OnlyDirtRoads

120,000 miles!

Seems like only yesterday my FJ was brand new, with plastic bumpers and crappy OEM tires. It still feels new, but at 120,000 miles, it has twice as many miles on it as any car I've ever owned. I have no plans to do anything but put another 120,000 miles on it, and more. So far, it still has the original clutch and original back brake pads.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Aug 8, 2013

It's been six months. Time to stop using my broken leg as an excuse and start writing. In fact, the last several months were not what I'd planned on, but life rarely goes according to plan.
Playing catch up after being injured has taken a lot longer than I expected. My leg isn't at 100% yet. Until recently, I would have pegged it as 95%, as I've been able to do fairly long hikes, and fish a little. I've had to be very careful with where I walk and where to put my foot, which takes a bit more energy.
Fourth of July weekend, we went for a hike in the Medicine Bow Maountains of Wyoming. It was a gorgeous day and a gorgeous place. My ankle was fine. However, last weekend, I was in Salt Lake City for Outdoor Retailer. I got in around noon and started walking the show. By 3, my ankle was badly swollen and in some pain. I began to wonder how I was going to walk back to my parked car, and how I was going to be able to work the rest of the show. Happily, I brought a pair of Hokas with me. I wore them to the show the next day. Much to my happiness, there was zero pain and zero discomfort for the rest of the show! It was like magic. It did make me aware that my ankle isn't anywhere near as healed as I thought. This is somewhat sobering, but a reality.
A pro tip for those in Salt Lake City: in the summer, the SLC farmers market is in Pioneer Park. It's a great venue, list of parking and lots of trees. Hell's Backbone Grill has a booth there. It's the best restaurant in Utah, and the items in the booth were a welcome respite from trade show food. Check them out!

A break....

After a six-month hiatus; I’m going to try to resuscitate this blog. I’ve had too much going on and something had to give.  Two months ago, I got a break I wasn’t really looking for…while walking to my truck, on a sidewalk in Boulder, I slipped on ice and broke my leg. After I fell, I wasn’t in pain, so I walked two blocks to my truck. My left ankle seemed stiff. I got into the FJ, started the engine and pushed in the clutch. It was then I realized something was wrong.

I drove to the ER, and learned there I’d broken my tibia and fibula and badly sprained my ankle.

So…so two months and a week, I was in a cast…no real exercise, couldn’t drive at all for a few weeks, then could only drive a rental with an automatic.

The FJ sat all that time; batteries getting lower and lower. Periodically, Nancy would run the engine for a while to try to keep ahead of the batteries.

This experience has many perspectives: helping me see the need to slow down; me realizing it’s OK to ask for help. And more.

A new tent! (We hope!)

It appears our new RTT will arrive in Prescott by the end of this week! As Prescott is a multi-day drive from here, we'll fold the beginning of our vacation, Labor Day weekend, and "The-trip-to-get-the-tent" all into one.

Friday at 0800, I will give a speech for a client in Boulder. I have awesome clients; so I couldn't say "No" when I was asked to speak. I'll drive into town, run through my PowerPoint deck; drive back home, change clothes, hook the Horizon to the FJ, fill the water tank, lockup the house and leave.

We are meeting some overlanding freinds at their house on the Western Slope and will caravan to Woods Lake, near Telluride for the night. The next day, we'll both drive to Hovenweep and camp there for the weekend. Our freinds assure us that it isn't crowded, even on Holiday weekends. We'll see.

Monday, at some point, we'll then drive from Hovenweep to Prescott, AZ; and welcome the Adventure Trailer crew in the morning. ( Note to self: "Find a donut shop in Prescott".) Ben from Equipt1 will also be there, it'll be nice to see him, and possibly even get a tour of the entire Overlanding Industrial Complex. Hopefully, in short order, we'll have our new RTT on the Horizon, and will mail our car camping Kelty tent back home, so we don't have to drag it all over the Western US. We have a few optional routes planned from Prescott to the Bay Area; and will select one based on what time it is when we depart Prescott.

One Last Trip (for the tent!)

