Toyota is the brand the hosts focus on, framing the show as “Toyota based off road” and discussing “wrenching on Toyota.” That indicates the vehicles and parts they’re likely to be discussing are Toyota-based.
The Ford Expedition is a large SUV that can fit more passengers and cargo than a smaller vehicle. It’s often used for trips where you need space and comfort, including outdoor adventures. In the podcast, it’s mentioned in connection with expedition-style travel.
“Prepping” is used as the core theme for the upcoming discussion—getting ready for the trip by planning and preparing gear and tasks. It’s a structural topic marker for what listeners should expect next.
They’re talking about a specific off-road light product called the Divos Light Ranger 500. They’re offering a discount code to people who sign up by a certain deadline.
The Ford Ranger is a pickup truck, meaning it has a cargo bed for hauling things. It’s commonly used for off-road trips because it’s designed to handle rough roads and trails. In the podcast, it’s mentioned in connection with a Ranger-focused group or event.
The Bugatti Divo is an extremely expensive, very fast sports car designed mainly for performance driving. It’s not an off-road vehicle; it’s built for speed and handling on paved roads or tracks. The podcast mentions it as part of a themed group or event reference.
In off-road communities, a “rig” usually means a specific vehicle setup used for trails—often including suspension, tires, recovery gear, and other modifications. Here, they’re asking listeners to share photos and details of their own builds.
They’re setting things up like a forum, meaning you can start a topic and keep discussing it. It helps people find and follow conversations about the same vehicle.
“I-Rate 4x4” is where people sign up for the different membership tiers. They’re also talking about whether it can connect with their other sign-up options.
They’re talking about a specific fire extinguisher brand/product called Russo. The giveaway is for one of those extinguishers, which is useful to have on a trail in case of a fire.
Concept
giveaway tier
A “giveaway tier” is just the level of membership you’re on. They’re saying you need the right level to be entered for the prize, and the gift box includes it.
PSI is a measure of pressure. They’re saying the extinguisher’s container is pressurized to around 190 PSI, so the powder inside is constantly being pushed down and ready to discharge.
Some fire extinguishers use powder to smother a fire. If the powder shifts or compacts inside the bottle while the vehicle is bouncing, it can affect how the extinguisher works.
An auger is a spiral “drill” bit/tool that you twist into the ground. Off-roaders use it to dig holes or make space for things like anchors so recovery gear can be set up.
Brand
Rousseau's
“Rousseau's” sounds like the brand or shop the hosts are talking about for a specific fire extinguisher setup. They’re basically saying it costs more, but they think it’s worth it.
“Two and a half pound” is how much stuff is inside the extinguisher. More inside usually means you can spray for longer or fight the fire more effectively.
A reload kit is a service package that lets you refill or re-charge a fire extinguisher after discharge. The hosts are describing carrying a reload kit so you can put the extinguisher back into action quickly during an extended incident.
Car seats are the child safety seats that keep kids buckled in while you drive. In a crash or fire, being able to reach and remove a child quickly matters a lot.
A rock crawler is an off-road vehicle meant to go over rocks slowly and carefully. It’s built to keep traction so it can crawl over obstacles instead of blasting through.
An overlanding vehicle is a truck/SUV used for long trips in remote places, usually with lots of gear. In an emergency, the extra stuff inside can make it harder to get people out quickly.
Term
compaction
Here, “compaction” means things getting squeezed or blocked so fast that the extinguisher can’t reach the fire properly. They’re saying that can reduce how much of the extinguisher actually helps.
“Four by four” means the vehicle drives all four wheels. The hosts are saying that in these vehicles, the fire situation can get bad fast, and the extinguisher may not deliver all its contents effectively.
Elevation can change how cold it gets. If you go higher up, it often gets colder, so you need to plan for that when camping.
Concept
100 miles up and then 100 miles out and then 100 miles down
This describes a route-planning approach for a multi-day off-road loop: breaking the trip into legs (up/out/down/around) to estimate daily distance and fuel/gear needs. Even without naming specific trails, the structure helps them think about logistics and how far they can realistically go before needing to return.
Concept
100 mile radius
They’re talking about the area around where they start—about 100 miles out. The idea is to guess what the weather will be like in that general zone so they can plan for the trip.
The hosts pivot to the episode’s theme of preparation for an off-road trip. They’re emphasizing that the show doesn’t give away every detail, so the real question is how well you can plan and get ready ahead of time.
Concept
packing and clothes stuff
They’re saying what they pack (clothes and personal items) matters, but it’s not their biggest worry. For off-roading, they’re more focused on making sure the vehicle is sorted out.
Term
vehicles I've offered to come over and help you
This is about hands-on vehicle assistance during prep—essentially troubleshooting and getting the rig ready before the trip. While they don’t name specific systems here, it’s a reminder that off-road prep often involves real mechanical work and coordination.
Concept
fix this
They’re saying they had something that needed fixing before they could go. For off-roading, it’s important to get problems solved ahead of time so you don’t get stuck.
GoPro is a brand of rugged cameras people use for action sports and outdoor trips. They’re talking about which GoPro model to buy so they can film themselves better.
This is a way to record video of yourself. It usually means you can see yourself on a screen while you’re filming, so framing is easier.
Term
4k
4K is a video resolution standard meaning the image has roughly 4,000 pixels across the width, producing sharper detail than lower resolutions. The hosts decide to avoid older cameras that don’t shoot 4K because they want higher-quality footage.
It’s a microphone that sends your voice wirelessly, so you don’t have to stay tied to one spot. That makes it easier to record interviews or talk while walking around at an event.
DJI is a consumer electronics brand best known for drones, and it also makes wireless audio gear used for video and podcast production. Mentioning “DJI mics” suggests they already have a wireless microphone setup from DJI that will cover their event audio needs.
“Wheeling” means taking an off-road vehicle on tough trails and obstacles. It’s basically the off-road version of “going for a drive,” but on harder terrain.
Axles are the shafts that transmit power from the drivetrain to the wheels, and they also help locate the wheels’ movement relative to the suspension. In off-roading, “built these axles myself” implies custom or upgraded axle components for strength and durability on rough trails.
A “creeper” is about going super slow and controlling the vehicle precisely. Off-roaders use it when crawling over rocks or obstacles where you can’t just drive normally.
Concept
Kermit vehicle
“Kermit” sounds like a nickname for one of their off-road trucks/vehicles. It’s likely the name they give to a specific build they use for wheeling.
They’re talking about saved settings for their laser. Instead of dialing everything in every time, they pick a preset so the laser works the same way each run.
They’re using an “ultra swing” setup to help carry a spare tire. They don’t have a good storage/carry solution on their vehicle, so this accessory solves that.
They’re talking about a timed/required exercise where you swap a flat tire for a spare. The point is to be able to do it quickly and correctly when you’re out on the trail.
A bumper is the sturdy part on the front or back of the truck/SUV that helps protect it. They’re worried their bumper might get damaged because it has to hold a heavy spare tire.
“37-inch” means the spare tire is very large. Bigger tires are heavier and create more leverage, so the bumper or mount has to be strong enough to handle it.
“Baja” is shorthand for a very rough off-road trip/race environment. They’re using it to say their bumper took a lot of damage in that kind of terrain.
Term
40 on heavier wheels
This sounds like a reference to running even larger/heavier wheel-and-tire setups (likely a larger tire size or increased mass). Heavier wheels increase the forces on the spare carrier, making secure mounting and impact durability more important.
Ratchet straps are strong straps you tighten with a ratcheting mechanism. They’re thinking about using them to keep the spare tire from shifting while driving off-road.
The hosts discuss giving their off-road vehicles character-based nicknames (e.g., Shrek/Fiona/Kermit/Lord Farquad). While not technical, it’s a recurring off-road community theme: personality branding for rigs and how owners talk about them.
Ditch lights are extra headlights you add to help you see the sides of the road/trail better. They’re usually mounted low so they shine where the ground drops off or where obstacles are near the edges.
They’re talking about a 2005 Toyota 4Runner, which is the vehicle they’re trying to mount the lights on. Mounting brackets often need to match the exact year/model so they line up correctly.
The hood hinge is what lets your hood swing up and down. They’re saying they attached the brackets using the bolts that already hold the hood/hinge in place.
Steer knuckles are parts that help turn the wheels. If you mount lights near them, you have to make sure the lights don’t interfere with steering or suspension travel.
Chase lights are extra lights you add so you can see what’s behind (or around) your vehicle. People use them for night driving and for setting up camp.
An enclosed trailer is a covered trailer that protects the vehicle during transport. If your vehicle is tall or wide, you may need to remove parts like roof racks to make it fit.
A deck-over trailer is an open trailer where the vehicle sits on a lower platform. It’s usually easier to load and doesn’t fully enclose the vehicle like an enclosed trailer.
3D printing is like making a part by building it up in thin layers from a computer design. Here they’re thinking about printing small pieces to help mount the lights/whips.
PLA is a type of plastic used in many 3D printers. It’s usually pretty easy to print, but it can get soft if it gets hot or if the part has to handle a lot of force.
“Whips” here are tall light/fixture mounts that stick out to help you see more. They’re figuring out where to bolt them on and how to run the wires safely.
A rear swing-out is a hinged rear section that swings open. If you mount lights on it, you have to make sure the wiring can flex and won’t get damaged when the door swings.
The headliner is the fabric/plastic panel on the inside ceiling. They’re saying they’d have to take it down to run wires cleanly, which is doable but not quick.
L brackets are small metal brackets that look like an “L.” They’re often used to bolt things down quickly and securely—here, to mount the whips/lights.
“Gatekeeper” sounds like the name of a specific mounting kit or bracket they’re installing. It’s not a generic car part name, so it likely refers to a particular accessory setup.
Steer arms are parts that help turn the wheels by transferring movement from the steering system. If you remove them, you need to put them back correctly so the steering stays aligned and safe.
This is a fan that cools the radiator, but instead of being driven by the engine, it runs on electricity. It usually turns on automatically when the engine gets hot.
This is a radiator fan that’s powered by the engine itself, usually through a belt. It tends to run based on engine operation rather than a separate electrical control system.
A compressor is the pump that builds air pressure for an air-based system on the vehicle. In off-road setups, that air pressure can control things like lockers.
These are the electrical parts that control whether a differential locker is engaged. When they get power, they help route air pressure to lock the wheels together.
Labeling wiring in an engine bay is a troubleshooting and maintenance practice that helps identify each circuit and connection quickly. In complex off-road builds with many accessories, clear labeling reduces the time needed to diagnose faults and prevents miswiring during future work.
Heat shrink tubing is a protective sleeve that shrinks tightly over wiring when heated, helping insulate and protect connections. It’s often used with printed labels, but the speaker notes a readability tradeoff depending on how the label is oriented.
Wire “gauge” is basically how thick the wire is. A 14-gauge wire is on the smaller side, so it can be tougher to label and visually track in an engine bay.
The engine bay is the space under the hood where the engine lives. In this case, they’re talking about how hot that area gets and whether it could ruin thermal labels.
A thermal label is made to change color when it gets hot. That’s why it can be affected by heat and sometimes sunlight over time.
Term
UV
UV is the part of sunlight that can fade or damage materials. Here, they’re saying sunlight can mess with thermal labels even if they’re covered with tape.
SwitchPro is an aftermarket control box for off-road accessories. If something acts up, it can “soft reset” by restarting power, instead of you having to hunt for a blown fuse.
