RENAMED!! The adventures of Chase and his 2006 Yukon XL Denali!! Follow along on my travels!

[adventurenali92]

Sux the new switch doesn't have the green/amber lights in it.

I know. I had one. But none of the backlighting worked in except for the little green indicator on it. And that part is discontinued…

 

[adventurenali92]

Evening fellas! Today was a completely unexpected day! Yet I got to experience probably a once in a lifetime event that I couldn’t more excited about and blessed to be able to have!

So y’all know how much I love country music! An artist by the name of Granger Smith is my all time favorite artist. So much talent and his music just hits home for me in so many ways! Check him out if you don’t know him! But what draws me more so is that he’s open and honest about his faith in God. He’s hugely involved in his home church in Texas and has an awesome YouTube channel he started with his wife about their faith, family, and church life. And then of course there’s YEE YEE apparel, that granger and his two brothers started, which I absolutely love! Hats, hoodies, t shirts, the YEE YEE shot gun sticker on the back window of the Nali, I just love it. All of their apparel manufactured by us vendors in the southeast so I genuinely enjoy supporting their business.
Well… Friday night I was scrolling through instagram, and saw Granger Smith’s post, that he would be sharing a message in a church in Bakersfield, this morning, before performing a tour date show in Bakersfield tonight. I thought…. “How amazing would this be to be there at this church for this?! “ so I called my mom up and said “hey wanna go to church on Sunday morning with me in Bakersfield?!” Lol. Explained what’s as going on and she made the trip with me. Filled up the Nali’s tank and hit the road at 6:30 this morning! Three hours and 185 miles later we hit this really neat little small town feel type church called story church. We got there an hour before the planned service as I was assuming we’d be going to some big giant church and need time to park and get in. Not at all what we found. The pastor introduced himself the minute we walked in, showed us around, and showed us to the “sanctuary area” where service was gonna be. Which was a small stage set in front of about 8 round tables with 8 chairs each. They had a small breakfast setup for everyone. It was an incredible service with amazing worship, granger taught a beautiful sermon and there was maybe 80 people all together! Like I said once in a lifetime experience! Met
Some beautiful people and of course Granger stayed after to meet and greet everyone!

For a blue collar 29 year old guy that lives in a small mountain town in the middle of nowhere… I’m pretty blessed! To be able to make a spur of the moment decision to hop in my 15 year old suv, fill the tank and drive 400 miles round trip with no issues, and comfortably, to see a country music artist I love, is pretty freakin awesome! I’m so blessed!

 

[adventurenali92]

Beautiful scenery through tehachapi on highway 58, between Mojave, and Bakersfield. No traffic this morning at all. Granger even signed my hat!!

 

[adventurenali92]

Did thanksgiving with my mom, sister, bro in law and the kids Wednesday since my bro in law got forced to work a shift on thanksgiving day at the fire department. So he headed off the mountain Wednesday night and my sister and the kids stayed over night. I ended up driving them back to riverside yesterday afternoon and the drive put me a little over my oil change interval. I wasn’t too worried since the oil life monitor said 18%.

 

[adventurenali92]

So when I finished up work today, I picked up oil and a filter and hit the gym early. Got home at 3:40 and had my oil change and air filter clean done before dark. Truck rolled over 160k yesterday driving my sister and the kids back down to riverside.

 

[Rocket Man]

I’m closing in on 175k in my 02 but the miles are coming on slowly since I retired. My commute is a walk around my hood with my furry buddy twice a day.

 

[adventurenali92]

I’m closing in on 175k in my 02 but the miles are coming on slowly since I retired. My commute is a walk around my hood with my furry buddy twice a day.

Lucky you! I’m pretty sure I’ve put close to 18k on my truck this year!

 

[adventurenali92]

Another 200 miles round trip in the truck today. Down to villa park to my aunt and her husbands house for a late thanksgiving with my mom, sister, bro in law and the kids. Truck ran flawlessly. Had to work a couple hours this morning and then scoot off the mountain. My aunt goes crazy with Christmas decorations. And now they have inflatable ones… of course with the kids we had to blow them up… lol. good memories though today.

 

[adventurenali92]

So it’s been just under a year since I let a couple guys talk me into doing an HID swap for my headlights… (@PopperM5 and @05Single who isn’t around much these days) lol. Eric gave me the contact info for Nathaniel at custom brackets and designs and he got me set up with a whole kit. It has been working great since install. I love the HID output so much more than the LEDs I ran in the other aftermarket headlights with cheap projectors. What I didn’t know that was that Eric’s rig got Morimoto HID bulbs and ballasts for his HID setup…. He was just showing me his setup a little bit ago and I was like “HEY! I didn’t get Morimoto bulbs and ballasts… Chinese stuff instead….” They have been performing fine so it wasn’t a big deal… however one of the wires going into the ignitor pigtail pulled out from its little slot. I’d have to make sure it always stayed tucked into its pigtail. No issues but always bugged me about the wire. So I decided for longevity sake I wanted Morimoto stuff. Ordered 35W 5500k bulbs and ballasts from Morimoto. Interestingly enough the order was fulfilled through the retrofit source.

They got delivered yesterday and I test fit everything to make sure it works. Got them installed into my projectors today and it works as it should. Also Eric directed my to get a high beam splitter harness because the extra power harness coming off the mini H1 8.0 projector plugged into my factory high beam harness to move the cut off plate when the high beams are engaged. With the splitter in place now I can keep that setup the way it is AND still have the LEDs I have in the high beam reflector spot will light up with the highs engaged. I really like the setup. So much forward light!! I’ll post some shots tonight when the sun goes down. The cool part is this is all done and set now for my Utah trip next week so I should have some awesome light performance for this trip! First pic is the Chinese branded ballast and ignitor with the wire pulled out of its pigtail. Second pic is the high beam splitter ordered from lightwerkz.com and third pic is the boxes of the Morimoto ballasts and bulbs.

 

[Rocket Man]

Morimoto is quality stuff. Should be GTG.