LeftofLucky
Observer
It happened. Wife and I lost our minds. I quit my job as an editor with Road & Track last October. We've been selling everything and gearing up for a year-long trek around the states since then. I've been hounding ExPo for a little over a year, and you bastards got the gears in my head spinning. We're taking our 2003 Ram 2500 four-door long-bed, 5.9 Cummins HO, 6-speed, four-wheel drive. Here's the thing as I bought it almost a year ago:
It was super hammered. Was a Texas truck before it made its way to a backwoods farm in Tennessee and suffered accordingly. I didn't buy it with the intention of turning it into a long-distance rig. It was supposed to just tool around town and pick up lumber and motorcycles. So much for that. We couldn't really afford to sell this one and go out and buy something a little more sorted, especially with our camper choice. More on that in a second.
Take a deep breath. So far, I have done:
Rear wheel bearings and axle seals
Front wheel bearings
Bilstein 5100 shocks
Carli ball joints and king pins
Front axle u-joints (required the replacement of the passenger side axle shaft)
Redhead steering box
Power steering pump
Borgeson steering shaft
2009 Steering linkage upgrade w/pitman arm
Water pump, thermostat, serpentine belt, tensioner
Mechman 240 amp alternator (with 0-gauge cables and in-line fuse)
Dual Odyssey AGM batteries
Remanufactured injectors, CP3 pump
Valve cover and rocker box gaskets
Replaced heater core
Midland CB with NOAA weather band
Which, more or less brings us here:
You may notice the absence of a bed. We've opted for a Four Wheel Campers Grandby Flatbed. I'm picking up an aluminum bed for the truck from Martin's Welding, an outfit out of Martinsburg, PA, next week. To make things a little more exciting, we got the note from 4WC that our Grandby will be done on Feb. 3, which means I need to button up a few more things on the truck before I shuck to Sacramento to pick the thing up.
How the hell is all this possible? For starters, when I say we've been selling everything, I mean it. Cars. Bikes. Furniture. Hell, even the house. We're all in. I'm also writing about this idiot shindig for Time Inc's new automotive vertical, The Drive. If you're interested, you can follow along here:
http://www.thedrive.com/article/982/why-im-selling-everything-and-taking-my-family-on-the-road
There's a link to the other stories in there, too. I'll be contributing two pieces a week on this whole thing there, and trying to keep up with the technical end of things here. As much for my own benefit as anybody else's. So yeah, let's do this thing.
It was super hammered. Was a Texas truck before it made its way to a backwoods farm in Tennessee and suffered accordingly. I didn't buy it with the intention of turning it into a long-distance rig. It was supposed to just tool around town and pick up lumber and motorcycles. So much for that. We couldn't really afford to sell this one and go out and buy something a little more sorted, especially with our camper choice. More on that in a second.
Take a deep breath. So far, I have done:
Rear wheel bearings and axle seals
Front wheel bearings
Bilstein 5100 shocks
Carli ball joints and king pins
Front axle u-joints (required the replacement of the passenger side axle shaft)
Redhead steering box
Power steering pump
Borgeson steering shaft
2009 Steering linkage upgrade w/pitman arm
Water pump, thermostat, serpentine belt, tensioner
Mechman 240 amp alternator (with 0-gauge cables and in-line fuse)
Dual Odyssey AGM batteries
Remanufactured injectors, CP3 pump
Valve cover and rocker box gaskets
Replaced heater core
Midland CB with NOAA weather band
Which, more or less brings us here:
You may notice the absence of a bed. We've opted for a Four Wheel Campers Grandby Flatbed. I'm picking up an aluminum bed for the truck from Martin's Welding, an outfit out of Martinsburg, PA, next week. To make things a little more exciting, we got the note from 4WC that our Grandby will be done on Feb. 3, which means I need to button up a few more things on the truck before I shuck to Sacramento to pick the thing up.
How the hell is all this possible? For starters, when I say we've been selling everything, I mean it. Cars. Bikes. Furniture. Hell, even the house. We're all in. I'm also writing about this idiot shindig for Time Inc's new automotive vertical, The Drive. If you're interested, you can follow along here:
http://www.thedrive.com/article/982/why-im-selling-everything-and-taking-my-family-on-the-road
There's a link to the other stories in there, too. I'll be contributing two pieces a week on this whole thing there, and trying to keep up with the technical end of things here. As much for my own benefit as anybody else's. So yeah, let's do this thing.
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