a forty-minute ride to our trailhead Cottonwood Spring and the southern edge of the Park.

By the time we reached Cottonwood Spring, the sky was looking entirely different than it had at the northern section of the Park.​

Every single palm was wearing a hula skirt.​

Oasis.​

Contrast.​

As you can imagine, this oasis was a special spot long before the National Park existed! Several morteros decorated the granite boulders in the area.​

From Cottonwood Spring, the Mastadon Loop hike would take us through a small section of the Eagle Mountains, with constantly changing terrain and commanding views of the southern portion of the park. We'd get a mix of weather as well - depending on which way we were facing - as clouds to our west and south provided a bit of drama overhead.

Up we go - the first of several very nice stairways.​

North through the Ocotillo, Pinto Mountain reached up towards the blue.​

Perhaps one day, we'll reach the summit.​

New growth on those same Ocotillo.​

There weren't many wildflowers, but these tiny white Eastern Mojave Buckwheat (Eriogonum fasciculatum var. polifolium) was showing off along the trail.​

A little less than two miles in, the terrain changed from a gravely wash to the rocky boulders we'd experienced elsewhere in Joshua Tree, and we started our climb towards Mastadon Peak. This was my favorite part of the trail, the overcast sky tempering the usual shadows; the orange granite striking against the brilliant blue sky.

More stairs.​

Carving this set must have been a mountain of work.​

I'm sure it was caused by water over time, but I like to imagine that a bolt of lightning struck this rock, splitting it cleanly in two.​

After a short, "not ADA accessible," according to @mrs.turbodb, scramble - we reached the top of Mastadon Peak. From there, views in all directions presented themselves, but none was more striking than the view to the west, where the Salton Sea stretched across the valley - a cesspool of poison.

​

On the far side of the Salton Sea, Anza-Borrego Desert State Park.​

Only a few hundred feet from the peak, the trail traversed the hillside once exploited by the Mastadon Mine. While the gold-bearing quartz vein was likely discovered in 1919, records indicate the mine was established in the 1930s and worked on and off by George Hulsey (and his family) for several decades. Originally, the ore was assayed at $744 a ton and to exploit it, an inclined shaft was eventually developed to a depth of 75 feet on the vein. However, faulting severed the main vein, and unable to relocate it, Husley eventually sold the mine, which was eventually - after the claim had lapsed in 1971 - acquired by the NPS (National Park Service).

The old shaft, well sealed.​

What remains of the ore bin at the mine was stabilized in 2015 by volunteers and the NPS.​

By the time we got back to the Tacoma, it was a little after 10:30am. The tent - in and out of the sun at the whim of the passing clouds - was mostly dry. After a quick towel-off by yours truly - while @mrs.turbodb prepped some sandwiches we would eat when the time was right - we got everything put away and set our sights on the first American Hiking™ trail of the trip - the road through Pinkham Canyon.

Note: American Hiking is the kind where your left foot controls speed, and your butt is remains in a seat.
​

On my previous trip to the Park, I'd thought that my descent through Berdoo Canyon was the only High-Clearance, 4WD road on offer, but since then I'd learned of the existence of Pinkham Canyon Road. Not only that, but the description I found led me to believe that it might be a smidge more exciting than the basically-a-forest-service-road that Berdoo turned out to be:

Pinkham Canyon is a true jeep trail with numerous ruts and rocks. A stock 4x4 with high clearance and 4 low should be able to manage the trail, but some of the sections require slow going. If you haven't aired down, now would be a good time to do so!

Overland Trail Guides​

Hoping for the best but accustomed to the overdramatization of road conditions, we held off on airing down as we exited I-10 and pointed the truck north. In front of us, the Cottonwood Mountains and some rather ominous looking skies provided plenty of visual interest, even if the road seemed a little tamer than we'd been sold.

