My latest Adventure, update 7/11/21

[bigdog9191999]

Don't have all the pics here. But


Just the new fogs

High beam I believe.

Low and fog. It has so much better visibility than the high alone.

Also got brackets for the Denali in.

And a nice order to make it all easier from TRS

 

[bigdog9191999]

Then it was time to get busy!!!

Some differences between the two. The led had so much open space I would have needed a boot and it would have been a pain to get them in the Denali and not dust. The hid was just a batter of bolt and silicone the edges.

OEM vs H1's

Flopped the led I had in the low, to the high spot ( did mostly for the color) and along with a fresh set of 3k led for the fogs, looking pretty good.

 

[bigdog9191999]

The output however proved me wrong. And after some adjustments they are working awesome.

 

[bigdog9191999]

Then it was on to the car. I have done some mini H1's into these cars before, and it wasn't too bad. These are slightly larger and took some effort to get in there and half ass straight. But even tho they are not perfect, they are sooooo much better than stock I don't even care.




Needless to say there was some "fitting" need done.

Had to all but mutilate the shrouds to get them in there.

But we got them

And I think the effort was worth it.

 

[bigdog9191999]

The output says it was worth it also!!



Low

Low with fog

And hello darkness

 

[bigdog9191999]

Also got the truck from Dad's house to mine so I can start getting the case swapped and hopefully drivable soon! (. Yes we strapped it, we are 1 mile apart and most of that is a 35 zone).

Inside and ready to get something to did. Now if it would quit being freezing and being at work on the warmer days.

Just look at it! However the electrical is in far better shape than I had previously thought.

 

[bigdog9191999]

Ok, now for the personal updates.

Her mom's house that we have been trying to sell for the last two years. ( Which is one of the plain reasons for the camper) Finally got a real offer and looking like that whole thing is going down very soon. So we will have too e her mom to the camper and start the construction on whatever the new place will be soon.. as well as get her things in the storage container.



And the other huge thing is that I work at a nuclear power plant, and we are setting some firsts. We shit down and started decommissioning about a year and a half ago. ( I have been armed security for right at 20 years here)


Well we are now going to the the first plant in the country and one of very few in the world that will be repowered and brought back on line. With this is coming a restaffing for a multitude of jobs. And I put in for many of them. Had to take a test ( mass test for power plants if anyone wanted to look that up. ). And apparently passed, as I have an interview scheduled on the 4-15!! If I get the job it will mean very different hours, less overtime and almost $15/hr raise! So here is to hoping.

 

[bigdog9191999]

been a while since last update, to say we have been busy would be quite the understatement. as per the last post we did indeed have an offer on her moms house, so we hooked up the tahoe to my buddys converted horse trailer to move things with. ( stayed hooked to the trailer for a month while we moved)

this first week of april i had a couple vacation days i took for a concert ( brit floyd) so we moved every basically every day. the short version here is that the chick that did the FHA loan inspection grossly lied and missdocumented several things and scared off the buyers. the issue, is that we started moving and now we cannot show the house as it is no longer a lived in state so we have to keep pushing to get it empty so we can show an empty house.

during all this busy, our washer ( probably 25yrs old at this point) decided to act up.. so we dug in during the off hours...

we got her mom moved into the camper, and for the sewage we are using a mactator pump ( like a garbage disposal/grinder pump) that puts it down to a garden hose that we are pumping to our septic tank.

also picked up an inline remote relay to make the use of the pump easier. ( working quite well)

 

[bigdog9191999]

so during moving everything the denali decided to spew all its coolant ( unknown why at the time. ) so we got it parked till we got the house emptier and had time to get it home.

squirrel decided to pester the cats, was pretty funny.

with the denali down it was time to fix the water pump on the tahoe ( known leak throughout the winter) but now it was going to become primary wheels so time to get it fixed up.

was trying to be slick with the house, it had a broken pane of glass, so i was going to remove the broken pane and make it a single pane just so it wasnt broken, but the second pane also broke, so a replacement was in need.

 

[bigdog9191999]

ok, so this is where things get a bit out there. every day off accept for a job interview (different department within company, spoiler, didnt get it) on may 10th things got REEEEEAAALLLLYYYY shook up.. my dad ended up in the hospital. i will get into more of what happened below.





being he is in the hospital and we are/were still down a vehicle i decided he wouldn't miss if i used his pickup to make life a bit easier.

on one of the days to the hospital i went to pick up mom and the grand am had the hood wide open , with none of us opening it. made us a bit on edge (nothing else seems to have happened since)

but because of this and few people being around ( frequent trips to the hospital ) we decided to move his car to a family friends for safety ( and he cleaned several things up for us)

Grand prix didn't look too bad sitting at the hospital

 

[bigdog9191999]

so we were trying to get things taken care of and mowed ( so the village wouldnt complain) so had to do some digging into the ol tractor.

but it was of no luck.. even after fussing about, she didnt want to roll over well enough to try and start, and just dont have time to keep fussing. so we called in reinforcements ( dads cousin has a blueberry farm a couple miles away, and another family friend does some work for her so she sent him down with the tractor to get us hooked up)

also got to ride home in a buddies car ( same one that has dads lemans currently)

 

