There is something about the first succesful outing with a project that really makes it worth it.  After 8 years of ownership, over two years since I built it, 2100 miles on the clock, and 700 of them in the last 6 days, I finally I feel like all the work was worth it.  No longer do I actively wait for the next thing to go wrong, sure I realize the possiblity is there, and the list of things I need to address hasn't gotten any shorter, but it has finally gone (in my mind at least) from a project to a driving truck.

We just got back from the OD road Trip.  There were 5 vehicles that ended up going, and right up until the night before departure I wasn't sure my 715 was going to make it. 

After so much wrenching and modifying with only 1400 miles of seat time in two years isn't really the way to go into a trip that is going to cover 500 miles of on and off road driving.  Of those 1400 miles the longest trip one way non stop was about 28 miles.  Longest period of time without a wrench on the truck was about one drive.  Needless to say, I was still sweating every noise and detail.

The power steering ate up two days of time in the 4-day prep period, the electric fans ate another 1 1/2 days just to end up with an automatic fan controller controlled manually and fans that still didn't really fit.  I finally wired in the Painless dual battery setup, not for any real reason except to stop Cappa from picking on having two batteries with only one hooked up.  I put over 2 gallons of gear oil in the truck (with 1/2 gallon of that going to the transmission leak alone), I added a quart of oil as it was low, I replaced a bunch of tie rod ends at 6 am the day before, and then took it for a 65 mile test drive to the office.  I still am not sure why, if something went wrong I really had no time to fix it, and AAA would have gotten the truck back to my house if I was on the OD trip or not.

True to my form, I worried about all that work I did in the days preceeding the trip, and checked on stuff before heading out for the day.  It turns out, I didn't have to adjust this, tweak that, remove the other thing... By the end of the trip I had added no fluids, had stopped worrying about the noisy drivetrain, and was just revelling in driving a unique truck.

Pete Trasborg
Associate Editor