Bonneville 2016

Time for another road trip!  Last year Troy and I had planned to take the truck on a guys trip down to Bonneville for Speed Week.  Unfortunately Speed Week was cancelled due to poor salt condition so we ended up going to Hot August Nights.  This year the salt was in good shape so we decided to go down there and check it out.  Truck ran great on the 1,500 mile trip and the recently updated bench seat was very comfortable, but we sure could have used some air conditioning. The sliding rear window does help a lot but I think I'm going to make AC a priority before next summer.
To prepare for the trip I recently swapped the rear end for one out of a '99 Police Interceptor.  This had to be done for rear fender clearance.  With the wider, lower offset wheels the tires have been rubbing when the rear was lowered which could be trouble if one of the bags had an issue on the trip.  The earlier rear end is 7" narrower, allowing plenty of clearance.  This keeps the truck drivable in the case of a rear bag failure.  Since I was switching rears I found one with Trac-Lock and 3.55 gears (previously was 3.27) for better acceleration and traction.  I was a little concerned about mileage after the swap, but I calculated the mileage at about 20mpg going over 70 most of the way with windows down (and even 80-85 through Idaho).   We made the trip home in 12 hours with a couple stops for meals, a couple fill ups, and a rest stop.

I've posted a video on YouTube that has pictures and video highlights of the trip, you can view that here:  https://youtu.be/jVHuX9QFwuw

Here are a few pictures of the truck on the trip:

Bags

Finished my air bag installation.  If you've been following my blog you might remember I had previously installed rear bags from a civilian model Crown Vic. They don't raise/lower very fast but they fit easily in place of the rear springs and are designed to work with the Vic with no hassles.  That has worked great to adjust rear height to compensate for whatever I carry in the bed, but I wanted to have some adjustment in the front too.... so I started collecting parts.
I picked up an air tank (and an air horn!) off craigslist, bought a Little Larry's manual switch block, and a Viair 444C compressor.  Then I was able to get a set of used UAS Aero Sport bags for the front.  These have a hole in the middle to allow them to replace the coil springs on the front struts.  Troy fabricated some bag mounts for me in our shop at work after hours and I finally got airlines run and everything installed.  I think it looks great aired out, it's not "laying frame" by any means but it's definitely low.  Still needs some modifications to the bag mounts for more upward travel, but it can go high enough that the tires don't rub at all.  My YouTube page has a video showing the travel, and here are some pictures of the front strut assembly and photos of the truck all the way down.