On Sunday, March 9 I made the trek down to Lexington Kentucky to have Sam "The Isuzu Man" Jelinek install my ARB locker. The drive was about 3.5 hours for me one way, and I can honestly say I would drive twice as far in the future for the kind of hospitality and quality of workmanship I was treated to.

Getting started:

One advantage to having Sam do the install is that he allowed me to do as much of the work as I wanted. This is a big deal to me because I feel it is important to know how to do as much on your vehicle as possible in case work needs to be done on the trail. All of the more local places I talked to about the install would not even let me in the garage do to liability purposes..... and wanted over 3 times the money Sam was asking.

Sam setting everyting up and the open differential on the left vs the ARB air locker on the right.

ARB set-up in the third member. Notice the fitting on the housing that the air line connects to. This had to be drilled and tapped.

Third member put back into place with blue ARB air line going to it. I lucked out routing the air line because there were spare clips all the way down the frame that it fit into perfectly.

Locker and Compressor switches on the dash and compressor under the hood:

After the install, we drove down to Livingston, KY to give it a test run. What an amazing difference!!! Up until this point I didn't think I could do anything to my truck that could compete with the Tera Lows for "best mod". I'd say they are both equally worthwhile, but benefit trail performance in separate ways. And they both have no adverse effects on the street.

The first hill I tried involved a 4-foot nearly verticle climb, followed by a fairly-steep rutted climb, ending with another steep 4-foot climb. With the truck in 4Lo, first gear around 2000 RPM, I completed without slipping a tire. When I got to the top, I looked back and saw people at the bottom video taping me...... glad I could be a positive representative for Isuzu. And what made it even sweeter was an old Bronco on huge swampers went after me and really struggled. It was obvious he wasn't locked since one tired front and rear spun wildly as he attempted the steep parts.

The rest of the day I just played around on small climbs:

Several times, I tried things like this with and without the locker turned on. There's just no comparison, the locker made a factory-capable truck one that is simply amazing.

But don't let me trick you into thinking I'm done with the mods. I still want a lift and larger tires when my 31's wear out. And at some point I want to get a front ARB put in as well. This is even more useful with the IFS because I am more likely to lift a tire in the front, which basically leaves me with 2wd until both front tires are back on the ground due to the open front differential.

Testing out the new locker at the Badlands!

Trying out the steps:

Up and Over:

And here is a link to some video of that same obstacle at a later date:

http://www.mwior.com/attica_wmv/seantrysagain.wmv