MR.D Posted July 28, 2004 Share Posted July 28, 2004 My wife, 4 year old son, and I are off on a 3,500 mile trip Friday afternoon. We'll be leaving San Diego and heading to Yellowstone and Grand Teton NPs for a week, and then taking the Beartooth HWY to Red Lodge MT to meet my mom at Red Lodge for 3 days. From there we'll follow them back to their log home in the Black Hills of SD for about a week. Our drive home will be a 2 day blast through Wyoming and Utah on the way back to So Cal. Hopefully everything will go well, I've been prepping the Dolphin for the past week so I'm pretty confident, but mentally prepared for the worst. Wish us luck, I'll let you guys know how it's going once we get to SD. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gulfstream Greg Posted July 29, 2004 Share Posted July 29, 2004 Mr.D Sure wish it was me going on your trip, sounds great. Enjoy and may the road gods watch over you! Greg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MR.D Posted July 29, 2004 Author Share Posted July 29, 2004 Thanks Greg, I appreciate it. We took a 350 mile test run last weekend and all went well mechanically, although the welds on the rear bumber broke. Glad I got to the bottom of that before heading out tomorrow. I'll post here from South Dakota once we get there and let you know how it's all gone... I'll look forward to meeting you at the Labor Day CA Toy-In. Anything new on signing up for that? We definitely plan on attending. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gulfstream Greg Posted July 29, 2004 Share Posted July 29, 2004 I'll contact Tika about Labor Day and see whats going on. Enjoy the trip! Greg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MR.D Posted August 15, 2004 Author Share Posted August 15, 2004 We made it! The Dolphin ran flawlessly and averged just under 15mpg running mostly 60-62mph over the 3,400 miles. I drove from the Black Hills to San Diego in about 32 hours and only 5 hours of sleep, so I'm beat now. I'll post more trip details tomorrow if anyone's interested... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gulfstream Greg Posted August 17, 2004 Share Posted August 17, 2004 Looking forward to hearing more, glad all went well! Nothing like having to rest up after a trip. Tika is now taking reservations for the rally. Greg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MR.D Posted August 17, 2004 Author Share Posted August 17, 2004 Thanks Greg, I've been in touch with Tika about it. I can't believe it's only about 2 weeks away. We're planning on being there from Saturday morning until Monday morning. The trip went great, we had only put about 500 miles on the Toy prior to heading out so I was a bit worried as to what problems I may run into. Luckily nothing whatsoever went wrong with the Dolphin. I learned a great deal about driving the unit and using it's auto/OD tranny. As I've read, I found the OD of very little use. I'd love to add a tach which would give be a lot more info about what's going on with the engine. I also finally found use for the ECT button, it does actually work and help in hilly terrain, without the tranny never wants to shift to second, or does so way too late. In the really hilly areas I did a lot of manual shifting from 3rd to 2nd, otherwise the tranny would hunt back and forth. I found that I could easily cruise at 45-50 in second, althouh I'd love a tach to see what sort of RPMs I was pulling when running it up to 55 or slightly more prior to shifting to 3rd. We really enjoyed the 16 nights in the RV and have really come to love our floorplan, the L-shaped dinette, barrel chair and couch. With the table stored away we've got tons of room, even with the lower bed made out. Although it made driving a little less enjoyable we found it easiest to just leave the upper bed made up at all times. Our fridge got a little warm the second day out and concerned us a bit, but then we realized that if we weren't careful it didn't make a complete seal at the bottom when closed, once we figured that it worked great. We only used our shower a few nights preferring to use that space for storage and using the much larger campground showers. Being on such a long trip ment we needed to bring quite a bit of clothes, and as I'm sure you're aware our units just don't have a lot of clothing storage. The sites were incredible in the Tetons, Yellowstone, and Montana. We found a wonderful little KOA campground in Montpelliar that we stayed on the way that we'd highly recommend, the one in Red Lodge was nowhere near as nice. All the campgrounds in Yellowstone were wonderful. We found that sightseeing in the Toy was better than we'd anticipated. It really wonderful being able to park in normal sized places everywhere we went, a real plus to our units Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gulfstream Greg Posted August 19, 2004 Share Posted August 19, 2004 Wow, 16 nights. Our max so far is 3 nights. Ours is alot smaller inside than yours but doable for the two of us. Sounds like you saw some great sights. I really like the ability to just pull over and take a look at something. As easy as driving a big van. We are going on a trip this weekend up to Oleama Ranch RV park near Point Reys. Got the rig almost packed and ready to go. My refer started off running cold, down in the low 30's but today it was at 44 degrees. Outside temp was in the 90's. I had just installed another cooling fan for the rear coils that runs directly from 12 volts, it seemed to help at first. Not much in the refer except some bottles of water so hopefully when it has more it will stabalize. I have had other times though when it would gradually rise in temp. I may have to break down and have to rebuild it. Is your rig a V6? I have the ect also but allways run in the pwr setting. I can use over drive as long as I am running around 60 mph plus. I think I tach at around 4400 rpm at 50 mph in 2nd gear. I really don't like running it that high and will usually back it off to 47 to 48 mph in 2nd. Some folks say you can tell the rpm by the way the engine sounds, ya right. I think getting a tach is a wise idea. On mountin roads I will often drop it into 2nd manually and leave it there, only moving into 3rd when the road flattens out. A transmission temp gauge is handy also. It gets hot in a hurry. I eventually plan on removing my clutch fan and replacing it with an electric fan. The clutch fan kicks in when things get hot but boy is it loud. Some of the electric fans move as much and more air without all the noise, at least thats what I have heard. Well I might check in tomarrow night if not to busy, if not , later until we get back. I will post that trip report. Glad to hear your trip went well Greg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.