Here's to hoping for something exciting!​

Looks like a fun hike. Maybe for another day, when we're not American Hiking™.​

The wash we were climbing through was broad, with plenty of Smoke Trees lining the route.​

It was lots of fun to watch the sun and clouds battle against the colorful hillsides of the Cottonwood Mountains.​

Oh no, do you think we'll make it since we're all aired up?​

At some point - around noon and knowing that we only needed to pull sandwiches out of the fridge in order to satisfy our stomachs - we stopped in the middle of the road and soaked in a few minutes of sun as we munched on the last of our provisions. Green grapes - juicy and firm - added a sweet splash at the end of the meal.

Lunch like a boss.​

By this point - probably two-thirds of the way through the 19-mile route - it was blatantly obvious to both of us that this "jeep" trail was just another example of internet hype. So, while my passenger settled down for a bit of an after-lunch-nap, I did what I could to spice it up a bit.

A trail like this requires all the lights.​

Soon enough we were back on only-slightly-smoother-than-Pinkham-Canyon pavement, headed north again, into the Mojave-Colorado Desert transition zone where our final hike of the trip awaited. First though, we had a stop to make - at the cholla cactus garden.

Pick one to hug.​

This is a place you really don't want to bring kids, and you're asking for a world of hurt if you even think about letting an animal out of your car. These Teddybear Cholla are the devil's plant, constantly dropping cholla balls that are surely worse than the deadliest land mine, and doing their darndest to embed their tiny little barbed hooks deep into the nearest flesh.

Most of all, it is not a place where you want to heed the call of nature, should such a situation arise.

For us though, it was the trailhead for another three-and-a-half-mile hike to the Golden Bee mine. So, after gathering up our various windbreakers and camera gear, we set off towards the Hexie Mountains, our fingers crossed that the weather would hold.

Dramatic skies over Pinto Basin.​

After traversing a mile or so of wash, we reached the base of the Hexie Mountains.​

A collapsed cabin, we must be on the right track.​

There are a few minor prospects scattered along this side of the Hexie Mountains, but two gold veins were discovered here that probably led to the Golden Bee: the Dickey Boy (or Dicky) and the Mabel.

By 1934, Eloge "Frenchy" Auclair and Daniel Leahy began developing the mine that would become the Golden Bee. Over the next few years, they followed the veins into the mountain with a 180-foot incline shaft, adits, crosscuts, drifts, and stopes across three different levels.

A small camp of five buildings and a headframe sprang up around the mine portal. Mine equipment consisted of a twelve-horsepower gas-driven hoist, an Ingersoll-Rand compressor, and a few air drills. The mine never had its own mill. Instead, ore was hauled over to the Wall Street Mill for processing. By 1941 and the start of WWII, the mine fell idle. Total production was about $40,000. The building at the end of the mine dump was a garage/workshop. It had the best view.

​

The Golden Bee Mine in 1941. Photo Courtesy of the NPS.

​

At some point while mining, honeybees built a hive in a water tank at the mine. They became so bothersome and aggressive that they almost forced Leahy and Auclair off the mine. The problem was so significant that the miners decided to poison the water with cyanide! That certainly did the trick and killed off all of the bees. I’m assuming they drained off the water and cleaned the tank before they re-used it. After that, the mine became known as the Golden Bee.

Starbuck's Exploring​

Climbing the hillside, we came to an old metal tank that served as the ore bin for the lowest level of the mine.​

An old spool of cable, once used to haul ore up the 180-foot shaft.​

Final ascent.​

The ore bin at the upper (main) level of the mine.​

Reaching the top just after 3:30pm, the skies were still looking ominous and gray, but no moisture had fallen, so we decided to poke around a bit in the hopes of finding an adit we could explore. Or, more accurately, I hoped we'd find an adit that could be explored. Ultimately - unfortunately, since I'm the one telling the story - the only adits we found were sealed; understandable I suppose, since the mine is visible from Pinto Basin Road, if you know where to look. Still, there were plenty of other artifacts for us to wonder about on the upper platform.

