Chuck FB

Since I own the autel tool I end up using it to guide me to adjusting the pressures since those are the pressures I will see reflected on the dash and yes I have checked with the stick style tire gauge and while close its not able to adjust as precise as the sensor, that way my pressures as as close as I can make them to match on each axle. The weird thing about buying Nokian brand tires in Canada is that somehow one tire chain store got the rights to sell that brand of tire, there may be a couple of other stores in Ontario but otherwise it seems to be Canada wide from what I have seen on Nokians own website. That means zero competition for that brand of tire for almost everyone in Canada so if I wanted to try Nokians, there were no choices of tire shops as otherwise some shops sell various brands for quite a bit less than another tire store chain. I would have to dig up my receipt to be exact but as I look on the tire stores website they list the tires at 508.00 and then on top of that would be installation and a 5% tax. My total bill was somewhere around 2500.00 as I had bought the sensors from them initially ( so around 2250.00 for the tires and installation and tax I think ). Then after the fact in buying the GM sensors I believe they were around 55.00 a piece before tax as they were giving me a break on the price as per the theme of discounting 10% or so for a customer that had bought the vehicle at that dealership. The tire shop assumed that the GM sensors would be insanely expensive as they have had to go to Toyota or what have you for sensors that were exclusive to the vehicle and not aftermarket and talked about how insanely expensive whatever brand vehicle the sensors cost. So you can see that tires here due to our crappy dollar are always more and with this brand of tire there is that lack of competition as well. By the way the BFG KO3 is the same price at that same tire shop as the LT3 as a price comparison between the two tires. And on a note about winter tires, if one wants the summer tires to match the winter tires for tire size, there are far fewer winter tire sizes to choose from as some may not realize that but the companies try to make them for the popular OEM tire sizes and otherwise its slim pickings if anything at all in some brands.

If you think of it this spring you can give it a try by not touching your autel and make sure you have sufficient air in the summer tires before its driven and can watch the dash with its prior ran numbers that are not changing and then poof the numbers jump to the current mounted wheels. I think its more of a taking a certain amount of minutes rather than any given speed. For someone that does not have a tpms tool it is a nice feature but has to be the proper GM sensors to figure itself out. Same goes for a person who may do a lot of miles a year and does their own rotations, that it shouldn't need any resetting other than any possible tire pressure changes. That shop must pay the owners of those wheels enough to make it enticing to hand over their factory wheels and must not be interested in hanging onto them for the purpose we are which is having two sets of tires mounted up for seasonal use. The price of new factory wheels is insane, I would have had to pay about 6 grand to get a set and goes back to the issue of hardly any aftermarket wheels out there have nearly as much positive offset that I was after. Initially I called a wrecking company here whom I bought GM takeoff wheels years ago from and they brought them in through their system ( the wheels he said came from California and they were just like brand new ) but they had diddly squat for wheels for the newer trucks, hardly anything in an 18" and nothing in a 20". I also did come across some company in Saskatchewan after I had already found my wheels that was marketing used wheels but their price was considerably more than what I paid which was 900.00 for the set and came with the hub caps.

