Fifth Annual Dakota Mailing List BBQ and Trail Ride

Friday and Saturday July 25-6, 2003
Forestville, NY

Hosted by Jon Steiger.
Photos by Josh Battles, Adam "Blaster" Comartin, Mike Cooper of SCORE, Jason Bleazard, Andy Levey, Eric, Mike Maskalans (as well as other SCORE members).
Video by Neil Bellenger, Jason Bleazard, Mike Maskalans and Jon Steiger.
Report by Mike Maskalans.

Prologue:

Meet Awards:

• 'Best Dive' goes to... Christine, with "Terrible" Tom Stack at the wheel.
• 'Best Swimmer' goes to... Mike Maskalans, during Christine's extraction.
• 'Strongest Pull' goes to... Jon's W150 Ram, and it's 12,000# Warn winch, also during Christine's extraction.
  Runner up goes to Don Metrick's Jeep at the top of Slippery Hill, who winched about half of us up.
  Second runner up goes to Mike Maskalans's Dakota for towing Christine about 800 miles at almost twice it's tow rating.
• 'Best Climber' goes to... The Adam Blaster, our very own Captain Ahab, for piloting his Cherokee to the summit of the lower falls - the only success this year.

Things that broke:

Christine.

• headlights, 1 front signal, tail lights, 3 of 4 KCs and the PCM all seem to have survived.
• all fluids/ filters were severly water-contaminated, or outright replaced by water (oil, coolant overflow, trans, fuel, diffs, t-case)
• windshield washer pump dead
• fuel pump dead and replaced; 3 fuel filters. Tank eventually had to be dropped to be cleaned, second fuel pump seems to have survived.
• trans seemingly dead (fluid changed while there and once since; the remains of the bands may have been found in the pan most recently. probably needs to be rebuilt at the least)
• Massive corrosion taking root in all electricals. looking for cleaning/ preservation methods.

Mike's alternator

...had been funky since the last pit run, and died in Buffalo on the way home. a 20 minute walk from the dead truck found an open-till-20:00 (on a Sunday!) auto parts store with the right alternator in stock. He swapped it out in a very schwank hotel's parking lot, and he made it back to Rochester.
other issues with the Red Dak:

• ripped RF lower ball joint boot
• leaking front diff input shaft seal, in addition to pre-existing leaking RF axle seal
• front edge of torsion bar crossmember bent towards rear of truck; assumed to be from high-centering in Mud Lane.
• about two and a half months later, Mike also discovered that his engine had injested a significant amount of mud (through observing mud having gone down the throttle body and through seeing mud collected on the intake air temperature sensor), but seems not to have caused any lasting issues. The K&N air hat is far tighter now than it has been =)

Don Metrick's RF brake line

...broke while attempting to climb the waterfall (Teal Wrangler)

Rick & Melissa Burt's LF axle u-joint

...snapped in the pit. (Red Wrangler - had been trailered to the meet)

Tom's trip home

Tom hitched a ride to the Buffalo airport on Monday with Jon in the 'vert - top down, to fly to Chicago. He had to skip out of work for two days since he didn't get back to Steven's Point from Chicago until Wednesday afternoon.

Christine's trip home

Christine's trip was entirely funded by donations from DML members - neither Tom or I had to kick in anything to get the truck home. amazing.

Leg 1a: Rochester, NY -> Forestville, NY; the loading of Christine

I left from Rochester on August 8th, about two weeks after the BBQ. I picked up a UHaul car transporter very near Jon's place, wiggled wires about a flakey left stop/turn, and proceeded to Jon's to load Christine. (If you talk to UHaul about this, she's an '89 Aires... I swear...) She'd sat on the concrete pad outside the barn since Tom came back to Jon's two weeks before. She'd run then, but didn't want to start for us.

Jon and I got the street tires back on (the mudders would have cleared width-wise on the trailer by 2" - a bit close for comfort), and decided to roll her onto the trailer. My first preference was to line the trailer up in front of the concrete pad and just push her on from where she sat, but the surge brakes on the trailer had other ideas. I wouldn't be surprised if the ruts are still in the yard there.... I pulled down to the airstrip entrance, and Jon hooked his ram up to Christine. I hopped in the driver's seat, and after making sure that the brakes worked, had Jon haul me up the driveway so I could get a run at the trailer.

