@hammerheadfistpunch Great Job!!

@hammerheadfistpunch you win! how are they coping back in the real world?

@ibrad I didn't even have room for that burger. Im still feeling it. Oh man it was good though.

@houstonrunner I’m still pretty shocked too, like who does that? The car isn’t designed for such things.

I’ve been rocking my sleep setup all shoved into a Rubbermaid bin and a thick, 4” foam mattress. It’s not compact, but man it’s comfortable. Eventually I’ll need to revisit it.

@carsoffortlangley Woah this almost makes me want to go to Canada 😉 Almost

As much as I like going new places, I especially love the in between spots you have no real expectations of being anything.

@silentbutnotreallydeadly That was my biggest fear. It 100% thought about it.

@pip-bip They've become even more expensive? Damn! A little while back I looked at some Australian used Land Cruiser ads out of curiosity (what with the 15 year rule here in Canada I can at least half-realistically mull over importing one) and remember being amazed at how close in price most of the decade and a half old ones were in price to a new one.

@hammerheadfistpunch said in Tippy van? Interesting experiment:

I can't even imagine what 43 degrees would feel like in that.

You'd need a five point seatbelt not to end up on the floor at 43 deg. I'm not going anywhere near 30 degrees! 😰 Wind gusts are scary enough in the Transit. It supposedly has a Side Wind Stabilization System. If it actually works, I can't imagine how bad the Transit would be without it.

@hammerheadfistpunch my stepdad has the ironman 6’ on his FJ and loves it. I’ve been toying about getting 8’ and this is probably the time to do it.

@carsoffortlangley beautiful photos! Looks like a solid excursion.

I gave up on all of those deflator things. I just pull the valve stems out, its fast and easy.

** make sure you carry extra valve stems.

@hammerheadfistpunch yesterday never would have worked anyway. I had my kid's birthday and still worked the night before and after. Looks nice though, I'll have to head up there soon.

@silentbutnotreallydeadly said in Some sweeeeet overland builds:

@hammerheadfistpunch
Down here, that species was always the Dyna/Delta. HiAce was similar but smaller/narrower.

Can confirm.

@pip-bip said in After three weeks and just over 10,000 kilometres...the roadtrip is over.:

@silentbutnotreallydeadly did fuel economy suffer much?

Not at all. If nothing else, at 98 km/h and 2500 rpm (absolutely flat out in fifth), it is a bit better than usual.

The last time this happened, the positive pressure pipe that supplies the wastegate actuator popped off. The impact on the engine performance was... different. So I'm buggered if I know what exactly has gone amiss.

@carsoffortlangley Great pictures! I think I recognize a couple of places - I've only seen most of the area from the air though. Ross Lake is as far south as I've ever flown out of Hope. From 10,000 feet it looked like it would be a great place to visit in person. When I had the Element I took a few drives on the mild forest service roads as far as I could that led more or less west from the Silver lake road that eventually gets to Ross Lake. The only real off road trip I ever took was with a friend on a non-flying day. We went up the American Creek (I think) road on the east face of Dog Mountain as far as we could go. Basically until it turned into a trail that would be cramped for deer let alone an old Pathfinder. It was an eye opener as the friend who was driving is one of the most cautious, careful and conservative pilots I have ever flown with but she turned out to be utterly fearless off road! (and quite highly skilled too) Me, I was full of fear as I had never done anything like that before.

@hammerheadfistpunch I didn't bring a thermometer, but my guess is we didn't see temps over 80. Much nicer than the current condition of the valley.

@carsoffortlangley
My waterfalling has been shamed....

@pip-bip nah, it said there would be a checkpoint at the NSW/SA border, but they must have had an early minute.

@silentbutnotreallydeadly no worries, enjoy 🍻

@gmctavish thanks!

@hammerheadfistpunch Yeah we use almost these exact radios on our road trips (UV82L, so the 5W version) but I agree that they came with a garbage config. I bought the cable and programmed them to use FRS and GMRS channels only. One of us has a GMRS license and I'll admit the others probably should get one as well. One problem with getting a license is IIRC it makes the fees and fines if you do get caught doing something wrong astronomically more expensive [citation needed] basically the idea being if you're supposed to know better, you need to be punished more, but that is a dumb excuse not to do it.

With the USB cable and CHIRP, the radios are an amazing tool. As a dumb example, I had a co-worker going to some track event in which he was required to have a radio that could listen in on a channel, but be unable to transmit on it. It took me less than five minutes to set up one of these to do that (including the transmit lockout) and saved him a ton of cash buying/renting the "proper" radio. As another example we were out doing... stuff... and I was able to download all of the frequencies local law enforcement and emergency responders were using and dump that table into the radio.

As a (former) HAM license holder... yeah. Admittedly I didn't really try to get into it, but I don't recall anything about it being friendly. So many rules and so many angry old men waiting to tell you all about how you broke them. Also sort of a non-starter for our group as it would require all of us to have a HAM license which isn't going to happen. I (sort of) agree the free radio bands need to be protected, but in a way the HAM people have been too good of stewards of this, getting to the point where no one wants to (or can) use the frequencies, so of course the hungry corporations are looking to buy them. I'm really getting to the limit of my knowledge here, so I apologize if I'm talking out of my ass, but I seem to recall a lot of people in the hobbyist community complaining they wanted to do more RF stuff using HAM frequencies, but the angry old men blocked any uses that weren't voice? Or something? Basically my takeaway was a group of Makers was trying to revive HAM and the HAM people said "no".

Anyway... yeah all of this is boned and I expect large swaths of the frequencies will be sold off and/or privatized in the next 10 or 20 years.

@vondon302 the electronic exhaust adjustments are becoming more mainstream from manufacturers. Updated Kia Stinger even has 'em!

I bet 5 years ago no one would have ever guessed there'd be a 368 hp twin-turbo v6 4-door sedan liftback from Kia with electronic exhaust cut outs lol