LIVE
Welcome one welcome all to the snail trail four by four podcast if you like going off
roading into it is wrenching on Toyota's camping into it is maybe even poking a little bit
of fun at Toyota's and of course hearing about how fantastic holy shit a lot of stuff
and photos is. Then this is the podcast for you. That's right. Ladies and germs. My name
is Tyler joining me for another episode of snail trail four by four, the podcast, the
greatest off roading Toyota based off road four by four podcast in Northern California.
More specifically this kind of upper central region of Sacramento is that's that's that's
us. The welcome to the podcast. If everybody out there is that's the that's the I challenge
the top podcast of that category. I challenge somebody to contest with us. How you doing
man? Good. How are you doing? Pretty good. Nice. Yeah, I got I got a lot done this weekend.
I know I didn't. We're pretty much going to talk about you. Yay. It's my favorite kind
of episode. Yeah, we'll we'll dig into that a little bit. But let's see. We are here for
Thursday. Yep. Yep. We leave tomorrow. Yeah. Are you ready? No, I'm not not ready. I
figure that's going to be almost half of this discussion. Yeah. So we've got we're taking
off Friday to go to on our trail hero X adventure trail hero expeditions. Yeah. Number two of
these. I haven't even finished watching the series yet. So I've got to have one more episode
to go. I watched it all. Did you know? Oh, sorry, Rich. Yeah. And it's fun, Brian. It's
pretty good. But yeah, I just haven't I just don't have the time. I seem to sit down at
lunch and I'll try to watch one of them. There are 23 minutes. So it's not too bad. That's
not too bad. Yeah. Set up for TV for half an hour TV segment. So it's pretty easy to get
through one once you sit that down. But most of the time, I'll like grab my lunch and I'll
go upstairs and work at the computer and eat lunch. You know, so I just had to get my mental
bearing of like, no, I'm going to plant myself on the couch and watch TV while I got you.
But yeah. So anyways, I think a lot of our chat today is going to be talking about prepping
and getting ready and what we need to do and what we've done for that. But before we get
to any of that, we have a lot of stuff ending this month. We do today. It is all the crap
it is today. Yeah. So if you're listening to this on the day this airs, this a whole bunch
of stuff is coming due. Let's see. This is the last day for the Divos Light Ranger 500 group
by going on when we're probably on the road. We're either going to call Rich or Spencer,
one of the Colin, one of them guys over there and finalize everything. They gave us a specific
discount code. And so I think the gist is that we're just going to give the people that have
reached out to us the discount code and then they can go online and buy what they want.
But we'll finalize that with them to make sure that's how everything's going to go.
So if you haven't yet, you need to give us your information about how many
are interested in. Actually, it doesn't really matter how many you're interested in
now because we've blown past the 25 that we need to sell. We're over 100. We have tallied over
100. Wow. Yeah. That's impressive. Great job, everybody. It is a really cool light. You guys
are really going to be stoked on these lights, but that's pretty cool. It's fun for me and Jimmy to
kind of bring vendors and the listeners together in a way and to see this much positivity behind
a product and a company from the listeners is pretty freaking cool. So yeah. Yeah. So really,
we just need your name and email address. So if you are interested in getting one, we can give
you that discount code if that's how it's all going to work. Yeah. So and you need to let us know by
when we're on the road pretty much on Friday because that's when we're probably going to shoot
out a mass email to let everybody know. And if you haven't told us one way or another, then
you're out of luck. Yeah. Let's see. I think kind of slightly changing gears. I thought the
discount code was a perfect way to work on this. The discord. Yeah, it worked great. It worked
out perfect. I've really been enjoying the discord. Me too. I keep looking over there.
We're not running a camera. I love the conversations that are going on the
discord. It's fun to see everybody's pictures of stuff coming through the conversations that
are happening. There's a lot of cool questions that are getting a questions and answers for.
I'm pretty happy with how that's running right now. Right? Yeah. We've changed the listeners rig
set up so that if you're going to post and just tell us your name and send us a photo of your rig
or talk a little bit about it, we have a category for that. But now we've made it more like a forum.
Yeah. And so you can like, if you want to start a thread about your rig and talk about everything
you're doing to it or showing people what you're up to, you can do that too. So that's pretty neat.
So that was a question or a comment that people have made about maybe you can implement this or
maybe we'll create new threads or set it up one way or another. And so yeah, because you guys
asked about it, we have modified it to create that. So it's pretty a fun thing. And it was a great way
to keep track of all the Devo stuff that's going on. So that worked out well. Nice.
All right. So, well, anyway, if you want to get into the Discord, there's a link down in the
description. You can go over there, join us, join us, chat with us, hang out with us. It's a lot
of fun. A lot of conversations happening. So it's pretty neat. Let's see. What else is happening?
We've got gift boxes coming to you and sad news about the gift boxes and our bad, I guess. I
looked it up to try to find, okay, I should be like, I haven't gotten any shipping notifications.
When's it shipping? I need some information. They updated shipping. It's not going to ship
out now until May 1st. Oh, bummer. So we're going to be gone. We're going to be gone,
which means we aren't, I'm not going to be able to get them done. Even if, I mean, if they arrive
today, Tuesday, when we're recording this, maybe Wednesday, I could have arranged to get them all
out in time. But yeah, we're going to be gone now. So unfortunately, so we're, you're still getting
your gift boxes. Yeah, 100%. It's just going to be really late. This is the first time we've
missed the deadline in seven years or maybe six years, whenever we started the gift box thing.
Was the first one in November? I don't remember. I want to say it was. I want to say it's around
Jimmy's month. Yeah. So first time we've been late before, late in the month, but we have never been
in a different, it missed the month completely. So our bad, everything's on order. Everything's
ready to go as soon as the t-shirts show up and then we'll package everything. I think they're,
I think they're coming to my house. So even if they showed up here, we couldn't tell MF or Ben
to start packing things up. Yeah. Anyway, so yeah, so bad news about that, but gift box tier is closing
today. So if you want to get into the gift box tier, you need to sign up today, April 30th to get in.
It's your last chance for six months. You don't sign up today or you're not in the gift box tier,
then you have to wait until November, if you want, or October, excuse me, if you want to get back
into the gift box tier. Also, let's talk about changing spots real quick. If you're changing any
tiers, this canceling your old tier falls upon your responsibility. So you need to log into
your PayPal account. You need to go over to your subscriptions and you need to cancel the tier that
you're no longer interested in. Signing up for the tiers is all done on I-Rate 4x4. Right now,
we might move some of that stuff to the Discord, just the easy ones. So you can sign up there.
I'm not sure if we can sync the two of them together. If it's PayPal based, we'll see. I mean,
it's all on their end, right? So in theory, it should work, but we'll figure that out
a little later. But yeah, so if you're signing up, you need to go over to I-Rate 4x4 or go down to
the watch list and then discuss sections, nail trail, 4x4 podcast and all your sign up options
are there. So you can sign up for the $5, $10 or $20 tiers. Cool. Yep. Yep. Is that ends today?
That ends today. We'll give boxes and today you can sign up for anything, giveaways and
everything else we're doing at any point in time. This month's giveaway was two gift boxes.
Correct. So we'll get the winners of that and those items shipped out. When do we get back
from Trail Herox? We've got this from Matt Gardner and he's gotten his gift box. Okay.
That was for Robert Lutz, which already, supposedly Devo sent it out to him already.
Oh, that's right. That's right. This one's ours. That one's ours. Thank you.
Yep. Well, we're going to, we need to bring that on the trip so that we could, I want to make a
reel about it. We need to, yeah, we need to have a fun little content in the mansion with it.
Correct. Yeah. I think that's good. So four dudes, one tent, it'll be great.
Yeah. I'm excited. It's a really big tent though. I'm hoping none of them snore. That's my,
I'm considering bringing the hammock just in case. Fair. I'm going to bring some of your plugs.
Yeah. So let's see anything else. I mean, we've got reviews that we could talk about.
Just go over to Apple podcast, leave us a review. Once you leave us a review, you get entered for
life or for as long as we're going to do this on some giveaways that we end up doing,
we're trying to get to a thousand reviews total, but we've got a few steps before we can get there.
So once we get to 800 reviews, which is coming up pretty quick, maybe when we get back,
we'll actually be there. We might. Yeah. But once we get to 800 reviews,
we're giving away an on ex elite membership. Once we get to 850, we're doing another on
ex elite membership. And then when we get to 900 reviews, we're doing $900 of more flight gear.
At least at, yeah, 900 plus dollars of more flight gear for you guys. And yeah,
and then we'll see what we can do for once we get to that thousand review mark. Yeah.
So that'll be fun. Yep. Do a thousand dollars in snail armor products. Yeah.
Do that. You just get one panel five times. Yeah. You can get to all your friends. Yeah.
Cool, man. So let's see anything else going on that's ending at the end of the month here.
No, but we've got something that's beginning at the end of the month here.
Beginning at the end. Yes. It's like a Harry Potter reference. Yeah. We got next month's giveaway.
Oh, perfect. What's next month's giveaway? You know what it is. Oh, oh, that's right.
We have Braden's fried right now. Yeah. Next month, you guys already heard the interview
with Russo fire extinguisher and they, hey, I've already been like contacted by
quite a few listeners saying that was amazing. I ordered two. I was like, geez, that's awesome.
So, yeah, we have a two and a half pound Russo fire extinguisher here at the studio ready to
give away to somebody in the month of May. So the month of May, that'll be our monthly giveaway.
And same thing. If you want to get signed up, go to IRA four by four by the end of the month.
Make sure you're signed up for the giveaway tier. If you're signed up for the gift box
here, it's included. So hopefully you got that done during April here.
But if you didn't sign up for anything, you're like, I really want a chance to win a Russo fire
extinguisher. Go to IRA four by four and get signed up for that giveaway tier before the end
of the month. And then like Jimmy said, we're going to try and also make signups available
on the discord. So we might have that live by the end of the month. I don't know for sure because
we're going to be gone for half of the month. So we'll see how that works out.
But they're pretty freaking rad. Did you put that the video a link to the video of the side
by side of the show notes? Yep. Perfect. I've been sending that to people. It's an impressive video.
So yeah, Russo really cool fire extinguishers. I think that they really are the perfect
solution and implementation for anti fire in a vehicle. Oh, 100%.
So I really don't, it's awesome. I have them in all of the more flight vehicles and my personal
vehicles now and throughout the warehouse. I think I've got, I think I did the count. I have like
nine or 10 of them now. Well, he sold me when we were talking about the fire extinguisher
bouncing around in the rig. Oh yeah. Right. And I'm like, isn't that just like shaking it up?
Like, isn't that what you should be doing? You know, like if you don't have it in a carrier,
you know, and it's literally moving around. And the way he explained the fact that
it's the inside that bottle is pressurized to like 190 PSI, I think he said. And so it's
constantly pushing down on the powder that's inside the bottle. And when you jostle things around,
it's just letting it settle or it's compacting it and settling it better. I'm saying it's so
worse than the way that he described it. But what I was envisioning is like you have some small rocks
and you have sand, right? And when you start shaking the jar around, it all compacts and
becomes finer and like tighter together. And so, and then eventually it can, it's only so tight.
So then it just becomes rock hard. And that's what I was envisioning when he was explaining it.
And I just totally made sense that like you, if you have this in your rig and it's bouncing around,
mounted or unmounted, you're just making it compact faster. And their system,
since it's not under pressure, doesn't really ever compact. And it has an auger.
