The Story Of A Cummins Suburban (Lots Of Pics)

[Dieselwrencher]

Very cool pics! My wife would love the houses on that high way. She probably would have been long gone at first sight of the lizard!

[mosesburb]

Originally Posted by justcuz

When you went around the north side did you go through Yarnell and hit 111 at Kirkland Junction? We went up that way earlier this month. Then came home through Prescott down 89 and got some serious thunder, lightning and rain. Once we hit the desert floor though it was around 110 to 113 all the way to Palm Springs. Our friends have a place above the golf course by the airport. Right close to Emory-Riddle College.
Keep up the travelogues, it is cool to see the Arizona high country!

No, we didn't get that far west (or south). I like going that way though. I like pulling that hill north of Wilhoit then looking back over Peeples Valley. What a great view. You were just a fuzz north of where the car show was a couple weeks ago. It is at the north end of the round granite boulder area you drove through to get to your friends place. I could have gotten you out of the area on dirt if you wanted the scenic route.

Originally Posted by Dieselwrencher

Very cool pics! My wife would love the houses on that high way. She probably would have been long gone at first sight of the lizard!

My wife and I have drooled over those houses for years. We would park at the bottom of the hilll and walk up one side and down the other and talk to the people that were out.

The lizard is probably only about three inches long and very easy to miss. The only reason I saw it was because I noticed something move in the vicinity. So, with that, I'm guessing your wife would not have appreciated this:



We caught up to this guy on the road Saturday. Gopher snake. Non-venemous, but I guess it will give you a nasty infection if you let it bite you. We put a bunch of miles on dirt last weekend and I have some super-fantastic pictures of our adventures, but I am waiting on a photo-edit program to arrive before I post them up. It's gonna be cool.

[justcuz]

I got a kick out of driving through Skull Valley! Went by the store and 2 old guys sitting outside jawing. Real Americana there!
Drove around Prescott a lot, went by Willow and Watson lakes. Looked at houses and lot out on the east side of town overlooking Willow Lake. Saw the old stuff downtown, including the historical homes. Just west and south of Emory Riddle in that rocky area they are building some new high end homes in there. Looks very exclusive.
I think we left just before the car show. Had to come back to work. I wanted to go to Jerome, but my guests wanted me to see Prescott and the surrounding area, so I will save it for next trip.
I had a nice time sitting on their patio looking out across the valley toward Prescott and Thumb Butte. I think the new section of 89 is what runs through there now and ends up in town by the indian casino up on the hill.
The casino looks down on the old Veterans Hospital complex and the road that runs past Watson Lake. A few kayakers were on the lake when we drove up to the top where the bandstand is and some clouds came rolling in and we had a thunderstorm and rain shower. Was fun watching the boaters try to find some cover and get out of the middle of the lake. Nice area out there, but seems to be growing fast.
Reminds me of my city, Rancho Cucamonga. 27 years ago it was 53 square miles with a population of 26,000. The lemon, orange and avacado trees outnumbered the people. Now a lot of the groves are gone and the population is close to 130,000. If I move, it will be somewhere where urban sprall is unknown. That probably puts me in nortern Wyoming or someplace like that.
I love the Arizona high country though, very beautiful.

[mosesburb]

So I kidnapped my machinist a couple weekends ago. It wasn't as difficult this time as I had my door gunner with me. We dragged him up to a very scenic trail so as not to be located by some super-secret detection equipment. Shortly after hitting dirt we came upon this guy:



He was stretched across the road and my machinist being a friend to all snakes (the reptilian sort--not the greasy-human type), he got out to guide it off the roadway. The snake did not appreciate the assistance, but eventually understood it was best, but not before taking a swipe at him.



So, off we go. One snake saved and we are only a couple miles in on the dirt. We passed an area that i had mentally marked for future exploration. I found a good place to park and we started looking around. I had never really done much looking at this area before, other than looking at it as we drove by. It appeared to be a mine dump, but I couldn't see a mine around. Well, come to find out there was more up the hill from where we were. We got up to about the third "level" and we found some foundations of some type of processing buildings:





We could only guess at what they were as much of the supporting evidence had been scrapped or back-filled. Kind of neat wandering around looking and guessing though. Once we got up to the upper level of the workings we found a road. Sweet. We *thought* we were on a trail the way we went up, but come to find out we were not. The road goes this way and that way. How about that way.



It led over to a tunnel. There was some good air moving out of the tunnel and it appeared dry so we checked it out a little way.