All went surprisingly well, though it would have been nice if I'd had enough confidence in my stopping ability to get the back tires over the lip of the trailer without having to push them. I bet Jon really thinks that, since he's who pushed.... It was pretty scary aiming as best I could for the back of my truck at an unpowered 15-20, and I'm pretty sure the back tires of my truck came off the ground when I hit the ramps on the trailer.

After tossing Tom's stuff in the cab and bed (and tarping the tires in the bed so as not to be seen), I headed off for Cleveland.
I'll let my then-written accounts of the trip stand for the most part.

Leg 1b: Forestville, NY -> Cleveland, OH

I'm safe and sound in alan's apartment in Cleveland (Parma if I'm feeling accurate).

a mildly uneventful trip so far. I scaled at the first set of truckstops in PA. with an almost full tank, I'm 2620/3180/5800 (steers/drives/trailer) for a gross of 11600. just a bit heavy..... that puts me over my rear axle rating by 14 pounds, and puts one of the trailer's four tires right at it's weight limit. 3/4 are UHaul spec Goodyears (they say 'property of UHaul, not for sale' on the sidewall) with 2200-something @ 65psi ratings, the odd one out is a michelin with a 1500 something rating at 35psi. The three Goodlucks look good, but that' Michilin is damn squishy. I aired up my drives for their max rating of 1950#/ea @ 50psi, so I'm quite good there.

The truck handles the weight pretty well. The tail isn't wagging the dog, but it'll buck pretty good on a rough road. 60-65 in 3rd gear puts me between 2500 and 3000 revs, where it will pull decently on flatland freeway grades. The one steep hill coming here had me to the floor in 2nd doing a bit over 30 at 4k. heh. it's a bit lacking in the stoplight races, all of a sudden, too. I wonder why.....

The requisite scary incident happened just outside Cleveland. There was apparently a mulit-car pileup at the 197 yardstick, westbound, so I got off at the 200 to avoid what drivers were expecting to be a closed road. I noticed in my mirror that one of the tire straps had let loose, so I was looking for a place to stop and check it out (all had been relatively kosher in PA when I stopped, 100 miles before, and there are safety chains, too, so I wasn't actually worried about the load). I headed north, since my GPS told me that was the closer exit from where I was getting off, made a loop around and stopped on the 'on' ramp. Sure enough, both front tire straps had let loose. I re-centered the winches on the tires (I hadn't realized those winches slid side to side) and cinched them back down, and then re-tightened the straps on the back of the truck.

This was a very busy on-ramp (a pretty poor one to pick, methinks - not that I had any way of knowing at the time), so I had to pick a very long gap instead of being able to wait for no one at all. That also meant I had to really stomp on it from a standing start for the first time. My gap arrives, I put on my signal and give 'er. Brown-ness instantly *pours* from under the hood. It looked like I'd blown a head gasket and was having oily steam everywhere. I instantly put it in neutral, shut it down and coasted back to the shoulder. I was pretty worried about what I'd find under the hood.... I popped it, waited for another gap in traffic so I could open my door, and went up to take a look.... nothing. nothing at all. no wetness around the intake or on the valve covers or on the hood mat, and nothing else looks abnormal at all. so I get back in and start it. nothing abnormal.

So I think for a minute. I looked down before I killed it, to see if I had a check engine light. I hadn't had one. I noticed that the truck was really, really dusty - but not on the hood. it had come out through the gap between the quarter panels and the hood. My K&N was very dusty. So I took another look under the hood, and sure enough, that underhood mat is a lot cleaner than it had been. When I stomped on it, something made a big, thin sheet of mud drop off that mat and onto all the spinning things under my hood. My big 'oh shit!' moment was more an illusion than anything.
<<wipes forehead in relief>>

So when I got to Alan's apartment complex, I found a lot of parking spots right off the bat, even at almost 20:00. That was very nice - no having to split the rig to park it in two spots or having to back in so I could paralell park. Even nicer was that Alan left me the keys to his RX7, so I didn't need to unhook to go get dinner, either. w00t.

Leg 2: Cleveland, OH => Portage, IN

Day 2 was quite uneventful. I got out the door in Parma a bit before 11. Before I took off, I yet again shortened the straps holding down Christine's ass end, but this time I found a position with no rub at all, and they've been fine ever since.

I'm still getting a hair over 10mpg. I also found the the rig is far more stable at 60 than 67 =). The trailer will push the truck around if it sways at 67, but at 60-62 things are much more stable. An anti-sway bar would, of course, completely solve the sway issue, and a weight distributing system would probably help the wander that causes the sway.

