Welcome to Botches Off -Road. Join us as we talk
about everything from gear reviews to trail stories,
tank camping to rock landing, and all things
to do with the outdoors. I got it right the first
time, guys. I think you were reading the script.
Yeah, I was. But I got it right. So this is a
wrap. We're not going to talk about food for
seven and a half minutes. Except, I did just
make banging barbecue chicken for dinner, guys.
I got a box of 24 chicken legs from Jeans for
$3 out of their discount rack the other day.
Hey, dude. Times be tough. And I put them in
a whole... thing of barbecue and half a can of
coke slow let them marinate overnight slow cooked
them for six hours and then finished them off
on the grill they were a perfect okay i'm not
gonna comment because if we do we'll get into
seven minutes of food let's talk about seven
minutes of food what's your comment no i mean
it just sounds really good my uh dad used to
make a camp he'd call it mountain dew stew and
he'd cut up like little steak chunks, like roast
chunks, and the cast iron. He'd sweep baby rays,
and then he'd finish it off with like a half
a can of Mountain Dew, and that was Mountain
Dew stew. And, oh, my God, I tell you what, dude,
that hit every time when you're sitting next
to the river. Yeah, dude. Yeah. Coke, I've never
done Mountain Dew, but Coke is great for barbecue.
Yeah, my dad was weird. He'd eat, like, Mountain
Dew with Golden Grahams. Oh, my God. What the
fuck? Yeah. Jesus Christ. There's a reason why
he's still single. Well, now we know why you
came out the way you did. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
Yes. There was an error in the printing process.
Twice. Twice. So, yeah, it's a good old wrap.
I think we're going to save. Gavin's rap for
the hour because he has way more stuff than we
do. But... Because your weekend was what? Like
four days long? Five days long? Six days long?
Something like that? Yeah, Wednesday to Monday.
Jesus. Jealous. I can never do that, by the way.
I left early, too. It was supposed to be Wednesday
to Wednesday and we decided to just come back.
We were kind of done with the sand. I wish I
could do that, but I can't get away from work
like that. I mean, you had time a couple weeks
ago. Kind of. That was a different story. That
doesn't happen a lot. I can fix that. So, Mark,
how do you think our weekend went? I'd say it
was pretty productive, at least for you and me.
My brother was kind of slouch on his whole thing.
But he got it done. Yes, he did. He did get it
done. The frame on the black truck is back to
being solid. Yep. There's no more rust on the
frame of the black truck. Hey, shut the fuck
up, Mark. We know about frames. The black truck
is rust -free once again. The small little spot
of rust is gone. We have repaired it. But yeah,
so that's cool. uh we got into mark's truck after
its little incident that has not been talked
about on the podcast yeah that was fun to find
out about yeah it's a go elaborate elaborate
well give me a second geez so my brother had
to borrow my vehicle and he had pretty much zero
roll time with this truck it's been kind of my
bad for doing it but at the same time I've been
fighting with different things I haven't trusted
anyone else with a truck yet besides Alex because
he knows what my truck runs and it's pretty much
just like it so he knows how it feels and drives
so he had to borrow it for an appointment and
I think it was Tuesday coming back from work
someone Braked a little too hard getting off
the highway, and he ended up rear -ending Nissan.
What was that? A freaking Vibe? No, that's Pontiac.
Dude, and he didn't just rear -end this thing,
right? He absolutely annihilated the back end
of this Nissan. Oh, Nissan kicks. Yeah. I mean,
like, absolutely fucking annihilated it. Yeah.
But. The taco had, like, really minor damage,
so that's cool. Yep. My bumper wing got tweaked
back a little bit. Then we found that out after
we got everything squared away. Headlight was
cracked. Headlight was cracked. On the back of
the housing, luckily, so not the front, so it
still works. But definitely need to be replaced
at some point. And then your fender was bent
all out of whack. Yep. And then my fog light.
mount is tweaked pulled can't get that push back
in but for right now it's fine i wish oxbeam
sewed brackets by themselves for replacements
but i don't think they do based off what i've
seen oh my god yeah i don't feel like buying
a whole nother kit just for that one time you
let him use it one time and he rears dude this
is my fault I've been on Mark to let his brother
drive that thing, and the first time he does,
boom. So no frame damage? No, no frame damage.
That bumper held up real well. That's a new one
too, isn't it? Yes. Yeah, that's good break -in.
Yeah, so what did we end up doing? I fixed the
headlight. I just got some JB plastic weld and
welded the headlight back together on the backside.
Yeah. Um, but the fender back in place that I
am proud of myself for making. You did a really
good job with that. I was surprised. I thought
we were going to buy new fender for that one.
Like you can barely tell. Yep. Yeah. That was
wow. And I did it with a multi tool and my hand.
