The Ballad of Big Red

As in it cost you more than the pay was?

A lot of people try to avoid the northeast. Between tolls, fuel costs and traffic it doesn't pay nearly as well as other areas.

In reply to Mad_Ratel:

Exactly what Wally said. The tolls are expensive, the fuel is expensive, and while my experience with the traffic wasn't horrible, it's not great.

My company will pay back the tolls, but I don't enjoy carrying $100+ cash on me at any given time. In the end, you don't end up making much of a profit.

Yeah, I-90 through NY and Mass are outrageous with tolls. You can bypass a lot via Rte 9 through Vermont, but that is not a winter trucker-friendly route.

Just an FYI, I'm about 20min from the Chichester Camping World location. No pressures either way, but if you do find yourself out East, shoot me a message.

So I got this gargantuan:

It's a 37 ft Toy Hauler. I dislike Toy Haulers very much. Their weight is disproportionate when empty and they weigh a ton. If this was a 5th Wheel, it would probably be easier to handle, but being a bumper pull, this thing is like pulling a plow.

So anyways, the schrader valve for the left airbag got damaged and it was time to replace it because the ass end of my truck was squatting pretty decent. My rear mudflap was only about an inch from the ground and the tags for the chains were dragging. It dropped probably 4", which while not anything out of the ordinary, it was pretty obvious that the weight from the tongue was affecting the truck. I needed to fix the airbags to even out the truck and trailer.

I went to a couple hardware stores and couldn't find the air fitting I needed. I ran over to a truck accessories place and they had what I needed and gave them to me for free.

So anyways, I got home, replaced the fittings and put them somewhere easy for me to access. I need to replumb the lines at some point, but at 10 degrees outside, today was not that day. Right now I ran them between the mudflap and trailer hitch.

I then aired up the bags and checked for any leaks. These bags are also not long for this world, they are starting to dryrot, but they are holding air.

Pumped them up until my rear bumper was at 31" on the corner. That is the unloaded ride height and the truck works a lot better with a heavy trailer.

I'm going to check in the morning to see if the bags are holding air. The first picture is the truck and trailer evened out.

I had air bags on my E150 for towing my 20' enclosed. It's amazing how much difference a set of bag makes.

Yeah, I had one of the Pre-leveling system Rams with coil rear end, and it was almost ludicrous how much that truck squatted when towing anything at all. I bought a Firestone air bag system and it completely changed the truck in every way. It was how it should have been from the factory, and considering it actually did start showing up on new trucks 2 years later, pissed me off pretty fiercely.

Problem I have now is the left bag has a slow leak. Aired down almost 2 inches last night. Hopefully it's just the hose and the bag isn't leaking.

So my buddy told me I need a CB. We have transported together and sometimes it's easier to talk on the radio than to talk on the cell. It also helps to hear the truckers talking when it comes to car accidents and weather related issues.

I have been looking at the Uniden Bearcat 980. It got really good reviews out of the box and I wanted something that wasn't the standard Cobra lookalike. I had been keeping an eye on sales and they didn't really drop under $120 online and then I was waiting for a shower at a Pilot station the other day and they had it on sale for $99. It was $80 off their regular price, couldn't beat that.

I was holed up in Grand Junction, CO for the night so I went to Walmart and bought a cheapie antenna then sat in the parking lot and installed it.

So far it works great, however the cheapie antenna is exactly what it is, cheap. The range sucks on it. I can get about a mile when I should probably be getting 7. Turning up the RF Gain helped a little, but not enough. I need to get a longer whip style antenna.

In reply to SyntheticBlinkerFluid:

So what's your handle?

In reply to petegossett:

You're showing your age. I've been told the kids don't have handles anymore.

I had a K40 on my Monte and Wilsons on my towtrucks. Both worked well for a reasonable price.

Wall-e wrote: In reply to petegossett: You're showing your age. I've been told the kids don't have handles anymore.

Haha yeah that's a trend that died many years ago. Nobody really does the call signs either.

My handle 20 years ago was YellowJacket though.

In reply to SyntheticBlinkerFluid:

Mine was Alligator, but that was closer to 40-years ago.

So I was on my way to pick up a trailer and I hit a piece of road shrapnel and took out my drivers side front tire. Oh well for new tires.

