Atl-atl's Dodge Ram 2500 Regular Cab Long Bed "documentation" thread.

[Atl-atl]

I like those wheels a lot. I wish I could find some in San Diego ATL-ATL.

They are constantly for sale on craigslist around here, usually for less than $200 with some crappy stock size tires or $100 bare. If I ever make a trip to San Diego Ill bring you a set! Im sure you could find some in a junkyard. They are the same wheels on 2wd 2500 trucks which there might be more of in socal. Or just take the spare out of 4 2500 trucks in the junkyard.

 

[Atl-atl]

Finally got my license plates nearly three months after applying for them. Illinois is such a wonderful place sometimes. As a lifelong cyclist that strives to follow the rules/laws of the road whether driving or riding, Im happy that Illinois offers these plates. Share the road folks.

Bonus pup for good measure

 

[Atl-atl]

HUUUGE trip report coming!!! It was my buddies birthday on Sunday and he especially loves the UP so we went on a 4 day mini overland trip across the upper peninsula of Michigan. We spend a lot of time in the UP but usually just in Ishpeming and Marquette for mountain biking. We have a family friend that lets us use their vacation house whenever we please so we take advantage! For this trip we decided to do a little more adventuring/overlanding. It had just rained quite a bit so we knew it would be fun. :bike_rider:

Said rain on our way in.

After we got through the storm the sunset was beautiful.

Night one we stayed at the house and drank beet at Blackrocks Brewery in Marquette. Day two we mountain biked the south trails in Marquette. left for some back roads to Mt. Arvon which is the highest point in Michigan, 1979 feet above sea level. Leaves were already starting to turn but it was unseasonably warm in Ishpeming, mid 70s. Rain came back as the road turned from paved to dirt. We quickly realized it would be a dirty weekend.

Depending on who you ask this is or isnt technically a mountain. The two definitions Ive seen are, a mountain requires either 1500 feet of prominence above the surround terrain or 2000 feet above sea level. For anyone that has been to the UP, especially out to Copper Harbor or around the Keweenaw Peninsula, these are mountains! They also average 390" of snow a year!!!

Guest book sign in.

You can just barely see Lake Superior through the trees.

Night two we rolled into Copper Harbor grabbed some supplies from the general store and headed towards High Rock Bay which is the eastern/northern most point on the Keweenaw Peninsula. Its a maze of red clay roads with huge mud puddles everywhere. Bouncy, muddy and FUN!!! It was so rutted potholed and mud puddle-y that we didnt wind of finding High Rock until after dark. We knew we were somewhere special when we arrived though.

Cook those dawgs from the inside too haha. :chef:

More in a minute!

 

[Atl-atl]

Finally the piece de resistance! My view out of the truck when I woke up!!! :Wow1: It was so nice sleeping with the crashing waves right outside your window. Slept like a baby.

Manitou Island in the distance has two lighthouses at night which was cool.

3rd gen dodge ram marketing right there! My buddies CCSB cummins with full 3" Thuren fancy pants suspension and all sorts of diesel truck problems hahahah. Sorry Dave.

Instagram filter makes my skin look really brown/weird. :elkgrin:

Completely trashed my bikes, wasnt very happy about it, still not happy about it and I have to clean and fix them all up.

Day 3 we went back into Copper Harbor and grabbed some breakfast at Jamsens Fish Market which is a bakery with super yummy Scandinavian pastries for the first half of the day hah.

I couldnt get enough of this mad max looking boat parked at the bakery.

Then we drove up to the top of Brockway Mountain for some incredible views.

The funniest part about day 2/3 is that for some reason the Garmin I ride with stayed on after our ride in Marquette(it normally shuts itself off) and stayed on for the entire drive up to Copper Harbor and all the way out to High Rock Bay!!! I didnt realize it until just this morning when I plugged it in to download the new info from the ride. I was pissed on Sunday because the battery died right when we started our ride in Copper. I didn't know why the battery would be dead already! Now I know hahaha.

