Larry's 1978 K10

[Larry]

Given all went well with the shake down run we carried on with our usual plans of our annual Desert Trip. There were 6 total trucks confirmed to go (4 from CO and 2 from CA) but as the departure date grew closer people were dropping like flies for various legit reasons. Come departure day only 3 of us were rolling out but as luck would have it about 2.5 hours from home as we were approaching Alamosa, CO Bill got a call from his dad that his aunt died so he turned back to go help his dad with the affairs and what not. Now the DT21 squad was down to just Ian in an 8.1L powered M1008 Military Blazer and myself. With it now just being the two of us we stopped and studied the map to revaluation our plans for the week and we decided upon ditching our Northern Arizona plans and continuing West on CO 160 to Urvan to catch the Rim Rocker Trail then figure it out from there.

Rim Rocker was pretty neat. Its really nothing more than a dirt road really but we never saw anyone until we reached Buckeye Lake on the second night of the Trail.

Airing down at the entrance of the Rim Rocker

We set up camp about an hour into the trail as we had been on the road since 5 am and took the absolute longest route from Pueblo to this area being we had a change of plans along the way. We were pooped and the skies looked like they were going to open up any minute, which they never did

Don’t see much frame flex anymore

We ran across this sign the next morning not far from were we camped

Pretty scenic

Around 3 ish we rolled into Buckeye Lake where we decided to set up camp early to study the maps to determine were to go next

I never even thought about bringing a fishing pole on a Desert Trip but I was sure wishing I had

The next morning we bailed out of there with the rigs pointed towards Moab.

Ian had never done the White Rim Trail before so we figured we’d pedal up to the visitors center and see about any open camp spots but first we had to air up these pesky big tires

 

[Buddha.]

How long you been running the duratracs? Load range E? You like them?

 

[Larry]

How long you been running the duratracs? Load range E? You like them?

Yes, load Range E. For a truck this heavy anything less than load range E would be spooky. The DirtyTracs actually belong on my Polar Bear Suburban but since it spends most of its time sitting I threw them on the K10 for a while to wear them down as the Fierce Attitudes on the K10 were getting pretty tore up with trail rash and sketchy to run on long distance trips. The Dirtytracs are back on the Suburban now since the K10 got new meats. These Dirtytracs are getting close to timing out as they are approaching 10 years old. No signs of dry rot yet since it lives indoors.

 

[toddz69]

Looking good, Larry! Thanks for the details on the frame repair.

Todd Z.

 

[Mighty Dodge Ram]

I seem to remember us loading a broken down adventure bike into the back of Ty's Dodge when exiting Saline. Perhaps Ty should be designated official "rescue truck" of DTs; don't leave home without it. Glad to see your truck back on the trail!

 

[Larry]

Looking good, Larry! Thanks for the details on the frame repair.

Todd Z.

I figured people would be curious and offer their unsolicited opinions of how they would have done it differently given how the Portal has worked in the past ?. I know my approach wasn’t what some people would have done, especially metal fabricators, as many believe adding tons of heat and miles of weld to these old spaghetti frame trucks is a good idea. I spent much research in reading and talking with chassis engineers at work and the feedback was a consistent bolted C-channel stack recommendation over boxing every time. Boxing a C-channel frame was not a popular item with the engineers I spoke with regardless if it was a medium duty truck, class 8 semi or a little 40+ year old GM spaghetti frame pickup.

I seem to remember us loading a broken down adventure bike into the back of Ty's Dodge when exiting Saline. Perhaps Ty should be designated official "rescue truck" of DTs; don't leave home without it. Glad to see your truck back on the trail!

Yes sir! That’s the same Dodge that was with us when we rescued the broken Dual Sport bike in Death Valley ?. Ty’s rig is most definitely the rescue wagon for sure. BTW, Ty is moving back to CO soon! I’m definitely looking forward to it .

 

[Larry]

Back to the DT21 story… We lucked out and Canyonlands did have a campsite open that evening so we headed on down Shaffer and onto the WRT. This was my 3rd or 4th trip on the WRT but it never gets old

Just before we left the visitors center I received a call from Bill back home in Pueblo. He said things were under control with the passing of his aunt and he might drive back to Utah to met up with us. He might even leave later that evening. I had totally forgotten about this conversation and I actually expected to see him the next day somewhere on the other end of WRT as we headed out through Mineral Bottom. Well, about 2 AM we could hear something coming for miles and it got louder and louder and louder until our campers lite up like daylight. For a minute, I thought we were getting abducted by aliens but it was just a screaming Hemi singing the song of Bill's arrival into camp at 2 AM. Leave it to Bill to drive 8 hours in the dark and ¼ way through the WRT in the dark! He knew exactly where to find us as he looked at my SPOT before he lost cell service

He was a tired boy the next morning though. The last guy out of bed!

Good ole Murphy’s Hogback

That evening we camped somewhere outside the park on BLM land North of the Visitors Center

Nothing like eating a cow out in free range country still undecided where we would go the next day but wherever it would be was going to be better than being home

 

[zoomad75]

I love the pics as always. Bummed I missed out on WRT. Bill's legend grew cruising WRT in the dark. Such an animal.

