I haven't done much wheeling since getting back from the Mint. My camber being off has completely eaten my tires (which I bought new in August). New longer heims to push my UCA out are $200. The tires are already destroyed, so I'm just waiting until summer to buy the joints when I go through everything on the suspension for the annual check up. Since they're wearing so fast, the inside edge is already on the wear band, so last weekend I pulled the tires off (had to go to Discount to get the inner beads off, which was free since that's all I needed and took 2 minute) and flipped the tires on the front beadlocks so now the meaty side is wearing.
Anyways, kinda put a halt on wheeling much. The truck has a bunch of other small issues too, for instance my idle air control valve is all gunked up I think since the truck has to crank forever and then will barely idle but once you get driving it's fine. Front blinker fell out in the desert at Vegas, my air blend actuator doesn't fully open hot half the time, A/C stopped, etc. etc. All this meaning I haven't driven the truck much. School is over in 5 weeks, and then I'll take her home and do the usual tear down and haul ass and fix everything over the summer to last the following school year.
About a week ago I went up one of the canyons by myself, nothing exciting but played in the snow.
Moving on, yesterday me and some people went out West above the Great Salt Lake to a place called Kelton, which is essentially a desert and the northern dried up section of the lake bed. A long time ago my dad and I had driven past here on our way to California, but I'd never been wheeling there. I towed [MENTION=89531]Cartzo[/MENTION] dirt bike out since his 1st gen prerunner isn't running right now. This was the first time we'd ever been in the desert together, and the first time I had been in the desert with someone else to drive with. Everyone else I know has crawlers and likes to go slow, and sadly the 1st gen has never been running during the same period the 3rd gen has for more than a week, so we've never had a chance to run both LT rigs together in the desert.
Right off the bat getting there we ran into some morons who couldn't figure out how to change their tire, so we stopped to help. By help I mean I gave them a wrench to pull their lug nuts off since somehow they couldn't use their emergency one (you could tell they didn't understand what torque was, and that grabbing the end of the wrench did more than grabbing the base).
It was pretty hilarious actually. They didn't know how to jack the car up, so initially crushed the rocker panel by jacking on it. Then I had to show one of them where to actually put the jack in the front. Then once they got the donut on, they barely tightened the lugs, and I even told them to make sure they torque the shit out of them. Then they set the car down and said thanks and drove off, with the donut wobbling everywhere and ended up pulling over 200ft down the road again. We were already packed up and had started down the road, and I didn't feel like helping the morons more (and really all they used us for was breaking the lugs free). We figured if they were still there in 4 hours we would help them on the way out, which they weren't. Maybe they got some common sense during that time.
Finally after that we took off. Nothing super exciting so here's some pictures where we got lunch.
Direction we came from:
After lunch we tore off heading south until we could see the Great Salt Lake, and then eventually turned around since we were getting low on gas.
Cool saddle we crested. Tons of roads and trails. Rocky areas, salt flats, grasslands, big mountains in the distance, etc. Really cool area to explore.
Heading back we stopped at this bridge, which we had actually (accidentally) gone over on the way in the opposite direction. Heart stopping moment for sure. When we were heading to our lunch destination, there was this section of road risen up. It looked like it used to cross the lake when the lake was that far north, and there were these bridged sections every few miles to let water flow between the two sides I'm assuming. Cartzo was on the lake bed, so I had hopped up on the old road and was matching his speed and level with him, and couldn't see this bridge until we were almost right on it. I locked the brakes up, but I didn't think we were gonna be able to stop in time and I didn't have enough control under braking, so let off and accelerated and aimed for these two wimpy, ancient, rotted looking wood beams.
Everyone said how smooth it was, and Cartzo said he saw the bridge as he passed it and looked back as the truck was braking and then lifted back up as I hit the gas and it looked smooth. The point isn't how smooth it was (just a flat road and then hitting going over two wooden planks), but how bad it could've been otherwise. If any of you have seen those pictures of prerunners and buggies that fell into a crack or culvert or whatever, that's what was flashing in my mind, and going back on the way out it was worse than what it looked like when I went over it.
The bridge was probably 5ft in the air, and 3-4ft wide. And the two wood pieces were the perfect width, it looked like the rear would of been fine but the fronts would of hung off both sides a few inches. Point being, scary stuff, and it's shit like this that makes me always worry. At least having someone else out there with me we can signal to each other if something comes up, which happened a few other times where I'd come around a corner and I would see Cartzo waving his arms since a washed out part of the road would be right there. I love going fast, but going fast in places you've never been can always be sketchy, especially if the terrain looks fine, on a totally normal looking road, and then there's 3ft of the road missing.
The bridge was really the only hairy part. The truck ran fine otherwise. As usual I have to ***** about the rear suspension, which will be getting ripped out this year for sure. Today I looked on our GPS and mapped it, and we did over 60 miles offroad which isn't too bad for a couple hours exploring. I think we might go back there and explore other parts next weekend, probably at least once or twice before school is out. Otherwise the runner is just waiting for some new tires and some down time to get pimped out!
do you have any photos of your floor to where you welded the rocker tubes? i wanted to install some on my 97 4runner, i've seen a couple tutorials on how to put on some 2x6 or 2x8 steel rectangular rockers, mine are starting to rust away and i need to replace them 
