Welcome to Botches Off-Road. Join us as we talk about everything from gear reviews to
trail stories, tent camping to rock landing, and all things to do with the outdoors. We
have a special guest today, Mr. Patrick. How are we doing today? I'm doing pretty good.
Patrick's on our MST group that we tend to frequent. We were just going to chat a little
bit tonight and just talk a little bit about what's been going on. Of course, I've been
sick and all that. Patrick said he wanted to get on with us. That was a perfect opportunity
to talk to him and have us tell us a little bit about his rig. He's got quite the unique
one. Why don't we start off with that? What are you driving? The short answer is it is
a 1988 Toyota 4Runner, one of the infamous first-gen 4Runners with the removable hard
top. The long story is it is a piece-together truck that started as a two-wheel drive, 88
Toyota pickup. It's been engine swapped, solid axle swapped. It has a long story in the roughly
three and a half years that I've had it. It started off as a rusty two-wheel drive, regular
cab, short bed farm truck with a seized engine. It kind of spiraled from there. Wow. How did
you attack that? I guess for someone who's not super mechanically inclined, all the stuff
that you've listed is already pretty like gumbobulating. I don't know. I wouldn't even
know where to start. What did you do first? Here's pretty much the story of how this started.
Before I ended up with this truck, I had an 86 Toyota pickup. It was an extra cab long
bed, which is an oddball truck. They were originally sold as just a two-wheel drive
just work trucks. They were all pretty much carbureted and most of them were actually
automatic, which is kind of odd. I had that. I ended up doing a four-wheel drive version
to it by getting a four-wheel drive front frame section, splicing the two frames together.
I did that. After an unfortunate accident, basically wrote that one off, I now had a
four-wheel drive drivetrain laying around. I had a wrecked truck with shot frame. Hey,
look at this convenient two-wheel drive truck frame over here. I ended up doing a solid
axle swap to that. I had a regular cab short bed truck. I drove that for a solid year and
a half. It was my daily driver too because I have other cars, but it's just kind of fun
to daily drive an old 80s Toyota. After a while and a couple cross-country road trips
and driving out west of the mountains, I learned that having a nearly 100 horsepower, 22 RE
sucks if you want to drive up a mountain and do anything even near the speed limit. I had
a very beat to shit Tacoma. It was a 2010 with a 2TRFE in it. That is the modern 2.7
NA4 cylinder. It's basically a newer 3RZ. I was like, huh. There was one guy that had
a write-up talking about how they managed to swap a 2TRFE into an 87 4Runner. I'm like,
it's doable. We had the magic mix of what parts needed to bolt it up to the original
transmission in the 80s trucks since the transfer case is on the opposite side from the later
ones. You can't just reuse the Tacoma transmission without a whole bunch of more work because
the fucking driveshaft is on the wrong side. Thanks, Toyota, for fucking swapping that
deciding that the passenger side drop through your transfer case makes sense. Fucking nothing
uses that. Anyway, so using like 90s to come up bell housing and shit, all that will bolt
together. Then we got to the wiring. Quote, this is what the write-up said. The wiring
harness that's come is in three pieces. There's a dash harness, an engine harness, and I think
there was like a tail light harness or something for it. Quote, the wiring's not that bad.
And that was it for covering the wiring of the engine swap. So how did the guy tie it
into the 4Runner? I have no fucking clue because he basically wrote the bare fucking minimum
as to how he did the swap. The wiring, which is by far the hardest part of the swap. So
I spent a bunch of time looking at the original 4Runner wiring diagram. And Toyota, you throw
them, it's like 20 bucks. They give you a three-day subscription to all their service
literature for everything. 1990 and newer. So I was able to pull all the schematics to
build my own harness for the swap. Well, you're on that topic. What was it called? What, the
Toyota Service Info? Yeah. Let me look it up again. Fuck your phone. I have my email
and I have the purchase receipt. Enhance. I'm thinking this through... Enhance. I like
to say it's through, it's TIS. You look up Toyota TIS, you can find it and they list
all the subscriptions you can get. Here, I'll just send you the... This is like the homepage
to TIS. Just send it to you, the messenger. It's this fucking website that looks like
it's from 2003. I think it's actually through Snap-on or something. But yeah, this will
give you service info for anything 1990 and newer. And if you have the actual special
fucking Toyota scan tool, I think you can even like... If you give them enough money,
I think you can even program ECUs and keys and stuff. But I don't really have a need
to do that. I just wanted it for the service info because trying to do an engine swap like
this without good accurate wiring diagrams is essentially impossible. But yeah, I basically
managed to marry the 80s truck harness into the Tacoma engine harness because the other
guy that did it, yeah, he made his run and drive, but I managed to pull off fully functioning
emission system, working factory cruise control and working air conditioning.
Yeah, that's nice.
I'm not aware of anyone that's done a 2TR swap that has kept all that.
How did you... Your cruise control, what controls it? Is it the factory control switch or did
the old truck have a cruise control switch?
So the switches that I'm using are the factory 80s Toyota cruise control switch. It's built
into a wiper stock and there's an on-off switch on the dash. Basically what the newer Toyota's
use, because this one's a drive-by-wire ECU, so cruise control is built into the ECU. As
long as it has a speed sensor signal, I think like the brake pedal switch and the clutch
safety switch, it just has cruise control. There's no external modules or anything for
it. But basically the original Tacoma cruise control switch, it has one signal wire and
basically it measures resistance to ground depending on which position the switch is
in. So basically I had to measure those resistance values and match them with the stock truck
switches and I had to take apart the on-off switch on the dash so I could back pin the
on-off LED because I wanted that to work and solder straight onto the on-off switch and
the actual dash switch to make it work as if it left the factory like that. So a little
bit of reverse engineering to make that work how I wanted it to, but it works perfectly.
So nice having good modern cruise control that so the vacuum shit that everything in
the 80s had. It's like, yeah, it's better than nothing, but it's not exactly spectacular.
Do you, where you're at, do you have to have working emissions or is that just an added
benefit? No, I like having functional emission stuff. So, you know, the check engine lights
off. So something does actually happen. I know instead of just having a perpetual check
engine light. I think over in St. Louis, they do have emissions, but over here in Kansas
city, nobody cares. I know a lot of that you can tune out to until it's quit paying attention
for emissions. You can, I've tried to look around for people that can actually play around
with the two TR ECU, but there is very little aftermarket support for them in North America.
They head over to say Australia where they sold a lot more trucks with the two TR. It's
a lot more support for them, but I haven't really had any luck finding anyone in the
States that could actually play around with those ECUs. What years did that engine come
out of? So 2010, right? So the ECU and all the engine management stuff is from a 2010
and it did have, okay, so the 2010 Tacoma, it ended up having a problem with the timing
gear. Well, the harmonic balancer came loose. It cracked the main timing gear and went out
of time and the engine was also burning a shit load of oil. So that truck had an engine
put in it from a 2015. I had that for a while until a radiator fan hit a radiator and it
lost all its coolant without me knowing. I absolutely fucking cooked that engine. By
the time I knew that something was bad, it had zero compression and a catastrophically
blown head gasket. After looking around the pricing of used two TRs, there's an early
and a late one, the 05 to 15 engines all under change and then 16 to 23 is the later one
where they had a dual VVTi, I think a slightly higher compression ratio and a few other minor
changes. For whatever reason, the newer engines were like solid, like grand cheaper than the
early ones. Cause like an early engine with like 50,000 miles was pulling like, it's like
four or $5,000 for a used one where I was able to find one from a 2022 with 22,000 miles
on it for, I think it was like three grand. Actually, I think it's like 2,500 and this
was a one-year-old engine with 22,000 miles on it. Wow. Yeah. So I went with that.
