Grandma wasn’t thrilled when I told her that I planned to use her most generous Christmas gift on something for the truck. She wanted it to go for something fun and frivolous, not mundane utilities.

But what Grandma doesn’t know is that truck parts are fun and frivolous. I like to put cool stuff on my truck, and I have a whole laundry list of things that I want to do to it. Sure, some are fairly boring and basic, like the fold-out towing mirrors that I really need to get to one of these days, but some are entirely to support my hobby of goofing off by myself in desolate places, like the winch that’s now on my list.

I’ve been intending to get a set of gauges to go with my chip ever since I got the truck. If I’d had them over the summer, I surely wouldn’t have blown out my intercooler dragging Marv’s trailer back up the grade from Pismo.

Yesterday, my interior looked like this:

And today, it looks like this:

(Yes, those are bear parts hanging from the mirror. Dare you to guess which parts! Grouse knows.)

I had those gauges put on after one false start in which the money I’d intended for the project went instead toward replacing the intercooler which needed replacing because I hadn’t yet started the project. I put such a beefy replacement cooler in, that that definitely won’t be the next weak spot, but the hope is that watching my operating parameters a little more closely will keep me from pushing the performance too far and findiing the next weak spot. They let me keep an eye on my exhaust temperature, my transmission temperature (because I have a tendency to be hard on those too), and my level of boost from the turbo, which isn’t that useful until I modify the turbo. Also on my list.

So while it might be boring on the surface, it’s a fun tool that will let me play that much harder and push things a little closer to the edge. Grandpa would have approved!