Makes me get itching for the next run. I pick up the transmission Friday. Booyah!

 

[Larry]

I love the pics as always. Bummed I missed out on WRT. Bill's legend grew cruising WRT in the dark. Such an animal.

Makes me get itching for the next run. I pick up the transmission Friday. Booyah!

Yeah, total drag you couldn't make it. I'm totally ready to get out again!

We woke up and decided upon checking out Chicken Corners for our final night so we headed back towards the Visitors Center and back down the Shafer Trail then out towards Moab on Potash Rd. It was time to head to Moab for supplies (moooor beeeer) anyway before heading back out for another night.

Somewhere along Potash Rd

From the last picture we made our rounds through Moab for supplies then back out Kane Creek headed towards Chicken Corners. It was pretty hot, gloomy and looked a lot like it was going to rain

Felt like I was taking an International commercial photoshoot here with a San Juan Country truck doing its thing

Looking across at the Potash ponds, which was the road we were on a few hours earlier

Our home for the night

Not long after these pictures were taken it started raining like cats and dogs so we ended up hiding in our little houses for much of the evening

The next morning headed out of Chicken Corners

We stopped by Dewey Bridge on 128 headed back toward CO

That’s pretty much it. Now the long drive home in the rain. It rained and rained and rained some more then stopped for about ¼ mile then rained even more all the way home! We actually camped one more night near Gunnison, CO on the way home as it was raining extremely hard and my wipers quit working in the Black Rock Canyon outside of Gunnison! That got spooky for a while without wipers in a downpour. Didn’t get any pictures of that off-highway spot though.

This trip was shorter than usual with only being 6 nights and around 1,300 miles round trip and it went fast! The weather was much cooler and wetter than most June Desert Trips as well. Anxious to see what 2022 has in store for us!

 

[Overdrive]

Really enjoying this thread! Thanks for taking the time to share your build and travels.

A regular cab Power Wagon...now there's something you don't see every day! A few years ago I almost pulled the trigger on a reg cab manual trans PW. Still kicking myself.

 

[Larry]

Really enjoying this thread! Thanks for taking the time to share your build and travels.

A regular cab Power Wagon...now there's something you don't see every day! A few years ago I almost pulled the trigger on a reg cab manual trans PW. Still kicking myself.

Thanks! Its fun to share and also helps me remember trips years later when I read them again down the road.


Oh, ya! Bill lucked in to that red waggy! He found it on Autotrader last March during the Rona lockdown and 2 days later split town with his 2017 Tacoma to Sioux Falls, SD to make the trade. We left the Tacoma behind and came back with the unicorn Power Wagon and a big fat check for the difference. The dealer he got it from just had it transported from Southern California so it came from a nice climate. Supposedly, it was a one-owner truck and it sure looks believable as nice as it is. He has already put around 30,000 miles on it in the year he’s had it. Its already been on several trips to AZ, CA and UT plus one trip to OH to drag back a mini funny race car for a friend. Already burnt threw a new set of Geolanders on it within 10 months. The dude gets around

 

[Overdrive]

Oh wow, small world! I remember seeing it on Autotrader! IIRC I looked at the CarFax via the dealer's ad and saw it was from SoCal. Super clean truck. Sounds like Bill is getting good use out of it!

 

[Larry]

Back to the saga of the last 2 years...........So, the last two days of Desert Trip 21 got quite annoying as things just started to go wrong one by one. Thursday morning while leaving the cow pasture I noticed the A/C wasn’t working. No blower motor operation, no A/C compressor….nada.…..kaput. The next time we stopped I fiddled with this, fiddle with that….looked a the fuse box, etc. No luck so I just figured I’d deal with it but it wasn’t too bad anyway as it was pretty gloomy and rainy that day and before long I forgot about it.

Then as we got closer to Chicken Corners I heard a huge pop then not long after a horrible banging noise and of course, my mind instantly thinks the worst that something with the frame repair just went south so I stopped the truck and took a look around. Everything looked good (yeah, heard that story the year before a few times too). As I carried on the trail I could feel and odd bang/bump noise and I noticed it was something with drivers door so I stopped again and this time I found the front fender had broken loose at the upper mount where the bracket bolts to the cowl and was driving the fender into the door, which is a classic break spot for squarebodies. So now I don’t have A/C and I get to hear this gawd awful noise the rest of the way into Chicken Corners and back out again the next day. That made me pretty cranky and it would only get worse from here.

