RENAMED!! The adventures of Chase and his 2006 Yukon XL Denali!! Follow along on my travels!

[Fosscore]

Today was an interesting day. Moms new roommate is the oldest of the 4 kids that I lived above for nearly 8 years and got to be very close to over that time. Crazy to see their kids all growing up. Alli is 18 now, she’s been working full time since she was 16, and bought her first truck completely on her own and paid cash for it! She bought a 2005 ram 1500 CCSB 4x4 from family friends from our old church that I grew up in. Kid that had it I knew quite well. He put a level kit, method race wheels and general grabber A/Ts on it. Tow mirrors. Aftermarket headlights with HID projector retrofits and did some exhaust work on it. It’s a pretty nice truck. Alli bought it and took the shell off of it. She absolutely loves the thing. She called this morning while I was on my way to work and she was frustrated because it wouldn’t start. I immediately flipped around and headed for moms. Wasn’t turning over and battery was showing 12 volts. No clicks likes dead battery and gauge and lights lit up with the key on. Been there done that with all my rides and figured she needed a starter. Called my client and let him know I’d be a tad bit late as I was taking her to the parts store and then dropping her to work. Autozone had a remanufactured starter in stock but I told her it was better to have him order a new one and get it trucked up the mountain. She agreed. I dropped her to work and then headed to my clients house. Hammered out a detail on his Ducati. I watched a couple videos on YouTube and figured the job wasn't too bad and I could tackle it. Ran to moms and pulled the bad starter out pretty easily. She got the call about 3ish that the new starter made it up the hill. I was pulling pears from the tree in my front yard when she let me know. Got 4 boxes of deliciously fresh pears!
Anyways ran and grabbed Alli’s keys, picked up the new starter and dropped off the core to the parts store. But holy cow putting that new starter in absolutely SUCKED! Getting it in and out was fairly simple, only two bolts holding it to the trans bell housing, a nut holding the power wire onto the unit and a trigger wire clipped on with a plastic connector. Also a metal shield next to the starter that the guys truck in the video didn’t have. That made getting the lower of the two bolts out annoying but doable. Getting it threaded back in proper and tightened down was ridiculously difficult. Starter is mounted below the block on the drivers side behind the wheel, but the driveshaft and the down pipe with the cat completely blocked access to get ratchets in and get the bolt to turn. And the shield prevented me from actually seeing the hole to thread the bolt into. I had to unthread it and rethread it several times to get it in right and then tightening down took forever going 1/4 turns at a time cuz there just wasn't any room to turn the ratchet. Went to rehook the battery up after install and putting negative cable on made the starter engage. Like it sound like a fan running at high speed. Knew that wasn’t right. Figured out of the two posts on the new starter I bolted the power wire to the wrong one where the old starter only had one post for the power wire. Unhooked battery, took the nut off the power wire on the starter and moved it to the opposite post. In the process of putting the battery back together I dropped one of the nuts on the top post battery….. ooi… it literally vanished…. That was an easy fix though. Went and picked Alli up from work, on the way back stopped into autozone and had to guess on the size of the nut but they guy on staff is chill. He helps me out quite a bit and showed him the nut from the other side. Knew the lost one was a bit smaller and he was able to get me a pack of the right ones. We get back to moms, get the battery cables hooked back up and BAM! Truck fired right up! Alli was so happy that her truck is back up and running so even though it was a long ass afternoon I got I handled and it felt good. My mom was super impressed that I was able to get it fixed up. She’s like dang you can work on more than just your Denali….. I’m like…. DUH! Lol
All in all interesting adventure of a day…

Nice work Chase! Those pears look amazing.

Where’s picture of the Ram and the Ducati? Lol

 

[adventurenali92]

Nice work Chase! Those pears look amazing.

Where’s picture of the Ram and the Ducati? Lol

Should have snapped a pic of the truck. Motorcycles don’t do much for me though so I didn’t take any pictures haha.

