Very nice Chase! Those look great man! Hope you got a great deal as well!
RENAMED!! The adventures of Chase and his 2006 Yukon XL Denali!! Follow along on my travels!
- Thread starter adventurenali92
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adventurenali92
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Yup scored a good deal on em!
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Taking a 4 day weekend off, to camp at San onofre state beach, which is right where camp Pendleton marine corps base is. One of the guys that works for our ski and snowboard instructor organization as a trainer and examiner, is also a surf instructor. And he puts together a four day camping trip every year called surf to snow, and gets a lot of us from the ski resort to come down and learn how to surf. My mom came down last year and loved it. I had to miss because work. So this year I said I’m in, I’m going! Taking a much needed break from my crazy hectic work schedule....
made a make shift RV out of the Denali. Lol. The actual beach is a down a short hike down bluff but the camping area is basically a Large parking lot type area up on the hill side. So it worked out to have my truck here. A lot of the guys are truck camping out of their pick ups with camper shells. Couple guys are like “I’m jealous of the room you have in your Denali....” haha. I’m quite comfy tonight laying here stretched out on my air mattress. Lol.
my mom is here on this trip as well, though she’s fancying it up staying with our family friend that I’m living with, Cindy has a nice 18’ travel trailer that she brought down from big bear. Lol.
made a make shift RV out of the Denali. Lol. The actual beach is a down a short hike down bluff but the camping area is basically a Large parking lot type area up on the hill side. So it worked out to have my truck here. A lot of the guys are truck camping out of their pick ups with camper shells. Couple guys are like “I’m jealous of the room you have in your Denali....” haha. I’m quite comfy tonight laying here stretched out on my air mattress. Lol.
my mom is here on this trip as well, though she’s fancying it up staying with our family friend that I’m living with, Cindy has a nice 18’ travel trailer that she brought down from big bear. Lol.
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Sounds like a great time man! Have a blast!
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adventurenali92
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Spent the morning hauling watercraft for our close family friend. First the jet ski dropped in and then went back and loaded up the stand up paddle board and the kayak. Everything is in the water now. But it rained off and on several times today and the last one, got the roads wet enough to make a mess out of everything, but not enough to really wash all the crud off the roads. Anyways, post rainstorm wash this evening after feeding the horses and the Nali is lookin real fresh. Sunset was pretty nice too.
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Nice!
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Well..... the last few days have been pretty hellish... if it could go wrong it did go wrong.
It started with my stay at the best friends parents house last weekend. Saturday was a freakishly long day. Hammered out a crap ton of work in the morning, and an hour for the gym and then I decide to hammer out a detail on Bruce’s F350 because it was ridiculously dirty. Get it hammered out, meanwhile the oldest dog who’s 13 years old is laying under the back of the truck. I start the truck, walk away for a minute to put stuff away, I come back and Piper is sitting beside the rear tire. I’m like ok she’s out of the way, I get it in, back the truck up MAYBE 5 Feet!!! Like all of three seconds tops... And I hear all the dogs losing their minds. I get out and somehow Piper is stuck under the drivers side door of the cab!! I just about lose it! I’m like how the hell did she get there?!?! She’s wedged in between the frame rail and the motor that moves the automatic running board. Thankfully it didn’t impale her like I had first thought. I gently wiggle her out from under the truck and put her on the garage floor and she’s got blood coming out of her back left paw. Ok it’s probably broken I think to myself. I call Kim and tell her what happened and she’s like “ok it’s not your fault things happen”. The neighbors who are there best friends scoot over and he’s accessing and helping me figure out what to do. Of course big bears vets aren’t open on a Saturday and don’t have emergency after hours.... FML..... so I call around and finally after two and a half hours I get her to grand terrace which is about 20 minutes from the base of the mountain to get her seen by an emergency vet. And Bruce tells me to not even bother unloading my Denali to run her down there but to just put her on a dog bed in the back seat of his F350 and take her down. I’m like ummmmm.... ok. Now I too of everything else I gotta stress about driving his $85k truck off the mountain... Ooi.... Thankfully the foot that was all cut was just cuts that needed to be stitched, but her other back foot had a fracture in it. The vet got her in a splint and got stitches in and I had to leave her down there overnight. Picked her up the next day and she can’t maneuver much but she’s stable and stitched up and I bring her back up the mountain.
fast forward to Tuesday morning and Bruce and Kim decide to put Piper down. She’s just too old and not being able to move and just decided it was time. I had already been beating myself up the prior 36 hours over it, I get that news and feel so irresponsible.... the whole time Kim has been texting and calling and reassuring me that it still wasn’t my fault and that freak accidents happen and it’s life.
then this morning my standing wash appointment with the mechanic shop cancelled. And Kim calls and says “hey my Porsche could really use a bath before we head out to the lake house this afternoon!” Im like yup I can head over now. And of course I realize that I need to stop beating myself up about the dog because if they were truly unhappy with me or didn’t trust me over it, she wouldn’t have asked me to come to the house and detail her porsche. So I get there and she gives me a big hug and we go about the day.