[bigdog9191999]

so i am gonna loosely dive into dads situation. on may 10th (friday) he got an ambulance ride to the er/critical care (where he would remain for about a day) the following day they figured out what was going on. he ended up having an aneurism in the artery just out of the top of the heart. this filled the paracortical sac around the heart. both of these things should/could have killed him, but somehow it stopped leaking on its own, to the point that he could have surgery to make repairs sunday morning. ( a VERY VERY long weekend!! )

he made surgery well, and started recovering in the icu. to shorten things up it was 3 weeks to the day that he became well enough to downgraded from the icu. and has been in a rehab type facility since. recovery has been very slow (four steps forward one back sort of thing) and he is still working to get off the ventilator (which means he cannot talk back). and will be quite some time ( months) before he would look to come home, if at all, IF he survives to that point.


so all this with regular trips to visit with him, deal with trying to get her moms house cleaned out and sold, while working full time.. and trying to fix vehicles, and look after 3 1/2 households ( ours, my mom/dads place (shes physically limited), her moms, and her mom in the camper in our drive ( also physically limited).

 

[bigdog9191999]

So curt washed Dad's lemans ( I had driven his truck to work, as I needed it for a couple things on the way home )

With her mom moved out I made sure to get all the "important" things out of the house. This is the first time these two rifles have been together in probably 10 years! ( Both ours, we let her have one at the house to have a noisemaker she could handle)

Was clear to the end of May before I had a chance to actually wash the bike so I could ride it.

And a pic of the Sony a350 that came from my mom that I will be sharing some pics I took soon below.

 

[bigdog9191999]

Been a bit warm so we decided to try and get the forward ac unit going in the camper. Because,, yah!!


Got a portable we had around set up to help till we got the proper one going.

Got a used unit. Got it swapped. And still no work. So now the holiday is about over will be getting back on getting that fixed ( people open to help)

 

[bigdog9191999]

So finally also had a chance to look into the Denali. And short story the water pump failed and was leaking spectacularly , so got that swapped out, tested and good to go right!!

Also did valve covers As was hoping plugged pcv was contributing to oil consumption. The pretty red was cheaper on Amazon, so whatever.

Drove it to see dad, and ...... Oil leak! Engine oil cooling line rusted under the plastic holder. So..... Back apart. ( I had cut it apart here)

I also did the soap test on the wheels/tires that came with the pickup. Yah, gonna have a little work to do.

 

[bigdog9191999]

A couple pics of the interior of Dad's car after cleaning. ( The chrome has never shines like this. As he never cared that much. Function over form kinda guy).

Little brother drove Dad's car to town to grab some things for Mom and nailed a deer.

Curt and Denny came over and made it drivable again. At least. It too worried as mom and I discussed selling it to my brother as it will be some time before Dad drives again, if at all, and they still have her caliber.

 

[bigdog9191999]

And as if to mock me, apparently while fixing the oil cooler lines, it flexed the tank plastic enough, now the radiator is spewing gloriously!!

So after much thought, I am going to do a block off for the cooler lines, and delete them, and swap in the radiator from the parted out avalanche.




As for the camera. Here are several random pics of animals, plants, and bugs that I have enjoyed taking recently!!




after taking a look at this post, needing to reduce pic size to post them here really hurt image quality, but they are still decent pics.

 

[bigdog9191999]

 

[bigdog9191999]

 

[bigdog9191999]

ok guys this will be bit of an odd update, literally the day after the last update on 7-8-24 ( as seen quoted below) dad ended up passing away. so to say things have been a bit out of sorts and alot busy is a severe understatement. and i appreciate the condolences in advance. we had a very good relationship and have had many talks about mortality ect, and we as a family are recovering from everything , but are otherwise doing pretty well. there have been other good things happen and this denali, ugghhhhh...

i will be adding posts below, but they will be a little wonky as i am typing out on a work pc, then editing pics in with my phone after.

so i am gonna loosely dive into dads situation. on may 10th (friday) he got an ambulance ride to the er/critical care (where he would remain for about a day) the following day they figured out what was going on. he ended up having an aneurism in the artery just out of the top of the heart. this filled the paracortical sac around the heart. both of these things should/could have killed him, but somehow it stopped leaking on its own, to the point that he could have surgery to make repairs sunday morning. ( a VERY VERY long weekend!! )

he made surgery well, and started recovering in the icu. to shorten things up it was 3 weeks to the day that he became well enough to downgraded from the icu. and has been in a rehab type facility since. recovery has been very slow (four steps forward one back sort of thing) and he is still working to get off the ventilator (which means he cannot talk back). and will be quite some time ( months) before he would look to come home, if at all, IF he survives to that point.


so all this with regular trips to visit with him, deal with trying to get her moms house cleaned out and sold, while working full time.. and trying to fix vehicles, and look after 3 1/2 households ( ours, my mom/dads place (shes physically limited), her moms, and her mom in the camper in our drive ( also physically limited).

he was a mechanic and wrecker service for 30+ years, so we convened a convoy of trucks to lead the procession ( led by the county sheriff that was also a friend ) and and i drove the truck that took him for his last ride. it is our family friend that we have both driven for and was also like a son to him, and he drove dads car. ( pictured at the funeral home the evening prior at the wake)