Lucky8’s Project Discovery 3 Update : Testing 1,2,3…..4
After having all the issues in the sugar snow, I was thankful that SCARR in Texas was the next event on the docket.
SCARR is a fantastic event held by Texas Rovers at Barnwell Mountain. Barnwell has over 1800 acres of trails and we thought this would be a perfect venue to challenge our Disco 3. In fact we were so excited that we hit the trails as soon as we arrived.
To make things more interesting, we arranged to have a D1, D2 and D4 tackle the trails along side the L8 Disco 3. The goal was to see what truck was best if any at all.
To make sure nobody cheated, we enlisted the services of Staff sargent Army Rover.
After doing a little bit of reading courtesy of Nathan Woods, I was armed with button-pressing knowledge and ready to prove that the D3 was the best of the Discos.
The conditions in Texas were mostly dry, hard-packed clay with some rocks thrown in for good measure. In my opinion this is some of the most ideal conditions for the Disco 3 and thankfully the farthest thing from snow.
The Disco 3 danced around every obstacle it encountered. For the first time I was truly happy with the truck.
I think the Disco felt my content and decided to seek revenge for all the bad things I had said in the past. First, there was a little starter issue. It was my turn to tackle one of the obstacles so I turned the key to fire up the truck and………… nothing. I hit the key a few more times and luckily the starter jumped to life. Not wanting to test fate I pledged to never shut the truck off again.
The Disco 3 is a smart truck, maybe a little too smart. I think the computer did not like the off-road abuse it was getting so it shut the starter off. Since that did not work the next most logical step was to kill the alternator.
We were in big trouble now. Thank god we had a Gap Diagnostics tool and could monitor the voltage.
In the interest of science we continued to push the truck to see were it would die. Around 10.8v is where we started to lose systems. Unfortunately, traction control was one of the first to go.
By 9v the truck was on life support. I’m guessing only the engine ECU was getting the remaining power from the battery.
At 8.8v the Smell R Three had given up the ghost.