And as the auger, if you did have any issues or concerns or whatever, you know, maybe it's one
of those things that's like, okay, I'm going on a wheeling trip. I just got to spin the auger a
few times, make sure that thing is loose and we're going to be good to go. Yeah. So that after
that hearing all that, I'm like, okay, like, yeah, I need to get one of these in my rig.
Yeah. The big thing that I've talked with people about when I, when talking about the
Rousseau's is that everybody says, well, they're too expensive. They're way,
they're way more expensive than a normal fire extinguisher. I'm like, no, it's not.
Yeah. Dude, we have how much money I did. I kind of mentally added up all the receipts in Kermit
when I was getting ready to sell them. I'm pretty sure I've gotten $75,000, $80,000 in Kermit.
Wow. And I'm like, it's $150 to make sure Kermit doesn't burn down. Like, yeah,
you can spend $60 and get a decent fire extinguisher. But because of what we just
talked about, the powder compacting in there, you don't know if that's going to fire off
in a year, in a year, one year, six months down the road. You should replace it or get it service.
Yeah. Yeah. Like that's an extra $90 from a normal, what a quote unquote normal
traditional fire extinguisher, an extra 90 bucks on top of that to make sure your fire
extinguisher actually fires off and saves your $20,000 to $100,000 vehicle. Like that's cheap.
That's so cheap. So is it the two and a half pounds, roughly 150? I want to say it's a 120.
Okay. 125 somewhere around there. And then we're getting a 25% off discount for this month.
Yeah. I think the, the, it brings the two and a half pound down to like a hundred bucks.
Yeah. So, so you go at $40 more, right? $40 more for something that is good for 18 years.
Yes. Compared to one year. And you can use it multiple times in one go, right? If you just
carry the reload kit with you too, you can extend your, expand, expand, expand, expand your two
and a half pound of extinguisher, put a reload kit in it within a minute and you're back fighting
the same fire with another fire extinguisher, right? But the same fire extinguisher, right?
Yeah, sure. So more powder, another batch of powder with the same fire extinguisher.
Yeah. It's, it's a no brainer in my opinion. So, well, I was just going to do the,
the basic math, right? If, if using the discount code that we have for 25% brings it down to
roughly about a hundred bucks. If you go buy a cheap fire extinguisher, it's probably about,
let's say 50 bucks. Yeah. Right. So that last one year. So in theory, you're supposed to get
it serviced every year. If it's in your four by four rig, maybe let's say, let's just say every
two years. Okay. So and he said, if you are, go to a place and you have a bunch of fire
extinguishers, it's 20, roughly about $20 to do it. So let's, I'm going to keep everything on the
cheap. So 50 bucks for a fire extinguisher, 20 bucks to get it serviced, but you're doing
that every two years. So by year, what was it about six years in, so 50 plus 90 bucks in one year,
90 bucks, if you have two extinguishers or so in two years, well, one extinguisher per vehicle,
50 bucks, let's say. Okay. And then in two years, you spend another 20 bucks. So you have to 70 bucks.
So another two years, you're at 90 bucks. Another two years are over 110. 110. Yeah. Right.
And that is two, four, six years later. So seven years total after, because in theory,
you bought the first one, right? Or you went two years. So six to eight years and you matched the
price of the fire extinguisher, the Russo one. If you're doing the service longer than you should
have been, and it's the cheapest options, right? I give you a super cheap fire extinguisher and
probably service pricing that you're not going to get. So you're really looking at if you should
do it the way that you should do, you're probably buying somewhere at $50, $60 extinguisher. And
the next year is probably like 30 bucks for you to get the service done. You're at $90 already.
Yep. And one in two years, you've, you've saved the cost of getting a Russo.
Right. Yeah. It's a, it's really a no brainer, which, and for the safety of your vehicle
and your family and your family, say, if you've got kids in car seats, right?
Dude, how quickly are you going to be able to get your kid out of a car seat from a rock crawler
or an overlanding vehicle, whatever you have a bunch of shit everywhere?
But if there's a, if there's an out of control fire going on, right? Yeah.
Especially if you have a two door, can you imagine? Yeah, man, right?
Because I was just thinking about it because Bobcat's two door back seats and that,
would I tell the mini assistant to like crawl out the back window? Like in the case of a major
emergency like that, like, I don't know, like, or I'd have to have the assistant possibly hop
out and then move the seat forward and then help the mini assistant out. So yeah, it's just a really
kind of interesting order of operations to figure that out where if you have the right fire
extinguisher, they're still figuring out how to get out, but then you're fighting the fire.
Yeah. Where worst case scenarios, you're, they're figuring out how to get out and you're trying
to fight the fire, but your fire extinguisher is not working. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, it's really
a no brainer, you know, and the way, and I'm just, it's going back to me as just talking about the
compaction and how it, how fast it, and how, how bad it could be. It just was really a no brainer.
It's like, okay, yeah, I, these are, this is the solution I need. Yep. And with a traditional fire
extinguisher that because that compaction happens so fast in four by four vehicles,
you know, even if your extinguisher fires off, it may only fire off 50%
Yeah. Of the powder because the other 50% is compact that it can't make it up the tube, right?
So it's just, it's, yeah, there, it's, it's a no brainer. It's, it is very cheap. It's very
cheap insurance and you'll be super happy you have them. Yep. Yep. I mean, we're kind of beating
a little dead horse, but if you haven't listened to the episode yet, go listen to the episode.
Go listen to the episode. I've had numerous people message me and just being like,
that was probably one of the best episodes you guys have ever done.
Very cool. Yeah. And, and we knew like, we kind of talked about it in the intro and stuff. We're
like, this is a super important episode. But we, I didn't realize it was going to have that
amount of impact on people that it really did. So it was, it was really a great episode.
I messaged Chris mean street racing. I was like, did you hear your shout out?
He's like, oh no, I guess I haven't gotten to it yet.
I was like, all right, Chris, bring it on. Good. Yeah. All right. I think that's it.
Sweet. That's, so that's the good way for me. Make sure you guys get signed up before the end
of the month there. Anything else before we dive into everything going on?
Yeah. I don't think so. Yeah. We just, there's a lot of stuff ending this month and there's
some stuff beginning. So yeah, let's be present and be aware of what's happening.
Yep. Sweet. We'll take quick break then. You guys can work on ingesting all that stuff going on
and figuring out what you need to do to make sure that you don't miss out on opportunities as
listeners. And we'll be right on back with prepping for trail hero X.
Are you stuck inside? Are you not sure where you want to go to explore? We'll open the Onyx
Offroad app. It shows you all the trails around you and it tells you their difficulty. Now you
can quickly search out your next adventure or plan your next trip. Download Onyx Offroad from
the app store Onyx Offroad built for the adventure.
Welcome back. This is Thursday's episode. So we get to talk about prep. Hashtag KOH prep.
All right. So I have a lot of shit. Yeah, you do. That I did over the weekend.
What were you up to this weekend? You know, I've been rattling my brain trying to figure
that out. And I was like, I need to write this stuff down. Was it one of those weekends where
you're like, I was busy all weekend, but shit. I can't remember anything. Pretty much. Okay. Yeah.
But so there was a lot of little things going on with the family and that took a ton of time up.
The assistant's dad was in town. He lives a few hours out of town. Where does he live?
Why Rika? He lives out in Why Rika. Okay. And so he was down in town. So we had a family dinner
like on Friday night. Something was happening on Saturday or on Thursday. And so I had to
cancel on husband. And then he was like, well, that works. I'm in Georgia.
And so I was like, oh yeah, you told me about that. And I was like, damn it,
I should have got Richard from Atlanta together with husband while he was over there.
But that would have been super funny because I think he was out. So husband was at a conference
in, I believe in Atlanta. Oh, wow. Yeah. So that would have been pretty funny. I mean,
if you're going to Georgia for a conference, you're probably going to Atlanta.
Atlanta is a crazy big city. I just don't think people realize it. I think it has the busiest
airport in the United States. I think that is correct. I think because Atlanta is,
I think Delta's main hub. Like that's where their corporate area is. Delta's not Southwest. It's
Delta United. One of them. It's Delta. Okay. Because that's what I always flew when I'm a
previous life. So yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, I think it's that or New York, right? And I think
they have a train under the airport that takes you to all the different terminals.
It's like three, four miles long. So yeah, it's, yeah, it's crazy. Anyways, so I don't,
and I don't remember what, what it was that stopped me from, that prevented me from doing it. But I
think it was like the mini assistant needed to be picked up or something. You know, there's just a
lot of life that happened. That, and then there was just some KOH prep, THC prep, THX prep.
One of those. What kind of eventually? Yeah, one of them. Yeah. So I just started, you know,
mentally cataloging everything that I needed to do and stuff like that.
Started pulling out stuff out of the bins that I'm going to bring and organizing things. I
started, I sent a photo to the group of like all the mattresses that I've been, I was thinking
about bringing and stuff. I'm glad you got the cuddle mattress in there. So yeah. So that photo
didn't include the one I'm thinking about bringing. So okay. Nice. But yeah, I had like two camping
mattresses, like backpacking ones, you know, so they're like loft up to a little, maybe two
inches or something like that. But none of them, the blue one, the one that the assistant says
looks like a coffin, doesn't hold air. It's like, it's really bad leaking. My yellow one that I
normally use when I go backpacking, my most recent one seems to be leaking air, definitely
lost pressure. The big kind of blow up air mattress held air was totally fine. But I'm
thinking about bringing one of the deep sleeps that I got. It's smaller than, it blows up smaller
than the air mattress, but it does not compact as much as the air mattress. So I wanted to kind of
talk things over with you about just sort of space and how things are. I know that we're
sort of concerned about space. So I'm kind of, I don't know, I'm kind of leaning one way or the
other on it. I would like to bring it because I think it has a really good R value and I'm
concerned about if I bring the air mattress, then I need to bring a blanket to get a better
insulation from the ground because it doesn't really have that great of insulation where the
deep sleep does, but the air mattress folds up and rolls up about half the size as the deep
sleep does because the deep sleep has the, it's like foam on the inside. That's what gives it
the great R value. And so it's like, sleep well, have an easy sleep or bring something that I
need to bring another blanket or a layer to, to get a good sleep. So I don't know. I'm not sure
what to do. And then if somebody is snoring and I want to go into the hammock, then I don't even
have a good base layer underneath the hammock for that situation if it's cold. So, and a lot of it
comes down to like, we don't know the temperature. Like we can have an idea of like, okay, let's say,
because we're starting a Mesquite Nevada. So we can use Mesquite Nevada sort of as a reference
point. Like what's the weather going to be for the next week? It's probably going to, I'm guessing
because I haven't looked it up, but I'm assuming it's going to be 70s during the day and 50s,
40s at night. And that's kind of what we're going to have throughout the whole time
because we're not going to go terribly far from there, but we might go up in elevation
or we might drop in elevation. We were probably going to be in the desert scenario. So you can
expect it to be cold. Hopefully, fingers crossed, we have good weather and it doesn't rain or snow
on us. So it's kind of this weird, like I don't know what I'm getting myself into weather wise.
So you kind of have to bring appropriate clothes for like almost every situation,
but you don't want to pack too much. So that's sort of why I'm leaning towards the deep sleep
mattress, because it's like, if it's cold, I'm going to be great. If it's not cold,
then I just packed a big mattress. Yeah. Yeah. We're not sure yet, right? That's
we know that we're starting in Mesquite Nevada and we're traveling about 100 miles per day
for five days. So the furthest we can get out would be two to 300 miles because we have to
come back, right? Yeah. So my guess is, and we're going to, and I doubt we're going like straight
away and back. They said we were going to be touching three states, right? So I would imagine
we're going to be starting in Nevada, going into Utah and then down to Arizona or something, right?
