What a weekend. Knocked the skidplate out on Thursday after work and started packing up our apartment after. Worked Friday, quick nut n bolt check on the Sonoma, and got the keys to our house. Woke up bright eyed and bushy tailed and cruised to the Clean Dezert event for the maiden voyage of the Sonoma. Truck is freaking awesome! Drove there with AC and cruise control on at 70-80 the whole way (65 up the big hills lol) and averaged around 12mpg, so not bad at all. Got to the cleanup, talked with people for a little, and then went to find some trash. Mark A L(?) marked a tire pit and we figured we'd go snag some tires and head back. Well, the tire pit ended up being like 12ft deep just to get to the tires. So I hopped in and others dangled their tie downs for me to hook to the tires and they dragged them out. Well, NINETEEN TIRES later, and my lungs were coated in dirt and we couldn't fit anymore tires on the trucks! There were still at least 4 tires still in the pit when we left, but we just didn't have the room. Strapped them on the trucks and turtled our way back. Had a great time at the taco/hot dog buffet, chatting with people, looking at trucks, and my wife winning some swag at the raffle. After everything died down I was itching to drive, so Patrick (Ghan Racing), Chelsea and I took off for a short loop. We only did 7 miles, but it was so much fun. Chelsea started getting nervous when we were going 45-50 through some rougher stuff, so I had Patrick lead and we slowed down and cruised. Being her first time in an offroad truck she did really great, and I didn't want to push it by either overdoing it with her, or putting more dirt miles on and breaking something. I hate driving home into the sunset and we were moving into our house the next day, so we called it a successful trip and we parted ways when we got back to outlet center drive, around 3:30pm. We stopped at a weird little chachki shop in Little Rock on the way home and grabbed a milkshake. Made it home safely, with no truck issues, around 7pm. It was an awesome feeling, pulling into the driveway of MY house, in MY built truck, with MY wife next to me. Crazy how much life has changed in the last year!
Overall, the truck is killer. I'm not going to do any valving changes as it feels super spot on, but I think I may swap springs around to get a little more ride height in the front and more bottoming resistance. Realistically, for everywhere except Barstow, I wouldn't change a single thing. The front passenger FOA bump lost nitrogen so it wouldn't extend all the way out and was pretty useless, so I need to rebuild that. Eventually I'd like to do swingset steering and get rid of some bumpsteer and deflection, but stock extended is working great for now.
I made it in the CA300 Promo video lol