Why did you go the four cylinder route instead of going with like a four row? I already had
a four cylinder donor sitting in my driveway and I was able to keep the original W56. I
don't have to worry about trying to adapt a different transmission in or dealing with,
you know, trying to find another transfer case that dropped on the other side. I think
like one or two people have done a four liter swap, but it's kind of tight to make those
fit in these older trucks just cause how small they are. But it, I believe at least one person's
done it because someone asked about that in the first gen Ford or Drupal and apparently
someone's pulled it off. So does your, your factory transmission bolted directly to the
four cylinder or do you need an adapter? Basically, so it's Toyota W series transmission. They
have, you know, you can swap the bell housing out of it. So it has a bell housing that's
meant for our three RZ. So a 90 to a 95 to like oh four four cylinder Tacoma. It has
that bell housing on it, which will bolt onto the original W56 that bell housing will bolt
up to the two TRF. They share the same bolt pattern. So it is all factory Toyota parts
that is so freaking cool, dude, from different decades, but it's crazy. There's a hybrid
transmission now too. It's a W56 W59 hybrid I built a few weeks ago. So like a fucking
Johnny Cash song pretty much. The cabs in 88, the back half's in 85. I will say where
you welded the cab there. I, I couldn't tell. I couldn't tell what you had done there. So
you did a very good job. Yeah. Unless you know what you're looking for or look at it
pretty close. Like anyone that's done actual bodywork and like gets up close and looks
to it can tell, but like the fact I have straight, you know, door gaps and stuff, you know, I'm
proud of that. It was just lining up the spot walls for the cab splice. Yeah. Well, the
knowledge in the, looking at it in the dark and a snowstorm, it looked great, man. Right.
Yeah. No, the knowledge man behind building something like this, that's just crazy. It's,
it's like mind boggling for me. I can't even think of it. And I want to find line with
this too, cause the cab, you know, the rear quarters look decent on it, but there's about
a half inch of Bondo in them because the donor at some point was flopped on its side and
you can see about like 20 screw holes for someone like pulled the quarterback out and
just kind of fill it in with Bondo, which most people would view that as a, Oh, that
sucks. Which I mean, I'm not thrilled to have Bondo in the quarters, but while first off
it's been there since the nineties and all of it was still pretty much there. And you
have a first gen forerunner that's pristine. You don't have something worth like $30,000
to write the trails, right? What's something too nice because then I'll ever want to drive
it. This is the right amount of rough from, you know, when I actually drive it, I kind
of felt like that with my FJ at first I was like, man, I'm making payments. This thing's
worth a lot, worth a lot as in I owe a lot on it. And yeah, I was, and I was like, man,
I don't, I don't really want to do this. And I took it down a motorcycle trail on accident
once and pinstripe the fuck out of it. And then I was like, okay, well, it's good now.
Yeah. I mean the upside, the upside with the FJ is it's new enough that if you, you know,
if something happened, God forbid you could go get another one pretty easy, but yeah,
for sure. You can't, that's for me. Yeah. I know Patrick's, I mean that's that and it's
so Frankenstein and so unique and custom that it would be, yeah, it'd be really hard to
replace anything like that. Yeah. It's definitely unique. It's one of, I think, I think there's
like three or maybe four different two TRF. He swapped the old toy. Does that know that
actually run? You're some guy that has one and pretty much just a, you know, two chassis
buggy, but he did it. Apparently he did this spot back in like 2007 when like he said,
just were like grand fucking news. So that is wild to, you know, cause at that point
in time, the two TRF, he was a new unknown engine. It had only been in the market for
two years at that point. So he did that really early on in that one guy with the kind of
crappy right up. Wow. What, what kind of power does that make? I believe it's rated at 160
horsepower. It's about a 50 horsepower bump over a 22 RE. Yeah. Wow. Is that a, what kind
of suspension are you running with it right now? So it's your standard leaf sprung Toyota.
So it has Chevy 63 springs in the back and, I'm trying to remember what the fucks, I think
they're Pro Comp, like three inch springs in the front. Oh, I think, I don't know. I
got them from my friend in Texas and we're pretty sure they're Pro Comp springs. And
then the rear axle is out of a 1990 pickup. It's from a friend who had a raw crawler who
was getting switched to one tons. Someone else got the front axle, but I got the rear
for the low, low price of loaded up and get it out of here. So I got the rear axle for
free and the front axle is out of an 83 pickup. Wow. So the suspension's a pretty standard
solid axle swap mini truck. Nothing super exotic there. No, it's, it's cool to have
it though. The solid axle swaps are really sick on Toyota's. I've blown up so many CD
axles with various IFS Toyotas. I got really good at swapping them. I will say the 96 to
95 IFS setup. I like that the CV axle bolts onto the diff. Oh my God. What a miserable
bitch they are to actually swap the fucking CV axle. You have to disassemble the entire
fucking like, you have to like disassemble the front hub to actually get the CV axle
out. Which after you bet 10 times it gets really fucking old. The 98s, it's not hard
to get them out of the, the front knuckles, but man, getting them out of that diff, that
C ring just catches it so solid and it takes a lot of beating to get that thing to come
out. Big hammer and just give it a good hard whack is really the only way to get it out.
Even then you still have to lay on the ground. You know, I'm on rebuild number three in the
past year and every time I just hope that my CV axles are fine and everything else is
broken. Yeah. That's part of the reason why I did the solid axle swap because I kept fucking
up, you know, this IFS stuff. Like this shit just got so fucking old with constantly changing
shit and fixing it. And like, I was blowing up CV axles with fucking 33s. Like fucking
22 RE with 33s and it was fucking breaking CV axles. I'm like, are you fucking kidding
me? And the early IFS setups, they had a standard steering box with an idler arm. All the fucking
Toyota idler arms would snap in half too, so you'd lose steering. Not a fantastic setup.
I didn't realize that. Yeah. The rack and pinion ones that are later, they don't really
have that problem. I mean, people like Twizzler tie rods, but like, yeah, you'd sure the idler
arms in half on the early IFS trucks. It was in Texas the last time I actually swapped one
out for a guy because he had a second gen four runner and fucking snapped his idler arm
in half. Wow. What's the biggest gripe about it so far that you just, what's something
that you're just like, man, if I could change it, a heartbeat. It's hard to rethink. Well,
I mean, it's pretty easy when you change. I really need to change my shocks on it because
holy shit, they are fucking smoked and it kind of rots shit. It's not even that hard
as this. I have to figure out what I want to buy and cry as I actually buy decent shocks
for it. That's the one thing right now that kind of sucks on it or the shocks aren't great.
And I put all the, so in the 80s, the SR5 trim package was top of the line, fully loaded.
There was nothing above it until the 90s when the third gens came out. So it has power windows,
power locks, the full gauge cluster, cruise control. One of the gripes I had for the longest
time that I rectified this summer was 1980s Toyota air conditioning systems really weren't
that great. They had tiny condensers and as soon as you get above like 90 degrees out
there, virtually useless. You could try and, you know, even with R12, they just didn't
work that well because Toyota had a really undersized system compared to what, you know,
domestic manufacturers had at that time. I finally said fuck it. And I pulled a complete
HVAC system out of a, it was an 02 Tacoma that ended up at a pick and pull. Now the
dash was basically the only thing still intact on this truck by the time it got to it. The
bed was gone, doors were gone, engine was gone, the transmission was gone, the seats
were gone. Every removable body panel that was still good was gone. It was like half
of a frame and like a cab with a dash still in it. I'm like, well, what I want is still
here. So I pulled the whole HVAC system out of that because they use a newer style of
evaporator core and they have a better blower motor that moves more air. But they shared
pretty much the same layout as the original HVAC system in the 80s truck. It also uses
electronic controls instead of cables, which got kind of annoying. So that was pretty cool.