An old slag bucket, still sitting where the slag was poured into it ... and overflowed onto the rocks below!​

A concrete foundation that once secured machinery of some sort - a generator, perhaps.​

Frenchy | Mine | Nov 30 1937​

The old garage/workshop. Long collapsed, but still with a killer view.​

And with that, we were done. The hike back would be quick and uneventful, a little pep in our step so we could make dinner and clean up while it was still light out. Then, with no plan for where to stay, we exited the park in search of some BLM land where we could crash for the night. Anything would do, as long as we could get an early start the next morning.

The trip home...

Unlike most trips these days, this one entailed driving the Tacoma home - over the course of two days - for a bit of work that I have planned in the coming weeks. Along the way - at the northern edge of California and the southern end of the Cascade Range - we couldn't help but admire the snow-capped peaks that rose around us. While the snow pack was surely less than it'd been the previous winter, it was still a sight to behold.

Castle Crags.​

Mt. Shasta.​

Black Butte with a white cap.​

 

Replacing the Alcan Leaf Springs - with Chevy 63s

I've very much enjoyed my Alcan leaf springs. The first set I had was near as perfect as I could ask, and working with Lew - the new owner in 2020 - on the second set was a pleasure, even if the end result wasn't as perfect as I could have hoped.

Rather than go for a third set of Alcan's - which I am 100% sure would solve my problems - I'm going to try something a little different in the hopes of finding a solution that gives me a ride that is a little softer - but that can still carry the weight of the Tacoma; in the hopes of finding something with a little more travel - but that costs a little less.

Anyway, one winter day, I headed to Zane's @Speedytech7 to do the work. He'd already done a bang-up job of installing Chevy 63s on his Tacoma, and I knew the whole process would go a hundred times faster if I had his help.

That is, unless things ended up like when we relocated my rear shocks. Surely though, we've become smarter over the years.


The rest of this story is about the great time we had doing this work. If you've come here for a tutorial, I've created a step-by-step Chevy 63s on a 1st gen Tacoma guide with photos that covers the following aspects of the job:

• Why you might want to convert your Tacoma to Chevy 63 leaf springs.
• All the parts necessary to do the conversion.
• All the tools necessary to do the work (the way we did it).
• A walk through of the entire process.

Day 1

I pulled in about 2:30pm on a random Thursday afternoon. After being thoroughly impressed by Zane's new remote-controlled hydraulic gate, I unloaded the bed of the Tacoma so we could start the disassembly process once he got home from work.

I'd packed the bed as full as I could, to simulate the weight of a trip.​

Sure beats working in my outdoor, uncovered, 1-car parking pad.​

Even before Zane showed up, I started with the easy stuff, removing bolts here and there, so we could lift various bits off once there were two of us to carry the loads.​

Zane's job is a thankless one, but does have one benefit - he works 4 days a week and gets home somewhere around 4:00pm in the afternoon. Our plan then, after quick hellos - and several thank-yous from yours truly - was to try and do most of the disassembly before calling it a night. That would allow us to destroy - and then rebuild - the Tacoma the following day.

With Zane diving right in, things began to move at lightning speed. This guy knows his Tacomas and it was hard enough to keep up, much less take photos.

In mere moments, Zane had the bed rigged to the engine hoist, the easiest bed removal ever - didn't even need to remove the tent and bed rack first!​

We'll just store this over in this other bay of the shop!​

Removing the bed gave us easy access to all the other bits that we'd be stripping off the truck, but before diving in, I thought it'd be a good idea to pressure wash a bit of the EMHT debris off the now-exposed frame, top of the gas tank, and all the other nooks and crannies that had previously been tough to get to. It was a job that would make our lives just a little cleaner, though we'd still encounter plenty of dirt - piles of it in fact - as we pushed deeper into the project.

Getting the outside of the frame clean was easy. Unfortunately, that's not where the majority of the dirt was to be found...​

And then, the race was on. Plugs I'd never seen before were quickly disconnected. Fuel lines were separated so the gas tank could be removed. Brake lines, ABS sensors, and the e-locker on the rear axle were disconnected. It felt like Zane simply waved a magic wand and completed task after task, as I opened and closed drawers on his tool chest looking for the socket I needed to disconnect some reasonably unimportant part.

