Made it to Marquette, Michigan 1814.5 total trip thus far 319,965 on the truck. Only one fill up on this leg and despite lots of rolling hills and bucking a pretty serious head wind for about 3 hours I still was able to get 21.4 MPG. So far so good, truck gets 4 new tires and an alignment tomorrow.
Road trip preps for a 317,280 mile truck
- Thread starter FlyNavyP3
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Got the truck to my favorite home town tire store today, they installed 4 Michelin Defender LTS M/S tires and checked the front end alignment. The truck had developed a pretty significant pull to the left following my most recent tire rotation about 5,000 miles ago, the problem only manifested following the tire rotation. I had a feeling that something was off with one of my tires and that was causing the pull and not an alignment issue since I didn't have an issue before the most recent rotation. Well that suspicion was confirmed today. Caster and camber were both still dead in spec, left side was toed out a tiny bit and was just outside the spec by 0.010" the tech brought toe back in spec and test drove the truck prior to the tires going on, it still had a pronounced pull to the left. New tires went on, pull is gone. So far with all 6 miles on the new tires I'm happy with my choice. They're significantly quieter than the Goodyear Wrangler Radials they replaced, they're not nearly as aggressive so I expected this. We will see how they perform off road tomorrow as I'm heading off on an 80 ish mile trip through the woods from Marquette out to the northwest, this will not be their strong suit nor are they designed for this but we'll see how they do. Otherwise nothing new to report other than my alignment guy said the ball joints and all the steering components still get two thumbs up for continued service at 319,972 miles. My only thought was I wish someone still built new cars this well! More updates to come!
Back from my adventure in the woods today. Put 175 miles on the truck all but 30 of which were off of the pavement. So far I'm really impressed with the new Michelin tires, they're in no stretch of the imagination an off road friendly tire but they never let me down today, lots of steep steep grades with loose rock sand gravel dirt some of it wet, all completed in 2wd (granted the truck does have a Detroit Locker in the rear axle which helps) some muddy trails throughout the day. I wasn't trying to get myself into anything extreme as I still need to drive it back to Florida and I didn't have a rescue vehicle with me, just a nice come along, so the plan was to not put the truck in any situation that would require 4wd. It almost worked, just after dark a missed turn put me at the base of a LONG steep off camber very rutted sand hill that came up right around a corner, truck was traction hopping badly in 2wd and instead of bearing it to death hopping all the way up and risking breaking something I just stopped, jumped out, locked in the hubs put it in 4Low and proceeded to drive right up without any issues at all. Overall a really fun day in the woods! Really really impressed with how the highway Michelins performed today.
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Fuel filter is about 3 or so years old. It's located in an absolutely terrible place on the side of the block under the intake manifold and is really a pain to change. It was last serviced back when I had the cylinder head off doing the valve job and head gasket.
Does the truck have a tachometer? How can a truck that old keep up with crazy michigan drivers, or Florida for that matter? I've been to both, and 70 is just barely fast enough to avoid getting rear ended. What kind of speeds are you cruising at, and at what rpm? That's one stout little truck.
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Originally Posted By: Kurtatron
Does the truck have a tachometer? How can a truck that old keep up with crazy michigan drivers, or Florida for that matter? I've been to both, and 70 is just barely fast enough to avoid getting rear ended. What kind of speeds are you cruising at, and at what rpm? That's one stout little truck.
My 2 cents - how are all of the cooling system hoses, including the heater hoses? My wife was once driving and 1 of the heater hoses let go, fortunately she was almost home & made it.
I changed them all in my Saturn LW-200 2 years ago at around 150K, they were not so expensive from Rock Auto, just trying to guess what might let me down.
Originally Posted By: tomlct
My 2 cents - how are all of the cooling system hoses, including the heater hoses? My wife was once driving and 1 of the heater hoses let go, fortunately she was almost home & made it.
I changed them all in my Saturn LW-200 2 years ago at around 150K, they were not so expensive from Rock Auto, just trying to guess what might let me down.
Quick update, filled up following the day spent in the woods with the truck. No big surprise that mileage suffered slightly. But the truck still did well and returned a respectable 19.48 MPG for a tank that was mostly all off road driving.
