Stargazer's Garage

This is a picture of our GMC Yukon XL Denali and Keystone Premier 31BHPR travel trailer parked at the Winchester Wasteway Rest Area near Moses Lake, WA. Its name notwithstanding, we stopped here for lunch on the second day of our 2010 Road Trip. Because it seemed to be in the middle of nowhere, this location was very quiet compared to the bustling Indian John Hill rest stop we made earlier in the morning. There were still people coming steadily through, but everyone seemed to be in passenger cars coming in only for a quick pit stop and zooming back on the road right away. There were not very many RVs and no tractor trailers at all. The wide open parking lot allowed us to put out the slides and have a very relaxing lunch. This is one of the great benefits of RVing and hauling around our own portable hotel room!

We pulled over for our first stop in the morning at Indian John Hill Rest Stop at about 10:00. It's was a very busy location with lots of people coming in and out but I was able to pull our 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali and 35' Keystone Premier 31BHPR travel trailer into a nice central parking spot. This rest area was large with nice grassy areas, picnic tables, and plenty of tourist information. The view is very nice, too, with the Stuart mountain range in the distance. Unfortunately, there was one dog owner who didn't follow the signs and had their large dogs loose outside the designated dog area, so I couldn't let our 2-year-old play in the grass. It was too bad because he really needed to work off some energy. We're lucky all our 5 kids travel really well. We've done extended road trips in the past, including driving to... ...Washington, DC, (see Road Trip 2007 , Road Trip 2008 , Road Trip 2009 ) and we generally find that leaving not too early, having a ...

In August 2010, our family of 7 went on a road trip in our 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali and 35' Keystone Premier 31BHPR travel trailer. From Vancouver, Canada, we drove over 7500 km (4650 miles) through the United States taking the I-94 East to Thunder Bay, Ontario and the I-90 West back home from Minneapolis, MN. We spent nearly 30 days on the road living out of our trailer and had an incredibly great time. However, the journey was not without its bumps (including the first night when we found ourselves in the wrong lane at the border crossing and a flat tire in North Dakota), but every "wrong turn" we encountered happened at the "best" possible time to NOT ruin our trip. Even the bent axle that forced us to spend an extra 3-days in Deer Lodge, Montana, did not put a dark shadow on our vacation, because it allowed us to explore and make a special connection to a place we had no idea existed. As a result, we saw a very beautiful part of the country that we will alwa...

IMG087 Originally uploaded by istargazer . A custom GMC Yukon Denali by West Coast Customs was on display at the grand opening of the HP Store in Vancouver, Canada on 3 December 2010. It's an amazing vehicle and the paint work on it is even more incredible in person. It was fun being able to sit inside and play around with some of the equipment including an HP Slate mounted in the dash in front of the passenger seat.

I found a great iPhone/iPod Touch app at the iTunes store for keeping track of fuel consumption and automobile expenses called Road Trip. One of the best things I like about it is that I can enter either gallons or litres and whether or not I fill the tank and it will keep track of all sorts of stats and show me my fuel consumption in either mpg or L/100 km. You can then export all of this data into a spreadsheet through email. I find it easier to simply take a screenshot on my Touch and upload it here, which I plan on doing on a monthly basis from now on. This particular screen shows all the accumulative data since I first bought the Denali back in August 2008. Click the thumbnail above to see the full stats. You can see that the fuel consumption is not great. On the highway I was able to get an average of around 14 mpg, but in the city where I do most of my driving I get around 10 mpg. Such is the cost of living at the top of a mountain. You can also see that on my last fill-up I ave...

The weather finally seemed stable enough for me to put on the all-season tires and 20" chrome wheels back on our 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali. I'm glad to say that it was much less work than back in November when I switched to winter tires and swapped the wheels 10 times ! (Click below for more.) Of course, things don't always go as smoothly as I intend and this time it was trying to re-program TPMS (tire pressure monitor system). I had no problems doing that back in November, but yesterday I wasted over an hour inflating/deflating the tires numerous times and I just could not get the sensors to register. I got as far as three tires, but even doing that wasn't consistent. At least I'm not getting any warning lights in the dash. These 20" wheels are OEM so there were originally programmed already and the system must remember the sensors. Which is good. I can look at the readings to see if all the tires are the same. Recommended tire pressure for the 20" rims i...

