My question is, does anyone make a quality timer unit that can be wired into the headlights. Ideally, it would also be sensitive to ambient light and make them come on automatically when it gets dark. I found one in the JC Whitney Catalog, but seems like there would be a better product designed for street rods or customs.

If anyone has any suggestions please leave a comment.

Generally the dunes are extremely busy over Memorial day, but this year was different. With gas near $4.00/gallon and a tornado going through Windsor the week before, the sand dunes were unusually quiet.

We all spent the weeks prior to the trip trying to get everything running. Since everything was last minute, we broke a LOT of stuff. Here is a record of the Carnage:

Day 1 - Friday
When we pulled into a gas station in Ft Collins, Seth accidentally ran one of the trailers into a cement post near the gas pump.

Rob’s truck has transmission problems on the way to Laramie. He was pulling Jeff’s jeep on the trailer, so we had to re-arrange everything.

Jeff’s XJ had several problems. Missing TV cable on the transmission, front diff problems, transfer case problems etc…

The front diff in Jason’s Blazer broke after a late night foray into a snowbank. Amazing how quick you can break things with a 454.

Day 2 - Saturday
Tried to ride the buggy. It ran, so it’s not quite in the broken list, but it had serious issues. The Arctic Cat 500 2-stroke doesn’t like the sand dunes.

Jeff’s Wolverine had serious problems. Didn’t want to run right. Jeff took the carb apart, pulled the plug, checked the air filter, nothing seemed to help.

Day 3 - Sunday
Jeff’s Pickup got stuck, while pulling him out the tow hooks and bumper came off.

Rob got his truck running, took it up on the dunes, jumped it a couple times after which it promptly caught on fire.

Day 4 - Monday
Fortunately nothing broke on Monday, and we got everything hitched up an hauled home.

Another trip to the dunes in the books. Hopefully next year will be less expensive and less stuff will break.

See all the pictures in the Walden Sand Dunes 2008 photo gallery.

Things started off great. After the first mile or so we stopped and another group on four wheelers caught up with us. We stopped and visited with them, checked our bikes and continued on.

I took the lead as I had the previous day on Top of the World, and that worked well. My machine was a little quicker than the big 4×4 machines, so I could go through the sandy sections of the trail around the creek bottom. At what I’m going to guess is about the 7 or 8 mile mark, the trail splits. The Jeep trail goes up the side of the canyon, and the ATV section drops back down along the creek.

At this point the four of us stopped for a drink and short break. There were two trucks on the Jeep trail, the second one (I think it was a pathfinder) was having difficulty with an obstacle. The geniuses had tied a tow strap to a boulder just about the trail, and were using a handyman jack as a come-along to try and winch the truck over the obstacle. Jed, Jason and I all stopped and immediately commented on the folly of their winching procedure. 5 seconds after we had that discussion, the boulder fell.

I actually purposely didn’t snap a pic as the rock fell. I really didn’t want a picture of someone dying. Fortunately, the rock hit the trail next to the truck (not on top of it) and everyone was OK. As soon as I was sure everything was all right, I did get that shot of the rock while the dust was still in the air.

We continued on down the trail which goes about another 2.5 miles. There are several obstacles which are extremely difficult. We met back up with the guys we had seen at the beginning of the trail, and it took several of us to get the bikes across some of the obstacles. Going down wasn’t bad, but we decided to turn around and head back not long after that. Heading back up the obstacles was a little more tricky and took two or three guys on each bike to get them up.

Everything had gone great up to this point, but as we headed back, disaster struck…

Jason had taken the lead, but I had grown to like leading on the way in, so decided to pass him. The trail split, part going up on the bank, and part going through the creek. I decided to take the creek to see if I could head him off at the pass. I was going rather fast, and didn’t quite see the large rock jutting out from the canyon wall. The water had gotten rather deep, and once I did see the rock I was unable to avoid it. I took the rock with the right front tire. The bike came to an immediate stop, but somehow I was able to stay on and not fall in the water. If I had fallen in the creek it would have been much worse. The temperature was only in the 50s and there would have been a real danger of hypothermia.

After the crash, I tried to ride the bike up out of the Creek, and noticed the damage. The new, heavy duty, tie rod I had just put on had broken. I didn’t have a spare with me (something that won’t happen again since I have broken a tie rod twice now).

At this point we were 9 miles in on the trail, and had no idea how we were going to get my bike out. We removed the right front wheel and tried to ride it out on three wheels, but that wasn’t an option. I couldn’t do it, and Jed, who is a better rider than I, couldn’t either.

We finally decided to make a ‘gurney’ and tow it out. With a little help from the guys in the pathfinder we were able to find a suitable tree limb, tie it to the back of Jed’s Polaris, and tie it to the bottom of the Warrior. Delbert’s machine had two seats, so I was able to ride back in comfort.

It was a long trip back, but we were able to get the Warrior back to the trailer and loaded up. We then decided to head up Hurrah Pass for the great view. It was just dusk, so we dropped the Warrior, I hopped back on with Delbert, and we were off. Delbert is a great rider, but being on the back of that rig was downright scary. He was powersliding corners, and really just riding faster than I was comfortable with. I held on and prayed a lot.

We got up on the pass, and stopped to take in the spectacular view. It was just getting dark, so we headed back down, loaded up and headed to town. With our riding (at least my riding) done for the weekend, we just grabbed some dinner and turned in.