 

[adventurenali92]

Things have been so busy. Wracking up miles on the Denali. Working tons of hours lately but I need it. Took a week off mid October to head out to Tennessee to see my sister, bro in law, and the kids. Left the Nali at Long Beach airport which was super simple. Easy in and out of the airport and parking wasn’t terribly expensive for the week. Had a blast with them and wished I could have stayed longer. We did a lot of fun stuff though. Whiskey tasting in Shelby I’ll eat the u clue nearest distillery was fun. I’d never even heard of that whiskey so getting to try it was fun and learning the history was great.

 

[adventurenali92]

More cool and unique Tennessee history stopping in to see the ancestral home of president James Polk where he lived for 6 years as he was starting out as a lawyer, was super cool. It’s in Columbia, Tennessee just 15 or so minutes from my sisters house so we took the kids as part of their history lesson for the week.

 

[adventurenali92]

The hand built table for Polk was extraordinary. I can’t imagine having to light each of the candles in the dining room chandelier anytime guests would be over lol.

 

[adventurenali92]

Bro in law signed up for a spartan rice and the kids decided they wanted in on the kids version. So we drove an hour or so away for them to all hit the spartan, in a very damp cloudy and rainy fall day. But it was so fun to cheer the kids and my bro in law on!

 

[adventurenali92]

Of course I had to go line dancing in downtown Nashville…… can’t pass that up…. Lol Nashville palace is across the street from the Opryland Hotel. We went last spring when I was there and loved it so much we had to do another dance night. Not gonna lie the dancing scene out there some kinda makes me wanna move out there haha. Everyone is just so friendly on the dance floor and happy to be there. That and the dance floor itself is awesome, and so much fun to dance on.

 

[adventurenali92]

One of the neighbors in their small neighborhood or hood of lovely people, is very into telescopes. He had left one with the kids for like a whole week leading up to me being there, had showed them how to set it up, and adjust it all to be able to see everything at night and the kids were in love with it. We could see Saturn and Jupiter pretty clearly at night. Seeing the rings of Saturn was kinda mind blowing actually! The solar eclipse happened the Saturday I was out there, and that morning the neighbor brought another telescope over with a solar filter and set it up so the kids could see the eclipse. It was fascinating. Got some cool shots of it through the telescope which I didn’t think my iPhone 11 would do.

 

[adventurenali92]

The Taylor swift filmed concert premiered that weekend I was there as well and my bro in law had gotten my sister and two nieces tickets to go see it. He had to work so the girls went and did the Taylor swift thing while my nephew Jeremy and I went bowling and played laser tag. Super fun night and a good bonding time with my nephew. I really miss having them here in California and I definitely didn’t spend enough time with them doing stuff like this when they lived here. But a fun filled night nonetheless and the girls got all dolled up.

 

[adventurenali92]

The distillery had a beautiful vintage dodge truck on display in the retail store. Had to take a photo. Always loved old school dodge trucks.

 

[adventurenali92]

Hanging out with my nephew while he got the rifles ready to shoot armadillos….

In Jeff Foxworthy’s voice: “You might be a red neck if you sit on your back porch in the evening and shoot the armadillos coming out, instead of calling a pest company….”

Times like these are what being an uncle is all about! Going to the airport to head home was so hard this time around…..

 

[adventurenali92]

Hit 188,888k on the truck a couple weeks ago.

 

[willinnashville]

Well dang, you took a tour through my neck of the woods! I spent a lot of time in Columbia as a kid, that's where my grandma lives. Looks like you had a fun time on your trip!

 

[adventurenali92]

Well dang, you took a tour through my neck of the woods! I spent a lot of time in Columbia as a kid, that's where my grandma lives. Looks like you had a fun time on your trip!

Oh that’s right haha. They moved to Spring Hill/Columbia in January of 2022. Bought a house and property a little fort her out now. But I love going to visit! It’s so much fun!

 

[adventurenali92]

Well trucks projects I started yesterday on a down day from work didn’t quite go as planned. Ooi….. but at least I’m starting on stuff that’s been sitting in the garage all summer long. Updates on that shortly. But first things first…..