And I, you know, shove that in basically the same spot the original HVAC box was and got
that hooked up. And I have a custom stacked AC condenser setup and it went from having
AC that, you know, fucking sucked ass when we got about 90 to, you know, when it was
a hundred degrees out last summer, it would cool down to like 38 degrees where the thermal
shutoff is. Fucking Jesus. It went from, wow, this sucks to, oh, this is the best air conditioning
I got in like all my cars right now. Then you, yeah. Then you don't even need a fridge.
You just keep your shit laying around in the truck. Yeah. Beers are always cold. Yeah.
Yeah. I, when you first pulled in, when you came to my house last week, I was like, dude,
you really drove that thing all the way over here. That's what I, I sent a message about
that too. Yeah. I was like, oh, that's your daily. Then I got looking at it and I was
like, dude, this thing is fricking dope. Yeah. I have a bunch of the, you know, creature comforts
that most first gen foreigners don't have. You know, most people have like a 22 RE with
like, you know, no AC, no cruise control, manual windows, like the fucking shitty base
trim seats and like, no, all that. But you know, the SR5s have like enough of the modern
luxuries for them to be, you know, tolerable to, you know, live with, especially since
there's a third gen foreigner center console of actual cup holders. Now that's pretty nice
to talk about that just so that Gavin knows his center console and my mirror came off
the same car. Oh yeah. Benji's. Yep. Yeah. That's pretty cool. You should have had him
sign it clear coat that shit. I mean, I could go back there and have him sign my stuff.
He's only a couple hours. I need to talk to him. I want to cut the four section out of
his donor where the rear heat unit goes so I can swap the third gen rear heater into
mine and get that functional again. Because I know it was under the passenger seat, but
the floor isn't deep enough on the first gen to actually fit the unit in there. But you
know, a bit of metal work definitely doesn't scare me. So I have one with the working rear
heater and I have one without the working rear heater and the little bit of benefit
that it gives you, it's really not worth all the extra work. Honestly, the only reason
why I kind of want to do this is because it bothers me having rear heat controls that
do nothing. That's fair. I know they don't really do a whole lot in the front heaters
plenty, but still. Now that's fair. I've got one. So my rear heat and my daily, the
silver truck, it doesn't work, but the fan blows. So at least you can get air blowing
back there. Right. Well, your window rolls down. So that's nice too. I mean, so many
of the northern climate third gens to have had the lines to the rear heater brought out
and they've been looped so they don't even do anything anymore. Mine. Yeah. Yeah. But
the, the black one that's got the working heater. And I mean, is it a nice added feature?
Sure. But it doesn't really blow as hard as you'd expect it to. Yeah. Oh, that's funny
too. Is that earlier rear heat set up? So I've seen what the first gen second gen and
third gen ones look like. So, you know, you've seen the third gen rear heater lines and they're
like tiny. I think they're like a three eight line roughly. They're small. Yeah. Well, the
first chance they still have like a half inch heater hose and holy shit. You might have
heat the first gen rear heaters would make because they had the larger heater hoses.
Like you could turn the rear heat on and you don't have everything in the front shut off
and within like 10 minutes, it'd be nice and warm without anything on the front HVAC system
turned on. It was kind of the only nice thing to have rear heat. And I'm thinking this just
having my son in the backseat because it takes a while for the fucking heat to actually circulate
even to the back. I mean, not in a third gen. No. Yeah. But every every every time I open
that I have to open up my suicide door and my front door and move the passenger seat
up to get him in or out. It's it would have been nice to have maybe like a rear heat or
something back there just to keep him a little toasty. Something that's annoying about the
Tercel is the HVAC system. Twitter put nose was pretty spectacularly terrible because the
heat in it sucks. And it's not that there's anything wrong with it because if you watch
the Motor Week Russia review for the Twitter Tercel wagon, which they filmed this in the
winter, they're like, yeah, the heater really couldn't keep up once it started snowing real
heavy. It's like, oh, good to know that these have sucked, you know, as soon as they roll
from the ground. Yeah. Man, look at that seamless segue he just did from his his forerunner
to come with or Toyota pickup thingy to his car cell. That was perfect. Which, you know,
I saw a group of Tercells at the dunes that time we did Toyota Takeover. Yeah. I'm watching
those climb the dunes. Those guys are super cool. Yeah. Yeah, that was cool. We were all
like, wow, Tercells. I mean, the Tercel community can't be that big. So I'm sure you know. Yeah,
right. They're bigger. There's a lot more still around that you'd expect. So every so
for the past five years now, we've actually had a like get together where we do a Tercel
meet and greet where we basically convince people to bring their cars out to get together
and do some way off roading and like when we went to Colorado, we had like 20 of them
or something like there was a line. Dude, those pictures still amaze me. I look at I
have some of those saved somewhere. That was a cool meet. You should see the expressions
from people when they see like 20 of these fucking cars in one piece. They're like, what
the fuck is this? Yeah, somebody needs to swap the body of a Tercel on something else.
Oh, I've seen several of them dropped on 400 truck frames. One of the guys actually has
one on a I think it's a 93 pickup frame with a one UZ. That would be so cool. I'll have
to I'll have to look at that later. Well, the next meeting will be in Michigan. That
would be fun to be in September or something, but it's going to be in Michigan. So that
would be cool. Yeah, we do that. Oh, yeah. Can I crash it just to go and see all this
yourself? We're a very open and inviting group. So that is not a problem. Yeah, I was gonna
say, I'm sure they're I'm sure they're hoping to get anybody they can get at that point.
So we'll we'll come as the media crew and get some some media passes or fake ones made
up. Fresh off your printer at home. Yeah. No, that's cool. How long have you had the Tercel?
So I got this one. Not two months ago. I picked it up pretty recently. It's a 86 SR5. So it's
a very fancy car for its day. And the reason why I wanted this one in particular is it
has the very rare, very hard to find factory cruise control. So the Tercells were built
from 83 to 88. 88 was kind of a split year. They only sold them for I think the first
couple months in the 1988 before they replaced it with the Corolla all track wagons. But
86 through 88 were the only years you could get factory cruise control on them. And it
was a very rarely ordered option. And not exactly something that's easy to swap into
another car. And this one had it which now the body was in decent shape. Interior was
fucking rough. But you know, body was solid, you know, and it was a very original car.
Someone swapped an engine at some point it has one from I think an 83 or 84. When was
it swapped? I have no clue. Why was it swapped? I have no clue. But it has been swapped at
some point for some reason. But yeah, it's a factory cruise control car. It has air conditioning.
They never had power windows or power locks. But may find a way to make that change. And
I've now swapped out all the seats. It has another dash swapped in it. Like, I took basically
the whole front of the car apart just to clean it. Because it was parked outside. The last
registration sticker was 2006. It was parked outside with a horrific windshield leak. So
the headliner was growing mushrooms on it. The carpet was green. The seats were green.
And there was just a healthy layer of just mold on basically every part of the interior
of this car. It was bad. You're giving me anxiety and I need to go check my 442. Yeah.
The good news is yours wasn't parked for well over a decade. So you should be fine. I'm
just actually I would check yours because seeing as dad's got a sub one of those at
the I forget what it was nine something. And he had that part for not even two years. And
I went to open it up because I was going to take pictures to sell it. The whole inside
it was like powder, just mold everywhere on every surface. And I closed the door. And
I'm like, I think I might die in the next 24 hours. And, and I looked at Leo and I
said, dude, we're going to have to open every door of this and just take a leaf blower to
it before we do anything. Get all that shit out of there. Because, oh, it was nasty. We
closed the doors. We haven't even talked about a sense. It was, it was bad, dude. That is
leech on the interior of the tercel. Yeah. Yeah. That is my biggest fear with that car
because I know I can't afford to fix it. I haven't found all the parts yet. But God,
if I just found something like that inside it, I'd probably cry. My biggest fear for
you is mice. Just tearing apart your fucking wiring harness or something. That's already
a problem. The main wiring harness has been chewed through. I got to rip it all out and
rewire it. Yeah. Yeah. I've had a couple of mouse nests in the tercel too, which was absolutely
not a surprise at all. No, no, not at all. Like one headlight plug like under the hood.