Like I didn't have any special tools. Yep. Yeah,
you can barely tell it happened. Then we proceeded
to strip all the paint off because that spider
cracked from the impact point. Yes, it did. Sticker
bombing the fender? Yeah. Yes, we are. Yep. Saw
that coming. And Alex convinced me. We ended
up chopping my fenders. Yeah. So we're going
to see how long I like it. So far I like it.
I was like, dude, listen, you need new fenders
anyway, so why not just do it as a trial basis
and then go from there? Yep. Alright. I agree.
You guys. At least for one week and you guys
completely destroy Mike's vehicle. No, it's pretty
sick. It's pretty sick. Well, at least you guys
will have matching sticker bombs no his is passenger
side well still i mean like you'll have it on
your front fenders yeah you're not wrong i uh
i might have a sticker or two for you mark i
got some bison gear stickers and no site stickers
i think so much appreciated so then while mark
was dealing with all that i went through the
forerunners frame and Painted it all pretty and
black and got it all ready for winter. I mean,
I painted everything, man. Everything's all prettied
up. And then I stripped all the paint off my
pasture side fender and then clear coated that.
Okay, so the reason for that is that a long time
ago, I welded on some tabs. Yeah, some brackets.
And I don't use them anymore, but they burnt
my paint off. So I had these rust spots forming,
and I was like, man, this is ugly. So I fixed
it. Fixed it. Fixed it. It's like I just stripped
all the paint off the fender. And then clear
-coated it. It looks better than it did. Yeah,
that was your brackets for your... Garden trim?
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Uh -huh. I did that for
a while. So, yeah. I did that. And then, what
else did I do? Oh, I got a new intake from Duncan
because my intake was all fuckied. Oh, I forgot
about that. I also did my intake, too. Yeah,
you did. You did. Did I do anything else? I feel
like that's all I got done. I say that's all
I got done, but that was a lot of fucking work.
What about the bearing? I'm not there yet. Well,
you said that's all, so I was like. So, yeah.
It was the weekend, so. So I got all of this
done, and it's Monday now. And my wife had driven
to town and everything and hadn't said anything
was wrong. And then I got in the car to drive
into town to get food. I made it five feet, and
I'm like, what the hell is that sound? And she's
like, what sound? And I'm like, you can't hear
that awful grinding. So I went down to the church,
turned around, and I mean, it was awful. Some
of the worst grinding I've ever heard. And I
jacked up the driver's side, and I just watched
the wheel go from this angle to straight. It
was like a 45 to straight. And I'm like, oh,
God damn it. I took it apart and gave it a shake.
Sure enough, the wheel bearings bad. So then
I'm like, well, I better check the other side.
Sure enough, that one was bad, too. So I jacked
up the front, got it on jack stands and got both
hubs off and press the bearings out. I'm still
waiting on bearings, but they're at least pressed
out and ready to press new ones in. These things
came out in millions of pieces, like not just
the not just the barrel bearings, but like. The
actual bearing housing had disintegrated into
a million pieces. It was, oh, God. And if I remember,
right here, I'll put the sound bite I recorded
of the wheel bearing. So where are we at? We're
at 1137. Let me write this down real quick. Yeah,
God awful, dude. I've never seen a wheel bearing
that bad. That happened quick. Yeah. Yeah, so
when I was taking it apart, what I found is the
previous owner of the crawler didn't put a seal
between the bearing and the hub, so it was just
allowing water and mud to get in there and bounce
around all willy -nilly. Wow, jeez. So, yeah.
Well. And you can't really see that there's not
a seal there unless you take the hub out. But
to take the hub out, you got to press the hub
out. It's a whole process. Did I have anything
that happened this weekend? We'll get to you
in the hour. I was trying to think of anything
else that didn't really pertain to the trip.
Oh, I got my bison gear stuff. while i was gone
yeah um had my two external molly panels that
they gave me got me gave me i don't know and
the universal wheel mount so i have a project
now that i gotta film the install on them and
doesn't in the wheel mount missing a piece though
so the universal wheel mount is just the plate
itself that sits on the wheel to make a flat
surface like a mounting surface for, let's say
a propane tank or a, um, roto packs, something
like that. Yeah. So they didn't include the strap
that wraps around the tire. It's basically a
small ratchet strap. I could do that. Yeah, I
could do that. Um, but they didn't include anything
else with it. So kind of. You know, I sent them
an email just letting them know that that was,
you know, I don't know if they meant to do that.
So I was going to say, like, hey, you know, there's
not much of an install I could do with this.
