NAS LR3 build with an overseas twist

[Ray_G]

Khasab (Musandam) Oman & a the great transit of the UAE Pt2

The next day we got up and moving knowing we had a longer drive ahead of us. 305mi isn't all that far, especially on the excellent highways in the UAE and Oman but the little towns and detours kill time both because you start talking with people or finding cool things, and also because of traffic circles that effectively kill speed. It was going to be a long day in the saddle so we took a few more shots up on the tip, playing with the tripod and the timer before heading out.

Throughout the trip we ended up taking inordinate amounts of pictures of random animals encountered. Camels on the road, never gets old

Or goats, which are everywhere, these guys in particular were doing the public service of attacking a tree that was half in the road

The drive back down the coast was just as cool, sadly our new camera's battery died and I had blithely assumed that I had a spare cord to charge it so big fail there.

Lunchtime day 2 found us on the eastern side of the peninsula below Dibba, just below Snoopy Island (real name). Taking advantage of the reality that over here if it isn't specifically marked private it is essentially public and nobody cares if you pull off a highway and drive over to some empty beach front to eat your lunch.

Timing & location was optimal since a few miles later the wind had picked up and this is what it look like right along the water.

Stopped along the way to check out a very old, and architecturally unique, mosque which had a cool fort above it.


Mutually supporting fortifications (good)...but lots of dead space when you close with it (bad).

Cutting back across the country into the sunset was bittersweet since this will likely be the last major trip we take before the wife departs the UAE, and once she's gone I'll likely revert to a semi-hermit status and focus on work & my own retrograde to CONUS this summer. Its difficult to understate how much fun you can have over here if you get the chance to live here, in the end there is still stuff left on the plate that I'd love to do or do more of but I guess that's the mark of living in a great place.

 

[jerdog53]

Some very stark landscape you are dealing with there!

 

[Ray_G]

Some very stark landscape you are dealing with there!

Definitely a very harsh environment, to think that even in the 60's it was quite primitive is amazing-much less to fathom how people scratched out a living hundreds of years ago.

 

[Ray_G]

Dark Gray Wheels; aka fun with plastidip

With the wife's tacit approval to make the wheels dark it was time to exploit opportunity and I'd wanted to try plastidip on the wheels anyway so with the weather still nice here I set out to make my Tonga Green beauty have some darker shoes.

In true nerd fashion I first did the full size spare in a couple of different variations, and yes, I had a control that wasn't colored. The mockery from my PhD candidate wife was still worth it.

Looking at it up against the truck, the best part was when she said "We could just go with black" after having told me explicitly she didn't want black, and after letting me buy god knows how much $$$ worth of plastidip (its a little more expensive here than back in the U.S.), especially since we couldn't find the anthracite so it is a combination of the gunmetal (which is an awful primer like color) + smoke and glossifier.

This weekend was a long one b/c of the federal holiday and with the other half deeply focused on packing for a research trip to China I had time to do the laborious process. Like any painting its all about the prep. I'd originally thought about taking the wheels off the truck to do it but didn't want to buy jack stands out here and enough of my lugs are swollen from exuberant shop monkeys and impact guns that I didn't feel like that fight was worth it. So I'd u-tubed a lot of videos about how to do it on the car and thus set off to try it out by taking post-it notes tucked in between the rim and the tire, plastic grocery bags through the spokes covering the brakes, and painters tape on the lugs & valve step. To be honest the cleaning and then prep was monotonous but the end result did bear out that it can be done.

New center caps, in this case inadvertently sent black/silver LR ovals (I'd ordered glossy black caps with the green/gold LR ovals). In the end all the other emblems on my truck are moving toward the black silver so I decided to just stick with these and color match them to the wheels.

Several coats of the gunmetal in. With plastidip less is def more in terms of coats and thus the day was a long routine of light coat, 20-30min of drying time, and then repeat. I ended up doing 4 coats of gunmetal-a keen observer will note that the truck is now about 2-3' forward from the shot of it just masked up on the silver wheel-another trick from the videos was to roll the vehicle if you're painting wheels on to ensure even coverage. This seemed to work well, especially for the critical base layer.

Much later in the process. The nice thing about the smoke is that it is subtle, the unfortunate thing is that it took 8-10 coats to get it this dark. At this stage I'm actually down to just adding a couple of coats of glossifier.