That was a good fortune on your part that you came across those takeoffs, I wanted the same offset wheels as my factory ones but I knew the odds were not good of finding the very same style wheel for the HC as I don't know how long they have been out, maybe since 2024. So I found someone who was selling his 2022 HC wheels privately and had not run them for very long before putting on some aftermarket wheels and was looking to get something out of his factory wheels so I jumped on that as I wasn't hopeful I would find anything better price wise and just wanted to keep the tires within the fenders with all the crap that flies during the winter or for that matter on gravel during the summer. That's why the aftermarket mud flaps all the way around and the keeping the factory running boards on. Anyway what I was not up on at all at the time I had bought the wheels and then had the winter tires mounted up as no sensors came with these wheels as they would have been pulled to install into his new wheels, is that there was anything special about the GM sensors and the person at the tire shop was obviously not up on it either and sold me their brand sensors. Only after did I realize my mistake and never had put the tires on the truck anyway and bought GM sensors and took the tires/wheels back to the tire shop and they swapped them over for no charge and paid me back what they charged me for their sensors. So I had bought the Autel 508 because of wanting to lower the placard pressure but as per the theme of using the tool to reset locations of the tires I have not and didn't require to, which is why I was surprised you made that comment. So this winter when I took my factory wheels/tires combo off and put on this other set of wheels with the winter tires, I just drove down the gravel road although slower yet just to see if the tpms system would figure itself out and it did but just took that extra time and then the pressures jumped to the current tires. This coming spring when I put the factory wheels back on I will rotate the tires and set the pressures accordingly and I'll see if they do their magic as well. I have had an issue this last summer with the rear tire alarms going off if I happened to dip below a certain pressure if it was cooler out but has not made any sense as I lowered the threshold for the rear tires a bit more and pressure up the tires enough to get rid of the warning to turn that green and then lower them back to the exact pressures and still it would seem fine then but get triggered again but always some 15 or more miles down the road and in fact at the same location on the road which was at the top of a hill, the strangest thing. I've not had that problem so far with the sensors in these winter tires but I had also put extra pressure in to compensate for the forthcoming colder weather but have now lowered down the pressure just that little bit toying with it to see if it will trigger the alarm with these sensors. Back to the used wheels I bought, they are the clear coated aluminum wheels and it so happened that because these were made for the chev although the prior HC style wheel, the hub caps are exactly the same for both wheels so I just took them off before bringing the wheels to the tire shop as there was no need for them to be messing with them and damaging them for no reason, then I popped them back in before I put them on the truck. I personally like these hub caps in how they function vs the lower trim models that have the fake lug nuts that screw onto the ends of the studs, and on a work truck who needs to be messing with all of that, in my mind poorly thought out for those but at least someone grabbed a brain and made these for the upper trim trucks and don't have to touch the cap to remove or install the wheels. I've watched my brother struggling with those big plastic caps on his Ford king ranch dually as they cover the lug nuts and have to take those covers off every time the lug nuts need re torqueing.

What a piss off ( just voicing my displeasure ) that somehow GM thought it was a perfectly fine idea to throw an undersized spare onto the trucks that have the larger wheels/tires. Of course it would be cheaper to do what they did and put the very same wheel and tire combo under the trucks that take the 18 or 20 inch wheels, I am only guessing they use a 17" spare for the low end trucks as that would cost less yet. So I have a question for you, what wheel did you source for your winter tires and also did you have the genuine self orienting GM tpms sensors installed into them. In searching on line I came up with nothing for 20 cheap steel wheels if lets say one wanted to install the same size tire as what is on our trucks. Yes one could buy a cheaper aluminum wheel although I don't think there is anything really cheap these days for even aftermarket wheels or at least up here in Canada. Also if one was looking for a wheel that had the same offset as the factory wheels, there is hardly a thing out there that I found other than by that company "replica". I am guessing the larger tire should fit as I believe someone else on here talked about putting a larger spare under their truck, may have been a 35 or possibly larger yet. I can see a difference in diameter would not make the diff all that happy with the carrier pinions constantly working to balance the two axle ends speeds and certainly not if in four wheel drive as then the front and rear axles would be fighting each other due to the difference in rotations per mile. The tire would probably work best on the front axle if in two wheel drive if forced to drive it for quite some distance. The long and short being that a tire would have to be replaced or repaired as soon as possible to make things right.

Did you get a chance to look at the computer screen and see that it would say V8-350 5.7L as I bet it did ! LOL.