I could set it on the tire, and that's about
all I could do. So just letting them know, like,
if they want me to do something different with
it. There's not much I could test on it, you
know, for them. But the MOLLE panels, they're
all there. I'll probably put those on tomorrow
or the next day, whenever is a decent day to
do it and not raining because it kind of rained
all day today. All fucking day. So, yeah, that
was cool. Still have my fan coming in the mail.
I don't know when that's going to be there. And
right before I left for this trip, like the day
before, I'd say Tuesday morning, I got my NoveSite
pods in. So I just threw those in real quick.
They were real easy to put together. What do
you have them wired to? What do you mean? Did
you wire them to your switch panel? Yes. But
so they have a control box in the wiring harness
that they gave. Okay. Which controls the different
like patterns and stuff like that. So it's kind
of a weird thing, like I connected all the wires
into the switch panel and then still use their
control box and switch. So to turn them on, I
would have to click on or turn on the switch
panel button for them and then turn the button
on. So it's kind of a pain, but it's not a permanent
placement either. so yeah we can definitely fix
that yeah i mean i'm assuming the easy way to
do that is just to bypass the box um but we'll
see i i mean i'm happy with them so far they're
pretty dope uh my only complaint would be they
probably have too many programs for the like
the little halos like yeah there's like 10 of
them and i'm like you don't need you don't need
10 like I get if you had like a set of four,
it would really let you customize what you're
doing. But for two pods, man, like 10 different
settings that you have to switch through to get
what you want. And it does not have a memory.
So you have to like redo it every time you start
the truck up. Jesus. Which is fine because I've
remembered the one that I like, which is five.
So I just press the button five times when I
start the truck up. And I was like, I don't know.
It's fine. It would be nice if it did have like
a save feature. Yeah. So we can't do what we
do with the chase lights. We figure out which
one we want and left it on that one. Right. Yeah.
Right. But other than that, it was nice. Like
the, the wiring harness was really seemed like
it was really well made. Uh, everything felt
pretty solid, real easy to put together, obviously.
So. I mean, if Gavin could put it together, anybody
can put it together. Yep. That's true. I mean,
I can't complain, dude. For free? I mean, there's
really not much I can complain about. Got them
on the giveaway, so. Yep. Well, that's pretty
dope, dude. I know Mark did one other thing this
weekend. Yes. So, I think we talked about it
here, right? The cowl intake before? I think
we've talked about it. It'd been a while ago,
but yeah, I think we talked about it. So... because
of those chopping my fender i got rid of the
inner fender liner so i my intake was way exposed
now so we had to move it originally so there's
two ways of doing it you can get the actual kit
that a company sells it's like i think 140 for
that kit or you can get all the parts through
amazon and pretty much get it today after purchase
but i think we had two day wait because the one
part didn't come in right away like and it was
way cheaper just ordering the parts on amazon
oh 100 it was way cheaper i think i saved probably
like 40 overall for the overall purchase of it
so i mean 40 but i guarantee it was going to
be there this weekend and get it done and not
worry about it getting filled up with water or
dirt yeah So that was fun. Yeah. So yeah, it
was a lot of stuff. Then we also patched my little
brother's Tacoma frame. Oh yeah. Because he went
and got a oil change and they're like, Hey, did
you know there's a crack on your frame? So we
knocked that out for him on Friday and we noticed
there's a bunch of oil under the truck. And just
kind of, you know, wrote it off like, you know,
they just did an oil change. Maybe when they
took the filter out, they spilled a bunch or,
you know, something like that. Well, last night
at 930, I get a phone call and my little brother's
like, hey, I'm at I'm on Apple and I have absolutely
no oil in my truck. And I was like, didn't you
just get an oil change? And he's like, yeah.
So I drove out there with everything we needed
to fix it. I brought a filter. Uh, oil, obviously
just figured that they did something wrong in
an oil change. Um, yeah. So I get there and have
them start the truck up and there are micro holes
through the entire filter that this oil change
place put on. And it's just seeping oil out of
every spot imaginable on this filter. Jesus.
So. Didn't have to drain any oil out because
the truck had no oil in it. So I took the filter
off, put the new filter on, filled it back up,
started it up. Good to go. Drove it home. He
drove it to work today. So I'm assuming he made
it there and back. Yeah. But I'm hoping. I told
him to get a hold of that place because he deserves
a refund, at least an oil change refund. Yeah,
I was going to say, I don't know if anybody did,
but get some video of it happening. It was like,
that's ridiculous. Yeah, dude, it was fucking
wild. Oil changes dodge issues like that like
crazy. I remember when I had my Baja, they overfilled
me and didn't ask me. It took 5 .30, and they
put 10 .30 in it. And then, of course, again,
overfilled me. And all of a sudden, my head gaskets
went out quickly after that. And I called them
about it, and they were like, oh, you probably
just had a bunch of sludge buildup. And I'm like,
that's not how that works. Like, I'm not stupid.