The floor was dry, but it was sticky. Strange. Kind of like in front of the soda fountains at the Kwik-E-Mart. Not enough for your shoes to pick up mud, but enough to feel the adhesion to the soles of your shoes. A little further in:



I like the colors in this pic:



So off we go. We end up over on Senator Highway and we head up towards Senator Mine. On the way we stop at this area. I have heard it referred to as Maxton's Store, but of the pics that I have seen of Maxton's Store, this doesn't look like it. So with that, who knows. Here is a bit of what we saw: Better be careful on the stairs (or what's left of them)



Walls at the back of the structure:



Remnants of an oven maybe?? Shelves??



Kind of interesting trying to figure out what the remnants are and what they were used for back in the day. Kind of like modern day, or recent past archaeology.

I am in the process of figuring out some new camera equipment. As I get it figured out, the quality of pictures should inprove. So until then, we all suffer. Anyways, this takes us to about the half-way point of our trip. I have some more to load yet, but sorting through them is taking some time as I shot about 300 pics on this trip as opposed to probably 70ish on the last one.

[hgs_notes]

Neat stuff there. I gotta talk the wife into moving back out west once the kids are out of the house.

[mosesburb]

Originally Posted by hgs_notes

Neat stuff there. I gotta talk the wife into moving back out west once the kids are out of the house.

Change the locks and move out. By the time they get in and figure out you are gone, you'll be halfway here.

[Junkpyl]

Just stumbled onto your thread. First off I have to say SWEET BURB! Second, your making me homesick with all the pictures I have practically the same pics of Jerome in my computer, it was always one of my favorite places for a quick getaway. One of these days we may move back to AZ but I dunno. Time will tell I s'pose. Keep up the great work on your Suburban, I wouldn't change a thing on it except that dent in the front if you found an original match fender. Original paint Rocks

[mosesburb]

Originally Posted by Junkpyl

Just stumbled onto your thread. First off I have to say SWEET BURB! Second, your making me homesick with all the pictures I have practically the same pics of Jerome in my computer, it was always one of my favorite places for a quick getaway. One of these days we may move back to AZ but I dunno. Time will tell I s'pose. Keep up the great work on your Suburban, I wouldn't change a thing on it except that dent in the front if you found an original match fender. Original paint Rocks

Thanks!! Yeah, I have been searching for an origianl paint, orange fender for many years. They are not very available I guess. It really doesn't bother me too much as it is on the passenger side. I have thought about trying to fix it, but that is about as far as I get with it.

[mosesburb]

We interrupt your regularly scheduled trail photos for some actual fab work.

So, we didn't go wheeling this weekend. I was planning on it, but the weatherman said it was going to rain. It didn't. It was a bit cooler, so I decided to work on the transfer case skid plate that I have been casually fabricating for a little while now. I have been carfully choosing trails we traverse because there was nothing protecting the bottom of the transfer case. Now I am not very concerned about the case itself because it is cast iron and heavy, but I am very concerned about the aluminum housing on the transmission that it mounts to. The case will take a good hit, but the aluminum housing is extremely delicate in comparison. So, with that, I decided long ago that a skid plate would be necessary before running trails with sharp drop-offs or bigger rocks so as not to destroy the fragile aluminum.

So what to do about a skid plate?? I had looked at many factory applications as possible donors, but none really fit the bill. Most were around 1/4" thick aluminum. That would probably work ok if I had another crossmember to support the rear of the aluminum skid. I really didn't want another crossmember, so I started envisioning other options. I ended up with some 1/2" plate. I figured it fit the whole theme of this light-weight, high-speed project. I started laying out the steel to see how it would work.

I put a couple four inch wide pieces side by side and welded them together. Then I took a couple pieces about one inch long and wleded them on the ends at a slight angle upward. I also welded a tab on one side to act as both a mounting point and a spacer to keep the plates where they need to be.



Then I ground a nice gradual radius on the ends of the plate. I also drilled and tapped a couple holes in the plate on the right side so the mounting hardware could come in from the top and not create a point of possible hang-up below. I tapped them to 1/2"-20 and used a couple of those gnarly International tractor crossmember bolts. It keeps the whole light-weight theme going.



I added another little "wing" to it to keep the left edge of the case covered. I painted it and installed it and it ended up looking somehting like this:



In this pic you can see the ends of the mounting bolts that are ground fluch on the toward the leading edge of the plate:




It doesn't need a jack to be installed, but it would probably help. Hopefully it offers enough protection to keep the aluminum housing on the trans intact after an encounter with a rock.