Its good to know the transfer cases didn't cause issues at that mileage at least, hard to say what the dealer did for service as I can only speculate that if you had them drop the oil on the transmission and diffs for example, it would be rather likely they dropped the transfer oil as well. One of my female fiends who is probably about 68 now had said recently but referring to back when I would have been 44 years old that I drove like a grandpa then ( I am almost 61 now ), and I would agree with her LOL. Its how one typically has a vehicle that lasts longer and get considerably better fuel mileage vs driving fast and aggressively. Yes the manual does say that tire chains will not work on a truck with the larger tires and I can see on the front that if one bought tire chains that a chain manufacture lists for that size of tire it would go too far down the inner sidewall and not work at all with the upper A arm ball joints lack of clearance to the tire. Also I suspect that turning the steering wheel all the way may cause the tire chain to catch the sway bar and not sure about the inner fender liner clearance either. Cable chains "might" be an option but I have not gotten around to seeing if I can source a tire chain or parts there of with the exact cross chain length I believe will possibly work to not get too close to the ball joint. The chains would have to be snugged up good too and now allowed to "reach out" by being on loose. A lot of unknowns there and as to the rear axle I haven't noted items in the way other than the distance to the inner fenders. I can see why GM just says no as that is the easy out but I wouldn't write it off completely. For example my 1995 Chev half ton with the 265 tires that came with the Z71 it also stated that chains would not fit and they certainly do on both axles but again the clearance has to be kept in mind and the size and width of the chains. Tire chains used to be a lot more affordable as now its almost like buying a set of high end quality and size of studded style triple rails for a highway tractor used to cost to buy one set of measly chains for a set of single tires on a pickup.

Do you put quite a few miles on your tires a winter and the other key factor is if you are driving on a lot of dry warmer pavement due to the logistics of the cascades vs either side of the mountains would have vastly different road conditions as in bare. I have seen some comments under a tire review video mentioning the LT3 being longer wearing then some of the HD type tires that were softer and had extremely limited life as a result. And then if one is driving on much for gravel roads that have bare gravel on them during the winter, that gravel really eats some winter tires as they can't handle that.

I was wondering how many miles you had on some of those 1/2 ton trucks and if you used the 4 auto a lot on some of them. Also if you were changing the oil in the transfer case as a lot of factors would go into what sort of life a component like that would have, even what tires one runs, road conditions etc as low traction tires or light rear weight and driving style would all dictate how much work gets sent through the transfer case to the front axle. I can sure see though around town as one would be on and off the gas and if driven aggressively it would constantly be ramping up the clutches torque to the front to compensate for the rear tires slipping otherwise. Speaking of having good traction, other than specialty ice racing spike tires, running a good set of tire chains can sure make all the difference t traction. Of course a total pain in the rear to install and may not even fit at all on some pickups due to lack of clearance within the wheel well or suspension/knuckle components too close to the tire sidewall. And having to drive slow to be easier on the chains and hopefully on a snow surface where the cross chains can sink into the surface to smoothen up the ride. Nothing is invincible as too much snow and or hard snow and its not going to move but its amazing how a two wheel drive can outdo a four wheel drive in some situations quite handily with a set of chains and better yet with a 4x4 fully chained up.

In my head I was thinking back further in time, like when radials came out and became the normal tire that came on vehicles and the half ton pickups and the full sized cars of the time in the mid to later 1970's had the 235/75R15 tire and that was thee tire size for a number of years on vehicles of that size, and the skinny tall 235/85R16 became the tire of the HD truck market. Then the HD trucks started getting slightly wider tires and the half ton 4x4 took the big jump ( larger optional tire though ) of the 265/75R16 and that was seen as a fairly large tire and became quite popular ... until it too faded away because HD trucks started going to 17 and 18 wheels and now 20's are very common, and unfortunately with lower profile sidewalls and even lower side walls on the half tons that have 20" wheels. Mind you it doesn't end there as I know 22's are available from factory on some trucks. Yes brake rotor diameter increases and larger calipers definitely did play into this to a degree so it wasn't all bs but what to me is bs is that each time they increased the diameter of the wheel they increased the price of the tire that was made to fit onto that wheel even though the tire physically didn't have any more material built into it , it was like a scheme of build it and jack the price up and the factory wheels the same theme. Then on the other end taking what had been popular sizes and now not as commonly popular, make them hard to come by and jack the price up of them for those that still need those sizes. So your 18" wheels and tires to fit it which carry almost identically the same load as my 20" wheel/tire combo since my profile is lower and the actual air volume is almost identical to carry said load, but the 20" tires just happen to be a fair step up in price. I imagine they had this scheme planned out years ago, keep stepping up the size and charge more "just because they can". My truck came with 20" wheels, there was no option of getting 18" wheels, actually your truck may have had a bare bones 17" steel wheel as standard equipment.

