Daily Driving - the cheapskate build edition

Speaking of which, got some new rubber ordered today. Took advantage of Discount Tire’s sale to get some 255/85/16 Yokohama G003’s for the rig. We gettin’ serious now!

 

Niiiiice.

I’m debating whether or not I’m going to wait till my Grabbers wear down or if I want to pull the trigger on skinny tires soon and just try to sell the Grabbers.

To clarify, I definitely want to get them now lol I’m trying to convince myself to be responsible and wait.

 

Thank goodness I went ahead and ordered the tires last week. Found a good old nail embedded in my tire this morning.



I guess this can be a review of the Yokohama G015s.

I’ve been running them in a P265/75/16 for I think about 20,000 miles. I honestly wasn’t expecting too terribly much when I bought them. They were some of the cheapest ATs I could get at the time and I still lived in town, I just wanted something a bit more aggressive for hunting in a WMA. Little did I know that over the next year, I’d end up with land in the national forest and would be building a home out there.

Fast forward to today. For the past 10 months, I’ve ran minimum 6 miles of gravel/dirt forest roads every single day of the week. I travel ~50 miles daily for work on highways.

So, that’s their use. The performance is interesting. They’ve just always gripped. I haven’t been in deep soupy mud, but as I said somewhere earlier in this post, I’ve never needed traction and not had it. They actually saved my rig a couple weeks ago. One lone tired grabbed when it needed to and kept me from rolling into a substantially deep rut. The soft compound just seems to grab on to harder-packed ground.

The bad, however, is the life-span. These tires have been demolished by the forest roads. They’re absolutely ate up, and have developed cuts and nicks on the sidewalls, chunks of tread ripped off, and even some decent cuts into the body of the tire between the tread blocks. I’ve had I think 4 different nails in different tires. I actually ended up having to buy two brand new ones a few thousand miles into having them because of a sidewall puncture. Somehow, all 4 I’ve been driving on have ended up around 7/32 now.

My conclusion is that for a mostly on-road truck, these would actually be a relatively dang good AT tire. I would only recommend buying them in an LT size if you will be doing any amount of off-roading or even just in gravel and hope to achieve some longevity.

*Edited to include pictures off all 4 tires. I guess they still technically had some life to them, but this is only 20,000 miles…

 

Made a sunrise trip into Eastern time to get the new muddies mounted up.

 

It’s a beautiful day over here.

 

Had some fun wheeling around the national forest this weekend and testing out the set-up. I’m pretty happy with where she’s at.

 

Softopper acquired!

 

Well, as if just picking up the softopper wasn’t good enough, I guess the universe decided I needed a break. Got a little weird in a Lowes parking lot on a Sunday afternoon! Good times were had with @disel_V1

 

Looking good JD

 

Thanks buddy! Put a sleeping platform together this morning from scrap I had laying around the shop. Super excited to give it a shot one night soon.



The idea with this setup is the back section is only accessible with the tailgate down, so I can “secure” my tools/recovery gear/etc. The area under the platform near the cab can be accessed by sliding either of the panels on top of the other.

 

Nice

 

Today was a beautiful day to get up to no good with @Dayman Karate

 

Went to a Recovery Workshop hosted by Venture Unknown this weekend, and we ended the day with a fun little trail Sean knew of. This is the second obstacle before a rock climb to the overlook.

This is what it looked like on the line he tried first.


This is once we made it up to the top.



And this was the final rock obstacle gatekeeping the ridgeline before we headed back down the other side and around.

 

Finally got a few projects crossed off the list. I really pooped the bed taking pictures of the process as I went through the installs, but here's what I got at least.

Converted my battery terminals to the marine style with a top post. Which made getting my Blue Sea switch installed using the winch power bracket from Lambtek Innovations way easier.



Then I got my Ironman4x4 winch installed. Their specs called for mounting the control box on the outside top plate of your bumper, which I didn’t care for. So I used a couple self-tappers to install it behind the grill.




I also finally got my RCI skid package bolted up. I’ve had these bad boys sitting in my office for a couple months, just waiting for me to get the right sized bolt extractor so I could take out one of the stock bolts that had seized up and rounded off the head.



Now I gotta find time to take off the front wheels and get my shocks cranked up to support all the weight I’ve added.

 

Wanna knock a couple of my list? I don't have too many

 

Maybe we need to keep a running tab going on a mod day thread. Once the list gets so big we go ahead and make it happen for folks. I’m really starting to enjoy workin on these trucks, but I’m pretty sure my wife will make me disappear if I even think about doing anything else to mine for a good long while. Gonna have to start wrenchin on other folks’ at this point.

 

I've got coolant, water pump, thermostat, driveshaft u-joints(all preventative maintnance), head/fog light wiring upgrade and probably something else sitting around. I need to buy the 5th gen T4R rotors, calipers, and pads to do that job...as I have the dust shields already

 

Yep, I wouldn’t have a clue with any of that. But I’d love to watch you do it. Lol

 

Memorial post for the old stock plate. Served it’s purpose for the time it was on there I’d say.

 

This seems like a quality piece of equipment from GearAmerica. I did a decent amount of research trying to find another company that wasn’t just re-branded chinesium coz I didn’t really want to spend quite that much for the Factor55 ring. I think my recovery kit should be complete now. Also picked up some Rhino USA 7/16” soft shackles and 3/4” bow shackles.