The Great Alaskan Tundra Humper *pic heavy*

Hello Gents and Ladies, I am Jeremiah. I live in Fairbanks, Alaska; i'm in college, aspiring to become an English teacher; and bought my foz two years ago. This is it's story:

I broke it really soon after buying it, about a month or two. I got the ol' beast stuck in the snow, and trying to tow it out did a fair deal of damage:



But that was no big deal, it drove quite alright after we shoveled it out. Then, in the spring time, a bit of hooning started the rear bumper's issue of wanting a divorce:


Summer of 2013 brought plastidip and rear wheel bearings sounding like they were trying to make butter out of gravel:



Also got a nice deep clean at the laser wash:


Of course some adventures:




The spring of 2014 brought blown headgaskets, which i replaced with the help of a local Subaru flipper and cylinder head specialist.

I also did a few mods for the local ice track like two switches in the handbrake to fully unlock the center diff when pulled, even with my 4wd lock switch on. Sadly, i have no videos of that hooning.

More adventures came this spring:



Navigator Kyle:



Continues below. I have a picture limit :(
 
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do you think you could run 30 inch tires with that lift?
 
Keep the pics coming! I really want to road trip up to Alaska some spring/summer! It's so beautiful! Maybe when I come you'll show me around :-P
 
brent.lee said:
do you think you could run 30 inch tires with that lift?
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Right now i'm running 28 inch cooper discoverer at3's that i got for 40 bucks. They rub ever so gently on the bumper when i turn enough, but the front bumper is due for a trim anyways. Im thinking you could totally run 30's. I'm planning on getting some 29 inch Cooper Discoverer STT's.

Spideyflygirl90 said:
Keep the pics coming! I really want to road trip up to Alaska some spring/summer! It's so beautiful! Maybe when I come you'll show me around :-P
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I will most definitely keep them pics coming! And I would totally show you around, any excuse to get out of the city is great one!

Also, tested my used coopers the other night in the dank forest, and they really impressed me! Here's some phone pics of the foz flexing:




Not bad for being completely empty inside.
 
The weather finally cleared up yesterday; enough to go on an adventure and cook some hot dogs and baked beans for dinner.

I should've gotten a pic of the trail before this point, it was gnarly - steep with hefty jagged rocks. But this was before the trail opened up:

And when it did:



There was a thunderstorm South of us:

Pretty awesome, definitely my new favorite place to go to.
 
Went on a little family vacation before college fired back up two weeks ago, we went down to Valdez-which is apparently where all of the good lookin ladies live!



Took this in between Glenallen and Palmer:



Then we went up to Independence Mine; an old gold mine from the gold rush times. It has changed alot since i visited last time, with paved walkways and refurbished buildings, which we didn't care for, so we hiked over the tundra to find the original rubble:





Then went through Anchorage which is way to big of a city for me, and i picked up this gem:



An EG33 out of a 92 SVX to put in an Impreza this winter. It weighed the foz down quite a bit, almost every bump put the bumpstops to use. Had to put all the gear on the roof for this too:



The roof rack my friend and I built at my work the night before leaving, so it is definitely not finished yet. I left the engine (Big Jon) at my parents house in Nikiski, and two days later we left to Whittier. Not much to look at there aside from the Buckner building:



 
And more recently, I've been trying out some night photography:





And some Aurora action:



Pretty tough holding still for the 15 second exposure. I'm having a hard time getting the camera focused correctly at night, since its too dark to see anything in the view finder.
 
Nice aurora. We just had a huge solar flare so should have been excellent auroras! Nice pics of the ruins, esp the railway. If you can, get a shot with the camera right above one track, comes out great ;)

That H6 would go great in your Foz! :lildevil::monkeydance: Not an easy fit though
 
NachaLuva said:
Nice aurora. We just had a huge solar flare so should have been excellent auroras! Nice pics of the ruins, esp the railway. If you can, get a shot with the camera right above one track, comes out great ;)

That H6 would go great in your Foz! :lildevil::monkeydance: Not an easy fit though
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Thanks NachaLuva, i was working so much this last couple weeks that i missed out on the epic auroras caused by that huge sun flare. The h6 would be rad in the foz, but racecar..:monkeydance:

The other day i got this lightbar installed:

lightbar by jeremiah_miah, on Flickr

It's a non-cree led 40 inch bar off of amazon. I bought it knowing fully that it wouldn't hold a flame to a Rigid ind. or Vision X bar, and i'm pleased with the output for only 120 bucks:

lightbar output by jeremiah_miah, on Flickr

I don't like how much flood it has, as it lights up the windshield and hood, so im going to build a grill type thing to block the light from going down and hopefully not make it look ridiculous. But anyways, last night me and the guys went out to check out the northern lights:

sihllouette by jeremiah_miah, on Flickr

Try'd light writing:

Oh hay by jeremiah_miah, on Flickr

It says "oh hay". I wasn't the most creative at 4am :lol: And its harder than i thought it would be. An interesting thing i noticed in the pic, is that you can see the refresh rate of my phone's screen in the writing (i used my phone so i have a limitless color choice).