So I threw the spare on and damn did it look like crap (Not that I expected it to). The rim was full of Texas dirt and it just looked nasty.

So I drove on it a while, but every time I'd walk by the tire, I could see the dry rot on it and I was a little concerned about DOT, so I did a quick fix at Walmart and bought a bottle of Bleech-White, a scrub brush, water, a spray bottle, and some tire shine. It ended up looking much better:

However, it did not take away from the fact that the tire was still dry rotted, 50% used, out of balance and I was not ready to drive another 1000 miles on it. I already pushed my luck with the tire. So, I stopped at a Discount Tire company today and had them throw on their cheapest highway tire. Ended up with a Corsa Highway Terrain. $126 out the door.

Now you're probably asking, "What about your original tire?" Well, I actually have a spare one waiting for me at home. So this one will go back up underneath soon enough.

If you have the space, I'd look into carrying two spares. It's really nice knowing if you get a flat in the middle of nowhere that you didn't just put your only backup on the vehicle, and it's a lifesaver when you hit that 2x4 that takes out two tires at once.

In reply to Gaunt596:

For sure. I'm trying to figure that one out. Now that I have a fuel tank and will be acquiring a 5th Wheel some time soon, along with the addition of a real tool box, I'm going to be limited on bed space.

Got my new tire put on and I decided to give the spare a quick coat of Rustoleum before I put it back up in its hole.

I was also confused by this wheel because it did not look like anything GM has had for spare tire wheels in the last decade. Lo and Behold, it has a Pentastar stamped in the rim. I have a damn wheel off a Ram. Check another box for the junkyard parts that were thrown on this poor truck. At least it fits.

So I haven’t updated in a while. Now that the board allows us to upload pictures, this should make updates easier. 

First off, I pulled the backseat out and built a bed. Unfortunately I am 6’2” and I have to lay diagonally in order to be comfortable, but it’s better than sleeping on a seat. My carpentry skills are slim to none, so I called on a friend to help me. 

It’s worked great so far. I actually just bought another foam pad this week and now I have 6” of memory foam. The under seat storage has been very handy. 

Current odo reading: 474,000 miles. 

I really hate that all my pictures disappeared because of whatever 

Anyways, my left side airbag blew out from old age. They were pretty dry rotted. Sometime before Christmas I picked up a set of Air Bags with an actual compressor from Airslamit. It was a fairly easy install. It came with all the hardware, compressor, lines, purge valve, and a gauge. 

Here’s the culprit airbag. You can see the patch attempt I made. 

It’s great to have air bags again. It was a hard couple months without them. Those are one of those things that you don’t realize how much difference they make once you have them.

Very nice, wish I has the gauge/filler panel.

So tonight I bought a new battery box for my deep cycle battery. We use batteries for the breakaway brakes on the trailers while transporting. 

I had a battery box, but I lost the lid a while ago. This time around, I decided to put connections on the outside of the box. I already had some 6 gauge battery cables, so I bought some stainless hardware and went to town. The only this about this box was that it had vent holes in the top for some reason, so I filled them with silicone to keep water out. 

Oh I also ran my phone over with my truck. It was face down in the gravel and somehow it didn’t damage the phone except for a faint white spot on the screen now. 

FYI, I had pm'd you about a load.  I eventually passed on the opportunity. I figured you may never check your email...

In reply to Mad_Ratel :

Oh damn, sorry about that. The forum is linked to my old Yahoo account, which I do check from time to time, but I know for a fact that the PMs and Yahoo don’t mix and I never receive them. I need to see if I can change that to a different email. 

If you ever want to get ahold of me again, my email is my screen name @gmail.com. 

Well the other thing I took care of yesterday was a new 7-Pin connector. I had replaced the one that was on the truck last year due to a shoddy rewiring job someone did on the harness on the back of the truck. The original one was most likely removed for the flatbed I speculate this truck had. 

Anyways, the one that I had installed decided to crack and break off the lid in the middle of Sub-Zero North Dakota during the winter. I made a sorry attempt at JB Welding it, but it didn’t hold. I resorted to wrapping the pigtail on the trailer with a bungee cord attached to my rear bumper. The problem with that, is Jayco brand trailers use some E36 M3ty brand of wiring that doesn’t like to stay in the 7-Pin socket no matter what, so I needed a new socket.