jakeharr

In the quest for better fuel economy in our beloved 87′ 350 Chevy powered Minnie Winnie we’ve dubbed “Fermin” we’ve gone to the following places and eventually ended at the following conclusion:

Ideas we’ve visited

• We’ve checked full timing advance for correct setting
• We’ve priced out and entertained the idea of installing throttle body fuel injection
• We’ve looked into under/over transmissions
• We’ve looked at 5 speed transmissions
• We’ve evaluated the idea of installing a more fuel efficient torque converter

End Conclusion

After hiring an independent trucker to haul a grain combine that my sister bought a few years back and noticing that his tow rig was a late 80’s Chevy truck that was running a Cummins turbo diesel, curiosity got the best of me and I began researching Cummins diesel swaps. I found that these Cummins diesel swaps are becoming more and more popular all over the country. Poeple are putting the simple and robust commercial Cummins engines in everything from Fords, to Chevy’s, gas Dodge trucks, Jeeps, Toyota trucks and SUV’s, as well as a Hummer H1 I saw. What I also found when I started searching for one of these conversions already put together was the fact that Cummins made a smaller version of their legendary inline 6 cylinder engine called the 4 BT. I then found a 92′ GMC 1500 truck with an NV4500 5 speed manual transmission and a Cummins 4 BT, inline 4 cylinder turbocharged diesel. What a killer combination of simplicity, economy and robust reliability. At the same time I began looking at replacing my totaled Mercedes E300 Diesel to give us a reliable, comfortable and economical set of wheels to make long trips back east in (or anywhere else in the country for that matter). I found a nice 97 Mercedes E300 down on the East Coast of Florida and we decided to fly out to pick it up and surprise Adrienne’s brother on the West Coast on our way home. Just a few days before we left to pick up the Mercedes, the guy with the GMC Cummins swap settled on a price with me but we wanted to see it in person before making any promises. We decided we would drive the new Mercedes from Eastern Florida to Western Florida, hang with her brother for 1 day then drive to Tennessee to pick up my Uncle who lives near where the truck was and go look at the truck together.

Here is Adrienne with her new best friend.

Here is the Mercedes I found in Florida. It looks way better in the photo than it actually does in person, but never-the-less it got us nearly 2000 miles across the country and the only time it let us down was 1 time with a dead battery-because it was a bad battery.

Well, the truck was totally redneck but, totally bad as heck—so we bought it too. Adrienne drove the truck back to my uncles house after making a pit-stop at my cousin Robbins house for a visit. We left the truck with my Uncle for a few months till we can come get it and do some maintenance on it before we go traipsing around the country with it. But, how about this, 25 mpg, tons of power, no frills paint job, and ultra reliability…oh, and we can run it on waste deep fryer oil for free! Beats the heck out of a 7-8 MPG Winnebago. So, as sad as it is, it’s true—we will be selling “Fermin” and getting a nice tow behind RV for our future travels. Here are some photos!

Both of our new vehicles right after we purchased the truck in Tennessee.

Roughly 4 years ago a good friend who moved to Telluride Colorado started telling me about a new friend of hers and how I needed to meet him.  A few years back now, I was offered a position helping the two of them and a group they coordinate to get all of their equipment and art instillation out to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada for Burningman.  I was unable to make it but always wanted to go.  Now, fast forward a few years to present day and I finally made it to Burningman but her friend that she wanted me to meet didn’t go this year.  After we returned from Burningman, we met up with my friend in Telluride to catch up and she mentioned that her friend she wanted me to meet was working on a welding project and could probably use my help.  I got in touch with him and sure enough, I was able to help out. 

 Here is my new job working in one of the most epic mountain towns in the continental US and in one of the most interesting and awesome locations one could think of.  My new friend Anton got this job fabricating a large, industrial, custom set of stairs out of steel at the top of Bridal Veil Falls.  The waterfall plunges a sheer 365 feet and is situated next to the historic Smuggler-Union hydroelectric power plant—home to the second oldest AC power generator in the country.  The steps we are fabricating and installing will take workers from the treacherous switchback road, which gains roughly 1600 feet in elevation in only 1.8 miles, to the back side of the building that houses the hydro generator.

The view of the falls off in the distance on you way up the access road just before the switchbacks start.

The view of the town of Telluride from the top of the falls (The Job Site).

Here is the house that is home to the AC hydro-generator. We are constructing the stair case for workers to gain access to this building.

 Here are some photos of the site where the steps are being installed as well as some photos of the pieces we are fabricating.  To make things even more interesting, I’m fabricating all of the pieces in an old lime stone mine 7 miles outside of town where Anton’s workshop it setup.  Pretty darn cool if you ask me.   

Here’s the main entrance to the Mine/workshop. As you can see, tunnels go in many directions from the previous mining operations that took place here.

Anton finishing the fabrication of a large steel landing.

A long set of steps that will help finish off the project, landing people at the backside of the house.

Part of the workshop where I spent a week fabricating for the project.

Another workshop in the mine.

Adrienne and I just got back from Burning Man 2013, our first year.  Here’s a string of photos that will hopefully tell a story on their own and later I will follow up with our account of what it was like.  For now, enjoy the photos and use your imaginations.

In our preparation for Burning Man, #1 on our list of things to do was to fix the roof-top air conditioner. On our way out to Colorado from Pennsylvania, a few days into the trip Adrienne noticed, while walking back to the RV from the building at the rest stop, that the air conditioner was standing straight up in the air—not normal. I secured all of the loose and broken components and we moved on. After I got back from Alaska, I bought a used unit on craigslist to replace the broken unit and here is the saga that unfolded.

We woke up early one Sunday and went out side to start working on getting the old AC unit removed and the new one installed.  Once we got the old one out of the way Adrienne spent over an hour cleaning the roof surrounding the area where it mounts to provide a clean surface for the new sealant during the installation process.  The new unit weighed maybe 65 lbs and was large and awkward, with many sharp surfaces, providing a serious dilemma in getting it up onto the roof in one piece.  I finally solved the problem by wrapping a strap around the middle of the unit and we dragged it straight up the back ladder of the RV from the roof with a piece of masonite underneath to act as a sled–Adrienne did most of the lifting.

The new/used unit we bought was the same general model but many years older and of slightly smaller capacity and it didn’t come with the inside control assembly. The unit we had installed on our roof was a 13,000 Btu unit and the one I bought was 10,000 Btu. Along with this difference, which was nominal in my mind, was the fact that the wiring was different and the new unit was not setup for the addition of a heater. After re-arranging the wiring in the connector to match up with what was on our inside control unit, I got the unit to power up. But….

The two speed fan didn’t work, and there were dead spots in our selector switch (positions where you could set the selector switch that would not do anything, the fan and compressor would stop). Not a very good sign. So I did what I was dreading doing—I laid out both wiring diagrams side-by-side and studied them very carefully for the next two days and came to the conclusion that both units were exactly the same (minus the smaller compressor) except for the fact that the new/old unit did not have a two speed fan, which the original unit did. So I thought, well shoot, I’ll just take the old two speed fan off and swap the broken fan blade out for the good one, and install it on the new/old unit along with the better wiring harness from the original unit. Over the next 3 days, Adrienne helped me completely tear apart both units and salvage all of the best components to put on the one where were going to use. We tested all the capacitors, cleaned up the wiring, re-gained our multi-speed fan and two stage AC as well as maintaining our heating function. While we were at it, we tore out all the old insulation that smelled of 40 years of cigarette smoke and replaced it with new stuff.

In the end, what a project, but it was well worth it and we now have a beautifully functional unit.

The nasty old smoke saturated insulation.

What was left of the old unit on top of the RV after dissecting it for all its good parts.

Our new unit after installing the two speed fan motor. In the process of testing the capacitors and getting ready to install all the covers with new insulation installed.

Since moving to Montrose, Colorado, a variety of factors have contributed to a massive increase in gourmet home-cooked foods and meals. One of these factors is that Adrienne and I work very well in the kitchen together. She doesn’t mind chopping an prepping ingredients and I enjoy putting it all together in an interesting and delicious way. Another factor is that we share a similar taste for what we enjoy eating as well as a similar level of flexibility to new ideas and it makes decision making very easy.

For a long time I have enjoyed high quality artisan breads and while in college, my friend Peter and I started buying bread for our dorm from a woman in the community that was baking hundreds of loaves of bread each week in a hand-built wood-fired earth oven. When she moved, Peter and I went to her new property and helped her build a new earth oven to bake her bread in. Then, fast forward a few years and starting a few summers ago when Peter got married, I was asked to go with him to help pickup the bread for his wedding. I was instructed that we had to get to the “bread lady” a head of time to ensure we got any bread at all—and I’m never on time. As it turns out, this woman started baking bread in an earth oven and selling it from a stand on the side of the road. Her business has expanded only via word of mouth and her bread has become so popular that in only 30 min from opening, she sells out of all of her bread, muffins, scones and whatever else she has baked for the day. This inspired me and made me want to finally start baking my own bread. So, that year for Christmas I asked for a good book on baking bread. In turn, I was given a book that touted, “artisan bread in five minutes per day.” The book sat in my collection, collecting dust for a few years until my recent move to Montrose…I finally have 5 min a day to bake bread.

Not only do I have 5 min a day to bake fresh artisan breads but many other culinary and confectionery delights as well. The result is many delicious meals—here are a few of them to paint a more accurate picture.

It all started with a craving for salted caramel chocolate covered macadamia nut clusters that developed while I was up in Alaska. We made them the day we moved from Evergreen to Montrose. In the weeks, and now, months that followed we have created many, many more treats like bread loaves, rolls, bread bowls for soup, pizza, home-made meatballs, yogurt, stromboli roll-up, fresh and local corn chowder, cornbread, freshside (uncured bacon fried with salt, pepper, honey, and liquid smoke) a fruit tart, oatmeal chocolate ginger chocolate chip cranberry cookies, chocolate chip raisin macadamia nut cookies, candied Colorado peaches and Belgian waffles with home-made whipped cream, and milkshakes and smoothies of all kinds. Here are some photos!

A delicious pizza we made (1 of 2) this was one of the best pizzas either of us had ever eaten.

Corn chowder made from 10 ears of Olathe sweet corn.

Bread bowl with corn chowder.

Fresh bread rolls.

Candied Colorado peaches atop fresh waffles.

Homemade mac n’ cheese with broccoli.

Fresh corn bread with a cheesy sunny side up egg for breakfast.

With a side of freshside bacon. mmmm

Homemade turkey meatballs smothered in cheese and fire roasted tomatoes on a fresh homemade roll.

Homemade yogurt atop pancakes with diced apples, granola, and maple syrup.

One day after work, a few weeks back, we decided to take a trip out to Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park which is not far from town. Just like the Grand Canyon, there are two entrances, a north and a south entrance to Black Canyon of the Gunnison, so we decided that we would visit the North entrance since it was farther from home and chances were if we had visitors that wanted to go we would opt of the shorter drive and go to the south entrance then…and we didn’t want to never make it to the north entrance. So, off we went. The north entrance is quite a bit farther but it was well worth it. It was a beautiful drive and we stopped all along the way until we go there just as it was getting dark. We actually visited 90% of the overlooks in the dark of night. We were the only vehicle in the park and got to see spectacular stars and an awesome lightning show in the sky. Here are some pictures from our adventure.

One side note, Black Canyon of the Gunnison is very, very spectacular and well worth seeing. It’s odd that it doesn’t get more credit and publicity.

Blue Mesa Reservoir on our way to the park.

The strangest looking assortment of mountains I’ve ever seen.

Adrienne way up on the cliff and the water wayyy down below.

The canyon as we approached the park.

The Black Canyon of the Gunnison

Again, The Black Canyon of the Gunnison.

In the first few weeks of living in Montrose, we took a few nice long excursions on the CT-90, which we agree that we both really enjoy and are going to try to make it a more regular thing. Here are a few of the adventures we have been on with the small-motorcycle-that-could. The first adventure was to the nearby mountain town of Ouray, Colorado, which I posted about previously. The second adventure was toward the town of Gunnison, due east of where we live. This trek landed us at a local state park where we ran into a ranger that talked our ear off about how crazy we were for riding such a small motorcycle together on such mountainous roads. He mentioned that I must have enormous balls to do such a thing, and that he had been drawn over to our motorcycle because it was like the Model T of motorcycles and that everyone remembers these bikes from their childhood and has fond memories. Here he is shooting the wind with us—it was too funny.

Here we are. And now, Adrienne is going to sing you a Britney Spears song.

The last trek we took the CT-90 on was up to the town of Grand Junction, a 60 mile trip, 120 mile round trip. It took us most of the day, including some stops, and wandering around, as well as a close call with running out of fuel on the way home. The day was long, our buts were sore but boy was it fun. We had to go up to Grand Junction to pick up a new starter motor for Adrienne’s truck. The day before we went to start it and it tried to crank and the engine turned ever so slightly and then just stopped. I performed a voltage drop test on the battery and terminals and determined that the battery way beyond dead and noticed that it was low on acid as well as the fact that the terminals were dirty. We cleaned the terminals, top up the acid with water and charged the battery, and still, not a normal crank out of the starter.

I then located a blemish battery from the local Interstate dealer, a $110 battery for $50. After installing the new battery, I crawled under the truck to notice that when trying to crank the engine, the starter was smoking and there was lots of oil on the starter motor but not anywhere else, how convenient. Since I have heard of this sort of thing happening before, I sprayed parts cleaner into the end-bell of the starter to clean out some of the oil from the brush area and sure enough it cranked like normal and started. We removed the starter from the truck and took it apart to realize that the brushes were totally shot from being contaminated with oil for so long. Adrienne was pretty pissed off due to the fact that she had dropped off the truck to have a no start issue diagnosed, but not fixed earlier this year and the guy “fixed it” with out contacting her and then tried to charge her a huge mark up on the starter motor. What he failed to do though was truly fix the problem, which was the oil leak. Anyway, grand junction was the closest place that had a starter with a lifetime warranty. We got the starter and replaced it as well as the leaking valve cover gasket and now the truck starts like it was brand new again.

On our way back from Grand Junction with the starter motor, we stopped at this place in the town of Delta that sells only antique cars that are ready for people to restore or turn into hot rods. It was the first time I had seen someone covering this odd niche in the used car market. There were dozens of timeless classics here for sale. We both enjoyed poking around and checking out all of the neat cars they had for sale on their lot.

Just 10 miles north of Montrose is the town of Olathe, which touts it’s self as having the best sweet corn in the country due to annually ideal climatic conditions. What happens when an extremely small town has something like great sweet corn to brag about is an annual sweet corn festival. Here I present to you the annual Olathe Sweet Corn Festival. I got roped into volunteering (which makes it sound like I didn’t want to do it, but truth is I love corn and any excuse to eat sweet corn is fine by me) at the festival through Habitat For Humanity and their involvement in handing out free ears of corn to festival-goers. The had a fleet of the largest custom-built corn roasters I’ve ever seen—perhaps the largest in the country or world. Here are some photos of the corn being roasted and photos of the festival it’s self. The corn was indeed delicious and we went home with 10 ears to make my annual summer corn chowder. I gave a jar of the chowder to our new neighbors Bill and Jane and Jane said it was the best corn chowder she ever had. Maybe it was the chowder, maybe it was the Olathe sweet corn; who’s to know, but it was damn good.

The view of the festival from up on the hill.

Loading the hopper on the roaster with fresh ears of Olathe sweet corn.

Corn, and more corn being loaded into the hopper.

Waiting for corn to fill the bins as it falls from the roaster.

While I was back up in Evergreen I started looking at use sailboats on craigslist and narrowed my search down to two small racing boats (as disappointing as it was due to the many trailer ready cruisers available under 5k). Don’t worry though, I took careful note of the beauty of used boats in the middle of the country.

1. These boats are old but in really, really nice shape due to only having ever been used in freshwater and
2. They all have really nice trailers due to them being uses primarily on lakes where people don’t have homes and water-frontage. Plus the trailers are only used in freshwater so they are all in really decent shape as well!

One boat was up near Denver, an “International Fireball” which is a fast looking boat, it has a really extensive racing fleet and heritage, it looks like it would keep it’s sailors on their toes, it’s small, and has a trailer. The other boat was a Coronado 15 which was larger, almost half the money, both boats have trapezes but the Coronado came with a harness to use with the trapeze. The Coronado has a smaller racing fleet but would be easier to learn on and teach Adrienne as well as have the space to take friends and just have fun for the day. We settled for the larger boat, the Coronado. The day after I got back to Montrose from Evergreen, we went and met the guy and bought the boat for $400…boat and trailer. What a deal!

Rigging and getting ready to launch our new boat for the first time at Blue Mesa reservoir.

Pulling the boat out of the water at the end of our first day of sailing.

After sailing, on our way home, the light was absolutely perfect for some photos. Here Adrienne got a picture of me taking a picture. The body of water in this photo is where we were sailing all day on our new boat.

Here are some photos of us sailing it the last couple of weeks. It’s such a great addition to our collection of toys. The first day we sailed it on Blue Mesa and the second the boat hit the water the wind died completely and the water looked like glass for about 20 minutes. Then, the wind slowly kicked back up and we had inconsistent wind all afternoon that never dropped below 15 mph and exceeded 25 at times. It turned out to be a challenging first day and really worked us hard. The second day of sailing was at a state park closer to home in Ridgway Colorado. We brought two cigars with us that I had bought for my father a few years prior in New Orleans. He used to smoke a cigar or two a year but has since quite completely, so after seeing them sit for over a year I decided I aught to just smoke them for him. On our second outing in Ridgway, Adrienne and I smoked them and here are some photos; I would never promote the smoking of tobacco products but it’s hard not to comment on just how bad @$$ I look smoking the cigar. The photos bear a close resemblance to the commercial images for Dos Equis beer. If you don’t know what I’m referring to, look it up.

I don’t always smoke cigars, but when I do, I’m always on a Coronado 15. Sail responsibly.

Our new rig on Ridgway reservoir.

After getting back to Montrose I finally got a chance to start to settle into our new home and it’s been really nice. Adrienne is also settling into her new job at Habitat For Humanity very well. There are currently two houses under construction in town that Adrienne is now overseeing the construction of. At the end of the first week in town, a group of volunteers came through called Bike And Build and we had to quickly get a grip on what stage the houses were in and come up with enough work to keep 30 young energetic volunteers busy for a day. It was a great day of work and we had people corralled installing blue board insulation on the entire exterior of both homes as well as house wrap. Here are some photos of the houses when we first got here to Montrose as well as some during the first weeks of work.

One of the houses as we found it at the start of our first week in Montrose.

Starting the blue board and house wrap with the home owner and some volunteers during the first week. Windows had been installed but we removed them to install the materials in the correct order.

The Bike And Build crew starting with blue board at the beginning of the day.

Toward the end of a good hard day of work for 30 volunteers–all of the blue board is up and most of the house wrap is done.

The Bike And Build crew.