Or the other way, right? Right. I imagine we're doing about 150 miles roughly away from Mesquite,
but we're going to go like 100 miles up and then 100 miles out and then 100 miles down and then
100 miles around and then 100 miles back. That's my guess. So I think if we kind of used Mesquite
Nevada as the reference point and said, what's our weather look like in 100 mile radius from there,
I think we'll get a pretty decent idea. Yeah. I agree. But yeah, that's kind of one of the
things that's fun about the show though, is you don't get a lot of details of what we're doing.
So it kind of comes out to how prepared can you be? Right. So, yeah. I don't know. Yeah.
I don't know. The packing and clothes stuff is not like, it's my lowest concern.
Yeah. But I don't have a lot on my list, right? You've got the vehicles I've
offered to come over and help you and you're like, no. And so it's like, don't touch my vehicle.
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I'm doing this electrical. I'm like, fine.
You know, and then you have all the stuff that was happening with Kermit and I'm like, well,
let's get it together and fix this. And by the time that we're like, when can I come over and help,
you're like, it's done. I'm like, okay. Well, all right. And then, you know, so it's like on my
end, all I have is like my clothes and my camping, my sleeping situation. You know, that's like when
I was going through the totes, I'm like, does he have enough coffee mugs? Like he said he's bringing
all the camping gear, but like, do you have four camping mugs?
Like, okay. You know, and that's like, I understand like, you know, pots and pans that's, you know,
we need one set for the, our family quote, you know, and we need, you know, utensils that we
probably have enough, you know, plates and stuff. Yeah. That's easy. But you know, it's like, usually
if I'm going camping, I don't know if I'm carrying four mugs usually, you know, so it's like, okay,
I can grab more, you know, and put more in, but you know, it's like, or do I just, everybody
brings their own, you know, it's like, it would be super easy to be like, bring your own utensils,
plates, bowls and mug, you know, like, okay, that's not a problem. So it's just a matter of how,
how we want to structure it. So, but yeah, on my end, I don't have a lot. You know, it's like,
I need to rely on you guys for like all the video and media gear. Right. I have none of that.
And I know nothing about it either. Right. So, and so in regards to that, I did go out and I bought
a new go, new to me go pro. Nice. I bought a hero nine black. I have a hero eight black.
And I was looking for hero eights. And it was like, the hero nine was the same price. I was like,
oh, I'll just get the slightly newer one. And the thing is, I so I looked, I had chat, I looked at,
I used chat GPT. And I just said, what's the differences between these? Is there a big advantage
having one or the other? It came down to the eight is actually smaller and easier for like
content creation. But the nine has a front screen if you're doing like self portrait mode. Okay.
I'm like, oh, okay. And that was really the biggest difference. All the, all the like
video quality and stuff was all the same. Gotcha. And so, yeah, so I have, I also have
two threes of four. So I originally had two threes of four and an eight. Okay. But the threes
don't really shoot 4k. Yeah. And we want to shoot 4k. So the threes are out. So I had a four
and I had an eight. And I was like, I don't want to use rely on the four for a,
like for a camera that we're going to be using often. And mainly because it's just old. It works
fine. It's totally fine. I'm still planning on bringing it. I took all the batteries out of the
threes work with the four. So I have like five batteries now for that one device. And the new
camera came with an extra battery also. And the batteries for the nine work with the eight.
Okay. And so, oh, and I have a GoPro 360. And the, so I have a bunch of, so, and the batteries,
the battery for the 360 won't work in eight or nine though. So, so I bought the nine just so
that we have better quality, better, more recent cameras that we're going to use to point at us
in the rig. Yeah. So that was my thing. I've also got a line on some road mics, road wireless mic
pros. Nice. Locally. But the guy's been flaky on Facebook marketplace. Yeah, good on marketplace.
I know. And it's just like, Hey, can I come grab these? Yeah. Probably tomorrow would be good.
Okay. What time tomorrow would you prefer? No answer. Yeah. Like you trying to sell this?
Like there are all, they're cheaper. The same thing. It's slightly cheaper in Lodi.
But I'm like, I'd lose the amount of money to drive there. Then they're like,
I could drive one town away for, and it's like 20 bucks different. You know, it's like, okay,
well, I'll just, I'll pay $20 more not to spend my hour to drive to Lodi and back.
Yeah. So I'm looking into getting a pair of those too. We'll see if it happens. Yeah.
But we do already have the DJI mics. Isaiah has those. So that'll work.
But yeah, I think the, and then Carson's seems like a wizard on a lot of video stuff. So
the only thing that I think we're lacking on is they wanted us to have an intro video done
before we got to the event. Right. So I forget about that. Yeah. I think,
I think we'll just either shoot it there or we'll petition to see if we can do it after the fact
and do like a really good one. Cause like I have some fun ideas on how to do it, but it's not
like you and I sitting in two chairs and talking about who we are. It's more like some background
of like, you know, like, here's my rig. Here's some wheeling I've done. Here's some fun things
that we've done in the past. Here's my day job is actually in the off-road community,
blah, blah, blah, you know, and all this stuff. And he was like, oh, here I'm Tyler and I do
more flayton. I have this vehicle and I've been romping around the, you know, the creeper slash
Kermit vehicle for a bunch of years and I built these axles myself and all, you know, here's
my family and you know, blah, blah, blah. Like mainly I've been, I think about alone,
the TV show alone and how they do this like background story on all the individuals and
I've been like, that's how I kind of would do it. But there's not enough time to do that.
So it might just be you and I sitting in a chair, some chairs at the hotel talking about who we
are. If they are, if they're a camping chair and put it like in front of the vehicles as the
backdrop and do a interview style, right? With a camera. Exactly. So if they're concerned about us
having an intro video of who we are before the show starts, then that's what we're going to have
to do before we start recording the show. But if they would like us to create a more in-depth
intro video, then we could do it better later because I didn't hear about it until
last week on that show in that meeting. I agree. We were not told informed about that.
But yeah. So for the most part, the weekend was a lot of family stuff. We had running around for
the mini assistant. She's got, she has her tech week this week for a theater at school.
And so Saturday, she was at her school almost all day. The assistant went and did some union,
school union stuff during the day. And I was like, sweet, I'm free. And then I just got swallowed
into like stuff I need to do around the house before I leave. And, you know, just basic stuff,
mowing the lawn, prepping the yard, making sure the speakers are working right.
Yeah. Just some kind of stuff like that. I wanted to get to the shop. I did go to the shop and I
started running, we're doing a giveaway item for the participants and some of the people involved
in the show. And so I got that done over the weekend as well. Nice. Then that took, I think it
was like seven hours total laser time. Yeah. Took a while. I wanted to ask you because you're running
some in the back. I wanted to compare laser, not preferences, but what are the
presets? The settings. I wanted to get for the slate. See what you were running compared to what
I did. I know our lasers are different powers, but I was kind of curious. But yeah, for the most
part, that's it. I mean, that's all I did. And I think I have a small game plan on how to move
forward. We're doing, we are packing the vehicles up on Wednesday. So yesterday. And
I mean, I don't have a whole lot to do. So I brought the fridge down. We got a rigged
ultra swing from Brennan at Trailco, Trail 4Runner, Trail Tacoma, all those trail things out there.
He's letting us use that for the vehicles because we have to bring a spare. And we really don't
have a good way to carry a spare or a good way to store it. I haven't ran a spare tire in 10 years
or more. And I did not set up either of the four runners to carry a spare. So I'm like,
I don't have a way to carry a spare. Are you guys going to be really serious about this? I
have everything to fix a tire. Yeah. Like no, you need to have a spare. And I'm like,
all right, I don't know how this is going to work, but okay. Yeah. I thought we could really push
the whole thing. Like we're sponsored by Glutred and we need this. If we do have a puncture or an
issue, then we need to show that we can fix it on the trail. But they're like, no, you need a spare.
So after watching the videos, for the most part, they do a whole... One of the competitions last
year, which I'm assuming they're going to do something similar this year, is they had the
contestants change a tire. So you needed to take the tire off the vehicle, get your spare tire,
put it on the vehicle, set it down on the ground, and that's done. And so I'm assuming they're going
to do something similar since they are so adamant about us running a spare. There was
another vehicle on the show that did bang up their rim really bad. And so maybe they're
slightly concerned about that as well. So I don't... I'm not sure. Well, we don't know what's going
to happen, but so we'll see why they're so adamant about us running a spare. But I can only envision
it's because of the competition. That'd be... Okay. That would make sense. So that being said,
we should have a little forethought onto where we place some items in the vehicle if we do think
that a tire changing situation is going to happen. Otherwise, I don't know what else is going to come.
I think we kind of have a small hint in that regard because we have to have a spare.
Yeah. We'll see how that trail gear bumper holds up because last time I had a spare
was when I went to Baja. I had a 37-inch spare on there and the bumper took a beating. Everything
took a beating. It's just so much leverage way out there, away from the axle. And this is going to
be a 40 on heavier wheels. So we'll see how it goes. Maybe we'll be ratchet strapping it,
trying to hold it in place or something. So yeah, we'll see. So yeah, that's really about it.
How much... What all have you done, which is a long list?
Let's see. So I dug into Fiona. Yeah, we're changing the name. So change the name. I was originally
thinking about changing it to Shrek. Yeah. We were talking off air about Shrek. So why'd you
go to Fiona? It was actually the secretary, my wife. She had a bunch of coworkers over because
they had an in-person meeting where the whole company kind of gets together to do meetings
in Sacramento, right? Yeah. And so she had some of them over hanging out in our bar inside the
house. And I came in and we started talking about stuff. And I was like, yeah, and Shrek. And
people were like, what's Shrek? I was like, oh, it's the green four runner outside. They're like,
which one? I was like, oh, the newer one. And they're like, oh, okay. And they're like, that's
kind of weird. Like having your vehicle named Shrek, right? And don't you run a podcast or
something? And how aren't you out at events and things? I was like, yeah. Is there any issues
with like Disney coming after you because you're naming and using a name of one of their movies?
And I was like, it's a fair point. Disney is very, very protective of their trademarks, right?
So we were thinking about it and somebody goes, what about Fiona? Okay. Which is Shrek's ogre
princess, right? Yes. And I was like, that would actually work really well. And then it's also
like, you don't have to sound always kind of sounds funny to me when you're like, yeah, I'm
going to go, you know, go inside Kermit or go to go inside Shrek. Right? Yeah. That's why I usually
make, I try to make my vehicles a female. Yeah. Yeah. And my joke is always because I spend all
my time and all my money on it. Yeah. So it's the mistress. Yeah. It's the mistress or the slut or
the, yeah, the second wife or whatever it is. But yeah, it's so I always, I usually try to
make it a female name. Yeah. So Fiona, I think worked out great. She's green and kind of goofy,
but she's a badass. Yeah. Right. So and after all the work that Jason did on it and kind of
putting it all back together, it's running great. So I think the name Fiona is going to stick.
Okay. And then that also means that we were talking about other names and Kermit's going to
because he's old and slow, right? And somebody said you should name a Lord Farquad.
I was like, that's actually pretty funny. Yeah. And it kind of fits, right? He's not small by any
means, but I mean, kind of has small man tendencies, small, man syndrome, small, man syndrome,
right? He's trying to be a big old truck, but he's got this tiny little motor. Yeah, can't go
very fast. And so that's kind of funny. I like that.
It's on stilts.
So I kind of like Lord Farquad for the, the Unimog.