Uh the pre GPS world, now people who can see clearly drive off the road or over a cliff as they take instruction from the voice on the GPS. However definitely I have seen situations where it would have been bad visibility and the follow the leader didn't work out so well as the follower followed the vehicle in front of them right into the ditch. Its certainly a horrible experience being on a road that has bad visibility, be that fog or blowing snow as the odds of bad things happening are absolutely not in ones favor.

I wasn't sure when they outlawed them, I am surprised its that long ago as there was no such thing as a really good studless winter tire until many years later. The insanity is that its a northern state and gets lots of crap road conditions just like all the other states that are near or on the northern border and I believe most of those other states do allow studs ?. Here in Alberta the rule is that we can run studs 24/365 as in no restrictions. Speaking of ****** road conditions that don't show up at all as being nasty, I just came across a video someone took this morning on the freeway heading up to this part of Alberta although still a long ways from where I am. That freezing rain is causing lots of issues and expect to hear a lot more about accidents etc and spun out trucks on the major grades ( river valley hills ). Don't bother listening to the video as its the ice ice baby music ... social media LOL. I assume the super B driver hit the brakes and the tires of the rear trailer locked up and it takes time to bleed off the air to release the brakes and get those tires rotating again once they stop turning on slick ice. The highway doesn't look bad at all, that just shows how an over cast sky and a thin layer of freezing rain can trick a person. https://www.facebook.com/reel/826461287032579

What's interesting is that photos like that may or may not indicate how grippy or slick the road actually is and why it can surprise a person in a bad way. Like that blowing snow on what looks like a clear road surface might be ok or it might have a very thin layer of very polished ice from that blowing snow and the photo above it with the visual layer of very thin packed down snow the plow could not scrape off may have better traction. Temperature etc and so on can sure change what the reality is from the perceived assumptions. As to how those surfaces look compared to what I typically have here on our secondary two lane highway, our road tends to get packed down snow and typically its cold and if its just salt/sand spread that won't touch it to melt it and so it builds up into a rough ridged mess that a truck plow just slides over, only a grader putting the pressure on could scrape that off and cause damage to the highway. When they want to wing snow back more they use a grader but have the main blade held up off the roads surface. They do a lot better clearing job on the more main highways but its surprising how icy and nasty they have left them in the last years, the contract company the government hires cuts corners and could be tax dollars as well just are not there. When/if we get s warm spell and if they actually get out there with the plows then it can cut some of that rough crap off. I just got a bout of ice pellets and freezing rain this morning yet the temperature is around 0f and still was able to produce freezing rain. I don't expect the roads will be in great shape now !.

I assume your truck has the 4 auto optional transfer case ( actually not an option but is standard for the higher trim trucks ) and wondered if you ever use it. That same question would also go for dieselfan1 . The reason I ask is because of my chat with one of the local transmission rebuild shops and his experience seeing this type of auto transfer case ( not saying the HD version specifically ) is prone to failure of the clutches due to the biasing slipping nature of them depending on the road surface one is driving on. Winter tires are an oddity due to how not just wear but age can reduce their ice performance.in speaking of non studded tires. Sure, any tire ages and has less ice traction then it had when new but winter tires I've found with what I have run in the past can have a drastic reduction in performance over what they "can" do when new in age and brand new. Winter tires are sure not equal in their performance either from brand to brand and years ago when the so called new age studless tires came out and the claims that some performed better than a lower end winter tire with studs, that sounded like a bs story but I found out from testing a tire shops trucks with various tires that it was not all bs at all. Its years ago now and a tire model that Bridgestone quit making as the DM-V2 came out to replace it but that tire for the first couple of winters was something else and defied logic on slick surfaces and am speaking of leaving the truck in two wheel drive and having performance of a four wheel drive with so so winter tires on acceleration from a stop but then age took over and the performance degraded and while still ok, was not nearly as top notch. Then I got a set of studless toyo observe tires of whatever series that was at the time some years ago and they were hardly any better than the well worn and aged blizzaks I had, that was a disappointment. The problem is popular tire sizes become yesterdays tire sizes and they drop the tire size for the winter specialty tire market.