At Overland Expo, we decided to buy a new, trailer specific tent. An order was placed, with an estimated delivery daye of "late summer".  A couple of Fridays ago, I posted our "old" tent for sale on a couple of forums, and promptly decided to go camping. Where? No idea. We were packed and ready to roll out; and had only to fill the water tank with water. As I was doing so a neighbor walked by to see where we might be headed. He mentioned that the access road to one of our favorite places to fish will close in mid-August. We decided to go there. The lame part: It's maybe 45 minutes from our cabin.

All the dispersed campsites were taken, so we stayed in the state campground. It's small and well kept, and a 5 minute walk to the trailhead. Our neighbors were nice and most of the sites surrounding ours were vacant. Saturday we walked down to the Cache La Poudre, which involved a mile of trail downhill, to the river. We walked another few miles downstream and jumped in. Before long, with Nancy on one side of the river and me on the other side, we were both catching fish. We caught a LOT of fish. Brookies big and small, a couple of rainbows, and a bunch of cutthroat all happily rose to a yellow stimmie. We had a blast. I even slipped on a rock, and fell in, getting pretty much soaked. I was happy to not break my flyrod. A big thunderstorm rolled in around 4 so we broke down our flyrods and hiked back to camp. Nancy cooked yet another great dinner and we parked ourselves on the hammocks until it got dark.  As we talked about getting into the tent, a nice doe walked right up to our camp, took one look at us, and sauntered into the darkening woods. It was a good day: we caught a couple zillion fish, had a good 6 mile hike, I took a cold bath, and we had a great dinner.

I returned home to learn that several people wanted to buy our old tent. A couple of emails; and arrangements were made to pick it up. The next day, we learned our new tent wouldn't arrive until the end of August.  We hope it will arrive in time for our vacation in September.

Next post: September, the Lost Coast, and us!

Plugging back in...

The last weeks have been busy with travel and blog posts got less important for a while. As I started to get caught up, I realized I had started to create a monster..a blog with many pages about mods to the FJ. This wasn't really what I intended, so I'll fast forward through that. Interested in something specific? Drop me a note and I'll expound upon anything, if I can.

To fast forward through the "refinements" to my FJ; I'll do no more than enumerate upgrades. Interested in how something works? Just ask.

Protection and Recovery: ARB Bumpers Front and Rear, Man-A-Fre skids, Warn 10,000 winch with Amsteel cable. ARB Twin Air Compressor. Hi-lift Jack.

Electrical: National Luna Dual Battery Monitor and Controller, 2 (two) Sears Platinum DieHard group 31 marine batteries, sPod auxillary power management, custom Contura switches. Multiple 12v power points. USB iPad charge ports.

Suspension: Front: ICON Coilovers with 700 pound Eibach springs. Rear: Icon 2.5 Piggyback shocks and OME "Heavy" coils. Total Chaos front UCAs. MAF Upper and Lower Control Arms in rear. Redeye Fab swaybar links F&R. Icon Panhard Bar.

Lighting: 40" Rigid Industries LED light bar. 2 Hella backup lights at back of rack. IPF Headlight bulbs. LED interior lights, Baja Designs 6" Prerunners with yellow lens.

Expedition Gear: ARB 50 liter Fridge/Freezer, Gobi Stealth rack with ladder and toolbox, Fiamma 7' Awning, MAF Auxiliary Fuel Tank.

Navigation and Comms: Cobra 75WXST CB with Bandi Mount, Toyota GPS Nav system.

And the mods begin....

Roof Rack

I'm not sure I can remember which mods came in which sequence. I practically lived on FJCruiserforum.com and took advantage of the collective wisdom and experience of many of the other owners there. Some have since sold their FJs, a few rarely post, and a couple have gotten banned. I feel like quite a few people there saved me some money and a few more saved me from doing something really stupid.

 Perhaps the first mod was a Gobi rack. I called Gobi, not far away near Denver and arranged to have them install it. It didn't take very long, and I drive back home with my OEM rack stuffed inside the FJ. I sold it for half what I paid for it; a disturbing trend that would be repeated with a number of other TRD options.

Skid plate, control arms and track bar:

Similarly, the optional "skid plate" (AKA:"bling skid") was another $600 option that I was happy to sell for half that. Installing a Man-a-Fre skid made me worry less about driving off road. Over the years, that skid has held the entire weight of the vehicle. It's scratched and rusty, but without dent. Now, when jacking the front of the truck up to change tires, I'll just slide my floor jack under the skid and lift the entire front end. It's that beefy. Occasionally I think about getting alloy skids to save some weight, but I'm not there, yet.