After our ride we got amazing fish tacos from a food truck in town that had just caught the fish that morning. We sat in the park and ate and got invited to an apple cider party. I didnt take any pictures but I totally should have. They had a press setup and were squeezing out the juice that you could drink right off the tap. They were also frying up fresh apple cider donuts right there on the spot!!! What a day it was. Unfortunately Dave had to return to Chicago on Sunday afternoon but I stayed in the UP and camped one more night by myself. I stayed at Big Erics Bridge State Forest campground which is about 30 minutes east of L'Anse and just south of the lake shore. Right on the Huron River the campsite is peaceful, secluded and empty on a Sunday night. I set up camp just before sunset and simply stared into the fire and did a lot of soul searching. Day 4 morning I cruised back into L'anse, got a really good breakfast burrito at Java By The Bay and then hit the slow road home.

 

[Atl-atl]

On top of going on a little adventure I have kept rolling with maintenance on the truck. All 3 bulbs in my HVAC controls were burned out. I ordered up a set of LEDs to replace those and the gauge cluster lights. From what I could tell online it looked like the same bulbs are used for both places. I think that was wrong. The three in the HVAC controls went in no problem but when I got to the gauge cluster i started bending/breaking the little metal tabs on the LEDs. I quickly realized I need a different style bulb. Wish I could have known this but at least they were only $1 each. I would not recommend buying the cheap bulbs off amazon unless you know specifically what you need and are getting. At least I only wasted $5. After looking at what went wrong and comparing the broken bulbs to things online Im going to order new ones from superbrightLEDs.com that appear to be exactly what I need. Could still be wrong though because they dont show gauge cluster bulbs on their vehicle fitment page. Oh well.

I ordered white bulbs and they look white from the backside of the panel but they definitely make the gauges blue. Be wary of this if you plan on doing LEDs and dont like blue. Im not sure if I should order white ones again or try a different color for the gauges. I dont want things to be mismatched all over the dashboard. The green stock radio is already driving me nuts now that the HVAC controls are blue. Does it ever end?

Quite literally burnt.

Even in daylight you can kind of tell theyre blue.

It looks like a huge mess but its actually very fast/easy to take apart the dashboard in this truck.

Close up of an LED with a bent/broken tab. There is a very apparent difference in quality between cheap LEDs and nice ones.

Back of the gauge cluster. You dont have to pull it apart to replace bulbs, they are the 5 little black hex/slotted things inside the holes.

 

[Atl-atl]

Also I replaced the broken glass in my driver side mirror. I dont have heated or powered mirrors and since it was already broken I had no problem replacing just the piece of glass and not the entire assembly. $10 from Amazon and arrived the next day, cant really beat that. PITA and got covered in little flakes of glass as I removed the old pieces though. I had been stubbornly living with this broken mirror for over two years, not sure why.

Cleaned off all the old sticky stuff with 91% Isopropyl

wOOt

 

[Atl-atl]

I also got a new windshield installed last week. Bought the truck 3 years ago with a cracked windshield and finally decided to fix it hahaha. No rust at all around the windshield channel which is great news. Also the windshield had been replaced previously and the safelite guy said they did a good job which is nice.

Gotta fix some of these rusty paint chips though.

Look ma' no windshield! :bike_rider:

 

[Regcabguy]

Finally got my license plates nearly three months after applying for them. Illinois is such a wonderful place sometimes. As a lifelong cyclist that strives to follow the rules/laws of the road whether driving or riding, Im happy that Illinois offers these plates. Share the road folks.

Bonus pup for good measure

AAA Club hands you your plates on the spot here for used vehicles. They can't register new vehicles yet.

 

[Regcabguy]

They are constantly for sale on craigslist around here, usually for less than $200 with some crappy stock size tires or $100 bare. If I ever make a trip to San Diego Ill bring you a set! Im sure you could find some in a junkyard. They are the same wheels on 2wd 2500 trucks which there might be more of in socal. Or just take the spare out of 4 2500 trucks in the junkyard.

Yeah,those alloys look nice. I've got '07 alloys now. Truck's in for the Takata death airbags today. 2nd time in the dealer since Oct. '06.

 

[Atl-atl]

AAA Club hands you your plates on the spot here for used vehicles. They can't register new vehicles yet.

Illinois will give you plates same day also but only for the regular plates. Since I got specialty plates they "have to" mail them.

Yeah,those alloys look nice. I've got '07 alloys now. Truck's in for the Takata death airbags today. 2nd time in the dealer since Oct. '06.

Just for the drivers bag? I got my drivers done a year ago and they still claim they dont have parts yet to do my passenger bag.