Like that was it. I'm like, you know what? Now that is fine. I did. I took out my cabin
air filter here because I hadn't changed it pretty much since I bought the truck and I
took my cabin air filter out in the, I would say a couple of months ago, there was acorns
and all sorts of shit. There's, there's something bringing it in there. And I'm like, Oh, well,
that's might be why I got some weird smells coming in in my truck. Yeah. There was a mouse
nest in the blower motor, the tercel and the blower motor was solid. Yes. It's got bones
in it. Yeah. It's, I need to get to that car. I think I'm going to do that in the spring
just because at least pull the motor and go through it again and make sure it's okay.
Yeah. I mean, scared to death. Yeah. I would at least go through it and refresh it. I mean,
just to make sure it was like, I'll do that with the, with little foot, the 94 Chevy. I'll
go through that every once in a while and just kind of clean it up, blow it out, make
sure everything's ready. I will say I have the opinion of if you have some, you know,
something older than like the eighties or nineties, it's usually your best interest.
Like you really want to drive the shit out of something, put a bunch of miles on it's
like rip the bandaid off, pull the engine, at least pre-gasket it and you know, make
sure it's in good shape, the rings or bearings or whatever. It's like not necessarily machine
work, but go through it. Cause otherwise you'll have an engine and it's like, yeah, it's great.
And 20,000 miles later, it's like, wow, everything that can leak oil is, this is great. See,
I bought my four four two in, I want to say 21, it had about 80,000 miles on it. And all
I did was fix an injector, pump out the old gas, put new gas in it. And I put almost 30,000
miles on it before the oil pump quit. It still doesn't leak anything, but the oil pump is
bad. It's such a weird thing to fail. It's timing driven. So probably the timing failed.
I was going to say that that's a strange failure. That's like, I'll do like one of two things.
I went to the opinion of either go all out and do everything or don't touch a fucking
thing. Yeah. One or the other. Cause my Pontiac, you know, I haven't really done anything to
the engine on it, but you know, it's a 3,800 so they're pretty stout. It's a series one,
so it doesn't have the fucking intake gas problems or the stupid cool elbows. You should
swap a quad four in that just because quad fours are fricking cool and they're so much
faster than 3,800. If I were to get a quad four one, I would import a Euro van that left
the factory with a quad four in it. Well, that'd be cool too. Yeah. That'd be fun. What Pontiac
do you have? It's a 1993 Pontiac transport van. Oh, okay. But yes, the Euro market Pontiac
transport was available with the quad four and a five speed manual. I now want one. That
is fucking awesome. I really want to pick up a first gen S 10. Um, I think it's a first
gen like a 91 S 10. Yeah. And I want to pick up. Yeah, that was still first gen late first
gen and then I want to pick up a 91 bravada and put a quad four in the S 10 and make it
look like a bravada pickup. That would be so cool. Right. Put the whole bravada front
end so it looks like the bravada in the front. Do like bravada badging on the tailgate and
paint it like you would a bravada, but then power it by an actual oldsmobile engine with
like, I don't know, a five speed or something. It'd be a cool little truck. The bravada is
so neat, but there was two of them out there. I had to go double check the look to make
sure the transport was what I thought it was. Man, I forget about these things that they're
so ugly. They're cool. Like, oh, they look like Hollywood baby cars. You say they are
a love it or hate it design. There are people there. The ugliest thing GM has ever made.
Oh, they are. That's my wife. Yeah, they're ugly, but there there's things and that's
what I like is like there are things that are so ugly that they're damn cool. And like
that and like that's how I saw the FJ at first is like I thought it was the ugliest thing
ever and then it was like, all right, I kind of like it. Now it's growing on me. The reason
why I like the transport man's is they are very similar to what the original concept
car looked like. They didn't make too far from the original concept car. So I just sent
you guys both a link. This is the bravada that I was trying to buy when I bought my
third gen and the guy, no matter how much I messaged him, would not respond to me. That's
so cool. Oh, even as a digi dash. Yeah. Did you dashes were the coolest fucking thing.
He turned out to digi dash, but they're really rare to actually find. I wanted this truck
so bad because it would look so good parked next to my 91 442. Yeah, God parked being
the operative word, but that's funny. No, I love that. That is cool. I'm not a big like
Oldsmobile guy. I guess. I guess, you know, they are what they are. They're cool, but
I would have to say this is pretty cool. I'll put a link to this in the show notes just
so that everyone sees it. But I would have definitely wheeled the hell out of this thing
and that smart track would have been so pissed at me the whole time. Yeah, I remember it
was my third and fourth grade teacher. She had a bravada like that. Even as a kid, I
was like, what the fuck is this thing? Because like I had never really seen one before. Aren't
those like really similar to like what are the older explorers, the 94 explorers? As
10, is it the yeah, it was basically a, you know, up badged, fancier as 10 blazer. I think
it was supposed to kind of compete with his Ford to start to make more luxurious versions
of the Explorer. So I think that was the Mercury line. Yeah, that was GM's attempt to kind
of compete with them. But you know, obviously it didn't really work that well, seeing as
they didn't really sell many of them. Well, they would have if they just put a quad four
in it. Okay, I am thinking of the Ford Explorer just being that boxier. Yeah. But yeah, I
mean, the Typhoon still the coolest of those Typhoon is an S10 blazer. So I know, I know.
Yeah, I'm aware. I'm just saying, I just think out of all of them, I really like the Typhoon.
I thought it was very cool. So this is how different is the typhoons want supercharged
or those turboed turbo turbo. They're turboed. So this is a euro transport with a quad four
in it. All right, that sounds sick. I think it was one of the lowest horsepower quad fours
like of the lineup, but it is you know, a factory quad four. Yeah, that is a quad for
LO. So a low output. Yeah, I think it was the one that was used in the Grand Am I think.
Well the Grand Am also got a high output. So maybe I'd have to see better from the top
of it. But it might be a high output, which would be frickin sick. No, these have a low
output version, unfortunately. Oh, lame. Yeah, let's put the low output version into a minivan.
What could possibly go wrong? As terrible as terrible as the quad four is, as a quad four
owner, I'll come out and tell you they're fucking terrible, but they are the coolest
thing that GM ever did. Like they're just, oh, they're so funded. They sound cool. They
look cool. And it was DM's first actually like modern quartz owner engine too. Yep.
Yes this is a typhoon was powered by a 4.3 L LB4 V6. Yeah, they were the turbocharged
ones. 200 horsepower. Imagine that bravado that I sent with a typhoon engine in it. Oh,
that'd be so sick. The engine uses a Mitsubishi TDO6 turbocharger. One of the wildest swaps
that I've seen was there's a guy in Canada who had a early Lumina APV. I think it was
like a 90. Well, apparently he didn't like TDI 31 and wanted something with better fuel
economy. So he got his hands on a front wheel drive four three diesel and swapped it in.
