[wrath]

I'm kind of a hobby locust. Very few hobbies do I fully let go of, the only two I can think of are photography and home audio. So I still peruse the same forums every day (well, the ones that still exist) but it doesn't mean I post. A lot of them are a pain to post on mobile and most of the time I spend on forums is either before I start the day or while walking/doing something else. I suspect this is why dReddit is so hugely popular. It is really easy to be doing something else, anywhere, anytime whether in the godawful app, the mobile site, or the desktop site.

For a few years I got into camping pretty heavily. Restored two campers and heavily modified them... then did the same thing with a 1978 GMC Motorhome (Coachmen Royale version). The motorhome was fun for the first couple years then I ran out of time the second summer so I made the mistake of paying Reichert's to build a Cadillac 500 for it... they bought all the parts (except the heads, had already converted them to large valves and full roller) and put it together. They put the wrong pistons in it (1.1L bore with a flat top piston and 70cc heads that they did work on) so it broke all the ring lands on one side. I CCd the heads and one side average 68cc and the other side average 71cc so that means they probably milled off more than the .015" they said they did on one head. Anyway, I ended up pulling the motor again and doing it myself. Somewhere around 1700 hours into the damn motorhome when I was done, and a lot of it was fixing one thing and then finding 10 other things wrong with it. At one time I had a whiteboard with over 200 things that needed to be fixed. It ended up being a pretty sweet racecar with plumbing when I was done but I wouldn't do it again. The funny part was the two things I dreaded the most... dealing with the 40 year old shitter tanks and painting the whole thing... was the easiest parts. It was what I thought would be easy like fixing the wiring (nope, hundreds of hours and 1.5lbs of solder later) or getting the fool injection fuel system working that took longer than expected. It was fun, kind of, I learned a lot of things I didn't really need to learn. Joined a lot of forums I didn't really need to be a part of.

The motorhome burned me out so I switched back to tacticool gear/firearm related stuff. I've been doing that for about a year and a half, even though I didn't paint the motorhome until last May. I updated all of my gear and other crap to join the 2020s instead of the aughts... shot all my old body armor which was a hoot... and now shit is so expensive I got back into reloading which is something I haven't really done in 15 years but I hoarded everything just in case ammo got expensive again.

I've been kicking around the idea of building adventure trailers and/or tiny homes. I miss fabricating crap like I did for the motorhome and campers. I have been kicking around the idea of offroading again also, but the boss isn't even remotely interested in it. If I could find a 68 GTO roller in good shape I'd probably buy that if it were affordable. Always wanted to build an AWD 68GTO with powertrain from a Escalade in it.

I can tell you that from all the forums I frequent (probably 30) that the offroading community is probably the most "normal" people. Chainsaw/power equipment people... weird. home automation people... weird. Reloading people... weird. Motorhome people... weird.

The odd thing is that pretty much all of the offroading people on forums are bought not built people nowadays.

 

[aber61]

about a month ago I stopped in a hardware store In the thumb. CCI mini mags were on the counter for $16.99 a box 100.
I paid that much for a 550 round carton two years ago.
The death knell to ammo will come from restricting shipping. You know, for safety.

Soon we will sing songs about the good years under Trump.

Buddy went to a shop cause they were having a sale on ammo. Said the line was out the door and down the street. He did manage to get in. When he got to the 9mm. He walked out. $45.50 for a box of fiddy and $30 or $32 for a box of 20, 5.56.
I think that song is about to happen.

 

[aber61]

I'm kind of a hobby locust. Very few hobbies do I fully let go of, the only two I can think of are photography and home audio. So I still peruse the same forums every day (well, the ones that still exist) but it doesn't mean I post. A lot of them are a pain to post on mobile and most of the time I spend on forums is either before I start the day or while walking/doing something else. I suspect this is why dReddit is so hugely popular. It is really easy to be doing something else, anywhere, anytime whether in the godawful app, the mobile site, or the desktop site.

