slow build- 97 Ram CTD family truck/expo rig
- Thread starter bloodyWEST
- Start date
bloodyWEST
Adventurer
Well I put about 350 miles on the truck today and yesterday. 50+ miles of dirt and I am very happy.
I had no idea what my tire pressure was set to by the tire shop, it felt like a lot. When I hit the dirt I checked it, it was at about 70#. I dropped it to 50 all the way around and with this much weight, it feels amazing all around. Good enough on the pavement and excellent on the dirt.
We are staying in Lone Pine and today we cruised around the Alabama hills and drove up to Whitney portal and found some snow. I am in love with my truck. It's a manual trans away from being the perfect vehicle.
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I had no idea what my tire pressure was set to by the tire shop, it felt like a lot. When I hit the dirt I checked it, it was at about 70#. I dropped it to 50 all the way around and with this much weight, it feels amazing all around. Good enough on the pavement and excellent on the dirt.
We are staying in Lone Pine and today we cruised around the Alabama hills and drove up to Whitney portal and found some snow. I am in love with my truck. It's a manual trans away from being the perfect vehicle.
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bloodyWEST
Adventurer
It's been a while since I logged into expo.
My family did a 4300 mile road trip to Texas last month. Truck ran awesome. Only mechanical issue was minor. We lost the AC in Wichita Falls Tx and some where on the way home wile doing 80mph (1000* egt and 30psi) for hours and hours on end, it developed a nice oil leak that I have figured out yet.
Mileage was all over the map. It doesn't like to run at 80mph with the 4.10 gears but it sure will do it. Stiff head wind and 75-80 mph with a 6500' trailer and we did 3 full tanks at 8mpg!! But we did do a couple tanks at 12.5mpg coming out if the mountains from Flagstaff heading across NM.
Passed this ************ 1970 on the 10west leaving Phoenix. Made me miss my first truck, a 1970 k10
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My family did a 4300 mile road trip to Texas last month. Truck ran awesome. Only mechanical issue was minor. We lost the AC in Wichita Falls Tx and some where on the way home wile doing 80mph (1000* egt and 30psi) for hours and hours on end, it developed a nice oil leak that I have figured out yet.
Mileage was all over the map. It doesn't like to run at 80mph with the 4.10 gears but it sure will do it. Stiff head wind and 75-80 mph with a 6500' trailer and we did 3 full tanks at 8mpg!! But we did do a couple tanks at 12.5mpg coming out if the mountains from Flagstaff heading across NM.
Passed this ************ 1970 on the 10west leaving Phoenix. Made me miss my first truck, a 1970 k10
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SDDiver5
Expedition Leader
Dude nice Center Console. That thing is sweet looking. If I ever have a vehicle that is more project based and NOT my DD then I definitely want a console like that.
8mpg is not bad for your year, gears and towing weight. Towing a trailer from Flagstaff to SD I got about 10 MPG with my 4.6L.
8mpg is not bad for your year, gears and towing weight. Towing a trailer from Flagstaff to SD I got about 10 MPG with my 4.6L.
bloodyWEST
Adventurer
Finally finished my bumper. Painted and all the running lights in. High clearance, stout hitch, hides and protects my aux fuel tank. I'm happy.
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ramsport59
Observer
8mpg isn't bad at all with that wind and speed!
This got 9.5mpg pulling in the mountains of PA doing 60-65mph. It weighed in at 19,500lbs. The bed is full of my tools and stuff needed for work.
Rick
This got 9.5mpg pulling in the mountains of PA doing 60-65mph. It weighed in at 19,500lbs. The bed is full of my tools and stuff needed for work.
Rick
Seabass
Idiot
Finally finished my bumper. Painted and all the running lights in. High clearance, stout hitch, hides and protects my aux fuel tank. I'm happy.
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That's a fine lookin bumper! Very clean!
bloodyWEST
Adventurer
Well the truck has sat in the driveway a lot lately, but I did take a nice back country camping trip with some friends at the beginning of summer.
I finally wired up the fuel transfer pump that I plumbed months ago. I learned that fuel had been siphoning and transferring back and forth without the pump on, which is why my mpg had been so erratic. I need to put in an isolation valve. It's really nice to have 55 gallons of fuel in the truck. My dad just bought a new 2015 ford CCSB diesel and it only has a 25 gal tank, it drives him crazy, and makes me really enjoy going an easy 500 miles.
We did a big 6 day camping trip up US395 last week. I grew up camping along LeeVining creek but it seems you have to go further and deeper into the woods to escape the crazies. We went to Green Creek just outside of Bridgeport, it's about 8 miles of dirt road back up into a valley that sits at about 7800'. The road was freshly graded and was very nice. I scrounged up a second spare tire for the trailer because I was nervous about dragging the trailer way back there, but it was a non issue. The campground is pretty tight (and $14/night) so we stayed in the unimproved area along the creek. It was free, beautiful and totally dead. There were 2 motorhomes with jeeps there, and they left the day after we got there.
We did some sight seeing around the area and drove though Dunderberg Meadow
I had been inspired months ago by locrwln's trip up Mt Patterson and I wanted to check that off my list. It turned out to be very epic and worth the drive.
So we went through Bridgeport and then turned northeast off 395 and stopped and Lobdell lake (pond) at 9000' IIRC
Then we dropped into 4 low and started the climb to 11,670'. We had to make 3 point turns 2 or 3 times on a few of the switchbacks, but overall it's a really nice road.