With great effort, Man-a-Fre also supplied beefier upper and lower rear control arms. These should be easy bolt ons, although the drivers side upper control arm is next to the main gas tank, and is buried behind the auxiliary gas tank (more on this later). The lower control arms were an easy upgrade. Changing out the upper arms was complicated by the fact that Man-a-Fre's customer service has issues. They sent me the wrong control arms. Twice. Every call regarding the repeat mis-shipments started with something along the lines of "those FJs have lousy quality control, and there is a lot of variation in specs". Really? By three or four inches? The arms they kept sending were WAY too long. Eventually I got the proper arms, but had to remove a lot of stuff under the truck in order to get in and remove the old ones. It would have been easier if I'd done this in advance of other mods.

I had a similar experience with Man-a-Fre when trying to order a new track bar for the rear axle. This long link connects the rear axle with the frame, and helps keep the axle located while articulating. Three times, MAF sent me a bar 4 inches too short, and three times, they blamed it on Toyota. I bought a bar from TotalChaos.com; which bolted right in. I'm resolved to not do business with MAF again, until I see evidence of rational customer service. The place hasn't been the same since !Cruzer! Moved back to Oz.

Starting...at the beginning

The FJ Cruiser.

In October of 2007 I test drove an all-black TRD FJ Cruiser.  I have a tendency to buy cars on a whim; which concerned my wife. Twice since we'd been married I went out to wash my vehicle and came back with a new car. Nancy had owned three or four cars since she started driving; I've owned 33.In an effort to appear responsible, I told the sales guy at the Toyota store I wanted to think about it. At 10 the next morning, I called to buy the FJ; but someone had purchased it an hour after I'd left.

I painstakingly optioned out a new FJ in an attempt to replicate the TRD. Of course, it was impossible to replicate the black on black paint. I wound up putting a deposit on an FJ scheduled to be assembled in Japan in the coming weeks.

On 14 January 2008, I got the call that my FJ had been delivered to the dealership. However, so had three transporters of new cars, and I was told it might be a few days before my truck would be prepped. I drove to Liquor Mart, bought a few cases of beer and dropped them off with the service advisor, and went back to work.

Two hours later, my FJ was prepped and ready.

I took the rest of the day off from work and spent the afternoon under the truck and under the hood. I'd run the various modules of the FJ mini-website on toyota.com and wanted to see how it was put together in real life. I finally just sat in the FJ, in the driveway. For some time.

Later, Nancy came home from work and we drive to get dinner out. "Did you know you smile when you start the FJ?"

I didn't, but I know I still do.

How did we get here???

I grew up in SoCal. In the 60's and 70's, it was impossible to be a teenaged guy and not be into cars. I had a succession of Triumphs in high school and college; and I'm still wary of British autos to this day.

We were close to the desert, and a Jeep was a handy thing to own. Quick blasts into the Mojave, or longer trips into the East side of the Sierras embedded early lessons in driving, and being prepared. (as well as learning the consequences for doing stupid things). My CJ7 got quite a workout, up until I moved to New York City in 1985. It sat in a parking garage in Kip's Bay for a year; and the first time I started it was to move to South Carolina. I could fit all my belongings, including two bicycles into that CJ7.

Fast-forward to 2001: After years of racing bikes and working too much; I found myself injured, unable to ride, and Nancy (who'd just married me) and I asked "what do we do now?". Our lives had revolved around bike racing for so long, we were lost. Turns out we both liked fly-fishing. And hiking. (So much so that our wedding was at 10,000 feet, on an alpine lake. In February. We got there on snowshoes.) Fly Fishing was (and is) a blast, but we found it more fun in remote locations. Locations that were not easily driven to in an Outback. After a succession of small and large pickups, we bought a 2008 FJ Cruiser and took delivery on 14 Jan 2008. It was the right size and could take us almost anywhere. 

I'll post mods done to the FJ; and more importantly, how the FJ has helped us see into our future in a way neither of us expected.

Have to start somewhere

I've been contemplating starting a blog for some time, but "stuff" keeps getting in the way. I've been inspired recently to engage 4-lo and drive over "that stuff".  Here goes.....