For a few years I got into camping pretty heavily. Restored two campers and heavily modified them... then did the same thing with a 1978 GMC Motorhome (Coachmen Royale version). The motorhome was fun for the first couple years then I ran out of time the second summer so I made the mistake of paying Reichert's to build a Cadillac 500 for it... they bought all the parts (except the heads, had already converted them to large valves and full roller) and put it together. They put the wrong pistons in it (1.1L bore with a flat top piston and 70cc heads that they did work on) so it broke all the ring lands on one side. I CCd the heads and one side average 68cc and the other side average 71cc so that means they probably milled off more than the .015" they said they did on one head. Anyway, I ended up pulling the motor again and doing it myself. Somewhere around 1700 hours into the damn motorhome when I was done, and a lot of it was fixing one thing and then finding 10 other things wrong with it. At one time I had a whiteboard with over 200 things that needed to be fixed. It ended up being a pretty sweet racecar with plumbing when I was done but I wouldn't do it again. The funny part was the two things I dreaded the most... dealing with the 40 year old shitter tanks and painting the whole thing... was the easiest parts. It was what I thought would be easy like fixing the wiring (nope, hundreds of hours and 1.5lbs of solder later) or getting the fool injection fuel system working that took longer than expected. It was fun, kind of, I learned a lot of things I didn't really need to learn. Joined a lot of forums I didn't really need to be a part of.

The motorhome burned me out so I switched back to tacticool gear/firearm related stuff. I've been doing that for about a year and a half, even though I didn't paint the motorhome until last May. I updated all of my gear and other crap to join the 2020s instead of the aughts... shot all my old body armor which was a hoot... and now shit is so expensive I got back into reloading which is something I haven't really done in 15 years but I hoarded everything just in case ammo got expensive again.

I've been kicking around the idea of building adventure trailers and/or tiny homes. I miss fabricating crap like I did for the motorhome and campers. I have been kicking around the idea of offroading again also, but the boss isn't even remotely interested in it. If I could find a 68 GTO roller in good shape I'd probably buy that if it were affordable. Always wanted to build an AWD 68GTO with powertrain from a Escalade in it.

I can tell you that from all the forums I frequent (probably 30) that the offroading community is probably the most "normal" people. Chainsaw/power equipment people... weird. home automation people... weird. Reloading people... weird. Motorhome people... weird.

The odd thing is that pretty much all of the offroading people on forums are bought not built people nowadays.

I like your idea of a AWD68GTO.

 

[XXXJ]

Buddy went to a shop cause they were having a sale on ammo. Said the line was out the door and down the street. He did manage to get in. When he got to the 9mm. He walked out. $45.50 for a box of fiddy and $30 or $32 for a box of 20, 5.56.
I think that song is about to happen.

Well, at least gas is cheap? Back to the big picture.
What can China or Russia do? The cannot out perform USA. So they have to make USA under perform, enter the democrats and their sock puppet Biden. We are being handicapped.
”If you want to look thin, stand next to fat people”
They throttle back America, to make other countries seem to do better, while America sends money to those countries to be siphoned back to politicians.

 

[Wramblerguy]

Well, at least gas is cheap? Back to the big picture.
What can China or Russia do? The cannot out perform USA. So they have to make USA under perform, enter the democrats and their sock puppet Biden. We are being handicapped.
”If you want to look thin, stand next to fat people”
They throttle back America, to make other countries seem to do better, while America sends money to those countries to be siphoned back to politicians.

Gas is cheap for now. I only see the price of gas and good going up up up since the 20th

 

[aber61]

Well, at least gas is cheap? Back to the big picture.
What can China or Russia do? The cannot out perform USA. So they have to make USA under perform, enter the democrats and their sock puppet Biden. We are being handicapped.
”If you want to look thin, stand next to fat people”
They throttle back America, to make other countries seem to do better, while America sends money to those countries to be siphoned back to politicians.

Trump was America First and that is why they as in the establishment hated him. It will a bumpy few years, the dems get what they want it will be the end of America as we know it. They are already ending the filibuster and giving DC statehood and Puerto Rico as well. That would give them full control which means there will never be a republican president.

 

[XXXJ]

. That would give them full control which means there will never be a republican president.

Thee most popular president in my lifetime, and republicans folded to appease their democrat masters.
It is appalling how The Trumps were treated.