I see where this is going. It's like husband. All of,
a lot of his vehicles are named. Well, for the most part,
his vehicles are named after family, family guy, fam. What's the
Stewie and family guy? Yeah. Family guy. One of his rigs named Stewie.
One of them was a Lois. Okay. Yeah.
And so he's kind of has this thing put it together that way.
Well, and then the buggy is named Serenity after from Firefly.
Okay. And then his dogs are named Kaylee and River and then the cats of Nara.
Yeah. And so he was doing a Firefly thing for a while.
And then, yeah, then he started doing family guy stuff.
That's funny. Yeah. Okay. So, um, so I see you doing a Shrek thing thing.
I'm excited to see the gingerbread man. Oh, that'll be fun.
I'll figure that one out. It's going to have to be like a parts car.
Yeah. There's gumdrop buttons on him. Yeah.
Yeah. So anyways, that was a funny thing. So anyways,
the mule is now officially renamed Fiona. Okay.
Um, so we got, there was a lot of things I wanted to dig into, right?
I have all the Baja design lights. Yes.
That need to go on and the full package was some S twos to complete the front bumper.
Okay. Cause the front bumper has a couple of squadron pros,
one on either side of the winch, right? But the front bumper is kind of like sectioned off where
there's four spots within the, the tube part of it, right? Right.
And I never really thought about it. I'm not big in, I don't want to say I'm not big into lights.
I like lights, but I like minimalistic, very effective lights, right?
So I've never really thought of lighting as being a design factor.
Lighting to me is purely functional.
Okay. While being simple at the same time, right?
Sure. Um, and the West over at Baja designs was like,
you have this extra little like cubby in your front bumper, right?
It'd be nice to put some S twos in there and it would help level out and balance and fill out your
bumper. And I was like, I don't need my bumper filled out. Like I was like, whatever dude. It
sounds like a good idea in theory. Yeah. Let's go shake. That's fine.
Um, the, and then he was like, yeah, okay. So we got that. We put some LP fours,
which are, uh, they're kind of bigger round lights. Um, like the kind of like their competition to,
the Casey rounds that they have. Um, so the LP fours we put up on like the, as ditch lights,
quote unquote monsters, um, right on the, the windshield A pillars on the hood right there.
So I got some brackets from, I don't remember the, the name of the company Goliath off road.
Okay. Whatever. Uh, there were some brackets that I, I googled
2005 for runner ditch light brackets. And that's one of the things that came up. So, um,
put those on super user install just the two bolts that hold the hood and the,
yeah, the hinge together. Um, and then put the LP fours on those. Uh, then we have some,
another set of S twos to go on the knuckles. Oh, the steer knuckles from on the gatekeeper
off road brackets. So similar to what will, uh, metal cook will has on his setup. Um,
I don't know if I'm going to get those in on time and, and, and up and ready.
Um, I want to do that on Bobcat or I want to figure it out. I've always thought it was really
gimmicky, but then I saw will driving around at nighttime one time. I was like, that actually
works really well. So we got that. I need to try and put on. And then I have another set of S
twos to go on the rear swing out to set up as a chase lights and camp lights. The way that, uh,
that wing, the airfoil wing on Kermit, yeah, those lights work the same sort of thing,
sort of, but there's no way to really do it up high for, um, Fiona. So I think it's
going to be just fine. It's just a matter of running the wiring back there.
It's going to be a lot of one or wiring to run back there. Uh, mega whips Mike who owns mega
whips. Uh, we met him out at, I believe trail hero last year, uh, and, uh, been chatting with him
kind of off and on since then. Uh, he sent me a couple of four foot RGB whips to put on Fiona.
So I need to get those on and which is going to be tricky because I was going to build those into
the roof rack, the roof rack and crossbar. Oh yeah. But in order to get Fiona in the enclosed
trailer, we have to remove the roof rack and the crossbars. Yeah. So why are you putting
Fiona in the enclosed trailer and not on the deck over? Cause Fiona has to go straight from, uh,
trail hero X down to overland expo West. Got it. So you're not, so they're taking Fiona to
overland expo West. Yeah. So Fiona will be out at in flag staff, right? For overland expo West.
Okay. That makes more sense. Yeah. So, um, at least if we could get her to fit in,
in the enclosed trailer, which if we take the roof rack off, she fits in the trailer.
What if you had the tires down? Um, then you're too wide. Uh,
they both got you too wide. Can't get through the door. Damn. Yeah. All right.
The only other option is to suck down the frame to the axles. Um, and I'm like, man, how do we,
how do you suck down the frame to both axles? Yeah, you can, but you can. I'd have to get one
of those like drill operated winches. I'd have to get two of them. I think to hold it to hold
everything together while it's in the trailer. So it's just a level of complexity that we don't
need right now. We just don't have time. So maybe in the future, I might do that if I want to keep
the roof rack on it, but I kind of really liked the way it looks without the roof. I like the way
it looks without it. It makes the car just look a lot more streamlined and the, the body lines
really stand out more. Um, so I might just leave it off the, and then I got to go talk to the dude
that did the rap city graphics and be like, Hey, there's some spots on the roof now that
that don't have any wrap on it. What if, um, what if you'd like 3d printed yourself
like a plug caps like caps and belted them both, bolt them down. I could totally do that.
And then print them in green. Yeah. I could totally do that. I have the neon green print. So
PLA, that's not a bad idea. I don't know if I can get that done before because I got to
cat it all up and everything, but that's not a bad idea. I could probably do that. Yeah.
But then I still got to find a way to attach the mega whips and maybe I'll just make a
mount off of the rear swing out. So they're off of the rear swing out.
Yeah. Would there be a way for you to include a threaded mechanism into the caps that you're
creating for the whips, for the whips, for the placement. I don't think then I think the caps
then would not be 3d printed. I'd have to do metal. Yeah. Make some metal caps then that way
that holds all the leverage of those four foot whips. That's totally doable. And then you're
going to have to run the wires. You're going to have to take the headliner out and all that.
Which is not too bad. But it's not an easy solution for right now if you need to run
those whips before the event. Yeah. I told Mike I would run them for the event. So I really need
to try and get those on. So they're going on the back as well. I think they're going on the
rear swing out for now. I'll just tack on some L brackets and mount them up. So for the event,
I think the knuckle S2s are not going to get on the vehicle. But I need to try and get those rear,
the chase light, camp light and whips on the rear swing out. So that's the, I think the last
priority that needs to get done. Are the brackets for gatekeeper already on the knuckles?
No. I have to remove the bolts for holding the steer arms on and put them on there.
Got it. So because I would, I was, I would say maybe it's just
worth it to put the lights in place to make it look like it.
Make it look like that's not a bad idea then. And then just not run the wiring.
Just don't wire it yet. I'll see if I got time. Yeah. You can do that.
So anyways, I think that's really all that Fiona needs. Okay. I did a lot of work
once I got Fiona back from Jason. Yeah. And a lot of that was done on Saturday this weekend.
Okay. And it was all electrical stuff. Right. Yeah. I know that there was a lot to do.
When I got the rig from Stellar built, they were, they used to have a electric fan for the radiator.
Okay. And they took it out, went back to a mechanical fan and they, but they left the relays
and the wiring and the circuits they set up for the e-fan on the radiator, electric fan,
all in the engine bay still. So I had to trace all that out, cut it out of where they had it
all zip tied, replace zip ties because it was attached to other wiring. So I had to clean
all that up, pull that circuits out, pull the relays out. And then while I was doing that,
I had to trace all the other accessory wiring that they have in the engine bay and in the front.
Yeah. Like the squadron lights, the light bar, the winch wiring, they had
wires going from the engine bay all the way back to the recorder panel for the compressor,
the locker solenoids and a few other things. So I had to trace all those wires out and label
everything because nothing was labeled either. So that, what did you use to label?
Just red tape, the red painter, painter's tape. And then did you write on it?
Yeah. Right on. It was Sharpie. Okay. So I try and do that so that it's very obvious in an engine bay.
If you see a little red flag in the engine bay, it's a label telling you what that wire is attached
to. Sure. So it's not the cleanest way to do it. Like ideally you'd get a label maker, print up
what it is, and then wrap the label around the wiring. And that makes it all super clean, but
I just, I didn't want to for whatever reason. I'd rather, because when you do it that way,
you have to take the wire and you have to spin it in order to read the label, right?
If you have a flag done on painter's tape, you can just look at the flag real quick
and read it. It's a lot easier to read. Sure. What about laying it long ways and then clear
heat shrink? You can do that too, but that's the same. You end up with the same problem of
a label maker in that laying it long ways. You still have to rotate the wire really to read it
because wires are, you know, 14 gauge wire is small. So it's just easier to read flags.
It doesn't look as great, but it's way easier to figure out what's going on with your electrical.
I've always been wary and I don't have the answer. I'm sure somebody is like going like
you're an idiot, but I've always been wary about the label makers apply heat to specific areas to
create the late, the later thermal printers, right? And so is your engine bay going to get so hot that
it's going to make that label disappear and turn all black? I don't think so.
Engine bays are typically 150 to 220 degrees. I mean, if you're getting over 220 degrees in
your engine bay, you've got a big problem going on. You need to stop driving. How hot does it need
to be to turn to make a letter on the labels? I want to say a label maker needs upwards of
four to 500 degrees to make a thermal print on a label, a thermal label.
And it's very intense, very direct heat, right? However, some labels, thermal labels are affected
by UV as well. Yes. So there's always that to keep track and be watch of, watch over too,
because if you take a thermal label and tape it to a shipping box and cover the whole label in
the packing tape and then leave that box out in the sun, it will delete whatever's on your label
because of the UV impact going through the packing tape and impacting the thermal label. So
some of the things you get to learn when you're shipping a lot of stuff over a week.
So anyways, I did a lot of the electrical, ripped out the old circuit, traced and labeled everything,
and then I pulled out the SwitchPro. SwitchPro, the soft reset ability of SwitchPro is really,
really nice. It's a really nice feature, right? You don't have to worry about running fuses,
and if something stops working, you can soft reset it by resetting the power to the SwitchPro.
With a regular fuse box, if something stops working, you have to go and start pulling fuses
and look at them to see which fuse burned out, right? So that's a nice thing about SwitchPro is
that there's no fuses to have to go in and pull and diagnose if a fuse went out. It's all done
through circuitry and it'll soft reset. You just reset the power and the accessory should come back
up if it overloaded the circuit, like a fuse fix. Not like a fuse does. Well, what pops though?
Nothing. There's an internal thing that says this circuit is designed for 10 amps,
and it went to 20 amps. It pulled 20 amps. Therefore, it shuts off power to that circuit
internally through the chips. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. So it can turn it back on once,
and then it'll, if it pops again, it just shuts off power to that circuit. Yeah.
So it's an internal CAN bus kind of thing, which is nice. It's a nice feature,
but I really don't like the way SwitchPro's terminals work to get power to all your accessories.
It's one power wire that comes out of the SwitchPro, and you wire that
into your accessories load wire, and then you put the ground for your accessory
on a chassis ground near the accessory. The load wire, in order to connect it to the
SwitchPro, you have to butt connect it or solder it or do some other thing. So the way I set up
the air compressor in there was I put it on a spade terminal and had a female spade
on the SwitchPro and a male spade on the accessory. Yeah. That way I could quick connect them together,
right? Sure. And then pull them apart. And the reason why I don't like that is
vehicle shake and vehicles vibrate a lot and quick disconnect things in engine bays can
end up quick disconnecting on you or get enough vibration and play in them that like on spade
connectors, the female side is what kind of holds tension on the male side. Yeah. That can
start separating. Sure. And then you have a bad connection, right? Anderson PowerPulse do a great
job at kind of holding everything in, being very positive connection. But they're kind of chunky
when you need to have 12 of these things all in one wiring harness. So I just don't like the way
that SwitchPro does that. And if you butt connect them together or solder them together, then you
have to cut the wires and redo it every time you swap out an accessory, which I really don't like.