I'm like, damn it. I had that idea. Someone else beat me to it. Damn. I really want to
get one of the front wheel drive four or three diesels, but God, they are so fucking hard
to find. They suck. Nobody trusted the old diesel by the eighties. So they did not sell
many of them. And for some reason, you know, 85 horsepower V6 diesels weren't exactly,
you know, a big seller for GM. Yeah, no, I wouldn't. Well, when you took a 350 and tried
to make it a diesel and it ran like crap, no one's going to trust you after that. Which
is sad because the later ones weren't nearly as atrocious as the early ones. And the four
three diesel wasn't actually like, they still lost some design cues of the 350 diesel, but
they like added more head bolts to them. And I think 84 has even had the actual fuel water
separator like they fucking should have had from the factory. But like by the time they
started to actually get half decent, GM pulled the plug on it and you know, that was dead.
Yeah. Typical GM. Hey, it's starting to get kind of good. Oh, yeah. Nevermind. Stop. Yeah.
There was quite recently I saw an Oldsmobile diesel for sale here in Michigan. I'll see
if I can find it and I'll send it to you. They shop every now and again. The 350s usually
aren't that hard to find. It's the like A bodies with the four three or the really hard to
find ones. And I think the C bodies did 84 only, but like those are like insanely rare.
I've seen like a grand total, I think two, one was a Cadillac, one was a like an old
98. And like they were, I think, I think it was only like the first like three months
of production, you could get it with that engine. That's when GM pulled the plug in
production. It was like some guy that like had one for sale right now, but it was like
$10,000 for it, which like who in their right mind would fucking pay them much for it. It's
like, yeah, it's rare, but rare doesn't equal valuable. Is it worth a little more with the
really rare engine? Yeah, a little more. Not that much more. Sweet car. You can't get any
fucking drivetrain parts for. Yeah. How hard would it be to do like, now, since we're talking
about diesels, because I'm kind of curious with your knowledge, how hard would it be
to like diesel swap that your your truck? Would you or would you even think about it?
Are you cool with what's what's there? When I still play it out to a drive trucks, I actually
got really close to it as in I actually bought a Toyota L diesel from a 82 pickup and all
these stuff for this soliciting my parents basement was really close to swap in one of
those and and then I did the toy started playing around four wheel drive stuff went hot. Maybe
a 76 horsepower diesel isn't the best idea after all, especially since you can't really
get any parts in North America easily. But I got really close to playing around with
the Toyota diesels and I decided that really low horsepower and a diesel is probably not
the actual thing. You still have that little diesel sitting around? Yes, it is in the basement
of my parents house. Geez, that's funny. How cool would that be in my generator, though?
Actually cooler in a ter cell. So it would be so cool in a ter cell. That engine would
be huge and unfortunately, be basically impossible to actually make it fit the ter cell transmission.
Right. It was I think it's like the one C Toyota diesel like actually matches the bell
housing bolt packer. But I think like the starters on the wrong side or something because
someone got one bolted up to the transmission. I don't think they were able to figure out
a starter motor that would like actually work for it. But I think that was the one engine
that actually shared the same bull pattern as the Toyota A series engines. Forage E swaps
are pretty common on them. My roommate has a turbo forage and a first gen ter cell which
is the same transmission as the later ones. And you know, I know there's several people
with forage E swapped wagons, which I find every real drive forage E. I just happened
because, you know, if I would be kind of nice going from 62 horsepower to doubling it at
120 would be pretty cool, too. All right. Completely off topic. But I just found an
N body Baja car that someone built. What the fuck? Yeah, I am going to send this to you
because you will love it. Sorry, I just I happen to see it because I've looked up and
body stuff just a second ago and it was like top of the Google listing.
What the fuck? It is cool. Isn't it? I like anything that's different. Yeah, for sure.
I like anything that's N body. That's why I tend to fall into the off road groups with
you know, all the oddball and weird shit because like, you know, eight different fucking moderately
built fifth gen foragers in a row. It's kind of boring after a while. It's like, wow, they're
all pretty much the same. Yeah, that's as much as I love Mark. Don't take this as a
slam mark when you do listen to this. That's kind of where I'm at with like second and
third gen tacos. Everyone has a second or third gen taco. Yeah, you're not bad, but
they're the fucking it's really hard to make one of those unique. The only real way to
do that is to like put one tons under them. Right. When I first bought the FJ, I thought
I was being very unique and that that slapped me in the face very quickly when I started
giving out these forms and was like, if you want to do it, it's been done. Like the like
FJs were like, so they were already in it quite a bit by the time that I was even. Well,
the numbers are dwindling, though. You don't see nearly as many FJs now as you did a couple.
Yeah. And mine's in really good condition engine and body wise. I would say. Well, yeah,
it is. I mean, it is. I mean, it doesn't matter. Right. Hundred and forty seven thousand miles
virtually rust free. I mean, it's got surface rust, but it's it's it's a good condition
for what it is. And I think anything for real drive Michigan that's not rusty means either
a it's not from there or B someone bought it, never drove it like. Yeah. The guy. So
the guy that I bought it in probably three years ago now and the guy who had it before
kept it in the garage all year. So and and would never drive it in the winter. Had another
car for that. So it supposedly had never seen a winner and I could believe it. But which
is just so weird for FJ not see winter, though. But I don't know. I he just so happened that
the guy that I bought it in. Well, I don't even I can't remember the city. What's that
city? Oh, Holland. I bought it in Holland and just so happens, like I lived in New Ago
that that that owned it. I was like, oh, you're going right back home, buddy. That's wild.
Yeah. So drove it two hours back home and and that's why I started looking on the groups.
I'm like, I got to find some off road groups. I got to get I got to get this experience
down now. And I'm like, can't wait, man. I finally found this unique truck I wanted since
high school. And then I get on and everyone's like, everyone's got one. And I'm like, oh,
man, that's all right. And then I start and then I start driving around and I see him
everywhere now. I'm like, motherfucker. The the third gens are cool because they're older.
There are I'm not saying there's no documentation on because people have done lots of stuff
with the third gens, but they're unique enough that when I go to do stuff, I'm kind of blazing
my own path every once in a while. Yeah. But I'm not completely in the dark. I was just
saying it's pretty much all been done for the FJ. It's fun. I guess in the dark, but
he has something like a Tercel wagon where, oh, yeah, that was in the 80s and 90s. Right.
Originally, I want when I had my oh six Baja, I was really wanting to like turn that into
an overlanding vehicle. And in a way that was had never really been done in the fashion
that I wanted to do it. But once I had my son and I realized I can't even fit a car
seat in the back seat, that kind of changed things. So I ended up selling that, which,
by the way, that subframe was literally rotted out to Swiss cheese. So I sold it for I think
twelve hundred dollars. And, you know, I think rarity was the only thing that got it up that
high. God, I swear, Subaru's like up north. They're either like fucking suspiciously clean
and rust free or like comically rusty. And there's a very long between either one bump
away from falling off or wow. This. Oh, yeah. Yeah. From the outside, the body was all plastic.
So from the outside, it looked completely rust free and great. But you looked under
it. And that that was part of my issue is I had it for probably six years, had two hundred
and sixty seven thousand miles on it. And I had it for probably six years. And I looked
under that thing only when I had to fix it pretty much. And when I looked at it this
summer because someone wanted me to take pictures of the rear and I was like, Jesus Christ,
I'm trying to sell this thing for twenty five hundred. I fucking I had to lower the price
on the market now as I lowered it. And I'm like, God damn parts only. Yeah. I lowered
it to two because I knew people were going to do me down to like, you know, fifteen or
something. And I'm like, basically, can I get more than the fucking junkyard will pay?
Exactly. So I was like, I'll take anything. But we they gave me twelve and I ended up
using that to buy some upgrades for the FJ like radio. And if you ask my wife what I
ended up spending twelve hundred dollars on for the FJ, I don't even remember. It was
all little things. I'm so. Yeah, I live on the edge of the rust belt now where, you know,
I can find older stuff and it's not completely fucking rot into the fucking ground. I'm like
everything else in Michigan because like the true cell is like fucking spotless underneath
like two rust spots in the rockers and like a little bit like rust, like the door bottoms.