 

[aber61]

^^^^^^^this right here. Shows that just how corrupt the deep state is.

 

[greygoose]

I'm kind of a hobby locust. Very few hobbies do I fully let go of, the only two I can think of are photography and home audio. So I still peruse the same forums every day (well, the ones that still exist) but it doesn't mean I post. A lot of them are a pain to post on mobile and most of the time I spend on forums is either before I start the day or while walking/doing something else. I suspect this is why dReddit is so hugely popular. It is really easy to be doing something else, anywhere, anytime whether in the godawful app, the mobile site, or the desktop site.

For a few years I got into camping pretty heavily. Restored two campers and heavily modified them... then did the same thing with a 1978 GMC Motorhome (Coachmen Royale version). The motorhome was fun for the first couple years then I ran out of time the second summer so I made the mistake of paying Reichert's to build a Cadillac 500 for it... they bought all the parts (except the heads, had already converted them to large valves and full roller) and put it together. They put the wrong pistons in it (1.1L bore with a flat top piston and 70cc heads that they did work on) so it broke all the ring lands on one side. I CCd the heads and one side average 68cc and the other side average 71cc so that means they probably milled off more than the .015" they said they did on one head. Anyway, I ended up pulling the motor again and doing it myself. Somewhere around 1700 hours into the damn motorhome when I was done, and a lot of it was fixing one thing and then finding 10 other things wrong with it. At one time I had a whiteboard with over 200 things that needed to be fixed. It ended up being a pretty sweet racecar with plumbing when I was done but I wouldn't do it again. The funny part was the two things I dreaded the most... dealing with the 40 year old shitter tanks and painting the whole thing... was the easiest parts. It was what I thought would be easy like fixing the wiring (nope, hundreds of hours and 1.5lbs of solder later) or getting the fool injection fuel system working that took longer than expected. It was fun, kind of, I learned a lot of things I didn't really need to learn. Joined a lot of forums I didn't really need to be a part of.

The motorhome burned me out so I switched back to tacticool gear/firearm related stuff. I've been doing that for about a year and a half, even though I didn't paint the motorhome until last May. I updated all of my gear and other crap to join the 2020s instead of the aughts... shot all my old body armor which was a hoot... and now shit is so expensive I got back into reloading which is something I haven't really done in 15 years but I hoarded everything just in case ammo got expensive again.

I've been kicking around the idea of building adventure trailers and/or tiny homes. I miss fabricating crap like I did for the motorhome and campers. I have been kicking around the idea of offroading again also, but the boss isn't even remotely interested in it. If I could find a 68 GTO roller in good shape I'd probably buy that if it were affordable. Always wanted to build an AWD 68GTO with powertrain from a Escalade in it.

I can tell you that from all the forums I frequent (probably 30) that the offroading community is probably the most "normal" people. Chainsaw/power equipment people... weird. home automation people... weird. Reloading people... weird. Motorhome people... weird.

The odd thing is that pretty much all of the offroading people on forums are bought not built people nowadays.

@wrath

Do you have any pictures of the campers or the motor home? I'd be interested to see how they turned out. And.... How did that motor home run with the Cadillac motor in it?

 

[greygoose]

.

 

[Jrgunn5150]

I'm thinking of building a crappy camper...

All I really need is a secure place to sleep in the back of my truck and carry my things. We go to be outside, I poop, shower, and basically live outside the whole time I'm camping unless it's raining. Even then an awning would be fine, I only go in the spring/summer.

Our truck bed camper has a lot of wasted space with things we don't really need in it, like a bathroom no one can use anyway.

 

[wrath]

@wrath

Do you have any pictures of the campers or the motor home? I'd be interested to see how they turned out. And.... How did that motor home run with the Cadillac motor in it?

The first camper was nothing special. Long since sold. Most of its modifications were to speed up deployment and set it up for boondocking. So inverters, setup for generator, etc.

