The last post ends with me finding a leak in the injection pump. That became a bigger problem the more I drove the truck around. Unfortunately I didn't have the tools to repair it in Arizona and local diesel shops wanted 1500-2000 dollars to repair or replace the pump. I didn't have time to fix it so I drove it from Arizona to Alabama with the leak. It dropped mpg to 14 and coated the exterior of the truck in diesel even though it was a fairly minor leak. The day I finished loading the truck in Tucson to leave I got in and closed the door only to have the driver's side interior door handle snap off.
In Texas I went to Big Bend national park. In the park the truck lost the front left wheel bearing and I had to limp it to a small town outside the park. It took a few days and a few hundred dollars to get the wheel bearing repaired. However I found a nice little resort down the street with a relatively cheap room so I hung around while I waited for the truck to get fixed. All in all it was quite a pleasant breakdown. I got into the park after the truck was fixed. It was the first time I have been happy the National park service always charges for a week admission.
When I arrived to Alabama the weather was bad enough that I didn't get around to fixing the injection pump leak. Also while driving in the rain outside Birmingham the windshield wipers broke. I have lost the small plastic widget that attaches the arms to the wiper motor before however I didn't have time to fix that either. Somewhere in there the passenger side door lock stuck in the locked position and I will need to take the door apart before I can open the passenger door. I took a girl out on a date with only the drivers door functioning and that was less than ideal.
Shortly after that I went to Cuba for a few weeks.
When I came back I made the decision to leave the truck in Alabama with my dad. I flew to my next job in Anchorage, Alaska and I bought a 2013 Jeep Rubicon 2 door with a 6 speed. You may be asking if this is the end of the old truck's story with me. I'm not sure yet. However my Jeep is easier to live with so far and while the old truck's problems were relatively minor it was starting to need a lot more maintenance than I had time to perform. The jeep is a smaller however but it is also much more normal. That is both a good thing and a bad thing. I have owned the truck for 10 years, put over 150k miles on it, taken it to most of the states in the USA, plus I took it to Mexico and Canada. I snowboarded out of it many times and did lots of offroading. I camped out of it more than a few months in total and went to a bunch of national parks in it. As far as projects go it has been a good one. Time will tell.