I took our 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali into the dealership for an oil change yesterday. With the Oil Life Remaining at 23% I didn't really need to bring it in. The owner's manual states that a message will say CHANGE OIL SOON when you need to change it, but I had some warranty issues I wanted to have checked out. So last week I made a call and setup an appointment to deal with these items: Oil change Loose driver's door panel - It seems like one of the clips would not hold the panel Clunk in rear hatch - I always thought this was normal but then I read on one of the forums that someone else had a clunk that developed into failure and warranty work Leaking washer fluid tube in the passenger wiper arm - It looks like there's a pinhole and fluid shoots all over the place Battery problems - The battery has died a couple of times since the first incident a couple of months ago. Click below to read the results of 3.5 hours of waiting a the dealership.... I'm glad to say that...

O.K. I am now officially done with the snow. I've had enough and it can't melt fast enough. Sadly, the last statement is all too true. The snow that has been sitting around blocking the side-streets has still not been cleared and the warm days and freezing nights have changed it into rock hard ice crystals. Late Friday afternoon when I was picking up my daughter from a play-date, I was very surprised to see that their street had not been cleared at all--even after 2 weeks since the last snowfall. The roadway was wide enough for only one vehicle and each driveway was marked by 3-foot piles of snow on either side. I could still see people shoveling out a wider opening for themselves. It was nearly impossible to turn our 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali our friend's driveway and when I tried to get out I backed into a snow--no, it was an ice -bank and put a huge dent in the rear bumper. I know it didn't sound.... ...good but when I got home and took a look, I saw the extent of the...

Denali snow Originally uploaded by istargazer . In December we were hit with a series of snow storms that left many people snow bound. I was totally impressed by our GMC Yukon XL Denali's performance with the AWD and winter tires and I never got stuck--even though I tried :lol:. While my neighbors were busy shoveling their driveways so that they could get out, I refused to shovel mine and simply drove the Denali in and out of our garage. I even used a tow rope to pull out a neighbor's Jeep Cherokee that had gotten stuck on the slope in front of their house. I also picked up strangers walking in the street who waved me down for help. I gave them rides down the mountain because their cars were stuck, the buses weren't running, and the sidewalks weren't cleared. Walking in the road in conditions like that was just too dangerous. I bought 17" winter rims this season in anticipation of getting chains for my YDXL but I'm happy to discover that even with our...

Denali-snow2 Originally uploaded by istargazer . We finally got snow today. We've had unusually cold temperatures this past week, but wasn't until last night and today where we got enough snow to really mean anything. That gave me the opportunity to try out our 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali. I have to say, I was quite impressed with the way the Denali's AWD handled itself in the snow. We've been having unusually cold temps the past week--tonight it's going to drop to around -9° C (about 16° F)--and we received about 4-5 inches of snow through the night and during the day. It was the first snowfall of the season. Coming from my 2006 Subaru Impreza WRX STI that had AWD, no traction control and was super fun , I was a little worried that the nanny on the Yukon would be too intrusive. Our 2003 Toyota Sequoia had a button to turn off the traction control, but it never really turned off completely--it was a total fun-killer. I tried the Yukon with and without traction...

2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali Originally uploaded by istargazer . I was able to wash our 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali yesterday and take some new pictures of the 17" ATX Thug winter rims I installed last week . Now I can explain why it ended up taking me two days to complete the install. Everything was going fine that afternoon and I was on schedule. I had all the wheels installed, nuts properly torqued, and TPMS sensors successfully reprogrammed. In fact, I had already inflated two of the Firestone WinterForce tires to the proper PSI when I noticed the directional arrows on the sidewalls were pointing the wrong way. I discovered that had installed all four tires on the wrong side of the vehicle. So I had to remove and swap them around--that was eight tire changes! But that wasn't the end of it. I had to reprogram the TPMS sensors again. The procedure to get the car to relearn the sensor position is to let air out of the tire. When I let air out of the first tire, I was a bit ...

Well, I think I spoke too soon. I tested out the new navigation disc on our 2007 GMC Yukon XL Denali with the "limitations" off and it's not what I thought it was. The capabilities of the nav don't change much with the limitations on or off. First of all, with the limitations "ON" you are only allowed to choose a previous destination or the address book or one of your favorites when the vehicle is moving. (With the old system, I believe you could only choose from your favorites or one that had been voice tagged.) When you slow down or stop--full function returns. I didn't find any other differences or additional functions with the new update. With the limitations "OFF" you get the additional option of picking your destination from the map. To me this is useless because it doesn't help my wife find where the closest McDonald's is to the hotel we are staying at when we are still 3 hours away from the hotel. You could probably come up w...