But like it's nowhere near as like catastrophically rusty as a Michigan car would be. Oh, yeah.
No, I want it. Like I said, I wanted to overland the shit out of the bar. And I really liked
it because the fuel economy, it was a weird looking pickup truck car. I thought that would
be so cool. But so what not this back to back to Subi's a little bit when I was in high
school, I had a buddy who's his dad daily drove an 06 STI. Right. Yep. And this would
have been probably 2012 is when I start remembering things about this car. But in 2012, it was
already rotted into the fucking ground, dude. Oh, six year old car just rotted the hell
out. Yeah. I would say that that was like their biggest flaw, even above head gaskets.
Like I and I say this like the guy I know, the guy that had it before me, I was a second
owner. The only thing he ever did was basic maintenance and a timing belt. And that was
it. So when I bought it, I had it for probably two years. And finally it started to leak
oil after I took it to a place in Fremont and they overfilled it and put 1030 instead
of 530. That was a whole thing. Finally started to leak oil then and blew a head gasket. He
took it. They took the engine out, replaced the head gasket, the water pump, the bell,
all the all the stuff that you usually do, the idler pulleys, put it back in like 13
hours and had my car running again so I could go to work the next day and had zero issues
with it ever since until I would say a couple of years, I would say last year or so. Well,
once I bought the FJ, I wasn't driving much anyway, and it just became kind of a yard
truck basically driving around, load wood in it, drive around, dump it, you know, like
a little K truck. But yeah, at that time, I was like, all right, well, I'm not going
to drive it. I'm not going to overland it, not going to do anything with it. So I'm just
going to sell it because at that point, it was just money that I could have. So Japanese
stuff in general, like up until like very, very recently and how stuff hasn't even been
long enough or rather see how it'll hold up like Japanese cars in general, who's always
fucking struggling just don't think. I just don't think they were made for that. You know,
I mean, design with that in mind. But if you go back to the 80s, the life expectancy of
a car was significantly shorter versus now. Yeah, very much that even if you look at cars
in Japan, dude, they're always rotted the hell out from just being in that salt all
the time. Yeah. And this is Japan still has the expectation of like every couple of years,
get a new car. They don't really like there's a guy in the Tercel group that's over in Japan
where he's been buying parts from the US, importing them to Japan to fix his Tercel
because he can't get parts for it locally because there's like none of those cars left.
God, I was just reading about a company and was like, or not a company a country. I don't
want to say it's the Philippines. It's something it's a it's a they have a law that they after
every couple of years, you actually have to like, you know what I'm talking about? Actually
have to like get a new car. Korea, Korea, they have to pay Korea if it's older than 10 years,
they have to pay insane insurance. Yeah, 10 years or something like that. Yeah. I know
it's really strict. I was like something that admissions related or something where once
you have crazy over 10 years, they're really strict. Yeah, I've looked that up later. But
one of my favorite memories from Korea, we were in the back of an LMTV and a dude I have
a picture somewhere. I'll see if I can find it. A dude pulls up behind us in like a 94
Y.J. right. And he's all in his little Korean business suit looking all fancy and stuff.
And we're on the expressway and we're in a traffic jam. And he just turns right and drives
up a frickin mountain in his business suit. And you know that the dude's rich because
he's paying like three thousand dollars a month in car insurance. Oh, yeah, for sure.
Yeah, with the guys with the older stuff like that, you already know. It's really cool.
I just like this Jeep had like all these Korea off road and all these other badges on it.
And he's in a frickin business suit. Look at all fancy. I will say on that Korean off
road note, like I've seen some of these Asian off road groups. They're not sure where they're
really centralized, but like FJ groups and man, are those fucking cool to watch. Those
guys, those guys mod the shit out of their FJs and then they beat the crap out of them
too. It's cool to watch. I watch it go through their way down to like Central America and
stuff. And every now and then you'll find a couple of them over in like Russia and stuff
too. Yeah. Most of them are in North America, but a few of them eventually a bit further
away from there. Yeah. Yeah. It's cool to see. I like a lot of people are doing the
same thing, especially with FJs too. And I'm trying not to fit that, fit that mold, like
a hundred percent cookie cutter. But yeah, but at the same time, what I, what I'm doing
and what, you know, what I'm trying to do, I have to kind of conform a little bit to
it. And we were talking about that. Me and Alex were talking about that the other day
about going into, I didn't, I wanted to do custom drawers and stuff in the back of mine.
And we were kind of talking about me going, maybe me looking into Milwaukee for some,
for just the fact that I could, you know, take the pack outs out the back and switch
them for different seasons, different outings and stuff like that. And while that's not
a bad idea at the same time, if I want to do the year round, I'm kind of, I'm weighing
the pros and cons right now. And, uh, yeah, you will. Yeah. But it's, it's hard because
I, you know, with my son in there, because if I took the rear seats out, there would
be no problem at all. Yeah. But you don't have to, if you pack out. Well, that's not
necessarily, it's just a space issue in general for how I want to set up, you know, with the
kitchen and, and, and being completely self reliant through the FJ. It's tough with a
kid because of the space he requires. You know, I currently need drawers from my forerunner
because right now I have the loosely throw all my crap in the back and just do that.
Which I mean, dude, I guess it kind of works. Yeah. Listen, listen to our pack out episode.
It's called, you had a contractor truck. Yeah. Me and Mark go through all the reasons pack
outs are perfect for that. Yeah. And then I was talking to Alex about it and we're like
thinking about, Oh, we can put these pack. We can actually mount these pack outs upside
down and have like quick grabs and stuff. And like, like, so I'm, I'm seeing it. And
I think there's a place for pack outs. I don't think that they're useless. I don't think
that, uh, like there's no place for them in my, in my gear. I just think that I, I am
going to try to incorporate both because I can use that door, you know, you know, where
my door swings out. Yeah. If I put pack out mounts on my door and put out like quick grab
pack out stuff, that would be really, that would be really nice. But I think that you
get stuck on the fact that you have a kid. Um, you know, I wheel with dogs and they take
up the entire backseat. So I actually ended up with less space than what you've got even
with the kid. No, I mean, I would say by law, I'm required to have a, to have, you know,
the seat bolted, you know, down into a certain way. I feel with the dogs, they're, they're
a little bit more fluid as you can move them around to different places, but I have to
have him fit in a certain way. And that was two dogs in a third gen dude. I don't have
room for that. I got to leave my entire backseat and entire floor empty. Well, and I don't
know. I, I, I would say that I have to leave my entire backseat, uh, for just my son. And
then he requires, uh, with, you know, changes of clothes, food, et cetera, at least the
whole rest of the backseat. So to me, to me, I would say that that I get hung up on it
because it's a big deal. It is as far, you know what I mean? It's, it's, I get hung up
on it because it's a, it's a big detail. And depending on how I want to do things really
depends on how, you know, how, because we've like looked at different car seats to try
to fit behind Sienna so that I could delete or swap because part, there's like the two
person bench and like a single, and I was going to swap the two person bench to the
left and move the single to the right. And then, or, you know, or just delete the two
person and then move the single to the right. That way we could sit right behind Sienna.
But at that point, his feet are in the headrest and it's just very hard. So, well, we'll work
on it. It's not a big, it's not, you know, I like the challenge of it. And I think, I
think with just how I have it now, we can make it work. We just got to, like I said,
we're just going to move some stuff when we put the rooftop tent on. We're going to just
move some more stuff to the top. Plus I have a lot of stuff in the, like the Pelican and
stuff up top that I really don't need all the time. Like, and those are just like electrical,
the grinder, all those, all this bunch of spare tools that like never touched once this
summer. So it was like, I mean, and I know you'll need them when you need them, but at
the same time.
