Dam it was HOT...temps in the 90's everyday cept yesterday, made for uncomfortable camping, but the Maiden worked pretty good at the dunes...power is king when climbing deep soft sand...I only aired down to 14#, but the power of the 454 kept the tires diggin good...Really glad I went with the BB for this reason.
The first big improvement with the hydro assist worked great....took away the death wobble, what a huge relief that was.
Had a fuel issue I need to address...which may involve a new fuel tank. My vent line isn't allowing me to fill the tank without backflushing the fill tube...the problem is that the vent tube isn't above the fuel level to allow the fumes to escape when filling, and thus preventing the fuel from pressurizing in the filler tube.
Also had some electric fan relay issues still, blew one fuse, replaced it, then it seemed to work good until I went nose deep into a water hole....may have put a heavy load on the fans, as I forgot to turn them off for the dunk, anyhow melted another fuse holder, but was able to still work the fans, that engine definitely needs both of them working.
And a very sporadic issue of power completely cutting out when under full throttle...the engine just died about 4-5 times over the week.
Right after that I would fire it up, and it would be fine...perhaps an electrical gremlin. I hit the rev limiter quite a few times, and perhaps there is an issue with that, as there may have been some connection with hitting the rev limiter then when shifted to the next gear and rpm brought up the truck would die about 3500 rpm.
Anyhow, overall I was pretty happy with the performance of the Maiden, and am looking forward to another romp in the sand.
my SIL took a few pics climbing one of the hills.
There were so many sweet trucks out there, seems the dunes are more for pretty trucks than bashed up rock crawling trucks
Met up with Dueling, his buddies Craig and Nate on Sat.
I had a couple buddies run earlier in the week with me, so spent 4 days out there over the week, went through about 35 gal of fuel in the Maiden...not much street time, mostly on the dunes.
Also met up with Blue85 (Luke) and his family....really good to meet them, Luke has a great family, we ran around some on the dunes, had lunch, then went to get back in and they wouldn't let him in with the factory top and no roll bar, or helmets for the kids in the back.....stupid rule, as it requires a steel top, not fiberglass...Luke is persuing this more I think.
