When my wife and I were dating, one of our first ‘tests of compatibility’ (that is, will we kill each other when forced into close quarters for a longer period of time) was a week long camping trip in my Chevy with a topper on the back. Drove from southern Oregon down to San Luis Obispo and back. Shockingly, the truck performed flawlessly and I have since marveled at how brave / dumb I was to have put so little mechanical prep into the planning. Actually, there was almost no planning and it’s a miracle we survived
Fast forward a few years and I’m showing off my new free Toyota van that “just needed a fan clutch”. We’re along side the road on an unusually warm Mother’s Day waiting for (of course) my mother to come pick us up, her rapidly-spoiling basket of goodies in the van’s back seat, all because ‘bad fan clutch’ was really ‘rapidly failing head gasket’ and the van was only good for about 75 of the 120 mile drive to her house. Looked like a real master mechanic then.
Edit: Nice truck, rpmerf!