Ah, well... a weekend for the books. One of my best friends, whom ive known since kindergarten, had it bachelor party this weekend in South Lake Tahoe. The typical drive for us is around 1 hour 30-45 minutes. This was not the case for this weekend. Northern California has gotten an INCREDIBLE amount of snow.

Needless to say, it was a bit longer of a drive than normal. Tons of snow, mini slides, jack-knifed semi, car roll over, more snow, chain control, more snow etc etc... For those whom are familiar with the area, from Highway 50 and the Hazel exit/on-ramp to Pioneer Trail in South Lake, it took..... 12 hour and 25 minutes....

It took 10 hours to reach the chain control. There was a surprising amount of dumb people on the road WHO GOT TURNED AROUND AT CHAIN CONTROL (after sitting in traffic for 10+ hours) because they either didnt have an AWD/4x4 with correct tires, or they didnt have chains. Idiots.

There were more than a handful of times where I just simply shut the car off for 15-30 minutes at a time. Glad I started the trip with a full tank of gas lol.

We landed at our rental house for the weekend just after 2am. Our friends who drive up from the Bay Area were only 7 miles behind us in all of this, the arrived just before 6am..

Some fun traffic pics







The BFG KO2s did wonderful in the snow, zero complaints about them at all. This might be one of the very very very few times I wished that I owned an automatic transmission (because I never have lol), it was pretty rough in that type of traffic for that long (especially on steel inclines and declines).

 

Made it to the house and got as close to the wall of snow as I could to make it easy for the Bay folks to park.

This is what my car looked like from only about 7 hours of being parked





Solid 3-4 inches.

Spend Saturday in South Lake, everyone left Sunday morning. The bachelor and I continued our journey on. We drove around the lake, in very poor visibility, to make it to the North Shore into Truckee.





Made it to my cabin.



Most of the snow melted off in the garage overnight. Woke up bright and early to start our day.


Stopped in at an amazing deli in town to grab some breakfast prior to snowboarding at Northstar. There was another Crosstrek that parked next to us at the deli, figured we were the only two cars in the entire parking lot and it was fitting to snap a pic haha.


What. A. Weekend.

 

Well, just realized that I never posted this mod that I did over a month ago lol...

I posted it on IG, so those who follow me on there, you've already seen it.

BDR Fab (same company that did my shift ****) did some custom e-brake buttons. I decided to snap one up!
Powdercoated orange to match the OEM orange stitching inside the car.

 

Nice. I was looking at that for my STI from Lathewerks just last night oo, but $$$ And it may have something to do with the fact that I want the burnt titanium one to match my Si **** lol.

I talked to BDR at BAM, nice guys! I still want to have them do a **** for me.



Already have this:



WANT

 

Yea BDR have been awesome. Won a **** from them two years ago at BAM 17.

Not sure if they can do Ti, but hit them up and see!

 

Next mod ordered this morning. Should be here on/before next Monday

 

Even though we've never used our EcoHitch I love it.

 

It was supposed to arrive today... it arrived in the bay yesterday at 6am.

Got an update this morning at 1am saying "Due to operating conditions, your package may be delayed. / Delivery will be rescheduled."

 

Would have been nice if it was like what happened with my phone case for my S10+ lol. It said out for delivery, then I got an email saying "due to unforeseen issues, your package cannot be delivered. We will issue a refund." So basically they lost my package. I bought a new one, three days later the original one showed up...

 

damn lol! Did you get a refund or something from the original one?

Got an update about 20 mins ago that its now scheduled for tomorrow

 

EcoHitch Stealth Trailer Hitch Receiver arrived yesterday.


Based on the reviews from the etrailer site (where I bought mine from - https://www.etrailer.com/Trailer-Hit...6-X7365.html#/) folks were complaining about the diameter of the spacer blocks not being large enough for the bolts to pass through (ive you've done this install, or watch their install video, you'll know what im talking about). I first thing I did was try to fit the bolt through the blocks, they all worked just fine! So I figured maybe their read those reviews and slightly enlarged the diameter of them.

Went a head with the install. What I did not take into consideration was the tiny bit extra that was added to the bold when you thread on the snake/wire to pull everything through the frame.... So I had to carefully remove the first set of hardware out of the frame and massage all 4 spacers. Just a hand file on each one did the trick. Once those were taken care of, I got the whole install done in about 35-40 mins by myself.









The lock in the last pic is pretty beefy, and got it mainly because I could rekey it to our house key. So one less key to need to carry around!
This is the lock: https://amzn.to/2HwLeiv It will work if you have a Kwikset style key-cut.

I wanted to get the hitch installed yesterday as it was supposed to rain here today. So today ill be installing the wiring harness for trailer hook ups.
This is the harness I got: https://amzn.to/2HxSA5a

I also picked up ones of these: https://amzn.to/2Y9sIBP to potentially make a cleaner install. Ive yet to really play/look around seriously as to where I might install it.

 

Is the bolt holding the receiver to the cross bar hitch pin size? Does it have to be a bolt or can it be a hitch pin?

 

The receiver is bolted into the hitch. Its a drop in/out so when not in use, I can remove it.

I think its like a 15/16th bolt.

you can see where the bolt would go thru and pinch/secure the drop in/out to the body mount of the receiver.

 

Oh, it has a welded nut on it. I feel like having that be a hitch pin would have been a little nicer to be able to take the receiver on and off without tools.

 

For quickness and ease of use, sure. But for safety/strength/security not even.

The way I see it, Ill just have 1 more large socket (15/16) in my bag-o-tools thats almost always in the back anyways.