The second you take something out, the next trip you will need it. Guaranteed.
Yeah. I mean, I have like a full electrical, like, you know, do an, do an electrical wiring
kit, multimeters, grinders, impact. I only hear things that you should keep in mind.
You'll be like, Oh look, there's this man in a boat here. Oh, let me just throw out
the garage next trip.
No, son of a bitch. I need it.
Oh no, I'm not saying that I should get rid of all of it. I'm just saying that I need
to move it or consolidate it to most used things. I mean, I run full kits. I've got
a grinder and impact, a drill, full electrical kit with a multimeter. I mean, if you're mostly
running in a group, I hate to say this, but you can kind of lean on other people a little
bit.
Yeah. That's where, that's where my game is. I was over preparing because I was doing a
lot of solo at first, but
I do very impulsive trips. Yeah. A bunch of solo stuff. I'm like, I'm bored. I'm going
to start driving North fucking now. That's pretty much what happened with what I was
wandering around, you know, over there. It's like, yeah, there's trails over here. I'm
kind of curious to see what they're like. I've heard about them. They write it up. I
can't, I don't even know where the hell I like found this map, but I'm like, well, I
downloaded these trails from fucking somewhere. Let's see what they look like.
Where did, how do you camp? I mean, I'm assuming you do the whole camping thing. Do you just
camp in the back of yours?
Yep. Twin mattress thrown in the back.
Nice.
I have had a ground tent, I have had a rooftop tent, and I've now had this.
Yeah. Well, what do you, do you have any like certain preferences for cooking or anything
like that, or do you kind of run a pretty bare bones?
I have a basic, like camp stove and cookware and stuff. I usually don't bring it with me
unless I'm on like a long trip. If it's like a day or two, I usually don't really bother
to bring a whole lot of stuff with me because like screw it. Butter and jelly is fine, but
I do have cookware and stuff. But you know, that's basically reserved for the like three
or four plus day long, you know, trips when I'm in the middle of nowhere.
Yeah, no. We have a really good fridge that I like that. I mean, I do have a fridge that
is 100% like one of my favorite things to have because like being able to have food
where it's not fucking swimming in ice water is.
Oh yeah. I love it. I really enjoy that as well. But for the price of it, I think I'm
within the next two years, I'm going to switch to a different size because I think mine's
like a 39 quart or something like that.
Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. Yeah, go ahead. I love my 44 quart packout cooler.
It is perfect for me. He's got a cooler. So me and Alex are team fridge versus team cooler.
So that's why I love having him as a friend and stuff and running around because he gives
very good, complete opposite views of everything that I that everything I do basically.
I love the opinion of coolers are fantastic for drinks. Fridges are fantastic for food.
Yeah. So like we did when we went down to Missouri, we just had my Milwaukee cooler.
We only had a small bag of ice and then it kept itself cold just based on the stuff we
put in it.
Yeah, like just freezing. We have a good cooler too. That makes a big difference. We have
like a really shitty like poorly insulated one that sucks. Yeah, I had like a thirty
five dollar one from Menards. It was hollow. That thing sucks balls. I didn't even have
much later. It's like film with spray foam. They're like actually pretty good. Yeah, I've
seen them. I've seen people do that. The Milwaukee one, I will say is top notch. I mean, you
pay for it was like two hundred and fifty fucking dollars, but it's a very, very good
fridge and it's very thick and very well insulated or fridge cooler. I had another one that I
think I paid a hundred for that I've been rocking for the last like ten years and it's
like one hundred and eight quart cooler and it it doesn't keep ice cold forever, but just
the bulk of shit you can carry in it was always fantastic.
Yeah, that's nice. I think my my biggest thing was the sweating and the soggy and the constant
like upkeep for us, because like I said, we were running a cheap cooler, so it was constant
draining and our lunch meat was always full of water. The eggs were always fucking water.
Everything was cold. I like having a fridge just so I can stuff. You still have like a
cooler for drinks and then a fridge for whatever food I have. Yeah, I think that's probably
the best way. I think having a small drink cooler and then a fridge is probably the best
of both. You don't need like your bottled water or whatever in the fridge that should
be cooler. Because if it goes, oh no, my water is wet. Whatever will I do? Yeah, right. And
if you instead of using ice, if you freeze water bottles, that works really well too.
Yeah, I've done that before. Yeah. But then it's still sweats. And that's like that's
like the biggest thing that sucks for me. But yeah, other than that, no, I mean, it's
obviously it's livable. It's creature comforts. You know, at the end of the day, if I wanted
to live off of ramen and peanut butter sandwiches, I could. But I do. My wife is a foodie. She
likes to eat good food when we're out. And that's one of the winning with the winning
arguments that I have is that if she goes out camping with me, we will always eat decent
food on that subject. Gavin, I am looking at picking up a dehydrator so we can make our
own dehydrated meals. It pays for itself in about one trip with three people. Oh, yeah,
I figured. Dehydrated meals are great. I love dehydrated meals. I eat the crap out of dehydrated
meals. One thing I'm still trying to figure out the logistics of since, you know, I live,
you know, further south where, you know, the summer feels like hell outside day and night
is 12 volt air conditioning since 12 volt AC compressors went from being astronomically
expensive to just regular expensive. Trying to figure out a way to realistically have
a 12 volt AC setup for camping because 90 degrees at night with 70 percent humidity
kind of sucks. You just got to make your own. I mean, you're your engine. You are like smart
enough that you can make your own AC condenser and everything. And it's just a question of
where do I want to shove all this stuff in the way. Just grab an RV AC, put it on your
roof and build some kind of crazy cage for it to protect it. Yeah, thought about those,
but like, God, they're fucking expensive. And there's you can get them cheap in part
outs. Not too long ago, there was one for like 100 bucks. I just I just go in and find
some scrap yards or something and rip one out of there. That's really hasn't crossed
my mind before. I'll have to keep my eyes open because I would not be opposed to cutting
a hole in that, you know, my hard top because first gen for hard tops are not exactly difficult
to obtain. Right. Yeah, it wouldn't. I mean, it's not like it would take much either AC
wise. Now that's the other thing a bunch of people forget about too with AC. It's like
once you get to night, once you lose the heat load from the sun, you don't need nearly the
cooling path easy do in the day. Now I'm I like the idea of AC but I don't for Michigan
we don't need it. I have a battery powered fan that we had all summer that worked great
just to move some air around. It's not too bad at night even in the summer unless it's
like going through like heat wave or whatever. It's not real. Yeah, down here. Yeah, it's
not uncommon to have 90 degrees at night. Yeah, I couldn't do that. I have been burned
by that before. I am the biggest baby when it comes to heat. If it's like if when I go
to bed, if it's like above 75, I'm throwing a fucking temper tantrum. It's the other option,
which is the relatively easy one, but you know, would be inverter generator plus window
unit plumbed into, you know, your tent truck or fucking whatever. You know, the easiest
option that I haven't heard you say yet is a Milwaukee cooler with the lid open and a
battery powered fan pointing towards you. There's your usually what I do in the summer. It's
like, oh, I'm traveling south. Let's book a hotel. Yeah. What about don't they have
like AC or propane ACs? I know they have some really, they have some camping ACs. I don't
know if I've seen an actual like AC unit set up with that, but the you know, I don't see
why it wouldn't work because propane is a fantastic refrigerant with one downside. You
know, the incredible flammability. Yeah, but you're already in a car. I mean, come on.
I can't. I can't you just shake it up a little bit and just stuff it in your sleeping bag.
Yeah. Just let out some AC and shove the can and some propane and shove the can in your.