Zane had the gas tank unplugged before I could even grab my camera.​

I had to put the fuel filler neck bolt back in to snap a photo of it.​

There were three bolts on the gas tank skid, and I only caught Zane removing the final one.​

The e-locker plugs and breather were quickly disconnected.​

In no time, the small bolts securing the rear brake lines - and everything else attached to the axle housing - were removed.​

No better time than the present to drain the rear axle (we wouldn't be reinstalling this one)!​

With the gas tank removed, and every line-or-wiring harness between the frame and rear axle out of the way, it was time for a bit of measuring. Our goal - to know the exact location of the rear axle in relation to the frame - was something we wanted to make sure that we got right. Getting it wrong could hamper our ability to complete the project at all, even to the extent of making the Tacoma completely undrivable.

The problem - as we already suspected and would later confirm - was that the good folks at Toyota weren't as precise as they perhaps could have been when assembling the frames of these early-2000s trucks. Cross-members are mostly perpendicular to the frame rails. Holes cut into the frame are sort of in similar locations from side-to-side. And, naturally, no two trucks are exactly the same.

Thanks Toyota!​

We started by drawing a plum line on the frame to the location of the center of the rear axle.

Next, we measured from this hole on the transmission cross-member - which appeared to be in the same place on both sides of the truck - to the center of the rear axle.​

After getting what we thought we needed at the time - but which would later turn out to be barely enough for us to eek out success - it was finally time to disconnect the still-reasonably-new Alcan leaf springs. We had two choices at this point - we could remove the rear axle from the leaf springs by disconnecting the u-bolts, or we could remove the rear axle and leaf springs as a single assembly by pulling the bolts from the front spring hanger and the rear spring shackle.

Why remove it piecemeal when you can just remove and roll the whole kin-n-caboodle out of the way?​

Still plenty of room to work if we store this assembly right over here.​

We only had one more thing to do before taking a few measurements, and that was to cut out the muffler. This wasn't technically necessary, but it when Zane suggested that it would be easier for us to weld the passenger side front hangers for the Chevy 63s - and assured me that he had a sleeve we could use to repair the exhaust when we were done - I was happy to get the monstrosity out of the way.

Apparently, things were moving so quickly that I was struggling to even focus the camera at this point.​

And with that, it was time for burritos and bed. Day 1 had been a huge success, and having gotten to the point where we could start installation of the new leaf spring hardware in the morning, I was sure that we were way ahead of schedule.

Even with all the bits removed, we still weren't confident that the rear frame was strong enough to support itself.​

Day 2

We were up bright and early to start day 2, hoping that our measurements from Day 1 would be sufficient to accomplish our task. Conceptually, it was a simple 10-step plan:

1. Do a bit more measuring to figure out where the new front leaf spring hangers would be installed, then weld them up and tack them in place.
2. With the leaf springs temporarily installed in the front hangers, figure out the positioning of the rear hangers.
3. Cut off the factory-installed front and rear hangers to make room for the
4. Cut into the frame of the Tacoma - you know, "no big deal" - to french in the front hangers.
5. Tack the new front and rear hangers into place on the frame. [
6. Install the Chevy 63 leaf springs and rear axle.
7. Take a bunch of measurements and reinstall the bed to make sure the rear axle was in the same place as it had been originally with the Alcan leaf springs.
8. Finish weld the new front and rear hangers.
9. Cut and weld a couple frame-reinforcement plates around the front hangers.
10. Reinstall everything we'd removed on Day 1.

Simple enough! ish?

All the bits and pieces we'd be using to complete the job.
(Except for that massive axle Zane had hanging around the shop.)​

Things were going smoothly until approximately the second-half of step ...1. That's about when we realized that our yesterday-selves had measured a lot, but probably not quite enough as our today-selves would prefer. Still, we muddled through and completed one step after the other - Zane doing most of the welding and me doing a bunch of cutting and grinding.

