The Lone Ranger – Kage’s ’94 X-Cab Leaf SAS and Bed Bob

[Kage]

When you decide you want new rubber you're gonna regret having 16.5" wheels, they really narrow down your options.

Somewhat. Seeing as how I'm a cheap bastard, I've never bought a new set of off road tires, allways used. And for the price of this setup it makes sense. The total bill for everything shipped to my door (4 h1's with Rock Rings, PVC inserts, and 6 take off's ) was a hair under $1500. To replace the nittos', I was looking at $1,600 just in tires, not to mention mounting fee's. So I'm money ahead right now, which gets even better if I wind up running another set of take off in the future.

Plus, I love how easy it is to mount my own tires right now

sorta true...but the HumVee take off tires will be available for quite a long time....plus they are cheap and he can "stock up" on em'....

l8r, John

Yup, at $100 shipped to my door per tire for a tire with good tread on it, that's a no brainer. Plus, I get the added bonus of not worrying about cutting a side wall on expensvie tires, or putting too many road miles on my tires.

Sooo, about these H2's you've got sitting around collecting dust.........

They're going up for sale when I get back from MT. Shoot me a PM if you're interestead in them.

i see that too much depending on time of year, and getting the tires is not what it used to be.

one thing about these is they absolutely suck in the snow and wet. i have not been overly impressed with them off road but they get by better then most at's. a bit wobbly---i am on my second set now and they are worse then the first set for run out...but really quiet for what they are.

Yup, I've read more than one place that they suck in the snow (unless its deep snow). If it gets to be too much of an issue, I can allways sipe them. They can't be any worse than my swampers were in the snow (I hope). There's afew fellas that run the takes off's around here, and while they're no swampers, they seem to work well enough for the price they cost.

...twf run me around a bit, but a different supplier was much worse...probably go back to twf or just get the r/t's..... they are a smoking deal as well....pretty sure i will run them if i have to work in the snow this year and not fla.

I might change my tune on TWF when I need to buy another set of tires. In the mean time I hope they work on their communication issues (either hire another person to help with the phones, or something).

..how did these tires do in the terrain you wheeled in??

i would like for you to report them in the military tire thread if you will http://www.therangerstation.com/forums/showthread.php?t=97361

I've only got about 60 miles on the tires soo far, and none of them have been off road. I literally got them put on the truck last night. I'll post in that thread after I have some off road time with them.

I can say though that seeing them in action around here, they seem to work pretty decent, but only on the 'heavier' rigs. The lighter rigs seem to have issues getting them to flex/warp around rocks unlike the heavier rigs (which makes sense).

...i tried the airsofts and they work about the same as the dynabeads...but easier to get and cheaper. how much weight did you end up with??

I've got about 8 1/2 oz per tire, its not quite enough. Going by dyna's chart, I should have 10 oz per wheel. So I'll dump a little more in there as soon as I can. As it sits right now, they're pretty close to being balanaced right with the 8 1/2 oz.

brother run's these on his K-5 and i am not impressed with them off road. they are stiff as iron and wear well, but they just dont seem to hook up. but you really cant beat the price at all.

keep in mind we run the ooey gooey stuff, not so much rocks

Yeah, I avoid the mud as much as possible, and I haven't really seen anyone run these in the mud either. Going by the tread pattern, I can see how the wouldn't 'dig' as much as some of the other tires out there.

I was considering these when I was going to run 37's, but I was told by a military buddy that did a lot of "offroad driving" in a hummer that the other style (michelin) grip a lot better offroad...
SVT

I assume you mean the newer style? I've heard that as well, an those take offs are just now starting to hit the surplus market. I'm hoping that once I kill these, I can pick up a set of those as I've heard nothing but good things about them.


Thanks for the comments guys!

 

[Kage]

We're down to the wire now! Unfortunately, I'm still dealing with wheel issues. At this point, one of the four wheels I have will not balance out regadless of what is done to it. I'll spare you the drama, but so far:

-There have been Three other tires placed on this wheel, None will balance out (one was a known to be good tire, everyone looked like it spun good).
-Every combo had been static balanced (wheel machine). When that failed, I went the Air soft route with the same effects ( 0-20oz in 4 oz increments).
-The 2 pc rim was indexed several times per tire, as well as indexing the rim to tire 180°. No dice.

At this point, its been narrowed down to either the PVC insert (not likely) or the wheel itself (most likely, but still rare). TWF is trying to make things right by sending me another wheel, but I'm unsure if its going to make it to me in time before we leave Friday. Thankfully, I have a couple of back up plans if the wheel doesn't get here in time, or If something else goes wrong.