The second camper got a lot more. Underneath it mounted are all tools you need to do anything, 2 spare tires, a spot for the shitter hose right next to the shitter emitter, a picnic table, an umbrella for the picnic table, 4 banquet tables, a shoe rack, a inflatables compressor, a cooler holder, and provisions for the outrigger jacks (essentially just receiver tubes you slide the jacks into near the front). There is a battery box on the front that holds 3 batteries. The rear has two electric tongue jacks. It also has security cameras. Every compartment has a slam latch on it and every core takes the same key. I put an EZstart on the AC unit and set it up to run off a single Briggs P2200 inverter generator. The inside got some stuff changed but not a lot. Mostly added shelves to put stuff that is easy to get to. It started life out as a Kodiak 263RLS so it was a pretty baller camper when I started. I'll probably sell it. I've been eyeballing a Freelander 23FS in the Chevy variety.

The motorhome was a fun yet miserable project. 40 years of idiots hacking on it but it looked OK from a distance. They just did a good job covering up all the plumbing and electrical hacks. I ended up with it in my yard after my inlaws had paid a small fortune for a bunch of idiots to work on it. I kept driving to Wisconsin for a couple years to work on it, eventually got the brakes fixed (converted to 1 ton Chevy 6 wheel disc) and put the motor together properly (one guy left a pair of channel locks under the intake manifold) and put a Fitech on it. Then he dropped a bolt down the throttle body and continued to run it and it ate two pistons (#2, #8) and broke the block.

By the time I got done with the motorhome I'd replaced almost everything. Converted it to 1 single AC unit and made it run off the alternator which was a project (Leece Neville monster off a medium duty ambulance). Abandoned the 420lb generator for a tiny 80lb inverter generator on a slide-out drawer. Rewired almost the whole thing, replumbed a lot of it, etc. The only thing left to be done is a new dash setup which I am waiting on until I put new front glass on it. When I do that I'll probably address the heater situation because it takes way too much room. I ran new wires for everything and have a bunch of new gauges (6 of them, mounted to the left on the floor between the seat at parking brake). Only thing original is the shower, the couch foam/frames, and the cabinets. Some parts were fun (rebuilding 2003 Escalade seats and building seat bases so it had proper seatbelts). Other things sucked, like the engine shitshow from Reicherts. Or the asshole that pulled the fuel tanks to reseal them but then proceeded to not put the gasket on the sender properly so when you filled it up gas pissed on the ground.

The fastest I ever had it on GPS was 104 sustained for more miles than I should have (checking for overheating on a 95 degree day). The fastest I actually got it to go was 114. It easily outpaces a modern shitbox car and will annihilate the tires even from a roll. In fact, I had to replace the new Michelin LTXs at 1900 miles because of all my testing and tuning and chasing rattles and and and and.

It's kind of loud. I kind of wish I'd spent the extra time to add the third muffler, I still have it in the garage. It has a pair of kustom 1 7/8" stainless headers to 3" collectors to 3" Borla super giant passthroughs. Then Ys into a 3" pipe out the back and just before the end there is a resonator. If the throttle blades are closed and it's at 1200rpm it resonates so bad it rattles windows, but you can't hear it inside. So when you think you're sneaking around in the campground you're actually pissing everyone off. It kind of makes me regret the wildish 9" of vacuum bumpstick but the heads don't flow without a giant cam so that's why it got a full roller conversion. However, it's a hoot driving through town and everyone turns and expects to see some muscle car loping through town and it's a big fucking motorhome.

There is one bug I haven't fixed yet, and that's the fuel overheats. The tanks are under the motorhome between the rear tires. All the engine heat and exhaust heat surrounds them so fuel boils in them often. I really should have put pressure pumps in the tanks instead of using an easily replaced lift pump to a pressure pump. I never would have guessed after a few hours the fuel would be boiling on a hot day.

The motorhome looks the same as here, but about a month after I sprayed it the paint was hard enough to stick a black body moulding down where the seam is.

 

[JohnnyJ]

OMG, that is so cool. Those are cool old motorhomes. I can't imagine going over 100MPH in one. Too bad you didn't go with the Stripes colors.

 

[whiterhino]

My dad was the lead diemaker on the GMC motorhomes.

 

[greygoose]

My dad was the lead diemaker on the GMC motorhomes.

^^^^That's awesome!