None of the bits and pieces from RuffStuff come assembled, so Zane got to work on those while I prepped the frame.​

Just gluing metal together... ​

Making the frame shiny.​

Does this look like the right place?​

The first test fit.​

What's this? All lined up? How could we have gotten that right?​

A quick test fit with the bed, to make sure things look good in the wheel wells.​

Ever thankful for all the help Zane was contributing - not to mention the shop space - I'd made it clear that any food for the duration of my visit was on me, and that we should eat well. Or, if not well, then at least we should eat things that Zane liked. So, as 2:30pm rolled around and we'd not stopped for lunch, I gently reminded Zane that I needed him to keep eating so that he had enough energy to keep helping me with a project that would take me an order of magnitude* longer to do on my own.

* For all you math nerds out there, that means Zane was doing 90% of the work, for a few measly meals.

It was not nerve racking "at all" to cut the frame.​

Huh, where'd that pile of dirt come from?​

Well, that can't be good for frame rust.​

As Zane worked on the front hangers, I chopped off the originals on the rear.​

Slowly but surely, Zane hogged out just the right amount of frame.​

It was a lot easier for me - I just had to get the positioning right before melting them on.​

Molten metal.​

The new ... and the old.​

Turns out, the same thing would happen for every meal that had happened for our first - both of us easily consumed by the project at hand - each one seeming to shift later and later in the day. It was just after midnight when we wrapped up day 2 and ordered up a hot pizza that would be quickly consumed before we headed to bed.

Day 3

With only finish welding of the new hangers and reinforcement plates remaining, we thought - or at least I thought - we'd wrap up the job within an hour or two, leaving plenty of time get started on the next activity that we had planned for my visit...

After a bit of fiddling, a perfect fit.​

Gluing on the last bits.​

A bit of primer all around.​

I'm not one of those guys who likes a throaty rumble out of the back of my truck. We definitely needed to get the muffler back on.​

Painted and the Chevy 63s in place!​

Zane tells me that these little plates - which space the leafs of each spring and keep the friction down - is part of the secret to their fabulous ride.​

Turns out that it took us until just after 2:00pm to wrap up that final bit of fitting, welding, and painting. By then, we were hungry and - once again - late for lunch. The truck wasn't completely back together - not by a long shot - but the remainder of the reassembly would require us to dig into our next project. Since we were still - literally - waiting for the paint to dry on this one, it was time for burgers and a short break.

After lunch, we'd have less than 30 hours to complete the second project - a tall order that would see us working late into the night - with no way of knowing whether we'd be successful until the very end. Still, it was a project I'd hoped to accomplish a couple years earlier when I'd visited Zane's shop to swap out my clutch - and we were both determined that we'd get it done before I had to blast off for home.

Keep reading the rest of the story - New Diamond Axle Housing from Front Range Off Road.



Epilogue: Are U-Bolts Really a Single-Use Part?

There's an ongoing "discussion" in the world of truck modifications:

I'm changing something about my leaf springs, can I reuse my U-bolts, or do I need to purchase new ones every time?

​

I'm not here to answer that question - I've been known to tell people that they should always use new u-bolts, while regularly reusing them myself - but I did want to share what happened to me on the way home from Zane's.

After working our way through most of the second project I alluded to above, it was time for me to blast off towards home. We'd accomplished almost everything we'd set out to complete, but there was a little bit of work that I'd have to do once I got home. And, doing that would require me to remove the Chevy 63 leaf springs we'd just installed (with some brand-spanking-new 5/16" u-bolts).

Beefy.​

I didn't view this removal as any sort of problem; I figured that they would still be new enough and I'd reuse them. The problem was something else entirely: the top plate I'd purchased was designed for 5/8" u-bolts, not the 9/16" that I had on hand. Being smaller, mine would fit, but there was a bit more space around each bolt than we were comfortable with when we tried installing them using the supplied washers.

