A quick recap of our adventure here 2 years ago (read the rest of the story here):
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Yooper Trip is in the books, and we are back home safely. The fuel line worked, the new brake fitting held (despite plenty of bouncing), and I left the dash bezel at home because I still haven't taken the time to trace the 24V voltmeter problem. The speedometer broke the night before we took off, and the issue is inside the transfer case.
So we went without this time, driving off of phone GPS speed estimates.
We drove about 850 miles (guessing due to the freshly broken speedometer), and the truck had zero mechanical issues on the road. With one large caveat. I dumped the poor Grendel into a puddle, and took on water for a few minutes until getting winched out by my traveling buddy.
Water poured in through weight-reducing holes in the floor and non-existent door seals. Pictures were not a priority, but we grabbed a few blurry ones while waiting for Adam to spool out his winch. Outside, water covered almost all of the rear bumper and buried both the headlights. Inside, it rose gradually until the driver's seat was submerged and the water started to flow over the tranny hump where the shifters are, and also onto the bed floor where the camping gear was located. The passenger side had less water but still soaked the bottom of the seat before we reached dry land.
I will admit to getting slightly impatient as I saw myself turning into a mermaid. But it's hard to complain when you have a friendly tow strap bailing out your own stupidity.
Thankfully, most of the gear up on the bed floor stayed dry, and most of the gear in the front didn't matter too much. Aside from my paper maps, of course.
The engine stayed running, and once we got back to shore everything looked fine and functioned normally. After a minute or two of having no belt accessories, the belt squealed back into life and we were back in business. I have never imagined being so glad to hear a belt squeal!
I still can't figure out how the intake kept dry. It certainly couldn't have done so if I had been running the stock air tube running down to the core support.
Pictures of the offending puddle. It was shallow on both sides with a transverse gorge that swallowed the truck quickly, one axle at a time. No current during this adventure, but it clearly hadn't always been so calm.
After extraction:
Then Adam pointed out that the puddle had a bypass. It wasn't a great bypass, but it wasn't as soggy as the puddle, so I drove around the water instead of through it.
When I first opened my door to let the water out, I tried to catch the various baby clothes, diapers, tow straps, etc. that flowed out of the cabin. But I failed to catch my water bottle (the white floaty thing in that last picture). So it floated around in the puddle for a while. Adam eventually fished it out, so I consider the bottle a survivor as well as the truck.
-------------
Yooper Trip is in the books, and we are back home safely. The fuel line worked, the new brake fitting held (despite plenty of bouncing), and I left the dash bezel at home because I still haven't taken the time to trace the 24V voltmeter problem. The speedometer broke the night before we took off, and the issue is inside the transfer case.
So we went without this time, driving off of phone GPS speed estimates.We drove about 850 miles (guessing due to the freshly broken speedometer), and the truck had zero mechanical issues on the road. With one large caveat. I dumped the poor Grendel into a puddle, and took on water for a few minutes until getting winched out by my traveling buddy.
Water poured in through weight-reducing holes in the floor and non-existent door seals. Pictures were not a priority, but we grabbed a few blurry ones while waiting for Adam to spool out his winch. Outside, water covered almost all of the rear bumper and buried both the headlights. Inside, it rose gradually until the driver's seat was submerged and the water started to flow over the tranny hump where the shifters are, and also onto the bed floor where the camping gear was located.
The passenger side had less water but still soaked the bottom of the seat before we reached dry land.I will admit to getting slightly impatient as I saw myself turning into a mermaid. But it's hard to complain when you have a friendly tow strap bailing out your own stupidity.
Thankfully, most of the gear up on the bed floor stayed dry, and most of the gear in the front didn't matter too much. Aside from my paper maps, of course.
The engine stayed running, and once we got back to shore everything looked fine and functioned normally. After a minute or two of having no belt accessories, the belt squealed back into life and we were back in business. I have never imagined being so glad to hear a belt squeal!
I still can't figure out how the intake kept dry. It certainly couldn't have done so if I had been running the stock air tube running down to the core support.
Pictures of the offending puddle. It was shallow on both sides with a transverse gorge that swallowed the truck quickly, one axle at a time. No current during this adventure, but it clearly hadn't always been so calm.
After extraction:
Then Adam pointed out that the puddle had a bypass. It wasn't a great bypass, but it wasn't as soggy as the puddle, so I drove around the water instead of through it.
When I first opened my door to let the water out, I tried to catch the various baby clothes, diapers, tow straps, etc. that flowed out of the cabin. But I failed to catch my water bottle (the white floaty thing in that last picture). So it floated around in the puddle for a while. Adam eventually fished it out, so I consider the bottle a survivor as well as the truck.