About half way into detailing her Porsche I notice a big puddle of coolant under the front passenger side of the truck near the water pump.... I’m like seriously?!?! It had better not be the damn water pump. It’s already been replaced TWICE! Ugh..... so I finish up and clean up the spot on Bruce’s freshly paved driveway. Lol.
I roll towards home, stop into the Carquest and grab a couple gallons of coolant. And then head home. I’m watching several YouTube videos thinking my water pump might be bad. I take the intake off and the upper tensioner pulley and the serpentine belt just above the water pump. Thankfully because I have electric fans I didn’t have to mess with any of the fan stuff because they’re not in the way. I’m staring at the thermostat housing, and it’s got ever so slightly a gap in between the housing and the water pump and it’s soaked in coolant. Coolant had run down the water pump but was not coming from that or any of the other coolant hoses. So I’m like alright that’s an easy deal. When the shop replaced my water pump last January, “due to bad pum gaskets” according to the shop..... he replaced the thermostat and housing. So it’s only a year and a half old. I called him up and he’s like “ I wouldn’t do the whole thermostat and housing is see if you can get the O-ring for it, and just replace that. and he talked me through how to replace it. NAPA had it in stock and my mom gave me a ride over to pick it up. It was like 4 dollars and change.... lol
Pulled the lower radiator hose off, let it dump coolant out, and then unbolted the T-Stat housing and pulled out the T-Stat. Sure enough the O-ring was flat as a pancake....after only a year and a half
Holy crap!! T-Stat and housing cleaned , new gasket on and bolted it back up to the water pump. While I was in the process of putting everything back together I decided since my air filter was already off the truck to go ahead and clean it up and re oil it. Especially since I’m leaving tomorrow to drive to Laughlin I figured it couldn’t hurt. Buttoned everything back and filled up with coolant. Let him run til got up to temp, which always takes FOREVER, when coolant is fresh with the right amount... lol. And then put the cap back on the surge tank. Pressure washed all the coolant out of the pulleys and the underside. So far now that t-stat housing is dry as a bone and no gap whatsoever between the housing and the water pump. Drove to the gym and back for evening HIIT class and so far so good. Will be keeping a close eye on the truck during the drive tomorrow to make sure.
It started with my stay at the best friends parents house last weekend. Saturday was a freakishly long day. Hammered out a crap ton of work in the morning, and an hour for the gym and then I decide to hammer out a detail on Bruce’s F350 because it was ridiculously dirty. Get it hammered out, meanwhile the oldest dog who’s 13 years old is laying under the back of the truck. I start the truck, walk away for a minute to put stuff away, I come back and Piper is sitting beside the rear tire. I’m like ok she’s out of the way, I get it in, back the truck up MAYBE 5 Feet!!! Like all of three seconds tops... And I hear all the dogs losing their minds. I get out and somehow Piper is stuck under the drivers side door of the cab!! I just about lose it! I’m like how the hell did she get there?!?! She’s wedged in between the frame rail and the motor that moves the automatic running board. Thankfully it didn’t impale her like I had first thought. I gently wiggle her out from under the truck and put her on the garage floor and she’s got blood coming out of her back left paw. Ok it’s probably broken I think to myself. I call Kim and tell her what happened and she’s like “ok it’s not your fault things happen”. The neighbors who are there best friends scoot over and he’s accessing and helping me figure out what to do. Of course big bears vets aren’t open on a Saturday and don’t have emergency after hours.... FML..... so I call around and finally after two and a half hours I get her to grand terrace which is about 20 minutes from the base of the mountain to get her seen by an emergency vet. And Bruce tells me to not even bother unloading my Denali to run her down there but to just put her on a dog bed in the back seat of his F350 and take her down. I’m like ummmmm.... ok. Now I too of everything else I gotta stress about driving his $85k truck off the mountain... Ooi.... Thankfully the foot that was all cut was just cuts that needed to be stitched, but her other back foot had a fracture in it. The vet got her in a splint and got stitches in and I had to leave her down there overnight. Picked her up the next day and she can’t maneuver much but she’s stable and stitched up and I bring her back up the mountain.