Luckily, Zane had some larger diameter fender washers, and we installed the u-bolts - torquing them to 110 ft-lbs - before I hit the road for a 300-mile journey.

It wasn't until I got home and started backing off the nuts that I realized how much force is really involved with u-bolts, and why there are those who suggest that the bolts deform under load may not be entirely wrong.

These washers were not up to the task of combatting 110 ft-lbs over a 1/16" gap.​

Hopefully some extra thick Grade 8 washers will do the job nicely until I can get some 5/8" u-bolts that fit the top plate correctly.
​

So maybe the moral of the story is this: reuse your u-bolts or don't, but for goodness sake, use the correct washers!

.​

 

Link = 404

 

I got the 404 at the link too.

 

Have you tried believing in it more?

If I believe it works but don't check it then it basically works

 

New Diamond Axle Housing from Front Range Off Road

It's been a minute since I happened to glance under my truck on the way home from a trip and noticed that the rear axle housing was cracked and leaking at the passenger side leaf perch. Luckily though, the sinking feeling I had at the time has faded, no doubt due to the smashing success of the patch I installed - following Ryan's @Reh5108 lead - which has been trouble-free ever since.

Of course, the only reason I installed the patch was because it was going to take a long time - six weeks was the estimate - to get a extra-beefy axle housing from Diamond Axle and Front Range Off-Road. Turns out, six weeks turned into twelve, so I'm now even happier that I jumped on that patch.

​

When I finally did receive it, I wasn't super happy about how the axle housing had been packed, but luckily it seemed to be undamaged.​

Extra beefy.​

Outside. And in.​

Interestingly, a few days after receiving the new housing, I got a call from Front Range Off-Road asking me to cut off and send back my OEM ABS housing ends as cores within 30 days, or - if I preferred - to pay an additional $300 to keep my old housing as a "spare." Having already paid-in-full 12 weeks prior - and with no mention of this "core" charge at the time - I was dumbfounded. Plus, by this time I'd been driving on my patched housing for nearly 90 days - long enough to know that it was fully functional - and I was in no rush to replace it with the slow-to-arrive Diamond housing.

"We need you to cut them at least 1" inboard of the weld" and send them to us! Apparently, these flanges are worth their weight in gold.​

Thankfully, after a bit of back-and-forth, I was able to convince the good folks at Diamond that it was not in their best interest to ask for more money after the fact, especially when it wasn't mentioned in the original invoice, and it'd taken them twice as long to deliver as they'd initially promised.

Now, nearly three years later, it's finally time to install the new axle housing. Not because the patch has failed or because of some fear-of-failing that I have, but because I'm replacing my stock-length Alcan leaf springs with some Chevy 63s. As part of that work, I'll be unbolting the OEM housing anyway, so I might as well bolt the new Diamond housing back in.

So yeah, it's feature creep.

Also, when I say "I," I am - as always - extra grateful to Zane @Speedytech7 for his help with the whole process. I'm sure I could do it myself, but it's nice to have someone around who knows what they are doing.

​

OK, so this post won't go through all the steps or show all the photos, but it is what happened when Zane and I tackled this work while in the process of replacing my leaf Alcan springs with Chevy 63s - a project that already had the rear of the Tacoma looking "naked," the perfect time to throw in a new axle housing.

Day 1 to Day 3: A Quick Recap

I'd shown up at Zane's on a Thursday afternoon, and we'd quickly gotten to work stripping down the rear end of the Tacoma to cut up the frame and install some new, longer - and most importantly, more comfy - Chevy 63 leaf springs. Despite taking a good half-day longer than we'd expected, the project had gone very well, and now that we were ready to reassemble everything, it was the perfect opportunity to bolt in the new axle housing rather than reinstalling the one we'd pulled to do the leaf spring work.

When you've got the right tools, removing the bed - even with the bed rack and tent still installed - is a piece of cake! Luckily, Zane has the right tools.​

Out with the old.​

Naked.​

Afternoon of Day 3

All the bits and pieces I'd brought along for the job.​

As we'd worked our way through Day 2 of the leaf spring job, I realized that it'd be better to have the axle housing painted prior to installation, so while Zane continued with the real work, I'd put on my artistic hat to work on the masterpiece I call "basic black."