I don't know what I was using the when I was using the buddy heater on our trip. By the
time it took probably five minutes of that buddy heater running and that can started
getting cold. And then when it would go out, there was a complete frost all around it.
I know I'd have to unstick the can from the tent. That was propane and butane both work
really well as refrigerant. If you look around online, you can every now and again, you'll
find out there's a which is a butane propane blend that sold as a drop in replacement for
our 12. Not a huge fan of that stuff, but you know, it does have. I've done really well.
I've literally seen videos of guys replacing their AC stuff with propane as an AC snob.
I try to steer people away from that, but it absolutely will work as a refrigerant.
Yes, pure propane is a higher operating pressure than our 12 or our 134. So the people that
are dumping this into questionable condition leaking systems from the 80s. That's where
I'm like, I don't know if I'd recommend this. Oh, yeah. That's why I usually steer people
away from like our 12 or just propane because nine times out of 10, it's someone shoving
in some fucking 40 year old original AC system. It said fucking nothing done to it. It's like
this is right. Especially since you're like, oh, well, there's like a gas tank. I mean,
like, dude, you put like four pounds of propane in your AC system. Like, there's a lot of
ships that can happen with that amount of flammable gas slash liquid. Oh, also, I was
trying to remember what the company was named. The zero breeze is the overland tax AC unit.
It costs probably as much as everything that you've ever done to your truck. I actually
just watched a video about how they're fucking terrible. Oh, well, see, this is what I'm
saying. Every everything that I ever see that I think is like decent. Alex is like my opposing
force. He helps keep me grounded because because I've seen like three videos and the guys are
like, I love my zero breeze. I live in Arkansas. Yeah, I mean, I do a lot of research because
I'm kind of anti the whole overland tax thing. Oh, so I heavily look into that stuff because
I always think, man, I can build that for less than what they're charging. Yeah, I rarely
buy anything that has the word over leaning attached to it. Right now. I think I don't
know what it is. I think it's like some algorithm bullshit because I try to vet out these two
and look like I will literally go on to YouTube and look up. For instance, I will look up
zero breeze problems, zero breeze issues. I will look that up and go through shit like
that and then still come out with like a better opinion of it as an overall than like and
then but then somehow like like Alex will find something that's like, like super fucked
up about it. I'm like, what the fuck? Like I spend hours on this. I have no idea. By
the way, this thing has this like huge inherent like design flaw that makes it terrible. Yeah,
it's like I will look for hours. I look for videos of people talking dog shit on it. And
then somehow it never fails. You know, at times I bought it's the equivalent of this
is good. And then I immediately go, oh, look, there's this big fucking like expensive ticking
time bomb in it that yeah, good. Find the fucking thing about until I fucking bought
it. It's the equivalent of me like walking outside and going, oh, fuck, the sky is really
blue today. And then Alex was like, actually, it's not. I learned like having chain problems
when I dropped an oil pan and found plastic chunks in the bottom of like, the fuck is
this? Like, oh, yeah, don't you know, like all 22 hours at like 200,000 miles will like
need a timing chain like desperately. I'm like, no, I fucking didn't know this. And
the other thing was zero breeze, not to like jump back on it is apparently their customer
service is like hot fucking dog shit. What was the main place is it'll sell like a premium
like ultra expensive product. And then some of these they have like atrocious customer
service that is like that to me. I'm like customer service is like 80 percent of like
retaining customers and sales. Like I can't understand how people. Yeah. What? Save $200
if I buy zero breeze from Wal-Mart. Thanks. So I want it. It's like why I don't buy Samsung
products anymore because their customer service is the absolute frickin worse.
I feel like you're different because you use Samsung. How or you use products differently
than 90 percent of the population does. You know what I mean? Like I use it. Everyone
just kind of learned like, oh, we like don't really need decent customer service anymore.
We can just get away without it. Like simultaneously, like every big corporation learned they could
just get away with absolutely atrocious customer service.
So back in 2018, I bought a Samsung Galaxy Book or Notebook, whatever, Pro 9, like super
expensive laptop, right? Like $1800 computer. I used it for three weeks. Didn't like just
played a couple of games on it, used it for basic web browsing, didn't even put Linux
on it. I left frickin Windows on it and it just fucking died. So I did some research
and it turns out that the graphics card in it likes to fry and short out two pins. So
I sent it to Samsung to get repaired and it bounced back and forth between us four times.
And they kept saying, well, it's your fault because we found a crumb in this speaker grill.
And then they sent it back to me. And then another time, well, in the charger port, we
found some dust and that could cause the problem. And I'm like, you guys are fucking terrible.
Well then not even three months later, my brand new Samsung TV that I spent $800 on
the filter behind it cracked and it turned black. And mind you, this is just a TV hanging
on the wall. And I messaged Samsung about it and they're like, well, what did we looked
up your area and there were some minor environmental vibrations and that is enough to void your
warranty.
Yeah, see, I've never had these issues like this is what I did. All right. So Alex having
all these issues of Samsung, I've had Samsung my whole fucking life basically in one way
or another. And other than me killing my own phones physically on accident, I've never
had issues. Oh, I have a completely different category. Well, like even my like I had a
Samsung TV still works now. It's fucking probably five years old now. Like I just accept the
tablets, pretty much electronics nowadays. I just assume that like as soon as you buy
it, expect to get shafted by the warranty. Yeah, I mean, yes, absolutely. It's just like
like my S I've like I'd ask 22 S 22 Ultra or something like that. And this thing is
fucking stellar. But I've never me and see and I've never had any issues with Samsung
to where we were. I'm never using it again. I'm sitting here looking at my two Samsung
monitors that my old roommate bought and one of them, half of it flashes every like two
and a half minutes. And I'm like, why did he buy Samsung displays and why did I get
stuck with them? It's funny. I just I think you're just technology cursed. 2016 still
works beautifully. This is one of the cheapest four K monitors you could buy back then. It
still works perfectly. I think I think Alex is just technology cursed. I really do. It's
not it's not everything. I mean, my Fairphone is fantastic. I bought a phone specifically
to be able to repair it. And then I never had a reason to repair it. Those things are
sweet. I don't know. Yeah, the one actual like technology company I've had that I like
refused to do business with now for my own personal experiences is MSI. I have it's I've
had so many fucking dead MSI motherboards. I'm just not going to fucking play this game
anymore. And I'm sitting here looking at my one MSI motherboard that never died thinking,
man, don't you die on me now. I had fucking five that were dead. Five. I have also had
a lot. Yeah, I kept ending up with a serious motherboards. It's like I'm not in love with
them. But like the deals kept being too good for me to say no. And they've pretty much
just worked. So I'm like, you know what, this is actually now that you say that I actually
think that I had. Oh, I don't have Neo Fetch installed on here. What the hell? Um, I'm
pretty sure that I ended up with a gigabit motherboard because I think my last MSI they
couldn't replace it. Giga bites decent. Yeah, it's a good time that we're selling power
supplies that would explode and kill your video card and your card shortage. That was
amusing. But hey, dude, that is all the time we have. We're actually over by about 20 minutes.
So I'm not surprised. Yeah, we will have to get you on again because this has been a great
time. Yeah. Yeah. As a regular. Have you come on every once in a while here? And yeah, there's
always there's always planning to talk about whether it's computers or cars like, oh God,
yes, I can talk about anything. Damn near continuously. And now I get to go plow my
frickin farm drive. Hell yeah. Oh yeah. I think I'm going to eat my taco bell and and
that'll be pretty much the end of my night. I have probably another two or three hours
of work. Yay. But I'll probably get this episode. I'll probably get this episode out to Thursday
night. So just I guess just listen for all listeners that now heard me say that this
one will be late even though you got it late. Yeah. Busy times right now. But all right,
I'll catch you guys later. Yeah. We'll see you later.