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Ok, So I took off from Miami Lakes on Friday December the 6th on my Yearly Road Trip. All set up. I wanted to visit my stepmom in Ft.Myers,Perrone Ford in Tallahassee, my brother in Nashville,My younger brother in Bowling Green, then across to my soon to be Father in law in Denver, then to Great Basin Rovers in Salt Lake City, then down to Oklahoma City to visit Rovercannibal and pick up some much needed interior parts then to Dallas to visit Kevin and the North texas Rovers shop, and down thru to San Antonio where I'd spend the holidays and then cruise on over to Los Angeles for some meetings and back to Miami, all in 30 days.
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OK, So we stopped off in Ft Myers and then I spoke with perrone and saw that his place was 1 hour away from my route on 75, so I skipped it for now and decided to visit him on my way back to Miami. So I continued up towards Nashville. I stopped short of Atlanta and decided to stay in for the night it was 25 bucks we pulled in at about 3am no credit cards accepted, we had 26 dollars in cash, We slept until about 12 noon! We got up and started on our way towards nashville after stopping for a good breakfast/lunch. all was well for now...
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So we're eating at a diner and we walk out to see a couple of guys looking at the top of my rack, when one of them tells the other, "here's another one on the side". We say hello to them and they ask my fiancee what Camel trophy is, so Kendra tells them, and they ask me if I have any more stickers like the one on the side of my truck, I tell them I don't have any with me and they proceed to tell me their hauling CAMELS!, I followed them to their trailer where inside are 3 real camels, on their way to a nativity scene for christmas in the north. So I had to take a pic of one of them, great company frontman huh?!
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Well, at least someone is relaxing on this part of the trip!
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Ok, so we're somewhere between Atlanta and Nashville we stop in to Gas up at a Chevron and wouldn't you know it. You can eat there, Gas up there, Rent a video and get a TAN!, what'll they think of next?! So from here we were to arrive in Nashville at about 6:30, have dinner with my brother, then up to Bowling green to see my younger brother, when all of a sudden about an hour outside of Nashville I go to flash my hi beams at a slow trucker and when I let go of the dim switch, the lights go out. I quickly pull the dim switch again and the lights come back on... 20 minutes later, the lights just turn off and I now have to keep holding on the dim switch back to keep the high beams on, we exit and pull in to a gas station where I try everything to try and figure out how to fix this, To no avail.. we end up driving another 9 miles holding the dim switch to a Days Inn for the night. We decide to skip Nashville and Bowling Green, (they're family, they'll understand) and head towards Denver non stop during every daylight hour, taking off during the early morning twilight and driving 750 miles the first day stopping at a Motel 6 a bit passed Colby Kansas. I think it was in Salinas, KS What a day!
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Ahh so were driving on our way and I see the gas light so I figure I have a can on top with 5 gallons but I should make it to a station within 30 miles which is a bit less than what I have left in the tank when the light comes on in mine. I'm somewhere in Kansas I think on our way towards Denver still driving only in the daytime cause I have no lights!!! Boy do I wish I had connected those Hella lights before leaving home. When I come to these signs I look both ways at the crossroads and see nothing!, so I stop to Gas up with the top can here, just to be safe. I didn't come across a gas station for another 40 miles!!
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OK, Finally we arrived in Denver and before anything else I drove by Denver East LR. I bought a main light switch since mine had disintigrated while dismantling the plastic covers around the steering column. So I replaced the main switch and I now had parking lights. and I decided to continue on to my Father in Law to be's house in Aurora and relax for a bit. I called Les at Rovers North and explained the problem, He said to check out Charlie at LandRover Flatirons but it sounded to him like a burned out contact in my Dim switch, so the next day I swung on by and Charlie showed me how to test the dim switch, he also asked me if I had High Wattage light bulbs, and I replied yes.
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So Charlie tells me that with High Wattage bulbs you will in time burn out the dim switch since there is alot more strain on the wiring that goes to the switch and the switch gets the brunt of it. He recommends a harness made by ARB that takes the strain away from the switch. I test the switch and indeed it is the switch that's burned, and I even saw the burned contacts and a bit of melted plastic on the switch when I pulled the connector to test it. He didn't have it in stock but Denver East did, I drove on over and picked it up installed it right in the parking lot and whala!, everything started to work, but I still had the high wattage bulbs!..
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So right after fixing the switches I decide to order this ARB harness called the MOO 2 from my friends at Roversaccessories and while I was at it I ordered a new headlamp bucket from RoversNorth to replace the passenger one which was in need of replacement. The parts all came in the next day and I was deep in some wiring for a while. Installed the Harness, replaced the headlamp bucket cleaned up some wiring, and started wiring the hellas up top. leaving some of the wiring for the next day. The delay had held us back a couple of days on our semi scheduled trip so we decide to scrap the trip to Salt lake and GBR.
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Heres a side view of the area where I installed the harness relays, right on the metal plate behind the radiator reservoir flow tank, there are 3 relays and a 30 amp fuse for the battery connection. One relay for the low beams, one for the high beams and one for the switchover. Alot more than the cars harness has! taking all the stress away from the dim switch, now you can run up to 145watt bulbs in your headlamps if you really really want to!
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OK, heres a close up of the actual install of the relay row and fuses, sorry for the dirty engine compartment. Maybe I'll clean it all up soon and post some pretty pics!
After I installed this system, the cars lighting system worked great no problems now, Everything works as it should! I decided to make some other adjustments since we did not have a heater.
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So since early on in the trip I had taped up the front of the outside vents in hopes to slow down the ingress of air into the main cabin. But plenty of air made it's way to the top of dash vents thru the space around the 2 hood hinges. and the side of the cowling bewteen the hood and windscreen. So while I was re wiring and fixing the light situation I pulled the 3 vents, taped them up on the inside and stuck a large piece of cardboard from one of the UPS overnight packages inside the compartment covering up the opening where the flap is that opens and closes to let fresh air in. This helped out incredibly on our way to OKC, I emailed Bill Davis at Great Basin Rovers and told him I'd have him send me the truetrac rear diff and D90 24 spline half shafts to me in San Antonio where I'd install them myself. The drive towards OKC was alot better because of the sealing out of the outside cold air!
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