Well, now that I'm an owner, not just a lookie-Lou, I figure I might as well introduce myself.
I'm Blake, and I'm the proud new owner of "Hopper", a very well equipped 2006 SMB 4x4 diesel. According to the previous owner (the third), Hopper has traveled the entire drivable length of North and South America and many places between. My family (wife, toddler, and dogs) can't wait to add adventures Hopper's resume.
A little about us: My wife (Gretchen) and I are both Mechanical Engineers by trade. We've spent time in Arizona, Colorado, and California before our latest stop in Seattle, WA.
In AZ, we were into hardcore rockcrawling in a Toyota-based buggy I built myself. We also did a ton of remote exploring and camping in our Tacoma.
When we moved to Denver, we used the buggy a few times, but ended up getting into dual sport dirtbikes and exploring CO that way (we still did a lot of truck camping). The buggy got sold...
We followed my job to the Central Coast of California where we had our son. The bikes went into hibernation and we started camping out of our Tacoma and Subaru all over the central and norther part of the state. Hiking became the preferred activity because the boy really digs sitting in a pack.
Again we followed my job to Seattle and kept up the camping and hiking. Here in the PNW, we discovered two things that convinced us to pull the trigger on a SMB; Packing up wet gear sucks (so does unpacking it to dry it out before the next trip), and doing anything with a toddler reduces the effectiveness of two people to about 50% of one person- we HAD to reduce the preparation and setup overhead if we were going to get out as much and for as long as we want to.
We picked up Hopper last week and while he's mostly ready to go, I have a couple projects to knock out.
The first time I tried to shift into 4wd, the lever fell through the floor- the front axle lever's pivot bolt had rusted or fatigued or something and twisted right off. The PO had "never even put it into 4wd" and I believe her! Looks like a pretty easy fix.
The flat plate is in the (outside) factory location. Since we intend to camp in the winter, it needs to come in. When I do that, I'll also install an anti-scald mixer to keep busy little hands safe.
We have a lot to learn about offroading in such a large vehicle, but that's part of the fun, right?
We're looking forward to meeting other folks with similar interests and collecting more adventures!
Sportsmobile (AKA Money Pit)
Linear Mode
