I can't tell you much about why or what drove me to ship my 1998 Dakota R/T to Alabama and whale on it for roughly 15 hours straight. You can fill in the blanks, but up until this weekend, I had driven the truck *maybe* 50 miles. And here I was in Dixie, clicking off checkpoints with my brother-in-law monitoring traffic conditions and radar zones.
It did great. The beast did great. I had Jay Gaston from Jay's 4WD come to the house just before it got picked up, and he fixed a fast blinking turn signal with a new socket and added some more powerful horns so I wouldn't be ignored in the face of quickly shifting traffic patterns. In addition, I had the truck rigged up with a CB radio and antenna for additional communications channels, which was relevant for the type of driving we were doing.
We were on the truck constantly, never stopping for more than a minute at various checkpoints. It never cooled down except for the interlude at a gas stop (this is NOT a fuel efficient vehicle at highway speeds and constant on-off hard acceleration) and we drove it back home 2.5 hours at 8:00 p.m. after the event had concluded.
I have never pressed a relatively "fresh" vehicle into immediate duty while having logged so few miles on it. Talk about the build quality all you want, but the simple truth is the truck drove great and the Belltech suspension made it handle exceedingly well, if not a bit harshly over road joints. I don't know yet if I'm holding onto this thing forever, but I generally get attached quickly to anything that proves its worth in a road trip.