I'm like, you should be able to make like there's terminals that you can wire in everything. So
like the other option would be to wire in another bus bar terminal to it with separate slots, right?
So then you can just have your own terminals that you plug your wires into. So you can do that as
well. But then I'm like, that's another thing you have to install in order to make it work.
So it's a very positive connection that's interchangeable later on down the road. Good.
You maintenance easy, right? Right. So you don't like it primarily because
if you're changing stuff, then you're eliminating the wire possibly over time. And if you change it
enough times, then you have no wire to work with to change. Yep. Yep. How often are you changing
terminals? So like on Kermit, I've changed out a few accessories a couple of a couple of times,
two or three times. Okay. So I mean, granted the pigtail coming off of the Switch Pro is,
I want to say six to eight inches, something like that. So like, if you're good, you can get
a dude about half an inch at a time. So you could swap them out 16 times before you're out of pigtail.
You can't do it anymore. Right. But I just, I don't, I always try and look at things in terms of
scalability and sustainability, right? It's just not sustainable. It will eventually
make so that you can't swap out stuff anymore. Unless you end up with a wire with four or
five different buck connectors all in it. And I'm like, yeah, that's,
well, once you get to the end, then you but connect on another wire. Exactly. Right.
And then you start eliminating that other wire. Yeah. So I really like, I ended up getting
a switch panel that is unbranded because I found a factory that makes
a bunch of switch panels for companies. And I was like, can I order up a sample of these,
please? I'd like to see how they work kind of thing. And I really like the way it's all set up.
It does have fuses on it for the circuits, rather than a smart programming to cut off
power to a circuit. If it gets overloaded, it's a fuse overload, which is a switch pros wins in
that regard. Yeah. But I like, I like fuses. They're not hard to diagnose, right? Right. Sure.
So like I, I'm, and everything else on the vehicle kind of runs on fuses. So like,
I don't understand CAN bus. And so how, if something happens to the CAN bus on the switch
pro, I've got to know how to plug in and diagnose and bring it up on a computer program to diagnose
it. Whereas this, if something's going on, it's probably a fuse. I'm just popping a new fuse,
right? I know how those work. Sure. The end, the relays are all kind of done internally. It's
not a relay. It's all a really thick, really nice, well done PCB piece, PC board. So the,
and then the terminals are load and ground going into the fuse box part of it with screw down
terminals. So you don't have to put a ring terminal spade connector, anything on the end of your
accessory wire. It's just bare wire that you stick into and then screw, tighten the screw down and
it has like a little box metal box contraption there that collapses in on the wiring and
pinches it in under tension. So by doing that, you don't have to trim down your ground wires
from your accessory and find a chassis ground near the accessory that's clean and operates correctly.
You just keep all your wiring intact from your accessory and run it up to your fuse box and
put the load and ground in one spot. So everything stays in one spot. You know where all the wiring
is for that accessory. You don't have to go searching around the grounds near that accessory
to find that accessory ground point, right? So I like that feature of it a lot and not having
to crimp on new terminals because crimps can fail over time. It's just even more simplicity
in a vibrating vehicle. So the downside was there's not a whole lot of mounts made for a random
fuse box and switch panel. And so I had to make my own mount, which was not too big of a deal. It
took me about an hour out of scrap metal I had in the garage, which was kind of fun. I haven't
got to do any welding in a while. So getting to sit there and weld up a new mount for it was a fun
project. Got that on. Everything is all secured in there. And then had to run all the wiring for
the power, make sure everything cleared of the hood coming down and the struts on the hood.
And then I could start hooking up all the accessories to it. So that then kind of ran and
had to redo a bunch of wiring because a lot of the accessories wires were not long enough
to reach where I had this location at. So I had to redo and kind of add on to the accessory
wiring, extend them over. And I also needed to run all the wiring for the switch pad
because it's a pad, just like a switch pro pad is, right? But it's a 12 gang instead of an eight
gang. So a 12 gang pad and it only runs four wires out of the pad back to the fuse box.
So it's not like there's 12 plus wires, 13 wires, 12 loads of one ground going through,
it's four wires. And what's really cool about this is how does it know a button you're pressing?
It's all in the logic of the computer boards. Interesting. Yeah. So the switch pad
has a power button on it. So you can turn off the switch pad when you're not using it. Granted,
the way they recommend to have it all wired up, which is something I really did not like the way
that Steller built had the switch pro wired up, was you're supposed to wire it so that it turns
on everything. It turns on the switch pro when you have the accessories turned on on the key.
Yes. And I'm like, that's stupid because if I want to run camp lights off of the vehicle or
something, I have to have accessories on which draws power from everything in the vehicle.
Sure. I want, if I camp and I just want lights on behind me and behind the vehicle because I'm
cooking, then I only want the switch pro running, not the entire vehicle. Right. So hot wire.
So I hot wired the accessory, the trigger to turn on the system. But it has a button,
a power button for the system on the switch pad. So if you don't want it pulling any power,
while you're not using the vehicle, everything's off, you just hit the power button and turns
everything off. And it might pull like minimal one milliamp. I don't know whatever it is.
Yeah. So it has that, it has the RGB button. So you can change the colors of the switch pad,
the illumination colors on switch pad. So I have it at neon green. Of course. Of course.
And then it has the programming button that allows you to choose how each button on the
12 gang behaves. Okay. What are the options on off toggle, which is your normal, how they work.
Right. Yeah. It also has momentary. So you can do like a horn. You can do a horn off of it. Right.
Yeah. Or winch controls off of it. Oh, so like you can press and if you can press it into a
short burst or you hold it. Well, you hold it. Yeah, exactly. It'll essentially it sends power
through the circuit only when the button is being depressed. Yes. That's a momentary. Yeah.
So you can put winch controls on it. You could do a horn, a siren. You could have different
siren controls set up on it. Yeah. So I'm like, that's kind of cool. I didn't think about
running the electric parking brakes. Yeah. You can run that off of the switch off of this
pad, the switch pad with the momentary switches. Yeah. Have a lock and unlock button.
There's flash mode. So it's a third mode flash and that's like a blinker or hazard light. Oh,
so I could wire up the blinkers super fucking easily. So you hit it and it would just go on,
off, on, off, on, off, on, off until you hit it again. Yep. Yep. And then the last one,
the fourth mode is emergency flash strobe. So it's like a strobe light in an emergency
kind of situation, right? Yeah. So it's flash, but faster. Yes. Exactly. So I was like, oh,
I didn't realize that this one had it. The main feature why I got this, asked for this particular
sample of this, this product was because it also comes with a wireless remote. So I can have a
wireless remote and operate everything on it from within I think 60 feet of the vehicle.
That's cool. Yeah. So I really like it, the main problem. And then I wanted to move the
switch panel from behind the steering column down next to the steering column, behind the
steering wheel to the center console next to the shifters. And so in order to do that,
I had to 3D print, make and 3D print amount to put it on the center console. Right.
And so I love using nutserts. Nutserts are awesome. I think a lot of people like in that
situation, which is drilled a hole through and then found a way to put a nut on the backside
and a bolt. And I'm like, nutserts are awesome, man. Yeah. You did so much simpler than a nut and
bolt. You don't have to worry about the nut coming off when you're pulling the bolt out or
having to get back there and hold the nut while you're trying to get everything undone.
You're giving a lot of people credit. I think most people would just get like a drywall screw.
And just screw it right into the plastic. Yeah. That's possible too.
So yeah, that's I put in nutserts. I kind of took some measurements and designed up a thing on CAD
with structure set up with a radius instead of just a straight L bracket, the radius in there.
So it resists bending. The bottom side of the L that the mount sits on is thick on the edges.
So it has like a frame to it to help again, resist more of the bend on it and make it a
little more structured. And then I nut started it to the center, to the transmission tunnel.
Yeah. Plastic and then nutserted the adjustable mount for the switchpad to the bracket that I made.
And that all turned out. I'm really happy with how that turned out. It looks great.
Yeah. 3d printed one out while I was working on the other wiring.
So I wired up all the, there's four amber lights in the bumper. Yes. As to
squadron pros, four of them are wired all those into one circuit. I wired the LP fours on the
A pillars mounts into one circuit. The light bar is wired into a circuit. Okay.
And that light bar is pretty pitiful. I don't know who made it, who makes it. I don't know
the brand name on it. I just have to go look, but it's not a Baja one. But like with the headlights
on from Alpha Rex, you can barely tell that the light bar comes on. All right. So I thinking about
just ripping that light bar out and then seeing if Baja would send out one of their 20 inch single
row S eights. But like it's such a, those Alpha Rex headlights put out so much light. I don't know
if any 20 inch light bar is going to make any impact. Yeah. Oh, interesting. The Alpha Rex
headlights. Yeah. So that's to do on that's later on down the road to check out. But I got everything
wired up together. I put the air compressor that runs the rear air locker and the front E locker
on the switch pad, wired all that in. Yeah. So that was all the main electrical
I did. Oh, and we diagnosed to fix the blinkers. Nice. What was up with that?
Stellar built an air box for the intake, the engine intake, right? And it normally in the
fourth gen four under the air box is up in the front of the passenger fender, right under behind
the passenger headlight. Yep. Yeah. And so they have a cold air intake quote unquote on it and
it's tucked in kind of on top of the passenger fender back by the firewall. So there's all this
space on the front fender where the air box used to be. Sure. And they built a box to fully enclose
and I think add structure to the fender that they built, the inner fender.
In order to get a wires, the factory wiring harness through, they kind of drilled a little hole
and didn't grommet it or anything. And it's a really sharp edge and it cut through the wire
sheathing and then into the blinker wire and grounded itself and grounded and shorting it out
on that box that they built in. Okay. So I had to open up that hole, pull the wiring out, cut
that wire. And there's another one that looked compromised, but it wasn't shorting out. And
I was like, I'm just going to fix this now. So pulled those out, redid those two wires and then
wallowed out and dug out that hole in the air box more. So it had more room in there.
And then put the whole wiring harness pack, whatever it is,
the group of wires, the group of wires into a rubber hose, essentially for like a coolant hose
or something. Yeah. A vacuum line or whatever. Yeah. I think it's a coolant line. I think it's a
grease and gasoline rated hose that I've left over from stuff. So I put it all into that and then
put that into that hole that I walled out. So it should be good now. And I have blinkers again
and hazards. Nice. And since, and since I have all that, I also have DRLs. Okay. Yeah. So the DRLs
on the Alpha Rex, I've never really ran them before because we didn't have them because that
circuit always kept popping fuses. And like, so this was the first time once I got the bar design
set up running the Alpha Rex DRLs too. And I was like, the Alpha Rex DRLs are amber.
Oh, perfect. And so it just, everything goes together so well. And I never understood the
concept of design in lighting and how you can make it all work and look really good as well as
function really good. It clicked once I kind of stood back and had everything on. I was like,
okay, I get it. This, this, everything was really well balanced. Everything looked amazing.
Everything complimented itself. And it just, it looked awesome popping in that amber against the
neon green. Sure. Wrap of the vehicle. Yeah. And then, and that was just during the daytime.