 

[Atl-atl]

Well its been a couple weeks since I posted in here. There is good reason for that, unfortunately. Im no longer engaged which sucks but it was my decision so...I moved back to Colorado!!! Couldnt be happier about it! :bike_rider:

Its been a rough two weeks. During my move I flatted while pulling a full uhaul trailer and my bed was full and I was 750 miles away from Denver so that was great. Drove 750 miles on 3 37s and one 35" spare tire. Not very many places stock 37x12.50 17s hah. I had an air compressor and a plug kit so I wasnt completely screwed if I got another flat but it wasnt fun. Luckily it wasnt a catastrophic failure and I was able to limp to the next exit where I found a closed gas station. Also luckily the stock bottle jack goes high enough to lift 37s off the ground hah.

 

[Atl-atl]

And since Im back, time to go wheelin!

We hit a trail that is only about 40 minutes from downtown Denver. Its called Barbour Fork. Its a 4-5 on trail damage and that rating seemed pretty accurate. I was with a Ford Ranger with torsion bar delete/coilovers up front and 33s and an Xterra on 32s. We just put a lift on this Xterra and the brand new ball joints blew up in 50 miles of pavement driving. So we swapped some new ones in at 2pm on Sunday and didnt get to the trail until 4 hah. We finished 90% of the trail and then the Xterra blew up a brand new torsion bar. Im starting to dislike Xterras and torsion bars, so is the guy that owns it hah. We did a bandaide repair in the dark on the Xterra and limped home. Trail was awesome for how close it is to Denver and its length/difficulty/views/camp spots. Ill definitely be going back here to camp because its close yet you feel remote and only relatively capable rigs would be able to make it. No minivan or Subaru campers here.

hooligan friends

Trailhead is only 5 minutes from Idaho Springs and has a parking lot to air down/up.

The best action from the trail!!! :Wow1:

 

[Atl-atl]

Well its been a few weeks again. Im busy career searching and riding my bikes a lot to relieve the stress. Also Ive been a little off since inhaling so many gasoline fumes lately hah. For a few months now Ive had the nagging P0456 code. I replaced the rubber lines on the leak detection pump, replaced the gas cap(twice) and visually inspected everything multiple times to no avail. Right in the middle of the last offroad trip I started to notice a gas smell. I chalked it up to 3 wheeling action on steep terrain and bouncing around a bunch. Well it kept getting more and more noticeable, to the point where I started to feel ill every time I drove the truck for more than a few minutes. As you can imagine I havent driven much lately, which is a good thing for a number of reasons, my pocket book being one. Well today I decided to do something about it. Went by my buddies shop and hooked the smoke machine up to the gas filler. Turns out the vent line from the rollover valve to the filler neck was leaking, right at the rollover valve. After the smoke cleared and upon closer inspection, the plastic nipple the vent line attaches to is cracked. After a little research I find out the rollover valve is not replaceable or serviceable, Dodge wants you to replace the entire gas tank to the tune of over $1000 just for the part!!! Needless to say that will be a last resort for me.

After brainstorming for a while with my mechanic friend, I decided I would go to the hardware store and see what I could find, broken off nipple in hand. The best idea was to find some sort of sleeve to shove into the hole in the rollover valve, put some super glue on and then slide the rest of the broken nipple onto the sleeve. The closest place was home depot so I went there first, as usual it was a complete waste of time. I wound up at Ace where I got 3 pretty solid parts: A brass crush sleeve, a nylon tube and a 1" roll pin. I decided to go with the roll pin because it was the longest and fit the most snugly. After getting home and cleaning out the hole on the pump and the nipple with a q-tip the roll pin was still a little snug. I took a crimper to it gently, to the point where it was still snug but slid in. So...I climbed under the truck, shoved the pin into the hole on the rollover valve, put some gel super glue on the plastic parts and slid the nipple onto the pin. Fits pretty darn tight. I clipped the vent line back on and the fuel vapor smell was immediately gone. Holy ******** I couldn't believe my nose! Now all thats left is to clear the code, fill the tank up to about 3/4 so the evap system cycles and pray the CEL doesnt come back hahahaha. :snorkel:


You can see the dirty spot on the nipple, this is where it had been cracked and was leaking fuel/vapor. The clean part is the remainder that I broke off today in order to fix the situation.

Pin inserted into the rollover valve.

Nipple glued back in place.

And done.

 

[chilliwak]

Looks like a clean and easy fix there Alt. Good work...:wings:

 

[Regcabguy]

Beautiful terrain. You're a handy guy.