What to do in a dust storm?

I would park the truck. Why risk a accident or engine damage from the dust?

 

I was there. Wind was howling- I parked at the Flying J downtown minutes before it happened. Every 911 vehicle you can imagine was flying through town to get to the crash site. I was lucky I guess, but the wind was a definate factor in my decision to park it.

 

Not to mention the fact that it can totally remove the paint from your truck.

 

Park as far off the road as possible if you can. If not slowly go along til you can get off the road with all your lights on. I got caught in a dust storm once on a road with steep ditches and no shoulder so I just kept going at 25-30 mph, fast enough to give somebody a chance to slow down if they came up on me, and slow enough that I could stop abruptly if I came upon a stopped vehicle. Luckily it was a county road with very little traffic on it.



The air cleaners didn't seem to affected by this at all. Once I got through this and got the engine shut down, I pulled off the rubber plug on the bottom of the canisters and not much sand/dirt came out at all. I blew out the filters the next day with compressed air and there wasn't any more than the normal from them. Still running those filters and there isn't a spec of dust anywhere in the whole intake.

 

when you run up on a good one there isn't time for all that just get off the road, shut her down, wait it out and hope to good some nut doesn't run into you.

 

Echo the above... if you can park ahead of the storm do so. If caught in it get off the road til it passes. If no other choice creep along. Close windows turn off a/c or set for recirculate. That dust gets in EVERYTHING. The air filter is an easy clean with the air hose after the fact which will be as soon as you get out of the storm and get parked.

 

I'm in Nevada enough so when one of the desert dust storms kick up, just park it where its safe enough for you to park. A lot of them arent very long in duration but when they come seeing a safe driving distance its very hard. Been though enough of them to just let the dust storm have its way and blow through than try and fight your way through it.