Needless to say, I'm just a wee bit annoyed at this point We'll see if TWF can make it right in the end. They seem like decent guys every time I talked to Todd or Andy. So I'm getting the vibe that I'm getting screwed intentionally, more like I've just got some really shitty luck going on right now.

In other news, I did make a scrap run this past weekend. I pulled this junk out of my garage..

And added a little bit more to it from a friends pile as well. I was a rather shocked when I rolled across the scale at 7,480 lbs This netted about 1,500 lbs worth of scrap

With all that weight on the back of the truck, it never once gave me any death sway problems on the highway, so I'm going to say that problem is gone!

Edit:
See the first post on the Recentered H1's for the update about TWF.

 

[86 slo-vo]

Looks like some good stuff in the pile, should have dropped it off here lol.

What's scrap running a ton over there?


Sent from your moms house using Tapatalk

 

[Kage]

Looks like some good stuff in the pile, should have dropped it off here lol.

What's scrap running a ton over there?

Some of it was, but I was very tired of kicking it around the garage (I'm a bit of a pack rat when it comes to 'drop' steel )

It was $260/ton for the 'non prepared' stuff on Saturday.

 

[86 slo-vo]

About the only steel I toss is something that I absolutely can't use or it's just 2-3 inches long. I hate throwing shot out and then needing it te next day. That shit costs too much these days.

Damn we are only at $200 ton here.


Sent from your moms house using Tapatalk

 

[wahlstrom1]

Around here if it doesn't fit in a 5 gallon pail it's not scrap, lol. I have fairly large steel rack thats pretty much full now....

 

[Kage]

Around here if it doesn't fit in a 5 gallon pail it's not scrap, lol. I have fairly large steel rack thats pretty much full now....

Genearlly I agree with ya. But I had quite a bit of large C channel (heavy stuff 1/4 and bigger) that I hadn't used in the past 4 years. I figure I haven't used it yet, then it needed to go. Plus, I had to move it to get to my HVAC unit, so into the back of the truck to scrap it went

In other news, the Truck is packed, and we're heading out west this afternoon. The bad part of this news is that I'm back on my H1's and Nittos for the trip. Even with the new wheel, I still can't get that one assembly to balance out. The only thing that has remained constant through all of this has been that PVC insert. While there doesn't look like there's anything 'wrong' with it apparently there is. The only thing left to try is to pull that insert out and see what happens, but after playing with with this problem for the past week, I called it quits at 9:30 last night and put the old tires back on.

At this point, I'm pretty damn disgusted with the whole ordeal. I'll sort it out when I get back, but I think the solution will be to just send the whole plie back to TWF as I'm just tired of ****ing with it at this point.

I'm sure the internet will be spotty/nonexistant when we get out in the mountians, I'll post some photos and such from the trip as I have access.

 

[railman]

have a safe trip

can't wait to see the pics.......

l8r, John

 

[Kage]

have a safe trip

can't wait to see the pics.......

l8r, John

Thanks John!

I started another thread over in the "Trips and Vacations" Forum (Link to Thread).. I'll update it as I have internet access.

The first leg of the trip was tiring, but we made it ok. That's in spite of the fact that one of my caliper key retainers took flight outside of Kansas City Mo. That little dude nearly put an early end to the trip

Thankfully, we're rocking along, and I'll dump the photos in that thread.

 

[Kage]

Well we made it there and back for a total trip mileage of 4,200 miles. The truck made it about 3,800 miles

See the trip thread (Link to thread) for the details on that.

The cliff notes one what broke is this:
- Brake caliper trying to take off multiple times (Fixed by jamming some metal to hold it in place at the home depot)

- Ball joints (not fixed, killed the wheeling fun for the trip, and making the truck a handful on the highway).

- Motor likes to detonate at partial throttle while cruising highway speeds (but doesn’t detonate when running WOT which is where I usually am on the highway).

- Truck likes to run hot on the highway (which has been par for the course on this truck) not overheating, but hotter than it should. Probably related to the detonation issue (dirty injectors making it run lean maybe?).

- The rear end seems to have sprung a leak on the drivers side wheel cylinder, and on the pinion seal (there’s other leaks as well that I haven’t tracked down yet).

- Possibly an issue with the clutch

- And finally, some sort of major driveline failure.

I'm not sure what the last issue is, and frankly, I don't feel like digging into it at this point right now (I'm at the "make me an offer and I just might sell the truck" level of frustration right now).

I'm guessing something in the transmission has stripped or let go. As we were going down the highway, the truck started to 'skip' for lack of a better trem (Like the drive line would briefly lock up). Once I pulled over, I found that reverse had left the building, and that any forward movement would give me this 'skip'.