I will admit that for the time I have had my truck, by the time I had it in my hands later last winter the road conditions were very abnormal for here as in bare roads so that was no challenge, then this winter it also was an odd one earlier on with roads drying off in between freezing rain or small snow events but have been on some ice etc and actually Christmas eve was the only time I have been on more the snow packed and snow falling condition with a bit of drifting taking place. This winter I am running a set of Nokian LT3 winter studded tires which I have no prior experience with I will say that I am not surprisingly somewhat disappointed in them because as I suspected their rubber compound for the 10 ply light truck tires is a lot firmer rubber than typical P rated winter tires and they don't have the amount of siping in them that the better P rated tires have. I knew all that going into it though buying an HD truck, just can't get the better gripping tires in a heavy tire that is made to be tougher. I am running the stock 275/65R20 size and have 40 psi in the front and 35 psi in the rear as I can only imagine how useless they would be jacked up to the max pressure of a 3500 that is almost empty of carrying any weight. While my time behind the wheel in crap conditions isn't that much, I certainly get the feeling that its more planted on winter roads than an empty 1/2 ton pickup simply because its heavier and the fairly long wheel base relative to some more compact vehicles always makes a huge difference in keeping things from going sideways literally. My truck I used prior was a 1/2 ton but an extended cab and I always had a fair bit of weight on the back and it was pretty good as well for stability and I ran winter tires for the last number of years on it as well. All terrains I used were only so so in performance, they could not compare at all to the ice performance of a good winter tire. Had the ditch had deep hard snow in it that night you slipped into it from a hardened plowed up snow bank or snow filled ditch, the odds are you would have been another statistic that night !, however as it was there is a good chance because you were driving it vs some light lower to the ground typical "sort of" all wheel drive you most likely would have been claimed by the ditch. That night before Christmas ( I mean how else can I word this LOL ) as I came to this idiotic new traffic circle that is right in the middle of a four lane divided highway out in the middle of nowhere and some governments brainwave to spend untold amounts building that this summer and still haven't completed it off, I saw a couple of pickups sitting within the traffic circle on the entry into it from the secondary highway I was on and it was like 11pm although there are street lights set up at that intersection. So what I assume happened is that a super duty Ford was going too fast for the conditions ( and his shitty tires ) around the traffic circle and skidded over and caught the snow ridge the plow truck pushed up and he ramped up onto that hard snow ridge/bank and his front wheels were off the ground as the truck was hung up like a turtle. Behind him and that truck was facing the rear of the ford was an older Chev and I think a heavy duty pickup as well and they had just hooked up what looked to be a 3/8 chain or so hooked around the ball of a ball hitch the Ford had and into the chevs one remaining front tow hook loops as his other tow hook was snapped off. Put another way, about everything wrong that one could possibly be doing as his next move was to hit the chain with a bit of a run and BANG it would go and it just barely inched the Ford. He did that maybe four times and finally got the Ford moving enough that it was able to slide off of the hard snow and the guy in the chev had his foot to the floor and it was bouncing off the rev limiter as he's scratching on the snow/ice like that's going to help. The reason I stopped was to see if they needed a tow rope for example and the guy standing off to the side directing the proceedings said I think this should work and I think also assuming they wouldn't be able to hook onto the closed loop tow hook with a tow rope anyway. Of course the guy with the Ford having a tow ball insert into his receiver, like that trick hasn't killed numerous people when it snaps off. Oh and I forgot to say that the guy in the Ford had tires that looked to be twice as wide as factory tires ( they were wide ) and really low profile and the wheels stuck right out and they were mud tires that were well worn down. Like hmmm, what could have caused him to have slid off the highway LOL. It seemed like they must have been traveling together and were not strangers, my guess is they were rammy oil patch workers. The guy standing there made a comment about how they had to really work at it to retrieve their chain from the back of their open box pickup as it was stuck solid to the box in snow/ice.