First, gray primer.​

"Becoming Basic Black." Not that any of this will really matter once the thing is exposed to constant sandblasting under the truck.​

After a few coats of primer and several more of attention-grabbing-black, we moved the housing into Zane's basement in the hopes that it'd dry better in 60+ °F indoors, than it would in the high-30°F temperatures of eastern Washinton winter. That move lasted about an hour, at which point, the off-gassing was giving Zane a nice buzz, and we moved it back outside!

Even in the shop, the housing was just fine by the time we wrestled it into position under the rusty new (to me) leaf springs, ready to figure out the positioning of not only the axle housing, but all the bits we'd need to attach to it - you know, for things like leaf spring perches, shock mounts, and other obviously optional accessories, such as brake lines and emergency brake cables.

Seems to be about the right width, at least!​

The first order of business was to determine the location of the perches that the leaf springs would sit on.​

Besides the obvious importance of getting the perches installed in a location that would center the axle under the Tacoma, we also needed to get them installed such that the angle between the top of the perch and the front flange for the rear diff housing were the same as they'd been on the original housing. This required both math and reading, so we were careful to take it slow and check each other's work several times.

In order to make the math simple(r), we leveled the leaf perches on the original housing and then read the angle of the flange on the rear diff housing.​

Matching things up. Angles are confusing, and this took longer than we expected.​

I have no idea if we got everything "perfect," but at least the opening on the axle housing pointed forward rather than back, so it probably wasn't all wrong.

A quick tack.​

All glued up.​

It was during the welding of the leaf perches - the first pieces we were welding to the 3/8" thick axle housing - that I realized it would have been a good idea to bring along my Miller 211. Zane is - without a doubt - a better welder than I am, but we could have used a little extra juice to get the thicker material heated up. "A quick second-pass once you get home wouldn't be a bad idea," Zane suggested.

It was nearly 10:00pm when we locked in the positioning of the rear axle housing and while we were both getting hungry and tired, we knew we needed to push on just a little longer in order to set ourselves up for success on the final day of our project.

The next order of business - seating the rear axle seals - was one that was notorious for being tricky. These seals are what keep all that disgusting gear oil contained in the housing, and they have a very narrow retaining ring on the rear axle where they can be positioned. That, and the fact that they are finicky when being pressed into the housing meant that we'd need to be extra careful as we installed them, since I hadn't brought any extras!

Zane had been more than happy to help with every part of this project, but I could tell that he was fine with me being the one to install the rear axle seals. ​

The seal driver set from O'Reilly didn't have a driver that was quite the right size ... until it magically was. ​

With the seals driven in, we removed the brake drums from the OEM housing and crossed our fingers that the retainers - on which the seals would run - were in the right spot for the new housing. Zane was convinced they would be, and while I couldn't argue his logic, I remembered how entailed the process - of getting them pressed into the correct location - was when I'd replaced them a few years earlier, so I wasn't quite so sure.

Out of the old.​

Still, we wouldn't know immediately if we were in for a world of hurt, since before we could test the axles in the new housing, we had to get the rear diff - which would support the ends of the axles - installed first. It was midnight when we separated it from the OEM housing, Zane working to clean the rubber gasket material off of the mating face, while I installed new threaded studs onto the Diamond housing to secure the rear diff.

"Sometimes these are a little tough to separate" -Zane​

Tasty!​

As with any job, good prep is the most important part!​

With some new FIPG (form-in-place-gasket), the Diamond was ready for its heart transplant.​

It was 12:39am when we stood back to admire our handiwork. We'd wanted to get this step taken care of before calling it a night, just so the FIPG would have a few hours to set up, reducing the likelihood that we'd screw something up as we continued the assembly process.

It'd been a long day, and we were spent. It was time for dinner, and then sleep.