Best guess is that something let go inside of the tranny, and is getting wedged into the gears.

When I pulled it off the trailer this morning, I found that I had reverse again (Yea!). But no forward gears. Shifting back and forth between the forward gears and reverse eventually gave me 1st and I was able to get it back into the garage.

So, it looks like the hunt will be on for another M50D here shortly...

 

[06RangerXLT]

Well we made it there and back for a total trip mileage of 4,200 miles. The truck made it about 3,800 miles

See the trip thread (Link to thread) for the details on that.

The cliff notes one what broke is this:
- Brake caliper trying to take off multiple times (Fixed by jamming some metal to hold it in place at the home depot)

- Ball joints (not fixed, killed the wheeling fun for the trip, and making the truck a handful on the highway).

- Motor likes to detonate at partial throttle while cruising highway speeds (but doesn’t detonate when running WOT which is where I usually am on the highway).

- Truck likes to run hot on the highway (which has been par for the course on this truck) not overheating, but hotter than it should. Probably related to the detonation issue (dirty injectors making it run lean maybe?).

- The rear end seems to have sprung a leak on the drivers side wheel cylinder, and on the pinion seal (there’s other leaks as well that I haven’t tracked down yet).

- Possibly an issue with the clutch

- And finally, some sort of major driveline failure.

I'm not sure what the last issue is, and frankly, I don't feel like digging into it at this point right now (I'm at the "make me an offer and I just might sell the truck" level of frustration right now).

I'm guessing something in the transmission has stripped or let go. As we were going down the highway, the truck started to 'skip' for lack of a better trem (Like the drive line would briefly lock up). Once I pulled over, I found that reverse had left the building, and that any forward movement would give me this 'skip'.

Best guess is that something let go inside of the tranny, and is getting wedged into the gears.

When I pulled it off the trailer this morning, I found that I had reverse again (Yea!). But no forward gears. Shifting back and forth between the forward gears and reverse eventually gave me 1st and I was able to get it back into the garage.

So, it looks like the hunt will be on for another M50D here shortly...

wow, sorry to hear that! I love what you have done to the truck, going from what it was to what it is now. You have given me a few awesome ideas, thanks so much for the insperation!

oh and dont sell her. i know problems suck, but thats what comes with an awesome offroad toy like that.

 

[railman]

sorry bout' the "hiccups" ...but, I am sure the trip was still better than work

glad ya made it home safely.....

as for the caliper key...what happened to the retaining bolt???

hope ya find a tranny fast

l8r, John

 

[Josh40601]

damn buddy. Really sorry to hear all that happened. sounds like our last trips were pretty rough on both of us. Although, you made it a lot further than i did

 

[Kage]

wow, sorry to hear that! I love what you have done to the truck, going from what it was to what it is now. You have given me a few awesome ideas, thanks so much for the insperation!

oh and dont sell her. i know problems suck, but thats what comes with an awesome offroad toy like that.

Thanks! Since offers aren't knocking on my door, I doubt I'll be selling here (after all, who wants a truck with a shot tranny, bad ball joints, needs tires, and who knows what else ). It'll get to moving again soon I hope.

sorry bout' the "hiccups" ...but, I am sure the trip was still better than work

glad ya made it home safely.....

as for the caliper key...what happened to the retaining bolt???

hope ya find a tranny fast

l8r, John

Some days, I wish I would have been at work, but over all it was still a whorth while trip.

As for the brakes, I'll post pictures when I dig into them. The issue appears to be with the bracket that mounts behind the spindle. For whatever reason, that bracket seems like its spaced out about 3/16" too wide. This would allow the key retainer and spring to have enough slop and slip out of its home (Slipping past the retainer bolt). I'd never seen anything like that before, and heck, I'd allready put about 3 k miles on the 'sloppy' setup prior to leaving on the trip. So I don't know why it decided to be a pain in the butt at this point.

damn buddy. Really sorry to hear all that happened. sounds like our last trips were pretty rough on both of us. Although, you made it a lot further than i did

Yeah, I was thinking about your fun as we were sitting on the side of the road yesterday At least you got go to the 'con and wheel some.

I'm striking out on the CL for a tranny, so I'll probably be junk yard hopping this weekend. I'd like to swap in the 4 banger gears while I've got it apart, but for right now, I'd just settle with making it move again.

On the plus side, now I have a reason to go ahead and swap in that manual T-case I have on the floor

 

[MrE_Powers]

there are 2 transmissions at Als auto in stlouis for 550$ and one @ rogers in Lebanon mo for 350$ http://car-part.com/
and some dude has a 4x4 4.0 m50d
http://stlouis.craigslist.org/pts/2569673536.html