Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Tough weekend with a happy ending

My wife insisted that we go spend a couple nights fishing a mountain lake. I really wanted to go to Idaho bear hunting, but her protest level was high enough that we headed for a Washington mountain lake.

We loaded up in our excursion and tossed the 12' foldabote on and landed a great camp on the water. Fishing was a bit slow beginning until we found the fish as the water is waaaay high right now. We started hooking fish on our 4 and 5 weight fly rods with a fish every 10 minutes or less and ended up with some true pig rainbows. I had one at 8lbs one at 6 and a bunch at 2 to 5lbs. It was pretty incredible.

The trip home made things a bit more stressful. We were 100 miles from home and closing in when I heard the sound of boost leaking.... crap. Quick scan of gauges as I processed what was going on and all was well. The mirror showed all was not well. Serious smoke. Shut down the highway smoke.

I was less than a mile from a small town and figured I'd head that way and monitor gauges hoping for the best. I made it to a safe spot and parked expecting a tow. Shut down all was normal minus the sound of my turbo scrubbing the housing. The excursion was pouring oil out the exhaust and it was obvious that the turbo was cooked. I called for the hook.

$422.00 later the fine fellows at Newport towing showed up just as my neighbor did to grab the wife and kids. Newport towing was the outfit who grabbed my stolen truck for me so I was happy to toss them my bucks. They hooked the excursion to their 6.7 and drug it home. I think my 7.3 does very well based on my sample of one loaded ride in a 6.7.

Monday morning rolls around too soon after a late Sunday and the wife offers to get everyone out of the house and I can have time to dive in. I love this.

She bails and I start calling people....but everyone is at the pikes peak race. I am going to lose one day to this....but I want some opinions before I commit on a turbo.

Not 20 minutes goes by and the brown truck stops and tosses me a new 2b bartlein in 308/10. Sweet! I'll go spin me up a new 300win and ease my mind.

I'm 10 minutes into finally making chips and my DRO chits the bed. Perfect. I pull some numbers and decided to rough it in on the dials and then I'll set up some travel indicators. I leave .005 according to the dials and shut down to set up my indicators....holy crap! I landed on my hard measurement....lucky. I finished the chambering on indicators and it turned out sweet.

Neighbor calls me at 5:30am and says I need to come try out his new shooting range....incredible timing. I do and suddenly forgot about the work ahead.

My rig has larger injectors and after discussing with several sources I decided on a KC stage 1 turbo....and as luck would have it, there's one 30 miles from me in Spokane. I stuffed it in last night and will finish it up in a bit after my boots dry from the cleaning.

What a emotional roller-coaster of a weekend. Sorry about the lack of fish pics.