In a previous post I complained about the factory navigation system in our 2006 GMC Yukon XL Denali. The data was old and software was excessively restrictive, not allowing even the passenger to enter any destinations while the vehicle was in motion. I take it all back. With the latest disc update I received last week, (GM p/n 25974486U) all those deficiencies have been removed. It now has updated roads and POIs and the restrictions for using the nav system are now optional. There is a setting on the Radio Menu that allows you to turn off the limitations. No nag screen (that's better than Honda!) and full function while driving? Whoo, hoo! The only thing that could make it better is if someone found a hack to modify the splash screen :biggrin:

I installed the winter tires I bought from Tire Rick on to our Yukon XL Denali today--and what an ordeal that was! I'm too tired to tell the whole story right now, but I'll just let you know that I swapped tires 9 times and I'm still not done! Tomorrow I'll have to get one of the tire valves repaired before I'll be finished. I'll spill the beans later. For now, I'm riding on one spare. The ATX Thug wheels do look pretty good, though, and I'm looking forward to taking some pictures. The weather has been pretty mild and is predicted to stay like that for at least next week, but with my wife due with our 5th child in 3 weeks, I didn't want to leave it too late. Here's some data from Tire Rack: Firestone Winterforce 265/70R17 = 41 lbs. ATX Thug Black w/Teflon Coating 17x8.5 = 28 lbs. When I weighed 2 of the rims I got 70 lbs. each for both of them so it looks like Tire Rack's numbers are pretty accurate. Click below to read about the weight of ...

It finally arrived. The updated GM Navigation Disc version 4.0c arrived in the mail almost 3 months after I ordered it. The wait was so long and the nav disc I had (version 1.10) was so old that I got frustrated enough to buy a Garmin Nuvi 750 in the meantime. But I'm not complaining. The actual ordering process was very efficient and I received this disc update for free as part of a special program offered by GM. Updating the nav system was very easy. It was just a matter of swapping discs and the software installed automatically in under 5 minutes. After the install, my address book and favorites were deleted and my location showed up as Washington, DC while the system tried to acquire the GPS signal. The disc that came with our 2007 GMC Yukonc XL Denali had data from 2004. Many roads in our area were missing and it could find almost none of the points of interests we were looking for. The new disc has 2007 data and includes the roads that were missing and a lot more POIs. It e...

I decided to remove the locking fuel cap that I installed on my 2006 GMC Yukon XL Denali a while back. There were rumors that the Yukon had an anti-siphoning device but I could not find confirmation myself until today. I bought a Flo 'N Go gas pump to use in the garage so that I could fill up the Burgman without having to make a special trip down the mountain. After I put it together I tested it to see if I could siphon some gas out of the Denali.... I couldn't. There was no way to get the tube far enough down the fuel neck to reach the gas because of obstructions. I shoved and shoved the tube and then it got stuck between 12-18 inches down. So I feel confident enough that siphoning gas out of that 119L tank would not be an easy task. (Of course, drilling holes is a completely different issue!) The locking cap was not all that convenient. With it, I would always forget to take the keys with me and would have to run back to get them out of the ignition. That of course turned ...

My first experience with in-car navigation was during our 2005 road trip from Thunder Bay to Washington, DC. I had a Magellan Roadmate 760. It was large and clunky and could not easily be carried in your pocket, but I quickly learned how valuable portable GPS could be. We made sure that the 2006 Honda Odyssey we bought had a factory navigation system and did another road trip in 2007, going from Vancouver to Washington, DC. In town, there might not be a great need for GPS but it sure helped us get across North America without fumbling with maps that can lead to car accidents or getting lost. So it was no surprise that we wanted navigation in the Denali and we got it. Despite that, I recently bought myself a little gift for my birthday: a Garmin Nuvi 750. Yes, I know it’s indulgent since we already have a factory navigation system built-in to our 2006 GMC Yukon XL Denali. But Costco Canada Online had it on sale at such a great price ($270) that I could not resist. Besides, I was tired ...

Red Eye Skull Denali - closeup , originally uploaded by istargazer . By the pricking of my thumbs, Something wicked this way comes: Open, locks, Whoever knocks! ~ Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I

Denali-HDR1 , originally uploaded by istargazer . Round about the cauldron go: In the poison'd entrails throw. Toad, that under cold stone Days and nights has thirty-one Swelter'd venom sleeping got, Boil thou first i’ the charmed pot. ~ Macbeth, Act IV, Scene I