I do have several more pictures from our last adventure, but I haven't loaded them yet. I figured I'd post these up in the mean time to prove I actually do something other than just drive it.

[CowboyProtectionUnit]

very nice!

[1985-GMC]

The skid plate looks really stout, great job on it! I might have to make one like it one day.

[ERASER5]

I think the skid plate needs some re-inforcement...

[mosesburb]

Originally Posted by ERASER5

I think the skid plate needs some re-inforcement...

What do you think, maybe some one inch round bar??
Gotta keep it light-weight you know.

[mosesburb]

Well, I'm not doing so good at this. My boy and I spent 12.5hrs traveling around last weekend and I took a metric dump truck full of pics, but then I realized I never posted the rest from a few weeks ago. So, without further delay, here we are back at the mine.






This is the lower road/level at the building:



Looking over toward the mine:



We did a little wandering around the erector set structure and from what I can tell, I believe it was a mill or an ore processing building. There are many different levels and I found the roads/driveways around the structure and it sure looks like it could have done processing of some sort.

[mosesburb]

So we decided to head down the hill and around back up the other side to check out th emine and whatever else we can find.

While heading down the hill, some equipment can be seen on the other side of the canyon: (the mine is to the right of the right edge of the pic)



After we get around the bottom and cross a very makeshift bridge/culvert/boiler tank we come upon this, which apppears to be the foundation of a building where the ore was transferred from the ore carts to possibly wheeled vehicles. There is evidence of a large door at the other end (opposite end of where tracks come in):



Just around the bend from the foundation we were greeted by this sight:



A little closer and we see this:



There was some air flowing out of the tunnel, but that mud was super-nasty. I did not want to risk getting any of it on me (or getting stuck in it), so I took a couple pics down the tunnel instead:



I like how this pic turned out:



The mud was super nasty, but what it contains is brought by the water which is also very nasty:



The water itself appears clear, but anything it evaporates off of oxidizes to a rust color coating.

Here is a shot down the creek a bit:



Here is a shot of the creek below the structure:



Pretty nasty. Lots of dissolved minerals that should not be exposed to air at this point in their existence.

So we had a great time wandering around these mines and taking some cool pictures. We headed south from here and saw some neat stuff along the way, but I haven't loaded the pics of that yet.

[ERASER5]

Originally Posted by mosesburb

What do you think, maybe some one inch round bar??
Gotta keep it light-weight you know.

At least! You should be able to jack the whole truck up from that skid plate! I'm thinking you once worked on Sherman tanks...

[mosesburb]

Originally Posted by ERASER5

At least! You should be able to jack the whole truck up from that skid plate! I'm thinking you once worked on Sherman tanks...

Believe it or not, I have never been accused of under-building something.

Honest.

[hgs_notes]

Vey cool. It might just be a lot of iron in the water. We have iron mines in northern MN and a few years back I was with my youngets girl up there just playing tourist for a couple days. We stopped at a lake off the highway to have a picnic and throw rocks in the water. From my experience at other places I recognised that the iron content was really high. My kids have one of those magnet sets with the balls and plastic covered magnets, I got one out and it would pick up rocks out of the water just like hunks of steel. Not just fine grains of iron, but rocks up to nickel or quarter size. Next time you go up there, try it out. Maybe it's similar. Then again, maybe it's uranium and you shouldn't. lol

There are abandoned open pit iron mines around the Crosby-Ironton, MN area that filled with water after they quit mining them. Some of the best scuba diving in the state. Excellent visibility and they go deep. Did my 1st 100 foot dive there.

[mosesburb]

Originally Posted by hgs_notes

Vey cool. It might just be a lot of iron in the water. We have iron mines in northern MN and a few years back I was with my youngets girl up there just playing tourist for a couple days. We stopped at a lake off the highway to have a picnic and throw rocks in the water. From my experience at other places I recognised that the iron content was really high. My kids have one of those magnet sets with the balls and plastic covered magnets, I got one out and it would pick up rocks out of the water just like hunks of steel. Not just fine grains of iron, but rocks up to nickel or quarter size. Next time you go up there, try it out. Maybe it's similar. Then again, maybe it's uranium and you shouldn't. lol

Iron might have been a very minor component of the ore, but the major components were gold, silver, lead, zinc and copper. The major contamination is from cadmium, copper, and a tremendous amount of zinc. There is some really funky stuff upstream from here also, so all of the nasty water is not necessarily due to this mine.

