Burt, The Old Man

A few photos of the past couple weeks.

 

Nice build!
Which voltage boosting fuse are you running of HKB? The user settable one or just the standard mini blade style one?
I have an optima red top and really like this approach rather than upgrading to a larger alternator.

 

Just the mine blade one it's really only needs the .5v boost. I am ditching my optima soon in favor of a Northstar. The optima is starting to struggle in the cold below about 15°

 

I'm gonna pick one up to try and help prolong the life of my red top.
Mine is still kicking, but when the time comes i'll likely be doing the same because of all the reviews about the northstar and what people have to say about them.

 

I wouldn't say it will make it last forever, but by giving the battery a full charge reduces the speed at which the battery degrades.

 

I agree. But it should help prolong it a little more and give me more juice to work with with the truck off and the battery being more changed than it currently is with stock setup.

 

Photos from the storm that rolled through the area over the last 2 days.

 

Did some Black Friday shopping for the truck. Switching back to my trusted brand of battery. Hopefully it will be in by next weekend.

 

New phone mount installed from TackForm.
I put in the location for the clock which I don't have.

 

Took an opportunity to get out during one of our recent snow storms.

 

The Cross bars made a return after a couple months of not running them because it was time to cut a Christmas tree.

 

I'd like to take offense by this and dispute the attributes, but dammit, it's kind of true. People that I commonly work with over the phone or through email always think I'm a +70 year old man... When they finally meet me in person, they're always shocked to find out that I'm only 36... Ain't easy being a Bert... or a Burt.

 

It's the name of a work horse, but not a fast work horse. But one you can never tell no.

 

Did some snow wheeling with a friend of mine. Got to use the maxtrax and winch a couple times.
Multiple short video are on my Instagram page but I can't get them on here.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B6EutLZHBPf/?igshid=dn21qssrcpaq

https://www.instagram.com/p/B6EueVwHjVG/?igshid=1oh5vekduaccv
https://www.instagram.com/p/B6EuMrWn08o/?igshid=1m9vxm04nrp30
https://www.instagram.com/p/B6EuAr9nIG1/?igshid=1arcllgt270bo
https://www.instagram.com/p/B6Et2NPHcQs/?igshid=s742ra183n1j
https://www.instagram.com/p/B6D-tKTnNPp/?igshid=14ppa5w3ot7vi

 

Took a drive over to Powderhorn Colorado, it was snowing lightly as I left Gunnison but I got progressively harder the closer I got. I originally thought about making the 65 mile drive to lake city but as it was 3:30pm I only had about an hour of light left I decided to cut it short and go to Powderhorn Instead.
The highway on the way there.

Based on where I live I have focused the build of Burt around driving conditions just like these. So getting out in these conditions is always fun and lets me think about what comes next on the little truck.
I stopped to take a few pictures in the valley of Powderhorn, turns out powderhorn is about 4 buildings a single room school. Not much else to see and with the snowfall becoming heavier there wasn't much to see overall.


I had an interesting find, normally when its snowing the worse lights to have on are LED Lights. The bright white light they put out normally lights up all the snow coming that you are driving into. I found however, that compared to having lights on the A pillar or Roof Like my past vehicles having LEDs on the bumper below the line of the hood were not as bad. Especially during a cloudy dust were its not quite dark enough for headlights to be effective but the flat light makes the snow look completely flat, the LEDs were bright enough to give good viability to the snow and help see the ended of the road, ditches, ect.
For example: what LEDs do in the snow.

A couple final photos before heading back to the Highway.


As I started the return journey of the trip I got back on the "highway" and found that even though I it had been a good 30 minutes off on side roads. There still was no sign that a plow had ever made a pass since the snow had started a couple hours before.
Back on the road and getting darker by the minute it got me thinking about what light set up I would like to have on Burt for when I have to do some of the long winter drives. My current plan is to run a set of Light Force Striker Halogen Driving light, with an amber cover for snow/dust which are removable if I want a more white light. I then plan on having a set of Baja Designs SAE squadron amber pods on the front end as well. The vertical cutoff should help a ton to reduce the amount of snow that's lit up in the vision on the driver IE me. Then a S2 sport amber flood light out back for a dust/reverse light.

After that drive it seems that it might be time for a bit of an electrical overhaul of the little truck.

 

this is awesome, i wish it snowed like that around here, the first half inch and you see more cars in the ditch than on the road its ridiculous.. if we had that much snow around here i'm pretty i would be the only truck ON the actual road...truck looks great and hopefully you find the right lights for you

 

Giving the Husky Floor liners a try, so far I am extremely happy with them.

 

My buddy got a foam cannon so Burt got a wash to remove at the salt and road grim.

 

Over the holidays I got a Kenwood radio and a Kenwood Ham radio. On a thread here I saw someone mount the radios on top of each other and I hoped to be able to mount mine in that same way.
First was pulling the dash apart.
Which was easy enough, the climate control panel I ended up breaking the hardest upper right clip as I expected.

I made up the Harness for the music radio. It only took about 15 minutes and just having the diagrams pulled up.
a quick test confirmed everything was worked and hooked up correctly.
And as usual here's about where I got distracted and forgot to take pictures. So here's the antenna mounted.

Here's the end project,
Kenwood kmm-bt328u
Kenwood TM-281A
And a Paranoid Fab ashtray replacement bracket.

 

Went out and got a few night photos after today's snow storm. Since it's usually less than 15° during the day snow doesn't melt very fast around here. So it builds up pretty quickly.

Because of this we use much larger snow removal equipment. This is one of the 3 or 4 CAT 644Ks. This was a 624K filling up.

Heres a shot from one from last winter clearing snow. These payloaders are absolutely massive up close.

Found what I believe is a snowshoe hare on the way in, then found 3 more on the way out. Non of which wanted to get off the road. I stayed back until they finally hoped off the side into the sage.

On the roads on the snow was only 6-8" of powder then a nice hard layer that Burt was too light to break through especially aired down to 9psi.

Off the main road however was a much different story I got stopped in my tracks in about 2' of powder on top of a layer a compacted snow and ice about a foot deep.

Eventually I found a nice spot on a hill and without a moon it was good for shooting stars.

I was only about 5 miles outside of town but Gunnison is such a small town that the light pollution is nothing like anything the front range.

I by no means am a photographer, just some guy that messes around with a camera from time to time.

I am amazed with this little truck every time I take the truck out, especially in the snow. It's just so capable with it comes to snow being so light and having quite of bit if low end torque and great gearing for the 31s.