I haven't been bringing my chev 3500 to the dealer or anywhere else for that matter for service since I prefer to do my own oil changes and greasing so I know its been done and I know what oil actually went into the engine etc and that no one had "checked" my air filter for example and loosened the intake duct hose clamp off or stripped out the screws that hold the cover on into the plastic housing below, or installed the filter sloppily and is now allowing dirt to pass by the filter for example ( l live on a gravel road in a rural farming area ... I farm after all ). I just don't trust some of the staff that work those bottom of the barrel positions in the lube bay. Service reps are typically not mechanics and they are reading what is in front of them on their computer, I am sure some have quite a bit of knowledge but there would be enough of them that certainly wouldn't have a clue. So then it comes down to the person in the lube bay and how the shop itself views the whole thing, do they credit the lube tech for doing a grease job on an HD truck vs a 1500 that has no zerk fittings .. good question. Certainly not every truck owner would even know if their own truck had grease zerks or not because many people do not work at all on their own vehicles and rely on a shop to do it for them and hoping they are doing a proper job of it. I've certainly heard the comment before from GM HD owners clued into the fact that the dealer was not greasing their truck during an oil change and so had asked why not ... the answer in one instance was and of course that would be from a service advisor was "oh that's not part of the oil change package". So the long and short is one has to know for one thing that those zerks exist and then each time one would bring it in if it was a GM dealer or some other shop, to specify and have them put that in writing in their system that the customer wants all steering/suspension grease points greased. Then look after the fact to see if anything was done, which goes full circle to why I skip all that crap and just do it myself or as long as I am able to anyway.

The heat circuit in an air con unit would be fine to have, I've never looked into how much actual heat they put out though and would depend on the unit. It would be more for convenience sake than anything as it would take up no more room and certainly if one was in a camp ground with full hookup and cool out, using it if one had it. Otherwise like you say your able to use small portable units and set them were you want vs that one central heat coming from the ceiling. I get the idea most of those air con units are heavy awkward pigs to get up onto a roof, I imagine that was all sorts of fun LOL. I did go through Carlsbad caverns during the middle of summer ( the last time I've been any distance down into the USA ) and I definitely recommend the caverns although in the middle of winter I doubt the bats fly out like they do during the summer once evening comes as I took that event in as well and I found that quite interesting sitting there at the natural entrance as they bats came out like a tornado and flew off into the evening to hunt for bugs. During the middle of the day it was hot there outside in the parking lot or anywhere outside but the cave is such a relief from the heat. Yes I also did go through Roswell and went through the museum and yes, it was an utterly fantastic waste of money . I think I stepped into at least one of the completely corny touristy stores along main street and it took a lot of will power NOT to buy my very own green alien blow up doll ... but it was a good laugh though to see some tourists actually buying that crap. It was hot out, I think the readout in town showed 104 which for some people is nothing but its hot to me. I actually drove across the state line that first evening after the bat show performance to Guadalupe NP campground as there is not a thing near Carlsbad caverns itself to camp at but that was a gong show as it was in the middle of the night and a total frenzy as others were doing the same thing. I never had a chance to enjoy the park and its the wrong time of the year as one would bake to do any hiking in the mountains, winter time would be the time to be around there I would assume. Speaking of those spaces within the wheel well area that some campers make use of behind the rear wheel wells with built on storage boxes as part of the structure width, that can't be done with a camper that is meant for a variety of box lengths. My bother still owns an older camper and truck that sits in a shed and its a 10'6" or so sized camper but dates back to the early 1970's and its made for an 8 foot truck bed and so it has external storage access from the rear of the camper into those spaces behind the wheel wells. Then up front in the base of the camper as there is no sewer works/basement in campers from back then, there are two doors, one on either side that open up to access those dead space area's ahead of the wheel wells as they thought of that back then. We would store rubber boots etc in one of them up front as after all it was not weather proof storage. These days with basements and such, that takes away that place where one had access in front of the wheel wells. With your camper sitting further back and the fuel tank I assume across the whole width there would not be much room left in front of the wells but behind them and that your camper hangs out back, that is where if one made some type of storage boxes or semi enclosed enough that it would contain items but use weather proof containers to store items in and then place into that space as yes otherwise its a space that isn't being utilized.

I just sent them a little note, will see if they send me a reply at some point.