This pic was taken just a bit upstream of the mine area. At first i thought it was nasty green water, but upon further investigation, I realized the water is clear but has some nasty biofilm on it. You can see the shadow of the floating log on the bottom of the reservoir, but the white stuff just to the right of the floating log is coagulated biofilm that is spread across the whole reservoir. I have no idea what it is, but it sure looks bad. This pic also illustrates how each mine adds its own "flavor" to the stream as the earlier rust colored pics were taken about fifty yards downstream from here.

Originally Posted by hgs_notes

There are abandoned open pit iron mines around the Crosby-Ironton, MN area that filled with water after they quit mining them. Some of the best scuba diving in the state. Excellent visibility and they go deep. Did my 1st 100 foot dive there.

Yeah, I know some aeas don't have the issues with contamination that others do. Hell, some water in abandoned pits is sterile--nothing grows in it and it remains crystal clear. The mine runoff in this area is not so nice. Some areas it is not so bad, but I'd venture to say that this is pretty average.

This got me to thinking so I went through my pics from this run as I thought I had taken a pic that might illustrate this even better, and I did.

This pic show the area just immediately upstream of the "confluence" of the mine runoff and the stream. You can see a bit of the rust colored water mingling with the non-rust colored water from upstream.



This pic shows the mine runoff coming down the adit. If you look close you can see the rust color ghosting the water down the pile. To take this pic I turned 90* from the previous pic.



This pic shows that even thought the water is nasty, mother nature provided something that can live and thrive in it.

[Mt Man Chad]

Great picture's!
Really like he skid plate ya made, looks very stout!

[mosesburb]

Originally Posted by Mt Man Chad

Great picture's!
Really like he skid plate ya made, looks very stout!

Thanks!! Yeah, hopefully it is stout enough to fend off any evil I bring to it.

[Dieselwrencher]

Nice skid plate! Hopefully it doesnt be the root cause for high centering you now. It's not like it's going to give or rip off.

And once again, cool pics. I imagine that there are a lot of old mines and gravel pits and such that have loads of pollution and run off. But the EPA only worries about big ticket items and go after places that generate money, not waste.

[mosesburb]

So we continued south down the Senator Highway, taking in all the sights and grand vistas we could. We stopped here and there to check out this or that.

This is just a generic shot of what much of the road looks like:



This is Palace Station. Back in th eSenator's heyday, this was a stage stop about halfway between Prescott and Crown King. Thses days a Forest Service employee resides there and the signs say they are not to be disturbed.



This tank is about all that remains at the site of the Yankee Doodle Mine:



This is a shot of the low area that you pass through while heading toward Crown King. Prescott and Crown King are both on tall mountains, but there is a big low area between them. This is in that area:



Another shot, down the road from the previous one:



The dark mountain in the back on the right is the one we go around on the right and hook back around it to get to Crown King:



One of the fantastic views off the side of the road:



Here's another:



This looks like a mill site on the way out of Crown King headed toward the interstate:



So that brings us to the end of this run. It was a great time and we got to see a bunch of cool stuff. Can't wait to do it again.

[1985-GMC]

Man you always go on these awesome adventures and have to come back here an show off.



Haha keep em comin!

[mosesburb]

Originally Posted by 1985-GMC

Man you always go on these awesome adventures and have to come back here an show off.



Haha keep em comin!

Will do.

One of my mud tires had an issue, nobody had any in stock and they are on backorder for some indefinite period of time. So that, coupled with the fact that the new tire would be the new tread pattern that looks nothing like my other tires and the other detail that if I have another problem in six months, I will be going through the whole wait-and-see ordeal again, I decided to get a more common tire size. I looked around at various other sizes and tread patterns. I really didn't need the mud tire, but got the previous ones because of the size. So I pretty much settled on 285/75/R16 BF Goodrich All Terrains load range "E". These were $31.00 less per tire than the load range "D" in the same tire. Strange. Anyways, these are about 33 tall and a fuzz under 12 wide. I asked what the narrowest wheel they could be put on was and I was told the preferred width is eight, but they could be installed on seven inch wheels with minimal detriments. No more 6.5" I guess. Well, I just happened to have a set of 16x7" Accuride wheels in my stock, so I took them down to the blaster and had them blasted. I brought them home and painted them white and took them in to have the tires mounted up on them. They don't look as sporty as the narrow mud tires, but these can actually be found in a tire store--a real ggod thing when you are out on the road somewhere. They are the exact same height as the muds, so I effectively have three spares for these new tires now.

The new wheels have a bit more positive offset and I think they look pretty cool for a wider tire. From a distance they look like the highway tires though.