The Story Of A Cummins Suburban (Lots Of Pics)

[lectric80]

I got thinking, and that might have come across differently than the way I pictured it. I just meant to say that although it is nice seeing you driving it, I can totally understand the desire to protect it and get to more places. Regardless of what you do, I enjoy this thread!

 

[ashman]

Thanks!!

Nothing at all wrong with just driving it, but this will open up a few more trails to me and, to be honest, I kind of enjoyed doing some fab work again.

I'm with ya there. part of the fun of having these old vehicles is wrenching on them now and then... so long as its a choice, and not because something broke at the wrong time.

 

[mosesburb]

I got thinking, and that might have come across differently than the way I pictured it. I just meant to say that although it is nice seeing you driving it, I can totally understand the desire to protect it and get to more places. Regardless of what you do, I enjoy this thread!

That's what I figured you meant. No worries man. I enjoy looking at other peoples trail photos myself, so I figure it is the least I can do for the rest of the people out there that like looking at places they haven't been.

I'm with ya there. part of the fun of having these old vehicles is wrenching on them now and then... so long as its a choice, and not because something broke at the wrong time.

I agree. Last weekend was thefirst nice weekend we've had in quite awhile. Probably didn't even hit 105*. In fact, it was the first time I have worn long pants since I don't know when. My legs were like "WTF is all this fabric rubbing on us down here??" I think they got over it when the tops of my feet weren't sending PAIN signals through them to my brain when my shoes collect hot slag and give it a nice place to cool down and catch my socks on fire. Running a cutting torch and welding in shorts is generally not advisable. Of course that hasn't stopped me before and the scars on the tops of my feet will attest to that. But I *try* to keep automotive work in summer relegated to repair to keep a vehicle in service as opposed to modifying or fabricating. In summer all I want to do is drive it to a higher, cooler elevation. Hence the glut of trail photos lately.

 

[mosesburb]

Well, I'm not doing so good at this. My boy and I spent 12.5hrs traveling around last weekend and I took a metric dump truck full of pics, but then I realized I never posted the rest from a few weeks ago. So, without further delay, here we are back at the mine.

This is the lower road/level at the building:

Looking over toward the mine:

We did a little wandering around the erector set structure and from what I can tell, I believe it was a mill or an ore processing building. There are many different levels and I found the roads/driveways around the structure and it sure looks like it could have done processing of some sort.

 

[mosesburb]

So we decided to head down the hill and around back up the other side to check out the mine and whatever else we can find.

While heading down the hill, some equipment can be seen on the other side of the canyon: (the mine is to the right of the right edge of the pic)

After we get around the bottom and cross a very makeshift bridge/culvert/boiler tank we come upon this, which apppears to be the foundation of a building where the ore was transferred from the ore carts to possibly wheeled vehicles. There is evidence of a large door at the other end (opposite end of where tracks come in):

Just around the bend from the foundation we were greeted by this sight:

A little closer and we see this:

There was some air flowing out of the tunnel, but that mud was super-nasty. I did not want to risk getting any of it on me (or getting stuck in it), so I took a couple pics down the tunnel instead:

I like how this pic turned out:

The mud was super nasty, but what it contains is brought by the water which is also very nasty:

The water itself appears clear, but anything it evaporates off of oxidizes to a rust color coating.

Here is a shot down the creek a bit:

Here is a shot of the creek below the structure:

Pretty nasty. Lots of dissolved minerals that should not be exposed to air at this point in their existence.

Here is a look at the structure from across the canyon on the mine dump:

So we had a great time wandering around these mines and taking some cool pictures. We headed south from here and saw some neat stuff along the way, but I haven't loaded the pics of that yet.

 

[scottishdave]

Trips like that cant be beat. Said it a few times, but i love following your little adventures and the pictures even more.

 

[ashman]

^ same here.

 

[chalet2506]

Pretty cool. Maybe an iron ore mine?

 

[mosesburb]

Trips like that cant be beat. Said it a few times, but i love following your little adventures and the pictures even more.

Thanks!!

^ same here.

^ same here, thanks!!

Pretty cool. Maybe an iron ore mine?

Iron might have been a very minor component of the ore, but the major components were gold, silver, lead, zinc and copper. The major contamination is from cadmium, copper, and a tremendous amount of zinc. There is some really funky stuff upstream from here also, so all of the nasty water is not necessarily due to this mine.

This pic was taken just a bit upstream of the mine area. At first i thought it was nasty green water, but upon further investigation, I realized the water is clear but has some nasty biofilm on it. You can see the shadow of the floating log on the bottom of the reservoir, but the white stuff just to the right of the floating log is coagulated biofilm that is spread across the whole reservoir. I have no idea what it is, but it sure looks bad. This pic also illustrates how each mine adds its own "flavor" to the stream as the earlier rust colored pics were taken about fifty yards downstream from here.

This got me to thinking so I went through my pics from this run as I thought I had taken a ppic that might illustrate this even better and I did.

This pic show the area just immediately upstream of the "confluence" of the mine runoff and the stream. You can see a bit of the rust colored water mingling with the non-rust colored water from upstream.

This pic shows the mine runoff coming down the adit. If you look close you can see the rust color ghosting the water down the pile. To take this pic I turned 90* from the previous pic.

This pic shows that even thought the water is nasty, mother nature provided something that can live and thrive in it.

 

[sponsoredbydad]

I feel like I just went out exploring. Great stuff!