Road tank needs new shoes…… bad!
like I’m down to the last little bits of tread I can squeeze out of these tires. Michelin DEFENDER LTX tires. Installed 2/9/2022 per the work order. I’m actually surprised looking back to see how many miles I got. Truck had 162,500 on the odometer when these were installed. As of right now the trucks at 189,507. So I’ve gotten 27,007 miles out of the defenders. Not terrible use out of them especially given that the mountain roads that lead in and out of town eat tires like nobody’s business. Lol. I don’t know anyone up here that gets more than 30K-ish out of a set of tires, except for a handful of older clients that I detail for that legitimately only drive once a week or so and only go off the mountain once a month. Now had I been religious about rotating my tires like I normally am at every oil change, and had I kept the air pressures in them at a constant even setup then I probably could have gotten 30k out of these tires.

This is my first set of defenders. They came very well recommended from everyone hear and a couple shops I chatted with before buying. Despite the tread wear they performed fantastically in every driving condition I’ve thrown at them including the storms that brought 10 feet of snow to our town in just 10 days. Almost everyday in that storm, caltrans and sheriffs department had R3 chain requirements in place which meant even 4x4 and AWD equipped vehicles needed to chain up to be on the road. I have never had a set of chains big enough to fit any tire I’ve run on this rig and even those days I never had issues in the snow on the defenders. So 5 star review on traction for these tires. Also never got stopped for not having chains on…..

I wanted to go back to the LTX A/T2 Michelins. I’ve had two sets of them in different sizes, one set on my OEM Denali 17 inch wheels. And another set on my 20s in a two size bigger than stock LT rating. Absolutely loved both sets of the all terrains. But everywhere across the country they’re out of stock right now in the 275/60 series I’ve decided to stick with. Bummed cuz I never had any reservations about going anywhere on those tires and kinda wanted that extra insurance that those tries sorta gave. Most venders said 30-60 days before they’d be ins rock again. But since I needed tires now I went with the defender again. Plus we’re looking at potential weather this weekend and I’m not gonna chance it even if it ends up being rain. So defenders again it came to.

But this time around I went with the XL load rated 275/60R20 defender LTX M/S2 as I found a company online that had them in stock. Getting them delivered here was a nightmare between the tire seller not getting my space unit number in the original shipping info and FEDEX screwing up the deliveries. Sad cuz FEDEX used to be really awesome but I’ve noticed in the last couple years they have always created hassle and issues with stuff being shipped via them. Maybe it’s just another lame Big Bear thing. Lol.

Anyways got two here Friday, and the other two miraculously showed up today. Got ‘em scrubbed clean and the first two have a nice thick coat of water proof tire coating installed on them. Second two currently have coatings drying on them now. I absolutely love this stuff I found about two years back. Dura-shine from Dura-coatings. I use their professional grade ceramic coatings as well for my detailing business and I can say that their products are top notch. Coating goes on and I’ve seen it last 8-9 months on my tires despite the manufacturer saying it’ll only last 6. Pretty good product life in my opinion. Once it’s cured on it’s totally dry to the touch. No greasy mess if you accidentally brush up against it. And no fling off ever down the side of the truck. Dust will stick a little bit around the edges but that’s kinda just how it goes when the edges of the dirt sink into a dirt road surface when I drive them occasionally for work. Whenever I wash the truck I just scrub tires with soap from my foam cannon, rinse and dry and the tire coating just cleans right up. Love this stuff.

Managed to accidentally curb rash my two passenger side tires last summer at a clients house. DOH! Trying to avoid that with the new tires lol. As you can see in these photos the inner edges of tread on the tires are just about at the wear bars with the outer edges not much above the wear bars…..

 

[adventurenali92]

New shoes dirty in the first two shots and cleaned and coated in the last two.

 

[willinnashville]

FedEx has been going downhill lately here too.

 

[iamdub]

As you can see in these photos the inner edges of tread on the tires are just about at the wear bars with the outer edges not much above the wear bars…..

Those look to be only about half-worn. I see tread like that and worse going for $100/tire or more on my local Marketplace.

 

[adventurenali92]

Those look to be only about half-worn. I see tread like that and worse going for $100/tire or more on my local Marketplace.

Sadly enough I see it here in big bear too…. It’s usually a clueless tourist from LA, and they’re stuck in a snow bank and can’t figure out why….. lol

 

[adventurenali92]

New shoes mounted today. Dura-shine coating came out really nice on all 4 tires.