And so once nighttime rolled around, I was able to kind of get all the lights adjusted.
I was like, damn, it looks, it looks good. So yeah, I just posted that picture up on Instagram.
This is Thursday. So a few days ago, if anybody wanted to see the comparison of daytime and
nighttime and how it all looks, it looks really good. So anyways, I did all that on Saturday.
And then Sunday, I hadn't, but the chainsaw certification class. Oh, nice. So the Forest
Service only had like four spots available in the class. So like, I know I put the call out to
people and was like, who's interested in chainsaw class? Cause if we get enough people together,
we might be able to put together a class. Right. And the Forest Service is like,
Oh, hold on. Cause I ended up like they called me like, all right, you know,
do you have some people in mind? I was like, yeah, I got a list of about 40 people interested.
And they're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on here.
We, they're like, are these all volunteers at the Forest Service? They all have volunteer
agreements. I was like, well, no, they're just people that want to get better
skilled at using chainsaws. And I know a lot of them, if they are certified,
they'd totally be down to come and help out and volunteer with the Forest Service.
Yeah. So it's more like, if they have a skill that the Forest Service needs,
because all the hot shot crews, all the Sawyers and everybody are out fighting fires
in Northern California in the summer, off-roaders can help maintain trails and help the Forest
Service do maintenance and be safe about it. Yeah.
And he was like certified about it, certified, right? And, and make, and you guys can get
volunteer grant matching funds out of it and everything. And he was just like, no, no, no,
no, no, no, that's where we just want people who are already set up volunteering with the Forest.
And I was like, you know, what comes first, the chicken or the egg guys? Yeah.
So anyways, they made me narrow it down to four people.
And so we had those four people out at the class. I was recertifying, so I didn't have to go to the
classroom, the day, the classroom portion of it. I got to go to the field portion of it the next day.
Yeah. And it was funny that we were all kind of standing around. They had a lot of instructors
there. Like last time I did it, there was enough instructors to have, it was like three to six
people per instructor, depending on what certification you were going for. And this time
there was like enough instructors to have like one person per instructor. I wonder if they were
doing it. I was like, you guys totally could have done a bigger class. And if they were doing
instructor training, there was a lot of people there from the Forest Service that were coming
back recertifying their B fallers certifications, which means they're out on like hot shot crews.
Like your B fall certification is pretty much you're a professional Sawyer.
Okay. And you're doing this full-time as your full-time job.
So pretty much all the guys there that were coming for the B recert
were Forest Service people. Yeah. Forestry people. So they had a bunch of those guys there,
but they had a lot of instructors as well. And so we were all kind of sitting around the parking
lot talking about how the day was going to go, how we're going to split everybody up with
the instructors. And he was like, all right. So anybody who has their B faller and you're here
to recert your B certification, you're going to go with these three or four guys. And everybody who
is doing bucking and renewing your A faller certification, you'll go with these instructors.
And so go ahead and I split yourselves up. And I kind of sat there and I was like, I got a question.
Yeah. He goes, yeah, what's up? And I was like, I'm an A faller, but I was hoping to go for my B
while we're here and upgrade my certification too. I don't just want to renew my A.
I want to upgrade and get into a B faller. And he kind of, I was like, so
it seems like we have more instructors over here for the B fallers than we have people
getting their B recerts. Can I just do that? Go with these guys? And he kind of looked at me and
he was like, I don't know. I don't know if we can do that. And my instructor from last time
happened to be here as well. And he didn't have anybody come over to him. And he's like
one of the top certified sawyers for forestry in Northern California. He's a C faller,
but like he also does tree climbing and arborist stuff too on the side. So
he's, he's one of the top certified guys apparently. And I was like,
Eric doesn't have anybody can just go with Eric. And he kind of looked at me. He looks at Eric. He
goes, are we allowed to do that? Like, can they upgrade here? And Eric's like, yeah, I mean,
I know, I know what it takes to test him on the upgrade. So we're not going to go through any
skill training. It's whether it's going to be pass or fail. And I'm going to test him on it.
And I was like, that's fine by me. Yeah. And he kind of goes, if it's fine by him,
then it's fine by me. I can, I can test. I'm certified to test people. So
the guy running the class goes, okay, go with Eric. Cool. So John Allen was there too. And John
goes, I'm in the same situation. Can I go with Tyler and Eric? And he goes, sure, Eric, are
you okay with having two guys? And he goes, yeah, sure. So it was me, John, and our instructor,
Eric, from last time. It was very drizzly that morning. And so it was like, it wasn't really
raining yet, but it was a heavy, heavy mist or just everything just got soaking wet, right?
And so, but by the end of the day, it was downpouring on us. Last time I did my chains,
when I got my chainsaw certification the first time, we were there until four o'clock,
like eight a.m. to four p.m., five p.m., doing nothing but bucking, limbing,
a couple felling to get the A fall cert. So I was expecting it to take that long again,
with just us two going through the B fall certification testing only. We were done by noon.
It was awesome. But it was really cool. The first tree, because they make you do three different
trees that are bigger trees. Ideally, multiple cut trees. You can't just do it in one bar length.
Their goal is to find a tree where the chainsaw you have, you have to end up cutting out it from
two different sides. So did you bring your eight-inch chainsaw?
My little 12-inch DeWalt battery one. No, I had my 24-inch bar, but John brought his,
I think, 20-inch bar on his steel, 460. And then I had my Echo 540, I think it is,
whatever it is, with the 24-inch bar. So the first tree we did, I did, was a pretty easy tree,
per se. It was a standard tree, not much lean to it. It's just a bigger than your A trees, right?
So not a lot of complexity going on to it, but something bigger where I was going to have to
do multiple cuts on. And so for the most part, brought it down just fine. It came down exactly
where I did it was that one off. It was off like two to three degrees from where I was aiming it.
And so, but it went well. John's first tree, he kind of messed up his face cut and had to redo it
and make it so that it was going to be going in the right where he wanted it to be going.
But he was with it enough that he got everything corrected and it came down. My second tree was
a big tree on a pretty steep hillside with a lean uphill. And what made it more interesting was we
had a hiking trail uphill. That was at risk of it coming down on and a driving road 20 feet downhill
from us. So we also had to think about safety of anybody coming on the upper trail or the lower
trail and keep that in mind with everything. And then the risky thing with this one was there was
another tree down right in front of where I wanted to fall this one because I didn't want to fall at
sideways on the hillside with risk of it coming down and then rolling down onto the road because
the road was so close. So I was like, I got to fall it uphill. I don't think it's going to cover the
hiking trail, but we'll have somebody up there. And if it does, we'll just chop the top end of
it off bucket and get out of the trail. But the main concern, safety concern was there was a big
tree down at two foot diameter, three foot diameter right in front of where I wanted to fall that
one. So if this one came down and the ass end of it lands on that and pops up, bounces up off of it,
it could be a big safety concern because it could jump any numbered directions. So I was like,
I want this landing on ground, not a down tree. So we bucked a seven foot section, six foot section
out of the down tree and then rolled that kind of downhill. But we used, we rolled that down in a way
that would help guard the falling tree so that if it came down just slightly more right than I
wanted, it would hit that one and bounce back into where I wanted it to be created a wedge.
I created a little bit of a wedge that if I was off from where I wanted the tree to land,
it would end up where I want it. So I thought that was kind of a cool process to be like,
can I do this? Here's how I'm thinking of this. And the instructor was like,
yeah, sounds awesome. I like that plan. I was like, cool. And so that one took a lot longer to do
because I had to take safety concerns bucking and get it all down. But the tree came down exactly
where I wanted it to come down and stuck the landing right there. And I was like,
that was pretty fucking cool. And then John's second tree, we went down into kind of the
Caldor burn area for his second one. And it was more that the top was off of it, had fallen off.
And so those ones can get tricky because they'll go quick. And they'll, they'll,
a lot of times don't really have a lean on it. So you have to go take your first initial cut
and go further than 30% in to the tree because you don't have the top of the tree to help leverage
it coming down. And because you have to go further in, once it starts going, it goes quick.
Yeah. So you kind of got to be really aware of what's going on. And a lot of times,
especially from Caldor, which was now five years ago,
those trees have been sitting there burned. So they're rotted in the middle sometimes.
Sure. So you got to check the wood and find a spot to cut at where you're not going to come
into a bunch of rot. And so John took that one out nice, very nicely done. And then my third
tree was a tree with two, a compound lean in it, had an S. Oh, it was burned with the cut,
the top of it off too. Oh no. And I was like, I kind of, because of the way, and it was on a steep
hillside in a ton of shrubbery. So like in order to build your escape out of there, I had to clear
out a bunch of, I had to buck and limb a bunch of stuff and clear it all out. So I had an escape
route. And then like every angle I'm looking at this from, I'm like, it looks like the lean is
this direction because the hillside's throwing off your perception and it had a compound.
Yeah. Lean in it had compression and tension at two different locations, right? I'm like,
I kind of pulled that back for a second. I was like, I walked all around this tree like four
times. I think it's leaning this way, but like the perspective and everything's throwing me off.
And he goes, I think you're right. And I was like, so I should be going on. My goal is to go this
way with it. He goes, that's what I would do. I was like, okay, just want to make sure just to
confirm that. But everything ended up working out great on it. I had to set a couple of wedges
because as soon as I kind of got through it, did start sitting down on the bar.
So I had to, because of the compound lean and with no top on it to kind of make sure it stays
going once it did. That's kind of one of the issues with top halves of trees burned out trees
are moved is that the tree will counteract the lean once you start it going and it'll sit down on
the bar. So you have to set wedges and then make sure that the wedges get the tree to go,
which way you're trying to make sure it goes because there's no top to make it go that way.
So I had to set a couple of wedges and then get the bar in further and then set the wedges in a
little further. And then once I got it to the hinge wood part came right down exactly where I
wanted it to be. So it was a lot of fun. I passed and got my B certification. It was nice that
they let me do that because I wasn't anticipating not being able to do that. But it's cool because
not many forest volunteers go and get B certs. Like I said, if you have a B cert, you're probably
more likely doing this for a living kind of thing. So it's cool to be able to go in and work on
trail maintenance projects where you really should have a B cert and understand some of the more
complex falls that you have to do during trail maintenance when after a high wind event or
something like that. So nice. Well, congratulations. Yeah, it was really cool. Although chainsawing
and doing all that for five hours, six hours in the rain. Just A, it was nice to go home and take
a hot shower. But B, my lower back is really hurting today. So that's why I'm wearing this
little back brace throughout the day. How did John do? John did great. His third tree was very
similar to his second tree and he nailed it one cut on each one. So he did his face cut, the wedge
cut, and then his falling cut, gunning cut, and then his back cut. So I think he had three cuts
and nailed all three cuts and everything was super clean and did it perfectly on the bottom
of the third tree and it was super quick. And I learned how to read after a tree was fallen.
You can go and look at the stump and you can see how everything was cut. Yeah. And it was really
cool to learn how to read a stump after a fall to be like, okay, yeah, I cut to here and here's
where I had this issue and I corrected it and this how I corrected it. And then you can look at your
hinge wood and be like, I could have done the hinge wood a little bit differently to make this happen
the way I wanted it to. And so I learned more about how to read a stump after a fall as well. It
was cool to have Eric there to walk us through each fall. Yeah. And he could look at the stump and be
like, oh yeah, you remember, did you do this? I was like, yes, I did. He goes, yep, this is where
that happened. And he pointed out on the stump and I was like, oh, God, it's kind of cool. Yeah.