Since this thread has the scantest expo value to begin with, I don't feel bad posting this distraction that sits a few spots down from mine.

I'd also note that trying to cook kielbasa amidst wrapping up the painting project is challenging when the elevator has 22 floors to travel back and forth. Thankfully cast iron is good for more than just cooking in the camp and retains the heat well with amazing flavor.

Back on point, as the rice was finishing for dinner I ran down and used a razor to make sure none of the masking was bonded to the layers, and left the truck overnight to dry.

In the light of day.

All told I'm pretty happy with the results, actually I'm extremely pleased with the uniqueness of the look. I've got black lugs inbound, will post on those specifically when they arrive since I'm trying some aftermarket lugs vice the black OE models. We'll see about the durability of it but the beauty of plastidip is that it isn't permanent. I do think that if I switch to the rim style that I have as a spare I may take advantage of going black which will be a lot easier to touch up than this will be but time will tell and that's not an urgent priority anyway. More to come soon including the wrap up of my onboard air ver 1.0, the install of an aux fuel tank (front runner), a rear swing away, and who knows what else before she ships back to the U.S.

 

[ColoDisco]

Looks great Ray! As my wheels are pretty weathered I am thinking of doing the same. Not sure on color though.

 

[Ooops]

That's the business Ray. Well done :clapsmile Where did you source the plastidip?

 

[Ray_G]

That's the business Ray. Well done :clapsmile Where did you source the plastidip?

The beauty of Ace hardware made it possible!

 

[Ooops]

Ah ACE Hardware :bowdown::bowdown::bowdown:
The one thing missing in Oman

 

[DiscoDavis]

Very clean. Nice!

 

[nathanwind]

The beauty of Ace hardware made it possible!

Wait...they seriously have Ace Hardware in UAE?

 

[Ray_G]

Ah ACE Hardware :bowdown::bowdown::bowdown:
The one thing missing in Oman

Al Ain isn't that far away.

Lav, yes Ace is here and to be honest it is what I wish Ace was in the us.

 

[ColoDisco]

I love Ace! They always have that weird quirky nut or bolt I need.

 

[Ray_G]

I love Ace! They always have that weird quirky nut or bolt I need.

The one's out here are great, tons of camping stuff and even some ok offroad items (Bushranger line, i.e. you can get an exhaust jack in the hardware store).

Total aside-with your color truck, def do the black wheels if you do plastidip or paint them-would look awesome.

 

[Ray_G]

Odds & ends update

Major changes coming soon with the truck's configurations but as is typical in the Middle East shipping delays and all manner of other life complications get in the way-but in the meantime I did get a couple of things worth posting sorted. First and foremost the OBA has been wrapped up by putting in a better hose (the plastic one from Viair's air source relocation kit was ok but not great, easily kinked given the routing and such. I retained it as a spare air line since it does have the fittings that you can cut & install on pretty much anything). Perhaps one day I'd like something that puts out more than the TJM but the current cost of it (nothing since it was already purchased) makes it worth playing with for the moment. Also note the optima yellow top installed in the Aux compartment-if I hadn't already noted that somewhere in my meanderings.


While I've got black lugs inbound from Gorilla to try those out to sidestep the continued bane of LR lug existence, the swollen cap syndrome, as I'd decided to paint the wheels awhile ago and didn't think I wanted OEM lugs given their $$$ I was searching around and found a set of 21mm black silicone lug nut covers on Amazon for a whopping $8.58 with free shipping: (21mm silicone lug nut covers). At that price I figured it was worth a shot, ordered them, and promptly forgot about them till they arrived.

*Yes, that is a case for rayban aviators. Its the middle east, the sun is bright and they work well. (Just in case Tony is lurking here to further mock me)*
I'd figured that the 21mm size would stretch sufficently to get over the 22-23mm lug nuts on the D3 and they did so perfectly. While not glossy, I definitely prefer the look to the silver lugs and for under $10 I'd say they are a great modification for folks thinking about paining their wheels who don't want to pay $300 for a set of OE lugs, or even the $100 for the yet to be tested gorillas. I'm still going to throw those on since they are solid and not capped, but they have to get here first! Here she is in daylight:


Def loving the dark gray wheels. Coming up soon: roof rack changes in the works, and a rescheduled appointment for aux fuel & tire carrier setups in March!

 

[nathanwind]

Tell me more about these Gorilla solid lugs....do they do different colors (like to stick with the factory color look)?