Your packing lots of other items with you for sure that will aide in prolonging your stay at a location that has no services to physically connect the camper into. I assume the bladders if put to use would be laid into the back of your pickup and the camper having been dropped off so you can run around with the truck to a location that has potable water and a sewer dump. Those racks you have rigged up are a big deal in being able to pack the extra propane and yes as your very aware a camper like yours only has room for one tank in its tank storage compartment. If a person isn't needing it too much for heating the camper, that makes a huge difference to how much propane gets used. The burners and hot water tank would no doubt take far less and last for quite a while. From what I gather with those that use a camper in colder weather that is even claimed to insulate reasonably well like a Northern Lite, they are using up a 20 lb tank in two days !, that gets very expensive to heat a space like that per month and the hassle as tanks having to be refilled constantly. Following the sun/weather like you are doing is far more comfortable anyway !. As to fuel type compatibility, with a gas gen set and a gas pickup and your jockey tank, your very well set up in that regard. So that air con you have, it must be a more modern unit that uses less power to get fired up as older air con units take too much power for a Honda 2000 to think of running from what I understand. That size of generator is at least one which can be lifted and moved, bigger than that and its a two person job. Your solar capacity is decent as well as long as you have some sun and not doing anything crazy with draws. That is the issue with my brothers camper, using the furnace means the draw for the fan motor and its an older camper so all the interior lights are high draw as he needs to round up led bulb replacements. His solar is 15 years old and is only an 80 or 100 watt panel and the less efficient converter solar charging system, and his vehicle charging to camper battery is almost a total joke which is very typical without a dc-dc charge system. I looked up to see where Mission is and I see its not far from Brownsville Texas. My dad and mom drove down there one winter way back and am guessing must have been the early 1960's or something like that, before I was born anyway and that was there late honeymoon trip I guess, did that and also over to Big Bend NP and so forth. That was with an old GM step side half ton pickup and an 8 foot camper and no doubt would have made your camper seem like an out of this world palace in comparison !. An ice box fridge and would have had zero bathroom and I doubt any running water, typical of the time period. And speaking of Big Bend, I never had the time to stick around there but tried to explore it a bit when I went through that area, various hiking trails etc if one has the time to be around there for a while. At least with your trucks power and gearing ( and obviously you have four wheel drive and low range ) the 15% grade to the west of Big Bend along the highway that follows the Rio Grand would be nothing for your unit, the hill that just about claimed my dads gutless wonder of a 235 GM engine and a high speed first gear of a 3 on the tree LOL. As you travel north from where your at over to Big Bend be sure to stop at the Pecos river bridge and take in that drop and the gorge, and over at Langtry and take in the little museum and some Judge Roy Bean history. It was later in the day when I was headed south from Alpine towards Big Bend and I was not expecting the views of the mountains, the angle of the sun sure can take a high sun washed out view and turn it into something spectacular. I don't know how far west you plan on going but there's Carlsbad caverns in southern NM, and the Guadalupe NP on the Teas side and so on with things to see into southern AZ as well.