And lastly, i must say that these Cooper Discoverer at3's are terrible in the snow! Thats compared to cheapo goodyear viva's and goodyear wrangler's, i'm not comparing to blizzaks or anything of that caliber.
 
You already have some snow up there, and no more leaves on the trees, you must be cold…

When saying "terrible" about the Cooper AT3's, are they good or bad on snow ?
 
Awesome thread J22!

If your strut bottom lift is strong enough to not buckle after hitting a pothole big and hard enough to tear glass from your windscreen, things are looking good!

Is there a rotational adjustment for camber or is it just set then held by clamping force?
 
jf1sf5 said:
You already have some snow up there, and no more leaves on the trees, you must be cold…

When saying "terrible" about the Cooper AT3's, are they good or bad on snow ?
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stilson said:
Awesome thread J22!

If your strut bottom lift is strong enough to not buckle after hitting a pothole big and hard enough to tear glass from your windscreen, things are looking good!

Is there a rotational adjustment for camber or is it just set then held by clamping force?
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Jf1, it sure is getting chilly here, averaging about 35*F. The Coopers are bad in snow. I think most of the issue is the center tread pattern being consisted of large blocks of tread with very minimal siping, and the tread pattern from the center to edges is about the same. But they are also wider and taller than my Goodyears, so the increased contact patch would make a big difference too. If they were siped, they would probably be amazing.

Stilson, thanks! And yeah, the lift has surprised me with its strength thus far. The camber bolts are still used in the front, but in the rear it requires a lot of filing to adjust the camber.
 
Well i got a text from a girl friend saying "I want to go hooning." Of course i am totally down even though after working a ten hour day, i have a two and half hour class that ends an hour before my bedtime.. We pick up our two other friends then head out north of town to Old Murphy Dome Road, which is a one-track road in the winter. There was about 10 inches of snow on the road with a good base layer of hard snow atop the gravel road. So i'm doing about 45mph up and down the hills and around the bends, then the road tightens so i slow down to drift these nice curves. After a bend opened up, i saw an intersection that 45's Murphy Dome road pointing right (uphill). I slow as much as i can and slide onto the road, then right on through the snowbank and into the ditch. I misjudged the road, i couldn't tell that it was off camber.

So i flipped my 4wd switch and reversed down hill through this powder about 2 feet deep, trying to get it to back up onto the road of course. The left rear tire just wasn't climbing past the little ditch and we stopped about 20 feet downhill from where we started. Here's some pics:

stuck by jeremiah_miah, on Flickr

The moon had the right amount of eerieness to it:

moon is on point by jeremiah_miah, on Flickr

The tracks next to the foz are from our entry into the snow.

We tryed for about two hours and couldn't get out, of course i had no shovels. I called my bro and he called back about 45 minutes later (we were a ways out of town) and he said he cant get up the hill (fwd Saab 9-3T ARC - Awesome car). So we leave the foz and walk 3 miles to Sid, and finally get everyone dropped off and home at 2:30am. Woke up for work at 5am, worst day of work this year. Then after work i skipped class and went out with some friends with shovels to get it out. We get there and some awesome person plowed the snow behind the foz as far off the road as he could and also pushed the snow away from the side of it! That is one of the major reasons why i like Fairbanks, the people. So we did a little bit of shoveling and just towed it out:monkeydance:
 
That was very nice of that kind person! Hope you find out who it was so you can thank them in person :biggrin:

As for the moon, looks like the kinda night those big werewolves come out!! :raspberry:
 
NachaLuva said:
That was very nice of that kind person! Hope you find out who it was so you can thank them in person :biggrin:

As for the moon, looks like the kinda night those big werewolves come out!! :raspberry:
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The next weekend we went up there, and helped a person get his truck unstuck, turns out, it was the guy who shredded his tire last summer.

Here's an update:

Did some adventuring a couple weeks ago, and found my new favorite lake: "29.5 mile pond".

29.5 Mile Pond by jeremiah_miah, on Flickr

Spent a couple hours two weekends ago with my tube bender, and made this cool brush guard that still isn't finished yet.



Need two pieces of tubing connecting the bumper to the grill hoop, then needs some bracing so it can take a hit without bending the radiator support. The new fog lights are these: https://www.superbrightleds.com/mor...-heavy-duty-high-powered-led-work-light/1582/
I love them, i got the 45* beam pattern, and they send a nice square spot way out and a spread that lights up the whole road, with a nice cutoff like projector lights have.

Then i bought a 96 Impreza sedan for 500 dollars for my eg33 rally car build. The same day, this happened:




At least the slam closed the hole in the trunk space so i can weld the subframe back together, LOL.

Also, heres a nice sunset panorama:

Sunset panorama by jeremiah_miah, on Flickr

Just yesterday, we played around at the lake again, blew up a pumpkin with tannerite, snowskated some and made a little campfire:

29.5 mile pond campfire by jeremiah_miah, on Flickr

Then last night, i got 5 pallets from work stacked on the roof of the foz and we went out past Murphy Dome to check out the Northern Lights:

Foz Aurora by jeremiah_miah, on Flickr
 
Great photos, you have some bloody amazing looking countryside over there. The people sound real nice too.....nicer than down here.
 
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