Chaos Offroad Visit and a Few Format Changes

I may shift to a monthly format. If I'm not wheeling 1-2 times a month (and wrenching on the weekends in between) there isn't much to write about. I do notice more and more rigs in my area that are at least built for wheeling. No clue if they wheel or not. I might start featuring them here too.

Last Friday (not this weekend, but the weekend prior) I headed down to Chaos Offroad's Fab shop to pick up some equipment Cruzer had ordered for safekeeping. It was the visit that almost didn't happen after maybe a couple months of trying to coordinate schedules.

 So I left my house at around 6am hoping to get down by Winchester before 8am, get the goods, and high tail it back up to DC in time for the workday.

 My aspirations for a quick turnaround were as crushed as these cars behind the shop.

 The guys, as I later found out, had a late build night the evening prior, and folks were a bit slow to rouse the next morning.

 I occupied myself outside taking photos and reading things online.

 Then I started peering in through the glass and taking photos of the Jeeps under construction.

 There were quite a few.

 The first member of the fab team got there around 915am, but he didn't have a key. Nice guy originally from Connecticut. We chatted about builds until the next guy with a key got there around 930. At about 9:45, AK arrived. Despite my much-delayed departure, I thoroughly enjoyed the tour of the shop. I was familiar with how GWs laser cutter worked (which is like a $75K, room-sized piece of equipment), but I had never worked with or seen a plasma cutter in operation. AK provided a demonstration of their shops hand-operated plasma cutter. Not a cheap acquisition by any stretch, but nowhere near the $75,000 price tag of the GW laser cutter either. "You'll kiss your cut-off wheels and band-saws goodbye when you get one of these," he remarked. And he is right. That's pretty much all I have at my disposal for my more rudimentary builds. When we had finished the tour, we sat down at the conference table (it was patio furniture, but that's ok) and AK showed me some of his prior builds and collaborations with his former partner out west and what they've also been up to more recently.

The Friday visit was necessitated by my wife's plans to head to VA beach that weekend to visit some of her HS friends. All good folks with whom I have previously enjoyed spending time. I tried to find somewhere that I could put the truck on the beach, but it was short notice and not much in terms of options turned up. So I only really have typical beach pictures and photos of Maddy with a face full of sand. It was also confirmed that my dog absolutely  hates all manner of water or aqueous activities.

Do you wheel, bro?

 I have seen this Xterra outsid eof National Geographic's headquarters a few times. he's got an axe and a shovel mounted to his roof rack. Mud flaps have been removed. I've been meaning to work up some "Spotted" cards. I left a note on a Frontier once, but the guy never responded.

The other day, at work, I spotted an Off Road-edition Xterra in the garage. There are a few Xs that park there, but most of them seem like the typical DC-area SUV. You get groceries in them and are happy to have it when we get a dusting of snow. Nothing wrong with that. But I noticed his nerf bars and flaps had been removed. "Maybe he wheels". I only noticed it when I came down to retrieve some documents from the truck before lunch. So I went upstairs, grabbed a business card, and came back down to leave the card with a note scrawled on the back. I got an email from him today, to which I responded with info of some of the local clubs in the area. He used to wheel out west but has not been out upon returning back to the area. So maybe he'll take one of the clubs up on the invitation to join and we'll see him out on the trails.

 I work down near the waterfront in Georgetown (although my activities take me around the city, as always). On days where I do a lot of ripping and running, when I come back to the office, it is not worth it to park in the building garage as the rate jumps to $19 once you've exceeded a 2hr stay. At that point, I just find parking on the street. And that's when I ran into this gem. The first time I saw a Lexus at an offroad event was down in Tennessee for National Xterra Meet 3 (NXM3). Not only did it initially seem out of place (at a Nissan Xterra event), aside from Land Rovers, I didn't think anyone would even dare try to wheel a luxury car. But I was careful to hold my comments to myself. Me and Josh F. have been the recipients of snide remarks from Jeep guys for having our Nissans on the trail. The one guy yelled to Josh once at the Big Dogs event, "Does your mom know you're out here with her car?!" It was clever, but he was still a jerk.

 Anyway, someone made a similar comment about this dude's Lexus I guess earlier in the day, and the report was that the owner countered that his 'car' came stock with front and rear lockers and he was clearing 35s. He went on to say, purportedly, that the commenter had probably never seen a Lexus wheeled because he couldn't make it where the Lexus go. Touche sir. Touche.

You clearly love America (as do I), but do you wheel?

I wanted to get a few pics from the front, but the guys you could see in the earlier frames were incapable of figuring out the operation of a parking meter, and I was not interested in crossing the street to get the other favorable vantage point. So I kept it moving. But he had some custom bumper work going on in the front and the rear.

I haven't done much with my truck as of late. The biggest mod I've done yet is relocate the CB antenna (again) to this lower position. I mis-estimated the clearance needed to run a shorter CB and still be able to come in under 6'-2" height which is about the lowest garage that the truck will fit in. In the front of the truck, I have a 4' whip for my scanner radio installed. I was thinking I could run a 4' CB whip out back here, but this position is actually about a foot higher than the front mount. So I would be at about 7'-4" with the CB antenna I just ordered. They make 3' antennas, but I think that is an unacceptable reduction in power-handling, and transmission/reception range for a guy coming from a 102" steel whip. What I decided was that I would swap the coax feeds between the CB radio and my HAM radio which has a 3' antenna also mounted on the front bumper opposite the scanner. I can then run the CB antenna at the HAM radio antenna's former location and move the HAM antenna to this rear location. Then all of my antennas will clear any downtown DC garage that I fit in (without the need for getting out of the truck and bending the 102" whip over and securing it). 

Other than that, I'll be working to diagnose an electrical issue with my aux power system. Sometimes it works, sometimes it is only putting out minimal voltage. Kind of defeats the purpose of a backup. So I need to get on that. I was supposed to do that this weekend, but blogging, Titan Swap research (thinking about it more than I ever have previously), and such kept me distracted. So we'll see.

Until the next post...maybe a month from now. Maybe two weeks from now. 

I'll probably continue to collect photos of the modded trucks I see. If you know who they are we'll need to extend an invitation to go wheeling to see if they actually will come out and get their trucks dirty with us.