Had my dad follow me out to his land, it had been a while since I was last out there so we made a family event out of it. It is ~55 miles out of town. That means in total I probably drove Ol’ Blue ~130 miles today with very few hiccups. Drives quite nicely down the highway, and the suspension, lockers, and 4wd work as they should.
Hiccup #1 the tachometer wire started shorting out of the firewall and made the truck stumble until I figured it out. For now it is just cut, I’ll fix it tomorrow.
Hiccup #2 I discovered that my metal fuel line along the frame rail is too close to the exhaust. Took a while to figure out but when we were driving around slow it would randomly sputter and shut off. When I would check my clear fuel filter it would be empty. Crank it for a bit and it would fire up and run for ~50ft. Turns out it was just vapor locking because the metal line was too hot. Any other driving besides slow crawling had enough airflow for it to cool off.
Here are pics of the biggest ditch that we could find that wasn’t heavily wooded.
Tires fit in the wheel-wells nicely. The tires just barely touch at full compression.
Rear Suspension working
Close up. Bump stop doing it’s job.
Front suspension
Tired pup on the way home.
Short video:
So far everything is working as planned. The truck drove great down the highway and performed great besides the two hiccups mentioned above.
I have some new things to add to my “To-Do” list:
Fix tachometer
Re-run fuel lines further away from the exhaust
Fix fuel gauge so I can stop worrying about running out of gas