The perfect stopping point. Never mind that we reached it well after the perfect stopping time.​

Day 4

Exhausted, we'd had no trouble falling asleep immediately after a pizza dinner. Still, we were both surprised the next morning when it was much later than either of us expected when we each woke up. For me - usually up around 7:00am with no alarm - the fact that my phone was reporting 8:43am was crazy. It wasn't until an hour later - just before Zane showed up a bit after 10:00am - that I realized what was going on: we'd lost an hour to daylight savings time!

Though later than we'd preferred, the moment of truth had arrived - it was time to check the fit of the axle seals on the rear axles. If they weren't correct, we'd have only one option: put the OEM housing back under the truck.

With a bit of purple sharpie and a few rotations of the axle in the housing, we were thrilled to find that the seal was perfectly centered on the retainer.​

As Zane headed out for a quick cup of coffee - at "2nd Base Espresso," an establishment that wasn't really his speed - I got started fabricating some of the little brackets we'd need over the course of the day to secure the brake lines, emergency brake cables, and ABS wires to the housing. I'd actually purchased a few of these from Toyota in the hopes that we could just "stick them on," but it turned out that making our own was just as easy.

Bending metal is the first step in making any simple bracket. Followed by drilling a hole and tacking a nut to the back side.​

Positioning all the brake lines, wires, and cables in their approximate locations, and confirming a few measurements from the OEM housing, I'd hold a bracket in place while Zane tacked - and then welded - each one in place.

These may not look pretty, but they are perfectly positioned and allowed us to reuse all the OEM brake lines and wiring harnesses, saving us hours (or days) of making our own.​

We hadn't been working long but having lost an hour into thin air as we slept, it was already after noon, and time for lunch. Still, the end was in sight. All that remained was reinstalling the pieces we'd removed the first afternoon, a quick check of the ride height in order to determine the correct location to install the lower shock mounts to the rear axle housing, and then the 350-mile drive home.

The finishing touches.​

With all the weight back on the frame, it was clear that we hadn't gotten it quite right. I'd wanted to take a few inches out of the back, getting it closer to level, but we'd done a bit more than that, the front now ever-so-slightly-higher than the rear.

This was totally understandable - Zane had guessed at which leafs to leave in the Chevy 63 leaf packs when he'd prepped them - and also completely unacceptable. And, while the fix wasn't hard - I'd just need to reinstall one of the leafs that he'd removed, raising the rear an inch or two in the process - it was something I'd have to do at home.

And that meant heading home shockless. For Zane and me, it was a fitting end. It was Deja Vu all over again.

Day 4+1: Really Finishing Up

By some stroke of luck, I had a few rainless hours over the course of the first few days that I was home. In them, I removed the leaf springs, added another leaf to each side, and got the lower rear shock mounts positioned, melted into place, and painted.

My 240v welder didn't even break a sweat with the thicker material.​

Done! And sitting pretty - with 4 inches of travel to the bump stop and 5 inches of shock shaft showing.​

It'd been a long five days but dang, the ride of these Chevy 63s is amazing and it sure is nice to finally use this axle housing!






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$300 for the ends? I'll harvest some for that.

The early-morning crews at the junkyard here always take the third members and leave the empty axle housings.

Knowing Toyota, the ends are the same on Sequoias, Tundras, and 4Runners too. I could get a couple sets a month easy.

 

I love watching these fab jobs come together. I need to get a good welder, welding is like a Zen thing. I'm not good at it, but I started learning MANY years ago in paint & body (at a shop that used to be Carroll Shelby Sports Cars in Dallas, which I didn't know until later). Laying down paint and laying down welds has some similarities, and both are rewarding when you get it just right. I have a '77 Celica that needs some cancerous metal taken out and new metal grafted in, but mostly cosmetic stuff. Just need the time and space . . .

Good work there, guys!

 

That's the diabolical part, ends are different on the different platforms. Sequoia one is a totally different pattern. That said they probably still want them cuz I bet they build axles for those platforms