Are you often staying in RV parks with hookups as per that example photo and the reason I ask is because of the limited fresh water and sewer tank sizes that I expect would make it tough to be off grid for very long. Weather always plays a huge roll in what any RV can deal with to comfortably live in and not be tethered in one way or another depending on how much self reliant supplies one can stuff into it and keep from spoiling, by way of fuels or electric power from solar or a generator etc. Unless I am not seeing correctly, did you mount an air con to it after the fact ?. Because you also own or at least did have a trailer, you have a comparison in rigs under your belt to compare the amenities and storage room. I know my brothers camper because it really lacks in solar, that has been a problem to get enough charge and it does not have a dc-dc charger to make good use of the trucks alternator when it is running. However he always has the fridge running on propane but during cooler weather camping and I don't mean winter here in Canada but getting into the early part of the fall he talks about the propane being sucked up because of running the furnace at night and morning when its cool out. On the other hand his camper has no air con and years back he was in southern BC and was not having fun as it was hot compared to where he normally camps up here and then was limited with the electricity to even run the fans he has and no room in the camper storage to even put a portable gen set on his camper. But he has a crew cab and has that back seat area stuffed to the gills with stuff. Which brings me to your front rack, is that a generator your carrying ?, and a propane bottle I see as your camper only fits one propane bottle. That to me anyway when I watch my brother is the crux of the truck camper, running out of room to pack stuff and the limitations of water storage/sewer storage. He pulls a Jeep TJ behind and runs around with it and will have the 5 gallon jugs in the back where he can find a place to fill them and then use a 12 volt pump to suck them out and into the campers holding tank to help extend his fresh water needs at a no service site by a lake for example. He never drops his camper off as that is an ordeal and relies on his Jeep as his run around vehicle. In the fall here the sun starts to be low in the sky and if its overcast out, that would never work with a 12 volt fridge unless one has LOTS of solar that might barely be able to do something and during our winters that must be something else for those that try to survive in an RV off grid period and solar is completely SOL then. When he first bought his unit he had ideas of maybe using it to go skiing with as some of these mountain ski resorts such as in northern BC have nothing for accommodations near the hill and thought with his wonderful new camper that maybe it was feasible but soon figured out even before winter came that he couldn't see doing that at all as the amount of propane to even hope to heat it and then probably never keep the water system from freezing and not enough battery power to keep what 12 volt systems need power. Never mind that the salt would ruin the camper prematurely and destroy the truck that could last for many years if kept off of winter roads so scrapped that whole idea. Yes, I see some youtubers struggling to use their campers at ski resorts but that is further south and doesn't tend to get near as cold as up here. Aside from my throwing out examples of cold or hot weather struggles, are you tending to try to move with the weather and find that happy medium so its not too hot or not too cold so your able to make it all work and feel like your having fun vs feel your in a struggle to survive. And also as I said at the beginning, if you rely fairly heavily on staying at hookup campsites vs being off grid a lot with your camper ?

Good to know your brakes and the tires you have on it have some ability. That reminded me now of something as I came back and read your comment again, about my 95 chev and how I had a couple of scares in it with standing on the brake pedal and NOT getting the action at all that I should have gotten out of them, not even close. No anti lock brakes energizing and zero skidding and it was because the first time I had some brake work done on it I had taken it to a Midas shop to have it done as I was short of time at that moment and also assumed they would be able to turn my front rotors which I then found out what crap they turn into because of corrosion and the rotor falling apart. In any event my rear brakes had life left in them so they remained as is with the GM drum shoes but I had the front rotors and pads replaced and they of course recommended ceramic brake pads ( because its an upsell ). I thought they seemed to work ok at first but I had never actually had to make any sudden stop. The first time I found myself having to stop fast I couldn't, the pads were just not able to bite down hard enough onto the rotors due I suppose to lack of hydraulic pressure for such a hard pad. These days there very well may be various types of ceramic pad and systems that apply more pressure but I took them off and put what they called a hybrid pad on from Raybestos and that seemed a lot more like the original braking performance. Never a good feeling to need brakes and realize they are not up for the task even though they are cool and should perform good but instead feel like someone smeared grease on them due to such a glass hard pad that lasts a long time because its not aggressive enough for the application.

I don't know when my insurance company started offering this but I had inquired before I had even ordered the truck as to what the insurance was going to cost depending on the price of the truck and if a 1/2, 3/4, or 1 ton. Through that quoting she mentioned that there was a certain coverage they offer only for the purchase of a new vehicle ( could not be a demo vehicle ) and has to be done at the time of first insuring it as well and can't drop the coverage and then decide to put it back on. I don't have the exact wording in front of me but its a no depreciation clause and my insurer will allow a person to carry that insurance for 5 years from the time the vehicle was purchased. So if something were to happen to it, written off because of any reason like a crash, hitting an animal that wrote it off or fire, stolen etc, the purchase price of the vehicle would be paid out up to that 5 year mark when the coverage ends, rather than a depreciated value. Items added onto the vehicle outside of the purchase price would not be covered though. Its always a numbers game with insurance as they are in it for the money but it might be something worth asking about through ones insurance company to see if they offer it and if then buying a new vehicle in the future can decide if that is a coverage one wants.

That's what I assumed given the price and I noticed when I was on the website and partly went through the motions a little pop up came up and asked if I wanted to pay the extra 5.00 for the ability to access the manual if I lost it on my device and was curious if you had chosen that also or not. As to the year of the manual, that may just take some time for them to put a 2025 year manual on the site. There must be a pile of pages to factory manuals these days.