HOWDY FOLKS!!!
First off, I want to thank everybody for being a great place to learn from, bounce ideas off of, and I’m grateful for all the help along the way, and I’m sorry for the long wait!
Life got unbelievably busy for us and sometimes you gotta focus your time where it's needed but I still have a lot planned for Mab3l, and I'm excited to keep updating you guys as things move along.
As for MAB3L, she’s still alive and crushing miles, and last November crossed the 100 000KM mark! While much is still broken, and she has a few more battle scars, she’s running and driving better than ever, and still getting reasonable fuel economy!
THE TRIP:
Since it really was a LONG adventure, I’m going to split up the posts, given word limits and everything.
If you really just want the technical stuff, I’ll give a breakdown in all the subsequent posts of whatever data, modifications, or general technical stuff I have.
In 2020, during the chaos of the pandemic, my life was in a weird place, my academic and professional life was entirely up in the air. So I decided to buy a 2006 Ford Freestar Cargo conversion for 1000$, and drive across Canada. I ended up spending a lot of time in the Yukon, and adopted my dog there. This little van took me farther than I could ever possibly imagine, and helped me figure a few things out. I love it so much up there, that I went back two more times (by plane) to see friends I made along the way.
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Turns out, I love a dirt bag roadtrip.
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(R.I.P Ronda, 2006-2021)
Fast forward to 2024, I buy MAB3L and fall in love again, and my partner wants to see all the things I tell stories about. The plan is to drive from our home in Northern Ontario, to the Yukon, a far northern territory in Canada.
Originally our goal was to drive up to Dawson City , and perhaps up the Dempster highway (pic of Ronda included) but that goal got cut seriously short for reasons that will become obvious shortly:
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The Months before:
As many of you know, my father, who fought Multiple Sclerosis for over half of his life, passed away in May, dealing with the funeral, hosting, and everything else was tough, but we got through it.
Come June/July, it was go time. Anxiously, the road trip approached, I needed some extra money so whenever I wasn’t at my day job, or prepping the house for the trip, I was delivering pizza.
I had big plans, lowering and suspension parts were arriving, I needed to outfit the bed for camping by adding a drawer, bed platform. I also needed to do basic maintenance, and figure out a misfire that became more and more frequent after installing the upgraded ignition (MSD Coil, custom wires, and gapped iridium plugs). The front pads, and rotors were in bad shape, and even though the bearings were silent I figured, when in Rome. Not to mention all the random vacuum hoses, and wires that were in rough shape (spoiler, I didn’t fix any of them for a pretty good reason.
We start to think the trip is cursed:
After all that chaos, we came to early August when both me and my partner got actual COVID, and we had it BAD. We both took a week off from work, and didn’t do much around the house making things even more stressful.
We hoped we’d at least test negative and feel somewhat better before d-day, the plan was to leave on August 27th, I kept working on the truck as much as I could, but the summer heat was unbearable in my sweatbox of a garage. I now had to start making choices as to what I could actually accomplish. Despite nearly passing out on multiple occasions, I managed to finish the following:
- general maintenance
- installing the lowering kit with much struggle
- installing Bilstein shocks on all 4 corners
- Replacing the front lower ball joints, front pads+rotors, and bearings.
- Replacing both rear shackles (the 20+ year old originals, seized bushings includes)
- Rewiring the impromptu e-fan setup which had a poor ground and wouldn’t consistently turn on.
View attachment 137761The first test drive on the new suspension was scary. The truck felt unstable at any speeds, creaked and made strange sounds and could hardly drive in a straight line. I ended up having to reseat the front left coil as its isolator had actually bound up, meaning once again disassembling the front left suspension. I also had to remove the splash guard completely, as it wasn’t quite right after whatever collision this truck was originally in. I tried my best to align it but quickly realized the cams that come with the belt tech kit don’t include bolts… So I decided to order 4 separate upper control arm bolts and cam kits (thanks 2 day shipping). Again. I had to take apart a lot of the front suspension.
I gave it my best eyeball alignment. And things were good, the truck felt more compliant and stable, it wasn’t punishing over bumps, at least not like before. It drove better once it was settled too. I scheduled a professional alignment 2 days before we were slated to leave, and when the tech put the car on his alignment machine, and realized it was lowered, refused to work on it since it was late in the day. Bummer.
So I did my best, covid brained measuring tape and string alignment, figured extra toe in should be a good idea, since it helps center the vehicle at speed, and hey! It made things a bit better, and got on my
That’s when the driveshaft started squeaking… More on this later.
No, we’re definitely cursed:
We’re starting to feel better, and the big day is one night away. We tested negative, finally! We got the house cleaned up, started packing, and decided we are going to drop off my partner’s car at the airport today, as she needed to fly back from the Yukon.
On the 2 hour drive home, the curse struck.
While driving at highway speeds, I reached back between the two of us to shut the rear sliding window. CRASH, the window directly behind my head shatters:
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It was late, we’d spent the whole day cleaning, so after a long exhausting day, we gave up, and headed to bed.
A New Hope:
The next morning, I was determined to make this trip happen, so I acquired some acrylic, and my local Canadian Tire's entire stock of flex tape.
After much cleaning, I managed to make this double acrylic paned monstrosity that is in fact still on the vehicle and keeping (most) of the wind and noise out of the cabin!
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We loaded up the truck, I reinstalled the cap and sealed it to the car with extra wide flex tape.
Knowing the journey would involve at least some wrenching, I brought a full jack, ratchet set, misc wrenches and extensions to retorque new suspension components, and not to mention many spare parts.
With a misfire under acceleration, two squeaky u-joints, a rear window made out of plastic, and a questionable alignment, still recovering from COVID, we decided we were going to set out on our 12 000KM journey from Northern Ontario to the Yukon the next day.
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Stay tuned! In the next post we’ll have our first full days of driving through the Northern Ontario's least fun, and most beautiful sections of the Trans-Canada highway, plus all the problems we had along the way.
Thanks as always for all your help and support.
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