 

[mosesburb]

I feel like I just went out exploring. Great stuff!

LOL, very cool!! Glad you liked it!!

 

[mtnman]

Saw you cruize by @ Cruize Central last night! You shoulda' been doing burnouts!

 

[mosesburb]

Saw you cruize by @ Cruize Central last night!

How did you know it was me??

Yeah, my boy wanted to cruise a couple times before we bailed. You should have told me you were coming, I would have liked to meet you.

You shoulda' been doing burnouts!

Well, maybe so, but I just left thirteen hundred dollars at the tire store that morning and I need a little more time to forget how expensive tires are before I can bring myself to burn them off. Maybe at the next one though. In reality, there were plenty of others willing to smoke off any remaining tread to appease the masses. A few really epic ones too!!

 

[mosesburb]

So we continued south down the Senator Highway, taking in all the sights and grand vistas we could. We stopped here and there to check out this or that.

This is just a generic shot of what much of the road looks like:

This is Palace Station. Back in th eSenator's heyday, this was a stage stop about halfway between Prescott and Crown King. Thses days a Forest Service employee resides there and the signs say they are not to be disturbed.

This tank is about all that remains at the site of the Yankee Doodle Mine:

This is a shot of the low area that you pass through while heading toward Crown King. Prescott and Crown King are both on tall mountains, but there is a big low area between them. This is in that area:

Another shot, down the road from the previous one:

The dark mountain in the back on the right is the one we go around on the right and hook back around it to get to Crown King:

One of the fantastic views off the side of the road:

Here's another:

This looks like a mill site on the way out of Crown King headed toward the interstate:

So that brings us to the end of this run. It was a great time and we got to see a bunch of cool stuff. Can't wait to do it again.

 

[mtnman]

How did you know it was me??

Yeah, my boy wanted to cruise a couple times before we bailed. You should have told me you were coming, I would have liked to meet you.



Well, maybe so, but I just left thirteen hundred dollars at the tire store that morning and I need a little more time to forget how expensive tires are before I can bring myself to burn them off. Maybe at the next one though. In reality, there were plenty of others willing to smoke off any remaining tread to appease the masses. A few really epic ones too!!

I'd know your burb anywhere....
If I had known I was going I would have said something! We went sorta spur of the moment... Totally awesome burnouts! Saw a couple of C30 dually crew cabs doing burnouts! Sweet stuff!
There was an 80s burb there with what sounded like a 24 valve Cummins in it

 

[mosesburb]

As mentioned earlier, I had to get some new tires on this thing.

One tire had an issue, nobody had any in stock and they are on backorder for some indefinite period of time. So that, coupled with the fact that the new tire would be the new tread pattern that looks nothing like my other tires and the other detail that if I have another problem in six months, I will be going through the whole wait-and-see ordeal again, I decided to get a more common tire size. I looked around at various other sizes and tread patterns. I really didn't need the mud tire, but got the previous ones because of the size. So I pretty much settled on 285/75/R16 BF Goodrich All Terrains load range "E". These were $31.00 less per tire than the load range "D" in the same tire. Strange. Anyways, these are about 33 tall and a fuzz under 12 wide. I asked what the narrowest wheel they could be put on was and I was told the preferred width is eight, but they could be installed on seven inch wheels with minimal detriments. No more 6.5" I guess. Well, I just happened to have a set of 16x7" Accuride wheels in my stock, so I took them down to the blaster and had them blasted. I brought them home and painted them white and took them in to have the tires mounted up on them. They don't look as sporty as the narrow mud tires, but these can actually be found in a tire store--a real ggod thing when you are out on the road somewhere. They are the exact same height as the muds, so I effectively have three spares for these new tires now.

The new wheels have a bit more positive offset and I think they look pretty cool for a wider tire. From a distance they look like the highway tires though.

 

[mtnman]

Looks good! I think BFG makes some of the best looking tires on the market. I like the mud terrains better but the a/t's are really nice looking too

 

[max 02]

Looking good!

Were did you get the 16x7s

 

[mosesburb]

Looks good! I think BFG makes some of the best looking tires on the market. I like the mud terrains better but the a/t's are really nice looking too

Thanks!! Yeah they ride a bunch better than the muds did too.

Looking good!

Were did you get the 16x7s

Thanks!! The 16x7's came from my shed. I have no idea where or what they came from originally though.

 

[mosesburb]

Well, I have been slacking on the updates lately I guess. We haven't been getting out as much as I would like as my boy's football games are all mid-day Saturday games. We did go camping recently but I still have to go through the pics from that run. I did find another cracked pressure line off the power steering pump. This will be number three. The first one I had tension on it when I installed it. The second one was installed neutral with no tension on it. It cracked. The third one I made a bracket and used a rubber lined adel clamp on it to a bracket I made for support. It cracked too. I gave up and remade everything in -06 Teflon lined steel braided AN line. I like the looks of the stock hoses better, but I think the functionality of the steel braided will be better in the end. We'll see.

Before shot:

Here they are removed:

I really liked how the lines came off the hydroboost unit so I retained the factory mandrel bent lines and brazed on some -06 fittings that Russ's 24hr Machine Shop bored to fit:

I used steel fittings and adapters on the lines. I like the straight-up 80's look of the red and blue Earl's fittings, but I figured with all the problems I have had with this steering setup and especially the pressure hose, I should go with steel for durability reasons.

While I had the system down, I decided a new power steering filter was in order: