I figured I would post some of the progress with my Overland Bound rig that I have been slowly building for the past year. Much has changed from the beginning. This is her right after she was purchased. I'm the 2nd ower and she was very very clean.
This was the first camping trip out with her, and by the last day I had taken her through some over grown road/trail and snapped my mirror off and scratched her all to hell. And that's when I knew that this wasn't going to be some show room pavement pounder, and that I needed to step up my game without breaking the bank. First things first, I had to have my tunes! So I installed all never AlpineR 5x7's front and rear, ditched the stock head unit in place for a middle of the road Pioneer with DVD and Bluetooth. I wanted a unit that I could link a backup camera to, which I also installed, a custom made sub box that I found online with a Rockford Fosgate 10" Sub, and I have it all powered off of a 5 channel MB Quart amp. The hard part was making the amp and Sub fit in my truck. But, I eventually figured it's out.
The next thing was tires. The tires that came on it were these tiny LT245/75R16. I stepped it up to some slightly larger 265's Nokian snow tires on my stock wheels at first.
But I hated the stock wheels and wanted something a little bigger. So after searching up high and low for some wheels, that "might" look alright on my truck, I finally found some ION 179's for about $130 a wheel on Amazon. You see, being that my truck is an F250 "light duty" Ford basically just beefed up a F150 , made it a 3/4 ton, and gave it 7 lug wheels, which is the only vehicle in the universe that utilizes 7 lugs far as I know. So I couldn't just mosey on down to the local tire and wheel shop and try out different styles and sizes, which made finding wheels much more difficult. Anyway, after alot of research I decided to go with the BFG KO2's and went up to a LT285/70R17, which definitely gave the truck a much more agressive look, although I did lose a little mpgs, and was a little slower to accelerate off the line.
I then blacked out the silver rocker panels and fender flares with Plasti dip, just to experiment. And added some mud guards.
After doing some some night time off-roading in the snow, I found out that I definetly needed some better lighting and a place to mount a small light bar on.
I swapped out the OEM headlight, fog light, and turn signal Assymblies for some inexpensive eBay ones, and added some LED bulbs, then installed some KC spot lights behind the grill. I added a bull bar, and in stalled a 20" light bar on that as well. All of this made a huge improvement!
Finding places for the switches was tricky but I eventually worked that out.
I also needed to figure something out for power sockets in the truck bed. We are constantly going to lakes and rivers where we need to blow up tubes, boats and other water toys, and it was difficult using the power sockets that were in the truck. So I mounted this in the bed. I
Then I installed some rock lights so I could see where I was putting my tires on some of the more non road like journey's that we were doing at night. Eventually I tore a couple of my mud guards off, and kept getting hung up on my running boards, so those had to go. And then after a exhausting night trying to get unstuck in a place we call "the pit of dispare" It was time to step up my recovery game. I really wanted a winch, but I needed a solid spot to mount it on. So I ended up purchasing and installing a new Iron Cross winch bumper, and slapped a cheap 12,000LB harbor Frieght bad lands winch on it.
Well worth the price!! Next was roof storage. I really wanted a roof rack with a basket that I could store stuff like my Highlift Jack, chain saw, gas can, and other things that I want to have easy access to if I am out off-roading and have a truck bed full of camping gear. I finally decided to go with the 40404 Smittybilt Defender Rack for the cab of my truck. I would have liked to mount a larger one on my camper shell, but the shape of my shell makes it difficult without some major customizing. Mounting the universal brackets to my roof was probably the most tricky. The hardware that they include was easy to install but was also utter crap! They give you these rubber well nuts, that expand when you tighten the ancor bolts for the mounts.These are all great and all for light duty applications, they tore out every time I left the pavement. So after replacing these over and over again, just to have them tear out and have my rack flopping around, I decided to mount it correctly using nuts, bolts, fender washers, and lock washers, along with some polyurethane to keep anything from leaking. It's now as solid as a rock and I love it! This the rack mounted on my truck with a few other additional items bolted to it.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using OB Talk mobile app
Unfortunately I could only post 20 photos and I didn't know that until I had already gone through all of the work typing this up and finding photos.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G935A using OB Talk mobile app
Unfortunately I could only post 20 photos and I didn't know that until I had already gone through all of the work typing this up and finding photos.
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