So I got to learn about how to read stumps for after falls. So good. So with everything you're
saying, I'm assuming John passed as well. John passed. Yes. Yeah. Good. So the Mad Hatters have
two bee fallers now. I don't know of many other off-road clubs in Northern California that have
any bee fallers. So that's a pretty, pretty cool thing. And we'll be able to go and help out the
forestry, forest service and county with more stuff now. So I did find out we went to a truck
days thing for kids and like a big trucks, like big trucks. There was a bunch of different big
trucks there. And there was a BLM forestry. So their, their Sawyer team, they had one of their
Saw personal carriers, person carriers. Okay. And so I was talking to the Sawyer and I was like,
do you guys do classes? He goes, yeah, we do class all the time. I was like,
you guys have BLM though, right? Is your training any different than the forest service classes?
And he goes, no, it's all the same. I was like, so you guys are following Olek and all that.
He goes, oh yeah, it's all the same training. I was like, so if somebody went and got a
certification from BLM, it would be transferable to do work for the forest service and Cal fire
or whatever. He goes, yeah, yep. So he worked specifically with Folsom BLM. Okay. And he said
that they do classes fairly often and they're not really that well attended. They're not really
filling out the classes. I was like, would you guys be open to doing classes with like
half of the class be like all volunteers that are looking to get more skills with chainsaws and help
out BLM and forestry and whatever with sawing and he goes, I don't know. He goes, I'm one of the
lackeys, but I can't imagine we have the capacity for it. So just be up to administration if they
want to allow volunteers into the classes. And I was like, so that might be another avenue. I need
to go and look down for all the people that have contacted me that are looking to go through chainsaw
class and certifications. So that'd be good to know. Yeah. Sweet. Well, yeah, you certainly did
do a lot this week. Yeah. It was a busy weekend. Yeah. So, but I like, I'm very happy with where
everything is at getting ready for Trail Hero X. There's a couple of things we need to do like
figure out the spare tire. Yep. Situation. But I think we have a solution for that with that rigged
ultra swing out from Brennan. It's just going to be a matter of modifying it to fit the eight on
170 lug pattern rather than the six on five and a half Toyota pattern. Right. So other than that,
I think everything's pretty well ready to go and we'll be able to kind of start test packing,
test fitting everything together tomorrow. All right. So yeah. Yeah. Now I'm just, I was just
thinking about that. I wonder if we can contact rigged. I bet you they make a one that like a
bracket and we can have it shipped to the hotel. Oh, maybe we've got the trailers and put spare
tire on the trailers. Yeah. Maybe then nobody has to make anything. Yeah. That's not a bad idea.
Let's, I like that idea. Let's see what they say. Yeah. We'll, we'll contact them and see what we
can do. Yeah. Sweet. I think that about does it then. I think from here, it's just a matter of
pulling all of our gear together and seeing what we need to pack for you and me being gone for 10
days. Right. And then Carson and Isaiah being gone for another week on top of that seven days.
So I'm making it all work and yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of level of complexity besides just this
event for, uh, for more flight because they've got the crew that's going down for more flight is
then continuing from this event down to go to Overland Expo West directly after this finish.
They're not coming home. Correct. So yeah, they've got a lot of, there's another level of complexity
and packing and everything that's going to be happening. Yep. But as for me, all I technically
have to worry about is clothes and my sleeping gear. So you made it really easy. Perfect. I've
bought some snacks. I bought some beers. I got a bottle of whiskey. You know, I bought some little
things that, um, I wasn't on my to-do list, but, um, yeah, I got, um, otherwise it's pretty easy.
Cool. Yep. Awesome. I like easy. I like making things easy and simple for people. So, uh,
I don't know, man, that does it. This is Thursday. So starting tomorrow morning, if you guys are
listening to this while it's airing that day on Thursday here tomorrow morning, we'll be
heading out to Nevada and, uh, hanging out at the Casablanca for a little bit and there will be a
car show and send off show. So if you guys are in the area of Mesquite, Nevada, um, swing by on
Saturday and Sunday, Saturday afternoon and then Sunday morning. I think Sunday is the car show
prepping for the car show Saturday. So I think the car show actually, if you wanted to attend
it Sunday and then we leave the resort Monday morning to start the trip. Right. So yeah,
it'll be fun. And even if you can't make the car show, maybe reach out and maybe there'll be some
free times and we can just say hi or go do something. We do kind of have a fairly rigid
schedule while we're there, but there is some downtime. So maybe we can, uh, you know, if
you're in the area, we can hang out. Cool. Yep. Sounds good. Um, anything else, man?
No, I don't think so. I think that's a good, I mean, you got a lot of stuff done and I think
we're pretty, we're pretty ready. I think we got a good plan game plan and set up. I think, uh,
one of the things that we're going to need to do, um, before we actually start the competition side
of things is, um, I'm going to need a rundown of, uh, Fiona and everything, just kind of get an
understanding of the vehicle. Cause in case they want us to switch drivers or have me do something
that, you know, I'm not used to this vehicle, then I just need to have a leg up and then
a better understanding. But yeah, I think that's really about it. So if you guys have any questions
or comments, you can always hit us up on Instagram. I'm over at snail trail, four by four. Tyler
watches four by four, Toyota Tyler. You can hit us up on snail mail, nine, one, six, three, four,
five, four, seven, four, four and leave us a voice message on the phone there and we'll get to it
on a, one of our favorite episodes on Fridays. Um, I guess we should say that we're not quite sure
how content's going to be while we're gone. Um, but we are trying to get some snail males in the
books and maybe that'll be about it, but maybe we'll see what else we can handle or get out there
for people. Um, but yeah, just bear with us while we're out on the road. Um, and, uh, we'll try to
get the content coming and continue it coming to you guys. Um, yeah, I guess, uh, the only other
last way that we normally talk about it, keep looking over at the camera.
I know I did too. The whole camera right now. I don't have time to edit the YouTube video for
this upcoming week. So I didn't bring the camera, but, um, and if you hate that, please email us,
Jimmy or Tyler at snail trail four by four.com. Yep. Sweet. Uh, we're looking forward to the
trip. Uh, we'll have lots of stories. I'm sure to tell you guys when we get back and we have a
really fun plan, uh, while we're gone for episode content for you guys. So I think you guys
enjoy it. I hope you guys get a laugh out of it. Um, I haven't listened to the episodes yet,
but they are pretty much done and we'll probably be listening to them. Um, while we're out on the
trip or driving around. So, um, yeah, hopefully you guys enjoyed all give us call, leave us some
voicemail, leave us feedback, let us know your questions and answers. Uh, we'll see you over
on the discord, I guess. So Jimmy, any final words for everybody out there? Well, I'm not really
only going to bring two pairs of underwear cause you told me I can wear one pair of underwear
five different ways, five different ways. Yep. And with that, my friends keep crawling.
I got one for you. Oh yeah. Which of Santa's reindeers, which of Santa's reindeer are dinosaurs
afraid of our dinosaurs? Definitely not Rudolph. This is a really weird question. I was so which
of Santa's reindeers are dinosaurs afraid of? Yes. I'm going to say Blitzen. Nope.
Dasher. Did you get a dash of salt and pepper on your dinosaur burger? Nope. Um, I don't know
what Comet. Oh yeah. That makes more sense. That's yeah. I would have gotten there eventually,
it would have taken me about an hour to remember the song, but nice
About this episode
The hosts juggle a lot of pre-trip logistics while gearing up for TrailHeroX: a light group buy has already blown past its target, gift boxes are delayed, and they outline how listeners can manage tier changes. They also pitch a Russo fire extinguisher giveaway, then dive into vehicle prep for Fiona, including lighting, wiring cleanup, camera upgrades, and making the rig fit a trailer. The back half shifts to chainsaw certification, where both hosts pass B-level testing after a demanding tree-felling weekend.
Tyler has been working his back off getting everything ready for TrailHeroX. Now that Fiona is back, he needed to put the Baja Lights on, lots of lights, along with the switch pros. He also still needs to add the Mega wips and a few other fun products. Jimmy spent a lot of time with family, and getting some gifts done for TrailHeroX
SnailTrail4x4 Discord: https://discord.gg/yFyFFkQbuy Come hang out with us on the SnailTrail4x4 Discord — it’s the easiest way to connect with Tyler and Jimmy directly, chat with fellow offroad enthusiasts, and get first access to Group Buys and Treasure Hunt token drops.
Group Buy for the Devos LightRanger 500 We reached out to Devos, and they are in. Here’s how the discount tiers work:
MORRFlate Giveaway at 900 Reviews on Apple Podcast. But our next giveaway is when we reach 800 reviews; we are giving away an OnX Elite Membership. We will also give away an OnX Elite membership when we get to 850. However, when we reach 900 Reviews, we are teaming up with MORRFlate for a $1000 MF Product Giveaway. Go over to Apple Podcasts to leave your review now and become eligible to win. Congratulations to A13XMONT, who won a set of tires from Yokohama Tire!
Call us and leave us a VOICEMAIL!!!
We want to hear from you even more!!! You can call and say whatever you like! Ask a question, leave feedback, correct some information about welding, say how much you hate your Jeep, and wish you had a Toyota! We will air them all, live, on the podcast! +01-916-345-4744. If you have any negative feedback, you can call our negative feedback hotline, 408-800-5169.
4Wheel Underground has all the suspension parts you need to take your off-road rig from leaf springs to a performance suspension system. We just ordered our kits for Kermit and Samantha and are looking forward to getting them. The ordering process was quite simple, and after answering the questionnaire, we ensured we got the correct and best-fitting kits for our vehicles. If you want to level up your suspension game, check out 4Wheel Underground.
SnailTrail4x4 Podcast is brought to you by all of our peeps over at irate4x4! Make sure to stop by and see all of the great perks you get for supporting SnailTrail4x4! Discount Codes, Monthly Give-Always, Gift Boxes, the SnailTrail4x4 Community, and the ST4x4 Treasure Hunt! Thank you to all of those who support us! We couldn’t do it without you guys (and gals!)!
SnailSquad Monthly Giveaway
For the Month of April, we are giving away Gift Boxes. Its Gift Box month and two luck indiviuals will win a one of our gift boxs. These are jam packed with goodies from tools to whiskey smokers. They are always different and always random. If you want a chance to win, sign up for the Giveaway Tier on Irate4x4
Congrats to Roger Lutz on March’s Giveaway. We gave away the new Devos LightRanger500. This little light is jam-packed with features, from red, orange, and white lights to a motion sensor. It would be perfect for inside a tent, under a canopy, or just general use around the vehicle. If you want a chance to win, sign up for the Giveaway Tier on Irate4x4
Listener Discount Codes:
SnailTrail4x4 –SnailTrail15 for 15% off SnailTrail4x4 Merch MORRFlate – snailtraill4x4 to get 10% off MORRFlate Multi Tire Inflation Deflation™ Kits 4WheelUnderground – snailtrail 10% off Ironman 4×4 – snailtrail20 to get 20% off all Ironman 4×4 branded equipment! Sidetracked Offroad – snailtrail4x4 (lowercase) to get 15% off lights and recovery gear Spartan Rope – snailtrail4x4 to get 10% off sitewide Shock Surplus – SNAILTRAIL4x4 to get $25 off any order! Mob Armor – SNAILTRAIL4X4 for 15% off SummerShine Supply – ST4x4 for 10% off Backpacker’s Pantry – Affiliate Link Laminx Protective Films – Use the Link to get 20% off all products (Affiliate Link)
