Author: rexplex

With a bachelors degree in history, I turn wrenches for a living. I’m most at peace when I hear the wind in the trees or the gurgle of a brook. I’m a believer in the Renaissance Man, as epitomized by DaVinci engineer, artist, soldier, statesman. As Heinlein said, “A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyse a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”

Project goals

Or What’s Fessick going to be when he grows up?

My wallet won’t support a vehicle that can’t do everything. And I mean everything.

Feature Creep

Let’s look at the airbags as an example of feature creep.

An air suspension is great for towing because it lets you have a soft luxury suspension when you’re traveling light, but add stiffness when needed for towing. You can add air at any fuel station, or even with a bicycle pump.

Brake Lights

The easiest job that requires two people.

One of my co-workers informed me that only one third of my center brake light was working.

Time for an upgrade.

Front Wiper and Washer

When I bought the truck, the left side washer nozzle didn’t work very well. It sprayed washer fluid, but when stopped, the fluid landed about 4 inches from the bottom of the glass. When moving, the fluid didn’t make it to the glass. Being that this wasn’t keeping the truck off the road, it was a low-priority repair.

After our final snow storm of the spring, the driver’s side wiper was only clearing the top and bottom third of the blade. I thought the blade had torn, so I bought new ones. Fancy, high-tech, bridgeless wipers.

This made things worse

The world’s slowest build

I’m totally in awe of those builds that just happen. Guy buys truck. Guy disassembles truck. Guy throws a ton of hardware at it. Super truck done.

This is not going to be that build.

Rules for modifying my vehicle.

Once I put on the 16 inch wheels, I was bombarded with people telling me that I was wrong to take off the 20’s.
Better acceleration.
Better fuel economy.
According to many of my coworkers, these things should be sacrificed on the altar of lifted trucks.

Upfitter panel, or don’t get ahead of yourself

Conversely, when you see a deal, grab it!

I’m a child of the eighties and as such, nothing looks more bad-ass to me than A LOT of cool switches. (Have you ever seen the space shuttle cockpit?)

At the same time, nothing looks worse than a mish-mash of unaligned switches of different styles.

Luckily, the lazy engineers in Dearborn came to my rescue.

Tow monster (part one (of many, I’m sure))

First time towing with the Excursion.

Had to rent a boom lift in order to take down a tree between the house and the garage.

Honestly, I didn’t even know it was there.

RV Shopping.

The wife and I went to the RV Show in Atlantic City this year. It’s a good thing we took her minivan, as Fessick would not have fit in the garage at the convention center.

My plan was to look at as many travel trailers as possible to find out some must have features as well as figure out what we could live without. I didn’t realize that the wife had been doing some online shopping. I was surprised when she pulled out her list and said “I want to check out these three models.”

We did agree on a few things – Continue reading “RV Shopping.”

Suspension Thoughts

The factory suspension on the Excursion was a mess the day it rolled off the factory floor.

Now that the factory sized wheels and tires are installed, the four inch “lift” on Fessick looks as bad as it drives.

And it’s not just because of the simple lift kit. The lift consists of just blocks on the rear axle and drop shackles on the front. Nothing was done to correct the defects in the factory suspension.

Continue reading “Suspension Thoughts”