John Canfield
Site Team
From my thread on a Jeep forum:
We pre-ran Bryce's Loop yesterday, the trail leader has never wheeled here before so I led the group (eight of us) from the RV park in town to the trailhead - or at least in the vicinity of the trailhead. The trail is very poorly marked and recent rains have washed away most tire tracks. It literally took an hour to establish exactly where the loop started since we wanted to run it clockwise.
After finally getting on the trail, following it became a trail blazing exercise. The trails around here are very lightly used compared to Moab where you just follow the two black tire marks. I felt sorry for the trail leader since everybody was getting very frustrated which I understand. (Since it was a pre-run, everybody in the club knows that stuff can happen.)
So - the bad news...
I got on a very bad line doing a little climb on a ledge (which I just spotted the trail leader up) but I wanted to move more to the left which seemed like a good idea at the time. I wound up in such a precarious situation I was going to flop if I went forward or flop if I tried to back out and re-position. I have a real good seat-of-the-pants feel for when gravity takes control of your rig so I had the good sense to stop and ask for a winch or a strap out.
My winch controller sits in the driver's door pocket so I handed it to the recovery team but they couldn't figure out how to control my MileMarker hydraulic winch , so they got a strap on me and I was able to re-position a little bit but not enough to climb out.
The guy in front turned his rig around, got a line on me and between the winch and me, I safely climbed out. We unfortunately wasted about 30-40 minutes with my screw-up.
Then some more bad news...
I was about half-way up this fun little escalator (I climbed it a couple of years ago) and lost drive to my rear axle - both rear wheels were not moving. With the sound of a very distinctive PING, Rubi turned into a front wheel drive vehicle . Fortunately, I safely backed down the escalator and tried to figure out what happened.
And then some more bad news...
My buddy Dave in his 4-door Hemi on 40" tires had an odd issue with his front wheel grabbing and making a clicking noise and despite a few of us looking inside the driver's front tire, we couldn't see anything obviously wrong. After we were all done with the escalator, the crap hit the fan on David's 4-door. I walked back to his Jeep to see his left front tire at about a 30* angle to the body.
What happened was his brake caliper worked its way loose ultimately falling and catching between the rotor and the wheel itself and with the tremendous forces generated, broke the wheel itself. His wheels are Mil-spec Hutchinson which are about as tough available.
Dave didn't have a spare and his bolt pattern was different from a JK or TJ so he called the 4x4 shop in town and they picked up his spare wheel, seated a tire on it and took it to him on the trail. A couple of hours later, Dave made it back to the RV park. (Ironically Bryce of Bryce's Loop was the rescue driver!)
So here we sit - I was supposed to pre-run my Plan B trail today and had a lot of people that wanted to run it with me. Dixie 4x4 has my Rubi and will look it over this morning to see what the problem is. I have this bad feeling that we have a transfer case problem or something went really, really wrong in the ARB locker or diff. It couldn't be the driveshaft by the way (wish it was - I have a spare.)
^^ Update ^^ I managed to spin the axle tubes in the diff pumpkin and for a bonus the driver's side tube actually pulled out of the pumpkin. :
:. Dixie Offroad is trying to round up enough parts to replace the axle assembly with a Dana 60 but I seriously doubt if they can pull it off so I can pre-run my trail on Saturday or Sunday (if necessary.) We have to leave here Tuesday because we have to get home for doctor stuff.
We pre-ran Bryce's Loop yesterday, the trail leader has never wheeled here before so I led the group (eight of us) from the RV park in town to the trailhead - or at least in the vicinity of the trailhead. The trail is very poorly marked and recent rains have washed away most tire tracks. It literally took an hour to establish exactly where the loop started since we wanted to run it clockwise.
After finally getting on the trail, following it became a trail blazing exercise. The trails around here are very lightly used compared to Moab where you just follow the two black tire marks. I felt sorry for the trail leader since everybody was getting very frustrated which I understand. (Since it was a pre-run, everybody in the club knows that stuff can happen.)
So - the bad news...
I got on a very bad line doing a little climb on a ledge (which I just spotted the trail leader up) but I wanted to move more to the left which seemed like a good idea at the time. I wound up in such a precarious situation I was going to flop if I went forward or flop if I tried to back out and re-position. I have a real good seat-of-the-pants feel for when gravity takes control of your rig so I had the good sense to stop and ask for a winch or a strap out.
My winch controller sits in the driver's door pocket so I handed it to the recovery team but they couldn't figure out how to control my MileMarker hydraulic winch , so they got a strap on me and I was able to re-position a little bit but not enough to climb out.
The guy in front turned his rig around, got a line on me and between the winch and me, I safely climbed out. We unfortunately wasted about 30-40 minutes with my screw-up.
Then some more bad news...
I was about half-way up this fun little escalator (I climbed it a couple of years ago) and lost drive to my rear axle - both rear wheels were not moving. With the sound of a very distinctive PING, Rubi turned into a front wheel drive vehicle . Fortunately, I safely backed down the escalator and tried to figure out what happened.
And then some more bad news...
My buddy Dave in his 4-door Hemi on 40" tires had an odd issue with his front wheel grabbing and making a clicking noise and despite a few of us looking inside the driver's front tire, we couldn't see anything obviously wrong. After we were all done with the escalator, the crap hit the fan on David's 4-door. I walked back to his Jeep to see his left front tire at about a 30* angle to the body.
What happened was his brake caliper worked its way loose ultimately falling and catching between the rotor and the wheel itself and with the tremendous forces generated, broke the wheel itself. His wheels are Mil-spec Hutchinson which are about as tough available.
Dave didn't have a spare and his bolt pattern was different from a JK or TJ so he called the 4x4 shop in town and they picked up his spare wheel, seated a tire on it and took it to him on the trail. A couple of hours later, Dave made it back to the RV park. (Ironically Bryce of Bryce's Loop was the rescue driver!)
So here we sit - I was supposed to pre-run my Plan B trail today and had a lot of people that wanted to run it with me. Dixie 4x4 has my Rubi and will look it over this morning to see what the problem is. I have this bad feeling that we have a transfer case problem or something went really, really wrong in the ARB locker or diff. It couldn't be the driveshaft by the way (wish it was - I have a spare.)
^^ Update ^^ I managed to spin the axle tubes in the diff pumpkin and for a bonus the driver's side tube actually pulled out of the pumpkin. :
:. Dixie Offroad is trying to round up enough parts to replace the axle assembly with a Dana 60 but I seriously doubt if they can pull it off so I can pre-run my trail on Saturday or Sunday (if necessary.) We have to leave here Tuesday because we have to get home for doctor stuff.
