We
spent the night at the KOA in Alamosa, CO and had a pleasant
night. From Alamosa, we set our sights on Colorado Springs
to meet with some fellow HiLo trailer owners. From
Colorado Springs, we traveled a short distance to Monument to
see my neice and husband, Becky and Peter, then on to La Junta
to start on yearly maintenance and upgrades.
The photos below are what we saw.
Traveling
north from Alamosa, we had a nice view of Blanca Peak.
At the western foot of the Sangre de
Christo range are the Great Sand Dunes, visible above as the
light tan area. This area is now a National Park.
We had lunch in Salida and then headed
down the Arkansas River canyon toward Canon City. The
river was flowing strong, but long stretches were seemingly
placid.
Anywhere
the gorge narrowed, the river turned into
whitewater. Because the access to the river is easy,
many rafting companies run tours on the Arkansas River.
Outside
of Canon City was this large mine on the side of the
mountain. I am not sure what they are mining here.
We
turned north toward Colorado Springs and our path took us
past Ft. Carson where we spotted this helicopter.
The
chopper was landing in a remote area and we could not tell
if it was a training exercise or whether they were
actually on a medical evacuation.
Ft. Carson is a large base and it has its
own rail yard and fleet of switching locomotives.
We
met the HiLo Owner's Rally at the Colorado Springs
KOA. Kathleen and I were besieged by the other
rally attendees that wanted to know WTF was up with our
truck. They dogged us until we finally burned out
about 9pm. There were about 80 HiLo's that
participated with many of the owners drove from far-away
places (like Ohio) to attend the rally. We, on the
other hand, happened to be in the area and used the rally
as an opportunity to do a re-supply and stage the next
visit on our trip. Thor is visible at the bottom right of
the photo above.
The
campground was next to Fountain Creek and there was a
substantial amount of water flowing.
Our
travels in the Colorado Springs area took us on I-25 where
we passed a very large concrete pumper being towed by a
large, industrial wrecker.
We
spent several days at Becky and Peter's place to the east
of Monument, CO. They had a great view of Pike's
Peak in the distance.
They
have a very nice home that was lucky to have been spared
by the fires in the area several years before.
We
left Monument and headed to the Terry Lee Enterprises
facility in La Junta. Rob, the owner, has an
interesting collection of antique safes and
strongboxes. The box on the left is a Mosler
screw-locking safe that was state of the art for it's
time.
We
had a pretty long list of maintenance and enhancement
action items. The list included the "normal" things
like oil and filter change, chassis lubrication, brake
fluid replacement and general inspection. In
addition, our plan was to rebuild the brake master
cylinder, add a bigger turbocharger, an intercooler and
paint the cab.
The
first action was to rebuild the brake master cylinder and
refill the system with fresh brake fluid. Above, the
pressure bleeder is being used to eliminate the air
bubbles in the system.
This is the stock turbocharger that will
be replaced with a higher volume unit with a waste
gate. Downstream of the turbocharger will be an
intercooler that will use water as the coolant.
Tire
rotation is necessary for extending service life of the
big tires. As part of the rotation, we changed the
stock lug nuts for "skirt nuts". The skirt nuts are
not cheap and a whole set was about $400, almost $10 per
nut. The side effects of the change, in addition to
the cost, were we needed new sockets and wrenches and we
had to remove the front protective plate.
We
damaged our awning on an extremely tight section of the
White Rim Trail in Canyonlands National Park. The
awning was never useful to us, so the damage sealed it's
fate: it was removed.
Kelly
and Rob used the 20' manlift to remove the canopy.
The water-based intercooler
arrived. This is a substantial piece of equipment.
This is the radiator for the
intercooler.
This
is the new, higher-volume Holset turbocharger with waste
gate.
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Photos and Text Copyright Bill Caid 2014, all rights
reserved.
For your enjoyment only, not for commercial use.