Big Bessie's build thread - kcdehart

[aemravan]

Found out that the valve cover was leaking *bad* after getting it back from the shop. Took it back to em and they said it was warped/wanted me to pay for new OEM parts ($390). Bought one off of eBay for $50 and did the job myself. Found that the term 'warp' wasn't quite accurate...

Reached back out to them and ended up getting a nice refund to cover the parts cost and my time spent. Still frustrating, cuz it makes me question the rest of the work that they did...

clearly they followed the torque sequence and definitely did not exceed the Ugga Dugga's specified in the manual.. but on a serious note, stuff like that pisses me off coming from a "shop". This is the sort of thing you expect to do yourself with minimal knowledge of how this should be done but anybody that charges money for repair services should know exactly how to avoid this. Or at least be stand-up about it and say "we messed up" instead of saying it was warped lol.

 

[kcdehart]

clearly they followed the torque sequence and definitely did not exceed the Ugga Dugga's specified in the manual.. but on a serious note, stuff like that pisses me off coming from a "shop". This is the sort of thing you expect to do yourself with minimal knowledge of how this should be done but anybody that charges money for repair services should know exactly how to avoid this. Or at least be stand-up about it and say "we messed up" instead of saying it was warped lol.

I actually think it might've happened when they were prying the valve cover off. He'd told me that they really had to pry at it, and you can see a little marring on the bolt hole in one of those pics. That honestly bothers me more, cuz then they'd have known they were putting on a bad cover, rather than just over torqueing it on final assembly.

 

[kcdehart]

Took the old girl out a few weekend ago and got up into the mountains exploring a bit. The trail I took was a *lot* easier than last time (a few years ago), thanks to current mods

As penance, I spent 8ish hours detailing today Not my favorite job in the world, but I sure do love the results.

The paint had a lot of mud baked into it that wouldn't come out. A claybar took care of it! It's really hard to see in these pics, but you can see it in some of them:

And here's the end result:

 

[kcdehart]

So much for my polish job

Got a dumping of 11" of wet snow last Monday and got to go explore/get gas for the generator/pull an old lady out of the ditch. The Geolandars did GREAT and didn't have me worried once. I was super impressed and had fun just plowing through the deep stuff when I needed to get around things

Little glimpse of what a 2-lane (with double yellow), paved road looked like...TONS of trees down all over the place.

 

[Eyassine]

Did you have to change the upper control arms?

 

[kcdehart]

Did you have to change the upper control arms?

Yeah, after being lifted for 5k miles or so, I found that my OEM upper control arms were *dead*. They'd worn notches into the balljoint carriers from being extended to their limits so often. I went to SPC UCAs.

 

[kcdehart]

My most recent addition

TrueNorth Fab front bumper that my buddy welded together. I then filled most seams with body filler to try to prevent rusting, and painted it with black appliance paint. Unfortunately we made the mistake of not test-fitting before doing final welds, so the wings aren't the same height - which will bug me for eternity. But oh well. I'm happy with it overall, and it should do its job just fine.

I've also swapped out my crappy LED pods for Lasfit flood ditch lights, and with the new bumper replaced the OEM fog lights with Lasfit fogs. *Very* happy with these! The fogs have a great cutoff and put out a loooot of light.

I also have an Ascend Overland rear bumper sitting in the house, but as the 4Runner is my daily till I get my Rolla GR, it's on hold. I'd rather not cut into the rear frame of my only vehicle

 

[gfxcruncher]

Truck looks great!

Can't wait to see the rear bumper... If I didn't put the effort into my swingouts, I'd definitely be wanting one.

 

[kcdehart]

Truck looks great!

Can't wait to see the rear bumper... If I didn't put the effort into my swingouts, I'd definitely be wanting one.

Yeah, I'm super excited for it! It'll be nice to upgrade from the hitch carrier I'm currently running