We started out Friday morning, and headed west over the mountains. It’s about a 6 hour drive from Loveland to Moab. We took the back way in from I-25, and decided to hit the Top of the World trail before we even went to the campground. We unloaded our bikes and everyone jumped on.

One thing to note about this trip, Jason was riding his Suzuki 500 4×4, Jed was riding his Polaris 600 4×4, Delbert was riding his Bombardier Outlander Max (a HUGE machine) and I was riding my 1988 Yamaha Warrior 350 2×4. Needless to say I was both underpowered, and trying to take what is mostly a sport machine over some of the roughest trails there are.

So, we started on on Top of the World, and I was struggling a little. About halfway up the trail I realized that my bike worked much better if I could keep up a consistent speed. While the 4×4 machines were able to crawl over obstacles, I had to hit the rough terrain with more velocity for everything to work well. Once I figured that out, I took the lead, and was the first one to the end of the trail. The view from the top was amazing, and while the trail doesn’t end abruptly, it can kind of sneak up on you and be a little surprising.

After achieving the summit, and enjoying the view, we turned around and headed back. It was still daylight, so we took another trail that led down by the river. We followed this for a couple miles, and finally just stopped and watched the sunset.

We got back to the truck about the time it started getting dark. Since this was March, it was still a bit cool out, but not too bad. We loaded everything up and headed in to the campground. Once we found our camp spot, we went to the Moab Diner and grabbed some dinner, came back to the campground and turned in anticipating a big day on Saturday.

Be sure to look at the photo gallery of our trip to Moab

As you may have noticed, not much Binder information on here lately. The project is coming along a bit slowly this spring, so I haven’t had much to write about. That said, I have tons of other things I can write about, and I’m getting much more traffic from things like my fuel injection articles and putting the distributor in my Buick LeSabre. As a result, I’m going to make a change.

From here on out, this blog is going to be dedicated to all of the guys out there who are more interested in building their rides than they are buying them. For over 20 years I have been buying, building, selling, modifying anything with wheels. My friends and I are continually trying to improve our vehicles at the lowest possible cost. Unfortunately, it seems like most blogs and articles out there are more about buying new parts and throwing them on than they are about low-buck DIY fabrication and modification.

Look for some changes, and a lot more frequency on this blog.

His Sweet Pickup, a 1968 Chevy with a 427 and 700 has woefully antiquated drum brakes. They are OK, but in the mountains they get hot and stop working. Anyone who knows much about these trucks know they didn’t even offer a front disc option until 1972 when they went from 6 hole wheel (on a two wheel drive) to a 5 hole wheel. There just isn’t a good option for converting an older truck to discs without converting the whole truck to 5 hole.

We walked by a guy on with some old Chevy pickup stuff, and there were a set of 6 hole rotors sitting there. They guy said he had ordered them from Classic Performance Parts, but something happened and he never ended up using the rotors. Jason bought the PAIR for $25.

I just looked htem up, doesn’t look like Classic Performance sells just the rotors, but the kit is $699. This set is cross drilled and gas slotted, a $89 upgrade over the standard kit. It was a great find.

I have thought for some time that it would be very interesting to hook a laptop up to a GM TBI wiring harness and create software that would be much more flexible in terms of engine management. It’s obvious the factory GM ECM is not designed for performance modifications - most obviously seen by the difficulty in getting a TBI engine with an aftermarket cam to idle properly.

Aside from the obvious labor problems of merging a laptop with a TBI harness, and writing the software, the biggest problem with this idea is the robustness of the factory ECM. GM ECMs are unbelievably hardy - they work in all types of temperature extremes and physical shocks for years. A standard laptop is just not designed to take that kind of abuse for an extended period of time.

It looks like the folks at Dynamic EFI had a similar idea and have solved the problem. They have created an add in board that is soldered into a factory ECM and solves many of the problems when using a GM TBI system on a performance engine.

Right now my friends and I are all extremely busy trying to get everything setup for summer, but as soon as time and money allows I think I’m going to purchase one of these computers, install it in the Scout, and see how it works. If it does work correctly, I will be in the market for two or three more.

If anyone out there has used a Dynamic EFI EBL system, please feel free to comment - I would love to know if these systems are as trick as they appear to be.

Spent the last couple weekends trying to wrap up the floor work on the Scout. Unfortunately, nothing seemed to cooperate either weekend, but I do have a fairly good rundown on what needs to be done if the rig is going to make it to Walden this year.

• Finish Floor - This is a given
• Install Seats - Again pretty much a priority. Did the RTI test this weekend without a seat bolted down. Not so much fun when your seat starts sliding across the truck
• Mount the computer - Can’t have the computer flopping when I’m racing up the sand hills
• Put fenders and headlights back on - Had to dismantle the front end while working on the floor.
• Windshield Wipers - Anyone out there with a Scout II knows finding the itty bitty windshield wipers is a hassle. My Dad has a good procedure for grafting Chevy Pickup blades onto the stock arms. Have to get that done ASAP, mine are shot.
• Fix rear axle seal and brakes - The rear end has had a leaky axle seal forever. Need to pull it apart and see if I can fix it. At the same time I can check the brakes, they work, but something is wonky there. Low priority, but needs to be done.

I think these are the major things right now. Engine still runs really rich when I first start it. After it warms up it seems OK, so probably just a computer thing. I think it will be drivable the way it is - might actually get some four wheeling in this summer!