The Little Green Truck's Big Adventure

[85_Ranger4x4]

A little over year ago another forum I frequent announced they were going to celebrate their 20th anniversary in Eastern Ohio. I had some big plans in store for my truck but the wheels got to turning how cool it would be to take it out there. I live in western Iowa so it is a pretty good haul but one of my plans was a transmission with overdrive which would really help. So I kept plugging away on the truck. Dropped out the C5 3 speed automatic and stock t-case and installed a 5 speed and a NP205 t-case. Fixed a rusted out floor pan while the interior was out of the truck. About June of this year I went for gold and swapped the front axle too, I had already rebuilt a different one that was much stronger with new everything and i got that in and aligned about a month before the trip. After i made a few runs to Omaha (about an hour away) I was building confidence in my little creation. I snagged a topper and started getting serious.

Very abbreviated build thread here:

Long Distance '85 Ranger Build

I have had the truck for almost 19 years, she may not look like much but I have made many special modifications myself. I have been tweaking it somewhat for a long distance drive to a Ranger/Bronco II/Explorer gathering at a offroad park in Ohio next week. So there will be long distance...

expeditionportal.com

Event was at Southington Offroad Park near Streetsboro Ohio. About 800+/- miles one way, taking two lane out (for better roadfarming/mpg) with offroading and camping at the end. Not really real "overlanding" but driving a 34yo truck that far that i built myself was kind of surreal. Wife was 7mo pregnant and we have been burning PTO time at a ferocious rate with dr visits so we didn't have time to do much camping along the way.

Getting close to launch until about halfway thru day 2 I was having "why the heck am I doing this" thoughts.



All packed and ready to go Wednesday night after work:









First night was in Albia Iowa.



Nicely reassuring...



Hit McDonald's in Osceola for breakfast



Found a sister ship, he must have been running late, he was running faster than I cared to.



Neat bridge across the Mississippi River.







Stopped at a neat Irish Pub in Peoria for lunch.



Almost to Indiana...



Boom, second state down.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Stopped at Mr Happy Burger in Logansport for supper. Tenderloin is not like what we are used to in Iowa (think school lunch) but my FIL's fish was awesome as was my wife's chicken. Very neat little place.



It has a little train running around inside:



Super 8 in Huntington Indiana for night #2.



Neat sunrise brings in day #3 as I am packing at the hotel:



And we are in Ohio!



The architecture is very neat out here. This is in Van Wert, wife wanted a bagel and I was happy to walk around a little and take some pictures.





This is actually a library.



Went to my first Big Boy ever in Tiffin. Gotta admit although it never crossed my mind before tarter sauce on a burger ain't bad.



Registration when we first got there:







Jeeps doing Jeep things that i don't understand in the campground as we set up camp.






Off to the Happy Moose for supper.



The oldest and newest truck as far as I know that showed up.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Our campsite, our tent is the back one. Inlaws tagged along (in case pregnant wife wanted to ride in something else or we had problems along the way) and they have the big green one and another forum member has the little one:



There was even a Landcruiser out there, I don't think I had ever seen one this old in the wild before.





I was a pilgrem in an unholy land... in a sea of Heeps. Wifey wanted to camp close to the bath house and thus not with the rest of the Ranger group.



I get the truck prepped for the trail run first thing in the morning, mainly check fluids and drop tire pressures. Not knowing what to expect I was conservative and only went down to 20psi.

Ol' Coleman didn't miss a beat:



Then we all meet up, hang out, do sponsor givaways and then take off to hit the trails. I was the last in the line and forgot to turn on my outside gopro so I stopped to do that and lost the group. I struck off in the direction they went hoping to catch up and didn't see they turned off for a bathroom break before striking out. So went down this trail a ways looking for them before i got to a spot I didn't think the stock trucks in my group would have much fun going thru and that i didn't really want to go thru by myself as it had occurred to me I didn't have anyone's cell phone number.


So I turned around and met back up with them. Taking off with our group:






Looking down to where we started at:





The forum administrator was driving the buggy at the end doing the rock crawl with another admin riding along. That rig was awesome.


Except for the high water (I wasn't figuring on submerging stuff this far from home) I was having a hoot. My wife was not, she was in tears during the hill climb/decent so we went back to camp to take a break and later regrouped and found some easier trails.







Very polite trail around a lake.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

And then we went to watch some of the more built trucks play on the obstacle course. Then some of the guys wanted to go back out the trail we had just been on and play on some of the obstacles out there, so we tagged along to watch.












After that we headed back to camp and had a good campfire with a lot of talking. Some of the guys I had known 18 years online and this was the first time i had met them, it was pretty cool.

Then we had to head out that next sunday. We lined up the trucks that were still there for a group photo (should have done that Saturday but nobody thought of it) before we headed out.





And after marveling at one guy's coffee maker we struck out for home. Kinda proud to say that i had the oldest truck there and aside from the site owner I had driven the farthest.

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

And on one of those top tourist destination things online I found Lanterman's Mill in Youngston Ohio. Only 20 miles from the roundup so we had better hit that. 20miles converted into about an hour and a half because it seems every other bridge between where I was and where I wanted to go was out.



They had a neat covered bridge there too. Ours (in Madison County) are fully enclosed, this one was kinda neat in that you could still see out of it.









The flour is milled off to left, they still mill flour there and bag it to the right side.



Some of the machinery, that shaft runs from the water wheel up four stories and runs everything in the mill.



The sluice gate that runs the water wheel:





Now bring me that horizon...



Very neat architecture out there, especially with churches.





Van Wert's courthouse is still fascinating.



First ever trip to a Bob Evans:





Crashed again in Huntington Indiana. I couldn't resist playing with my door prize at the hotel...

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Beautiful sunrise before we left the hotel:



More churches:





One of these things is not like the others... kind of funny among all these late model gray cars is my old big muddy beast.



Not a bad brisket sandwich



Got buzzed by a C-130 on the way out of town.



Wife's animation:





Stopped for supper in Albia.



Front coming in, we managed to miss most of it the storm. Just light showers for us.



And about 9:30 we got home and the faithful steed is back in its garage that is still a mess from the rush to get it ready.

 

[DetroitDarin]

Very neat. Thanks for sharing this! I cut my off-road teeth on IH Scouts AND Late 80s Rangers (brother had an 89 STX he eventually totalled, then had a 90 if i recall)

 

[85_Ranger4x4]

Very neat. Thanks for sharing this! I cut my off-road teeth on IH Scouts AND Late 80s Rangers (brother had an 89 STX he eventually totalled, then had a 90 if i recall)

Thanks! I have had a lot of fun with the truck over the years. The trip was a cool culmination of building it, the truck did the trip pretty much perfect and I still can't believe I did it. I am looking forward to doing more trips with it.

 

[oldtravlr1]

Thanks. I enjoyed that.

 

[slowlane]

Nice report. It's neat to see someone else travelling in an older vehicle. I like the pictures of the old churches. There is another really good one, an old Catholic church, in Petersburg, Iowa. The town sits on an intersection of 2 county roads and has something like 200 residents, but that huge old gothic style church can be seen about a mile away. Good luck with your future trips.