Will be loading up shortly to head back to Florida from Marquette, Michigan. Definitely not ready to leave fall to go back to summer in Florida!
Another quick update with details to follow tomorrow morning.
So far so good on my journey, I have about 350 miles on the new Michelin Defender LTX M/S tires, so far most of the driving on them has been on wet pavement and off road on unimproved roads and some that would barely pass as a trail. First impressions? I'm really really impressed! They're quiet, traction for days in every situation I've had them in and excellent steering response for a brand new full tread depth tire. They're the best driving brand new truck tires I've ever owned!
I will be starting my journey back south tomorrow through Sunday, about 500-600 miles per day to break up the drive a little. The only semi casualty so far this trip was the A/C idler pulley, following my trip through the woods in muddy ruts and sandy water crossings the bearing in the Dayco replacement idler pulley started to make some interesting noises. It was worst when cold and went about 85-95% away once it warmed up, however since I had the original with me as a spare I elected to swap it out to be safe since it takes about 5 minutes with a 14mm socket and ratchet. I'm more than a little disappointed that it died with only about 30,000 miles on it considering the original had 290,000 miles on it and was replaced the last time I changed the A/C belt just because. Oh well, it was a simple swap and I'd rather do that than smoke a belt as I'm likely to wand A/C as I journey south again.
Will update tomorrow when I fire up the truck to point it south.
On the road again 9:00 EST. 320, 235.8 miles on the truck now! Detroit bound!
wishing you a safe trip.
Update from the road! I got distracted and never posted my Detroit arrival. Whoops, also I elected to not delay my departure from Detroit yesterday to post. So anyway, departed Detroit yesterday at 2:00 PM EST and 320,805 miles bound for Knoxville, TN which is where I currently am. Just getting rolling here this morning but will be making the final push into Jacksonville today. I'll update the truck mileage when I get in this morning to point it south.
Originally Posted By: John_Conrad
wishing you a safe trip.
Heading out of Knoxville! 321,318.7 miles trip total so far is 3216.2. Talk to you guys from Jacksonville!
Made it back to Jacksonville! Just got the truck unloaded. Haven't completed the final fill up yet but once I do I'll crunch some numbers and put up some stats from the trip. Total trip mileage per the GPS is 3789.6 the odometer reads 321,872.4 the only issues on the trip were a burnt out dash light bulb and an A/C idler pulley that got noisy after the woods trip that I swapped back to the original as a precaution. The original completed the trip with no issues. No oil was consumed for the entire trip. Will post a follow-up this week sometime! Thanks for the help everyone I'm happy to say it was a success.
Getting settled in following the road trip in the old truck. Had a moment to crunch some numbers for the trip.
Put gas in the truck a total of 15 times of varying volumes throughout the trip. The final fill up was completed following my return to work so the total trip miles for calculating overall fuel economy vary slightly from the total trip mileage. However the 17 additional miles I put on before filling up is only about one half of one percent of the total trip miles so I'd argue that it hardly skews the data for fuel economy calculation.
Total miles driven per GPS for fuel economy calculation 3806.6 total gallons used 184.736. Yields 20.6056 MPG.
That 20.61 MPG included all of the idling in traffic, warming up on cool mornings, and a full day of off road driving. Needless to say I'm really happy with how the truck performed for a 30 year old vehicle with now nearly 322,000 miles on it. The truck remains my daily driver and will likely get an OC and UOA in the next few weeks on the home brew synthetic blend and a filter cut on the Beck Arnley filter currently installed on it. Replacement fill for oil will likely be another batch of home brew synthetic blend this time with a FL-910S to see if the better ADBV helps with the cold start rattle the BA filter exhibited after about 1500 miles on this OCI.
Originally Posted By: FlyNavyP3
Satin, good thinking. I have roadside assistance and towing as a part of my USAA insurance so I'm covered there! Thanks for a great suggestion!
Originally Posted By: e40
Originally Posted By: FlyNavyP3
Satin, good thinking. I have roadside assistance and towing as a part of my USAA insurance so I'm covered there! Thanks for a great suggestion!
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