I rolled into Portage around 18:00 (this seems to be one of those odd IN counties that ignores DST, since it's the same time here as in Rochester), checked in to my hotel and unhooked. I fueled up and went wandering (I started out looking for the source of the *black* smoke coming from north of the interstate). I happened to find Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, which is pretty cool. The beach was closed to swimming due to high seas, but I got some real nice pictures and waded around anyway.

I hit KFC for dinner and then picked up a surprise for Christine from Autozone. When we first went to AZ to get parts (fluids and filters, actually) after her bath, I noticed and made fun of a hitch plug. Not satisfied with the usual spinning prop, the designer of this wonderful decoration stuck a spinning prop on an 6" tall mercury outboard. Just what the truck needs to head into The Swamp, I think. I'm going to figure out how to mount it tomorrow morning. It would be nice if I could just stick it in the middle of the tailgate somehow.

I've also seen a good 15-20 H2s and two civ-spec Humvees running around, so I'm thinking there's something going on at the AM General plant. TireRack was also testing tires when I went by - they were running around a dirt track next to their warehouse in four WRXs, with two others on jacks having tires changed. There's also some sort of BMX thing going on here in Portage - a pile of kids who are racing are staying here, and while I was out, quite a few road bikes showed up, too. No idea what they're here for, but there are 4 or 5 trucks pulling multiple bikes (and one flatbed wrecker with a half dozen packed on). This certainly seems to be the weekend for running through Indiana.

Leg 3: Portage, IN => Stevens Point, WI

The final pull to Stevens Point was once again uneventful. I saw a few more H2s, and quite a few 'sconnie cops - more than I saw in any other state, even Ohio.

Since Tom was working this afternoon, I spent some time in Madison with a graduated friend of mine spending time at home during his summer off from Columbia. Since he was a vehicle short and both his parents were at work, I had to drop Christine on the street in front of his house while we ran off to lunch.

Drop, lunch and hook went just as they should have, though the trailer's jack took quite a divit out of Wellsley Road. I continued on to Stevens Point, and into the rain.

Between Madison and 'Point, the most notable event was the traffic. All the way from the intersection of I39 and I94, both southbound to Chicago and Eastbound to Milwaukee, traffic was bumper-to-bumper and moving at about about 20mph. There is an amazing amount of traffic headed back into civilization on a Sunday afternoon. Thankfully, I was headed the right direction and made good time running into and out of rain the whole way.

The rain let up about 20 miles from 'Point, and I was timed to arrive about 15 minutes before Tom was to get off work. Since I had the area's detailed map loaded in my GPS, I was able to look up AutoZone locations nearby. Since there was only one within 100 miles, I had a pretty good odds on catching Tom.

I pulled into the parking lot (scraping the tounge of the trailer impressively) about 10 minutes before Tom's shift was over. Since the store was closed, I just parked at the edge of the lot and sat. Tom was rather surprised to see me. Success! =)

I followed Tom back to his house, and we got the truck unloaded. Of course, the truck wouldn't start.... We pushed it off the trailer and then into his driveway. He'd wait about 5 days until it started to move it into The Swamp (his garage).

We headed to his local UHaul to drop off the trailer, and then to dinner. We grabbed a 12 pack at a gas station, and had a couple beers watching the recovery video before hitting bed.

Leg 4: Stevens Point, WI => East Bethel, MN

The next morning, Tom had to get to work early, but I stuck around for breakfast and BS with his mother and grandmother. I got rolling around 11am, first to check in with the UHaulers to let them know they had a trailer, and then to head home.

This was a very simple leg. I took highway 10 until I got home. The construction in Stevens Point screwed me up a bit, but that was the only minor note. Most importantly, I set a new mileage record: I got 17 on the way from Stevens Point back to East Bethel. I blame new plugs before I left in combination with low speeds on the two lane US10 across Wisconsin. I haven't done the math on the rest of the trip yet, but individual tanks ranged from 10.5 to 11.5 - which is only a little worse than I usually get around town.

My time at home was also quite pleasant, and my trip back to New York uneventful. So far, with about 3000 miles since the pull, no damage seems to have been done, which in itself is rather impressive considering the overloading I subjected my truck to.

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Introduction, Dedication & Attendees	Wednesday 23-July 2003	Thursday 24-July 2003	Friday 25-July 2003	Saturday 26-July 2003	Sunday 27-July 2003	Prologue