The motorhome sounds like a beast! I can't imagine a motorhome doing a burnout.....LMAO

 

[SHARPMACHINE]

Some great conversation going on here. Bravo

I really wanna buy a camper from wrath now. lmao

 

[wrath]

I can imagine all sorts of cool stories about building these motorhomes. They are works of art and very well assembled, designed, and planned... except the dash is epic garbage. Basically anything directly between the mirrors is pure horseshit. Some of the evidence from little widgets and jigs to put them together was brilliant. The one I worked on was a "transmode" so it was an empty box before being sent to Coachmen to become a Royale (this one is side bath) but it's awesome. It makes perfect sense that so many of these are still in existence (about 75% when they're been out of production for 43 years).

It cruises nice at 80. It's actually quiet inside, the wind noise does take over at about 85 but you can still talk. One of the reasons I built a healthy motor is so it could turn at 2500rpm all day pulling a TOAD in excess of the speed limit if you had to be somewhere. Most people put a deeper final drive in it but with a healthy Cadillac 500 it has more than enough torque to do anything you want. I even detuned the shit out of it so it could survive on 83 octane gas in the heat and it has no problems. It is actually sufficiently torque infested that you can't stop it with the brakes if the engine is over 1400rpm. Torque converter hasn't enough slip and the 6 wheel disc brakes with a dual-diaphragm booster and an electric vacuum pump.

After 80, it kind of floats for lack of a better term. By 95 steering is starting to get light and every large seam in the asphalt the tires chirp. Once triple digits show up it does require your full attention because it starts getting a bit twitchy.

If you drive it like a grandpappy it gets about 13mpg (keep it under 60ish if there is a breeze). If you drive it like I built it, it gets about 10. If you are pulling something it floats between 8-10mpg.

I was originally going to paint it the Toyota Quicksand color but I was afraid it would draw too much attention that it's old. A lot of the Boomer campgrounds have age restriction on RVs so if you show up in something that looks old they turn you away. I didn't think most people would turn away something painted Jeep Sting Gray so that's what I went with. I had planned on painting the bottom half blue or something if I didn't like the giant gray turd look but the gray worked out so I left it.

I kind of wish I had put a limited slip in it because it does get stuck on dry grass sometimes. You have to pick your battles. If you left foot brake it then you can keep the spinning to a minimum when on grass or gravel. I think you'd break stuff or slide into a ditch in the rain with both tires spinning. It's actually kind of irritating because if you're not paying attention it just boils the tires, especially if there is a painted crosswalk. It's not like a modern shitbox car where you just wedge your foot between the hump and the stupid pedal at the speed you want to go and let the ECM get you there. You always have to roll into the throttle gently. The more irritating part is the kickdown, so if you glide into 2nd gear and nail the throttle it's either going to downshift into 1st and destroy the tires or slowly build RPMs (comparatively) staying in second gear.

In the picture you can see over on the left side where the driver front was barely spinning when I went over the yellow line. I actually thought the transmission was slipping and was pissed (no squealing, couldn't feel anything) because I had just put the new motor in/didn't have the dash put together yet and whenever I rolled into the throttle the transmission was slipping. I was relieved when I smelled burnt rubber when I stopped to pop the doghouse to check the trans fluid level.

It was a fun project, until it wasn't. I named it the Albatross. For example, I probably had the crankshaft in and out 15 times checking my work after the first two motors failed because I figured if paid people can screw up that bad that one guy left pliers under the intake manifold and another guy put the wrong pistons in, what am I going to do?

 

[46flattie2]

I used to have a Caddy 472 in a 1964 Jeep Gladiator PU on 35's...It was Dukes of Hazzard tire smoking fun! The torque was incredible....in the swamp pulling guys out in high range and the tranny upshifting into 2nd gear kinda fun.

 

[greygoose]

Haha, I love it. Even though it was a headache, it's a very cool project. It's something different and that's what makes it cool.

 

[JohnnyJ]

Interesting on some campgrounds not allowing older campers. I wonder if the airstream people are impacted by this too?

any chance you could put a selectable locker in it? seems overkill, but would allow engagement only when you need it. What trans does it have? (sorry if I missed it)