fast forward to Tuesday morning and Bruce and Kim decide to put Piper down. She’s just too old and not being able to move and just decided it was time. I had already been beating myself up the prior 36 hours over it, I get that news and feel so irresponsible.... the whole time Kim has been texting and calling and reassuring me that it still wasn’t my fault and that freak accidents happen and it’s life.
then this morning my standing wash appointment with the mechanic shop cancelled. And Kim calls and says “hey my Porsche could really use a bath before we head out to the lake house this afternoon!” Im like yup I can head over now. And of course I realize that I need to stop beating myself up about the dog because if they were truly unhappy with me or didn’t trust me over it, she wouldn’t have asked me to come to the house and detail her porsche. So I get there and she gives me a big hug and we go about the day.
About half way into detailing her Porsche I notice a big puddle of coolant under the front passenger side of the truck near the water pump.... I’m like seriously?!?! It had better not be the damn water pump. It’s already been replaced TWICE! Ugh..... so I finish up and clean up the spot on Bruce’s freshly paved driveway. Lol.
I roll towards home, stop into the Carquest and grab a couple gallons of coolant. And then head home. I’m watching several YouTube videos thinking my water pump might be bad. I take the intake off and the upper tensioner pulley and the serpentine belt just above the water pump. Thankfully because I have electric fans I didn’t have to mess with any of the fan stuff because they’re not in the way. I’m staring at the thermostat housing, and it’s got ever so slightly a gap in between the housing and the water pump and it’s soaked in coolant. Coolant had run down the water pump but was not coming from that or any of the other coolant hoses. So I’m like alright that’s an easy deal. When the shop replaced my water pump last January, “due to bad pum gaskets” according to the shop..... he replaced the thermostat and housing. So it’s only a year and a half old. I called him up and he’s like “ I wouldn’t do the whole thermostat and housing is see if you can get the O-ring for it, and just replace that. and he talked me through how to replace it. NAPA had it in stock and my mom gave me a ride over to pick it up. It was like 4 dollars and change.... lol
Pulled the lower radiator hose off, let it dump coolant out, and then unbolted the T-Stat housing and pulled out the T-Stat. Sure enough the O-ring was flat as a pancake....after only a year and a half
Holy crap!! T-Stat and housing cleaned , new gasket on and bolted it back up to the water pump. While I was in the process of putting everything back together I decided since my air filter was already off the truck to go ahead and clean it up and re oil it. Especially since I’m leaving tomorrow to drive to Laughlin I figured it couldn’t hurt. Buttoned everything back and filled up with coolant. Let him run til got up to temp, which always takes FOREVER, when coolant is fresh with the right amount... lol. And then put the cap back on the surge tank. Pressure washed all the coolant out of the pulleys and the underside. So far now that t-stat housing is dry as a bone and no gap whatsoever between the housing and the water pump. Drove to the gym and back for evening HIIT class and so far so good. Will be keeping a close eye on the truck during the drive tomorrow to make sure.
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My passenger side turn signal has been doing this funky thing, AFTER my HID install, which is odd, where when the auto lights are engaged it stays partially illuminated. And I ensured there’s no crossing of ANY wires anywhere. I was very careful. Except it’s only the green arrow in my cluster and the red LED in my passenger mirror glass. And then when I engage the turn signal it hyper flashes like there’s a bulb out. It’s really irritating. The only two bulbs that could be bad are the two front turn signals and those are both new. My rear turns are LEDs in the tail light housing that do have laps resistors properly wired in. After bulbs I replaced the flasher relay just below the steering column hoping that would solve it. Nope. That didn’t work. A few weeks back I pulled a multifunction switch from a 2004 Denali thinking it might solve the issue of mine was going bad. I finally got around to swapping it out this evening after gym class. Original is getting pretty worn:
The replacement looks surprisingly good.
But unfortunately it didn’t solve the problem. And the switch is fully functional. Everything works as it should. Engages both turns, hazards work, cruise and wipers all work with the replacement switch. Anybody got any ideas as to why my tie single might be doing this?!?! Help!! Also I’m keeping the replacement switch cuz it looks so much better than mine.... lol
The replacement looks surprisingly good.