And they're like, well, you know, with high mileage,
we typically put like 1030 in it. And I said,
yeah, you didn't ask. So you just did. So I'm
not okay with that. Right. Those places get away
with that shit. Like, crazy. That was Vans in
Fremont. Before they switched people. I don't
think they exist anymore. This one's the one
in Nuevo. The sketchy one by the car wash. I
don't know why he goes there. Whoa. That one?
The one with the derby car in the last bay of
the car wash? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, I wouldn't
go there just on that. I asked him, like, Devin,
why did you go there? And he's like, I always
go there. I'm like, why not just do it in, like,
Alex's yard? It takes me, like, five minutes
to do an oil change on those trucks. Even less
for me. I just put a bottle under the, because
I can do the filter right up on the, I don't
know if it's the same for you guys, but super
easy. Mine's right on top. Love that. Yeah. I
do, too. So I'm hoping they at least give him
a refund, because that's bullshit. They'll tell
him it's his fault somehow. You probably hit
some gravel and threw a bunch of little micro
holes in the filter. Like, you'll figure something
out. Almost as bad as insurance companies. Oh,
don't even get me fucking started on them fucking
jokesters. Yeah, I just... If I had the one,
if I had that gauntlet, man, the infinity gauntlet,
it'd be every insurance salesman and lawyer just...
Bye. I just want insurance to be illegal. Car
insurance is bullshit. And side -by -side drivers,
maybe. No, okay, there's some side -by -side
drivers that aren't bad. I daily drive a side
-by -side, so... Nah, the ones that do it on
the trails. Yeah, I don't do that shit. See ya.
Mine only goes 20 miles an hour. That would be
a god -awful experience. Yeah, we went down some
trails, did like a night ride. and you could
see spots of the side -by -side. These were tight
trails, and you could see where these guys just
hit the fucking pedal at every corner. You could
see where the dirt was spun out. I'm like, I'm
glad we did this at night, because we would have
definitely hit someone head -on. They're fucking
crazy up there. They were everywhere. I mean,
that's like one of the main transportations up
there. Oh, well, yeah, these were like the...
The ones you could tell were like trailer to
get up there, like the razors and stuff. They
weren't like the old mules. No, I know that,
but even those are like how they get around up
there. Yeah. They still all have to go bye -bye.
No more benefit of the doubt anymore. You sound
like a very mean person right now because I...
I enjoy my side -by -side. Yeah, but I don't
know. It's good for some things. I use it for
bumming around the farm, and it's great for that.
Yeah, keep them in your property. Keep them off
the trails. I also want to get one to daily drive
so I don't have to pay car insurance because
car insurance is the devil. I can't dispute that.
Michigan car insurance especially. Oh, dude,
it's terrible. If I want a second car, I have
to basically take out a house payment to pay
car insurance. Yeah. I'm enjoying our nice $500
a month car insurance. Yeah, mine's $330 for
just the 4Runner. Like, good lord, dude. Yeah,
you'd think... My new one's $200. Mine's like,
what, 17 years old? My car? And you want me to
have, I mean, the crazy amount of car insurance
I have in my truck for a 17 -year -old vehicle.
You think your car being 17 is a problem? Yours
is what, like 25? I mean, it's a 98, so I can't
even do that math in my head. I can't even do
that math. It's old. It's an old truck, and they
want $330 a month. And, like, I get it. I pay
for full coverage, but it's not. i've got like
a thousand dollar uh deductible like it's not
a low deductible and it's still 330 a month what
the fuck and you know what the thing is is like
with trucks like that like you don't you don't
go to insurance for every little claim every
little hit you just fix it so it's like the only
time that we're going to insurance is that one
time where it's fucking totaled and there's no
fixing it and it's like that happens extremely
rarely like yeah once every you know what i don't
know even what you guys would say but i'd say
once every five years or so if that right right
yeah it's not a common occurrence they're getting
their money out of it for sure bullshit but i
don't want to take full coverage off because
the minute i do some asshole is gonna fucking
rear end me full speed total my truck out yep
he'll be driving like a tacoma And he's going
to have no insurance. It's not mine, Tacoma.
It's my brother's. I didn't know. And he'll have
no insurance on it, so I'll be footing the bill.
Probably be an FJ just trying to get his kid
to sit back in his seat and yelling at his wife
and slapping her and shit. Yep, with the old
wife beater on. Yeah. He'll have a barbecue stain
right off to the side a little bit. If he's got
an FJ, he doesn't have barbecue money. He's poor.
All right, well, that about wraps up our wrap.
Wrapping up that wrap. We'll sprinkle a little
bit of cheese on before we roll you guys up,
and we'll put you in a Subway bag. Enjoy the
footlong. Catch you guys later later