Due to the ridiculous rise in the price of gasoline and it's effect on the price of everything else, the great distance to any place to you can legally drive a vehicle off road, and the wear and tear I've put on my truck; I've decided give up offroading. I'll eventually sell the truck for something more eco friendly, but for now I'm just removing 400 or so pounds of steal and 2" of extra rubber. I figure I should pick up between 3-5 MPG which is a lot these days.
Sunday night I listed my parts on the classified sections of my Xterra club forums. By Monday morning I had sold my CB, skid plates, sliders (steel step rails), steel bumper, one of three oversized tires, and my hi lift jack. I should clear about what it costs to get Marc's testing (see next post). That's almost exactly half of what I paid for the stuff so I definitely got my money's worth over the past 8 years.
I spent all evening Tuesday and all day today removing parts. With a small tear in my eye, sweat rolling down my face, and a combination of dirt and grease covering my entire body, I loosened rusty dirty bolts while laying in contorted positions and holding up heavy parts. I Dremmeled away broken bolts and even helped one of my buyers install the parts on his truck. By the end of the day my truck had gone from the beefy behemoth to the piddly mall crawler. I even put the stock step rails and bumper back on.
The final step is the tires. I blew one out offroad last weekend. I figured that was the sign that it was time to quit before I broke something really expensive. I decided to go with small economy tires. They should have been put on Wed night but Mr. Tire broke my wheel lock key. (If you are unfamiliar with wheel locks, they are lug nuts that require a special socket to remove. If you have them, I suggest you throw remove them now and dispose of them. The chance of your wheels being stolen is much less than the chance of this thing causing you a huge hassle.)
So anyway, they tried a special tool but had no luck removing the wheel locks. I called two Nissan dealers who were no help. One wanted to charge me $100 a wheel to chisel them off. Finally I was able to find the company that makes them online. They told me that I could send the broken key to them and they'd send a replacement free of charge. So, as soon as that key comes, assuming it doesn't break as well, the castration will be complete. My truck will no longer have any balls.