We bbq'd some hotdogs at the top
https://vimeo.com/139301809
Sway bars? Nah
Then I glanced at my Delorme gazetteer and saw a road heading north into NV and headed that way, still in 4 low.
Ended up missing a turn, and crossing this creek like 5 times before we got to a dead end.
https://vimeo.com/139302107
Then we got back on track, after a 2 hour detour, then had a bit of trouble finding this "road" and had to do some manual GPSing. This was actually a first for me, taking the coordinates from my iPhone and locating myself on my map. We were kinda on track but the road was nowhere in sight. We found a new "road" which was a steep 4low 200yard climb up a boulder strewn hill, when we got to the top I could see the "road" a 1/4
mile away across a meadow. I thought "great we are back on track" we crossed the NV state line in the middle of this remote 9,000' meadow then the road got very tight, it was quickly turning from a jeep sized road, to a utv/quad road and then into a motor cycle trail. I was able to pull up google earth and see a major road was only about 3/4 mile away, so we kept forging on.
I started up a boulder pile, got hung up on both pumpkins at once, and gave up. It was about 5pm, it took about 30 min to turn around, I had to plow over some 5" diameter trees, it was off camber, truck was sliding off the trail, I was getting nervous. I had the wife/kids and it was getting dark, we were 30 miles from pavement. I had to stack rocks, and it was not pretty but we got turned around. It was about 4 hours to get back to pavement.
you can kind of see the "road" out there.
Back on track
We were in the dirt for 12 hours, in 4 low for 8 hours. We saw 2 quads whe we first turned off the highway, then went 12 hours without seeing a soul. We did about 50 miles of dirt. It was great! The wife was ready to be back on graded roads after about 8 hours. The fam was great though.
Here we are the next day driving out of green creek
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I finally wired up the fuel transfer pump that I plumbed months ago. I learned that fuel had been siphoning and transferring back and forth without the pump on, which is why my mpg had been so erratic. I need to put in an isolation valve. It's really nice to have 55 gallons of fuel in the truck. My dad just bought a new 2015 ford CCSB diesel and it only has a 25 gal tank, it drives him crazy, and makes me really enjoy going an easy 500 miles.
We did a big 6 day camping trip up US395 last week. I grew up camping along LeeVining creek but it seems you have to go further and deeper into the woods to escape the crazies. We went to Green Creek just outside of Bridgeport, it's about 8 miles of dirt road back up into a valley that sits at about 7800'. The road was freshly graded and was very nice. I scrounged up a second spare tire for the trailer because I was nervous about dragging the trailer way back there, but it was a non issue. The campground is pretty tight (and $14/night) so we stayed in the unimproved area along the creek. It was free, beautiful and totally dead. There were 2 motorhomes with jeeps there, and they left the day after we got there.
We did some sight seeing around the area and drove though Dunderberg Meadow
I had been inspired months ago by locrwln's trip up Mt Patterson and I wanted to check that off my list. It turned out to be very epic and worth the drive.
So we went through Bridgeport and then turned northeast off 395 and stopped and Lobdell lake (pond) at 9000' IIRC
Then we dropped into 4 low and started the climb to 11,670'. We had to make 3 point turns 2 or 3 times on a few of the switchbacks, but overall it's a really nice road.
We bbq'd some hotdogs at the top
https://vimeo.com/139301809
Sway bars? Nah
Then I glanced at my Delorme gazetteer and saw a road heading north into NV and headed that way, still in 4 low.
Ended up missing a turn, and crossing this creek like 5 times before we got to a dead end.
https://vimeo.com/139302107
Then we got back on track, after a 2 hour detour, then had a bit of trouble finding this "road" and had to do some manual GPSing. This was actually a first for me, taking the coordinates from my iPhone and locating myself on my map. We were kinda on track but the road was nowhere in sight. We found a new "road" which was a steep 4low 200yard climb up a boulder strewn hill, when we got to the top I could see the "road" a 1/4
mile away across a meadow. I thought "great we are back on track" we crossed the NV state line in the middle of this remote 9,000' meadow then the road got very tight, it was quickly turning from a jeep sized road, to a utv/quad road and then into a motor cycle trail. I was able to pull up google earth and see a major road was only about 3/4 mile away, so we kept forging on.
I started up a boulder pile, got hung up on both pumpkins at once, and gave up. It was about 5pm, it took about 30 min to turn around, I had to plow over some 5" diameter trees, it was off camber, truck was sliding off the trail, I was getting nervous. I had the wife/kids and it was getting dark, we were 30 miles from pavement. I had to stack rocks, and it was not pretty but we got turned around. It was about 4 hours to get back to pavement.
Back on track
We were in the dirt for 12 hours, in 4 low for 8 hours. We saw 2 quads whe we first turned off the highway, then went 12 hours without seeing a soul. We did about 50 miles of dirt. It was great! The wife was ready to be back on graded roads after about 8 hours. The fam was great though.
Here we are the next day driving out of green creek
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Last edited:
bloodyWEST
Adventurer
Still out here truckin. This is Mount Shasta coming home from an 11day road trip to Oregon.
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chilliwak
Expedition Leader
Looks like you and your family are getting up to some great:Wow1: adventures BloodyWest! I love the pics you posted. It looks like you had a blast and the 1st and 2nd gen trucks look great camped together. My family has a couple of 1st gen Dodges and swear by them. They love the simplicity and robust design. I prefer the 2nd gen for looks, and you can still get them with the 12valve mechanical pump diesel. Thanks for posting up. Cheers, Chilli..
Nathaniel0712
Observer
This in an awesome truck!! I need to get my utility bed set up.