Anyway the next day was the long drive home day and it pretty much rained the entire way. As we rolling through the Black Canyon on CO Hwy 92 between Crawford and the Blue Mesa Reservoir dam the wipers stopped in a torrential downpour. Now I’m driving like 2 MPH with my head out the door trying to find a place to pull over that wouldn’t dump me straight into the canyon because the windows are extremely fogged up because I don’t have a gat dam blower motor or A/C. Normally, I have the windows so greased up with RainX I often don’t even need wipers but after the truck got filthy dirty during the frame repair I had claybar’d the windshield and forgot to reapply RainX. After stopping for a few minutes the wipers started working again and the rain let up a bit so we carried on and at least got onto Hwy 50 closer to Gunnison but before we got into Gunnison the wipers stopped again. Now I am really pissed and hit up the first part store we could find to buy some RainX but the problem was the rain wouldn’t let up enough to even apply it. Being it was getting late in the evening I decided to just camp not far off the highway and call it a night. The next morning was much nicer and dry but I went a head and applied the RainX anyway as I was still a few hours from home and that turned out to be a good thing because it started raining again about an hour after I left the camp spot for most of the drive home.

We hit so much rain on the way home you couldn’t even tell we had been on a desert trip. The truck looked clean!

A few days after we got home I finally got some time to start doing an autopsy to see ****** was going with this thing. Upon closer inspection, the A/C fuse had blown under the cap where you couldn’t easily tell it was blown especially since that fuse location is pretty well covered by a harness. It didn’t matter that I didn’t see this on the trail anyway as I discovered I didn’t have a single new glass fuse in the truck. LOL

As I dug into the wiper situation, I found the wiper motor just flat out died. I swore I had just replaced it a few years ago but the Napa invoice said otherwise….more like 2004. LOL

BUT, this was the biggie…when I pulled the driver’s front fender off the bracket that bolts to the cowl was broken clean off and while this is a somewhat common squarebody failure point I blame those rock hard polyurethan body mounts that I added during the frame repair adding more stress to the fenders.

It wasn’t too difficult to fix though, just time consuming

I didn’t weld anything but two plug welds while bolting the rest with flange bolts and prevailing torque nuts and adding a reinforcement to the inside of the fender as well

Since I had the fender out of the way, it was a perfect time to go through the only harness on the truck that I haven’t ever touched, which was the original underhood harness from the bulkhead connector on out. Fuses don't commit suicide, they're murdered and I found plenty of hohos that would love to overload a fuse. Once I unloomed and untapped the original harness I found, in just the 10 gauge purple wire alone that goes from the bulkhead connector to the starter motor, 3 old big fat yellow butt connectors with ancient electrical tape over them. When I touch the tape it flaked off like a scab revealing a lot of green corrosion. In the circuit to the A/C compressor was another sight as it had several more interesting splices. The splice closest to the compressor was one I added many years ago but the others were from previous owners over 25 years ago. LOL

I ended up sacrificing one of my Workhorse L96/Allison engine harnesses to pirate the long 10 gauge purple starter circuit and OEM fuse links. Its really sad that you can’t buy good quality wire anywhere these days let alone in factory colors so to me it was worth sacrificing a 2012 harness just for the sake of having high quality OEM wire in the correct colors to work with.

Once the fender went on it took some creativity with a come-a-long to slightly make the final adjustments

Much better!

There is a lot going on under here but everything has its place and I can now trust what is beneath the looms

I also added these neat harness protectors that were scattered throughout the Workhorse harness

After promptly relocating the red polyurethan radiator support mounts in the trash and reinstalling my old ones, I added a longer bolt with a spring to help give the radiator support a bit more wiggle room without being loosy goosey.

Well, that brings us up to present day but I still have a punch list before we head out on DT22 beginning with replacing the polyurethan mounts under the cab. The problem is the non-poly that I have on order through Classic Industries have been on order for almost 5 months already and I’m pretty sure I threw my old cab mounts away during the frame repair. Might have to figure something else out soon! I’m tempted to pull the passengers fender and give it the reinforcement treatment too since it feels like it may have a broken spot weld or two as well

 

[toddz69]

Looking good, Larry! An amazing amount of work there! So that piece that broke off the fender was originally spot-welded onto the main fender? Is there enough room to get your hand behind it to get the nuts into position for all those bolts?

And that close-up shot of T&B ty-raps cut flush says it all about your workmanship!

Todd Z.

 

[Larry]

Looking good, Larry! An amazing amount of work there! So that piece that broke off the fender was originally spot-welded onto the main fender? Is there enough room to get your hand behind it to get the nuts into position for all those bolts?

And that close-up shot of T&B ty-raps cut flush says it all about your workmanship!

Todd Z.

Thanks Todd!

Yeah, that bracket was spot welded to the fender. All but 2 of the original spot welds got replaced with 3/8 flange bolts. There was plenty of room to reach in there to add the reinforcement plate and install the prevailing torque nuts on the back side. Of course, when I was done bolting it all together, I mustered to myself the obligatory … “that’s not going anywhere” ?. Rob's sloped nose K5 has broken in this same spot twice so I knew welding alone wasn't going to cut it. We'll do this repair to his when it gets its next fender. I still blame the rock hard poly mounts as being a contributing factor but the bigger issue is when the front tire gets shoved into the fenders under hard flex something has to give.

And you’re right, there is nothing worse than reaching your hand someplace and getting sliced open by someone’s diagonally cut tie strap. I have a pair of Snap-On cutters especially made for flush cutting tie straps. The money saved in Band Aids will pay for the cutters eventually ?