But unfortunately it didn’t solve the problem. And the switch is fully functional. Everything works as it should. Engages both turns, hazards work, cruise and wipers all work with the replacement switch. Anybody got any ideas as to why my tie single might be doing this?!?! Help!! Also I’m keeping the replacement switch cuz it looks so much better than mine.... lol
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Well at least the coolant leak was an easy and cheap fix!
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Thankfully yes! And I did it on my own so that’s a win too!!Well at least the coolant leak was an easy and cheap fix!
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Truck ran perfectly from big bear to Laughlin. No coolant issues whatsoever and my AC blew ice cold through the desert. Hottest part of the drive was 104 I think.
I’m “the backup tow vehicle” cuz god forbid my mom has to do anything for her boat by herself..... this was supposed to be a vacation and I’m already so irritated with my mom that I want to head home.....
At least when we hit I-40 she didn’t make me stay behind her all the way. She drove pretty slow cuz she’s terrified of towing her boat anywhere outside of big bear.... But apparently somehow one of the windshield pieces on the boat got shattered while she was towing it. We think it might have been a bird that took it out. The boat was spotless when we left big bear and there’s a huge red stain that kinda looks like blood on one of the fenders that sits right behind the window that’s shattered. So weird. She’s gonna try and deal with in the morning. I’m leaving early to go wakeboarding
with our friends that are also here on the trip. I know she’s gonna be mad at me for dipping out early in the morning to go have fun, but I’m an adult and this is my vacation too... and that’s why I brought my own truck.... lol
I’m “the backup tow vehicle” cuz god forbid my mom has to do anything for her boat by herself..... this was supposed to be a vacation and I’m already so irritated with my mom that I want to head home.....
At least when we hit I-40 she didn’t make me stay behind her all the way. She drove pretty slow cuz she’s terrified of towing her boat anywhere outside of big bear.... But apparently somehow one of the windshield pieces on the boat got shattered while she was towing it. We think it might have been a bird that took it out. The boat was spotless when we left big bear and there’s a huge red stain that kinda looks like blood on one of the fenders that sits right behind the window that’s shattered. So weird. She’s gonna try and deal with in the morning. I’m leaving early to go wakeboarding
with our friends that are also here on the trip. I know she’s gonna be mad at me for dipping out early in the morning to go have fun, but I’m an adult and this is my vacation too... and that’s why I brought my own truck.... lol
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My S10 did this after a cheap LED turn signal bulb swap. I've also heard of poor grounds causing the power to backfeed.
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River trip ended up being really fun. My mom mellowed out quite a bit. She did have a hiccup. We think a bird managed to hit the boat on the last stretch of her towing the boat into Laughlin as she stopp for full and the passenger side of the windshield was shattered and there a big red stain on the fender directly behind it that wasn’t there before we left. We went to a car wash and paid them to vacuum out all the glass and then we took what little glass that was left in the windshield frame out and the day exposed to drop her boat in the water anyways on Saturday morning. It worked out fine. Boat ran great the whole trip. Lots of fun playing on super fast wave runners. Got some tubing time in on one of the other boats and got the on pretty good. Lol. We all did lunch at our camp out spot on the beac together everyday. Did breakfast and lunch yesterday. All hung out together in the evenings at the hotel and played games and such. Was a good time spent with good people.
Ended up towing moms boat back from Laughlin. The other friend that line dances with us that went, sorta mysteriously left early on Sunday. And my mom decided she wanted no part of towing the boat home by herself, so she decided to come back with me, and asked if I’d tow the boat home for her with the Nali. I said “yeah if you pay for the fuel to tow it home” and she said yes. Worked out fine. Nali ran line the road tank it is pulling that little baby bayliner all the way home. Trans stayed at 180 degrees all the way across I-40 in steady 105 degree outside temps. Did well. Ended up getting home about 10pm last night. Our camp site during each day:
Ended up towing moms boat back from Laughlin. The other friend that line dances with us that went, sorta mysteriously left early on Sunday. And my mom decided she wanted no part of towing the boat home by herself, so she decided to come back with me, and asked if I’d tow the boat home for her with the Nali. I said “yeah if you pay for the fuel to tow it home” and she said yes. Worked out fine. Nali ran line the road tank it is pulling that little baby bayliner all the way home. Trans stayed at 180 degrees all the way across I-40 in steady 105 degree outside temps. Did well. Ended up getting home about 10pm last night. Our camp site during each day:
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