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Some misc pics from Saturday: This was a pretty sweet EB with a 6bt under the hood!    Taking a break (literally) while the same EB replaced a hub. This was on DeathTrap, which is a pretty awesome trail.  Another cool EB on the trail with us today. Those 39.5s sure look small next to these rocks!  Deathtrap leads into the far end of Rock Creek. So since we had time while waiting for a locking hub, he decided to run the creek. I decided to follow.  Somebody was not having a good day, found a damn-near new ujoint in the middle of the Creek, missing a few caps. I bet someone dropped it.  Got to the other end, and stumbled upon some other FSBs, iuncluding Jim and his too-pretty-to-wheel bronco. So shiny!   From there we went over to Crawl Daddy:      That's more or less all I got form the day. You can view my full photogallery of pics from friday, here, and from saturday, here. Theres a thread on the whole event over on FSB, located here. The annual Bronco Roundup, at Rausch Creek! Hers the obligatory group-photo pic from Friday morning:  Me Ox & Darrel lining up for the trailride  Such a nice, clean, unbroken windshield:  Heading into the park:  This is where it got ugly. From here we moved on to Crawler's Ridge, and Ox broke his rig. Seems the bolts that hold the passenger side steering arm onto the knuckle sheared off, and he lost all of his steering:  What youre looking at here, is what happens when two massive Grade 8.8 bolts break, and the Mog steering arm comes off the passenger knuckle. Because both the tierod & draglink attach to it, it left Ox with basically no steering at all. I left to go get a trailer while several others from FSB stayed behind to help ox get up, turned around, and then back down off the obstacle, so we could extract him. They built this crazy contraption out of a come-along, several short chains & some straps to sort-of get it steering again, atleast enough to get it maneuvered down the bypass, after it got winched up & off the obstacle. During that time I unhooked my trailer from the tow-rig, hitched it to the back of my bronco via a home-brew hitch I built for moving the trailer around the yard, and then drug it all the way back to the scene of the incident:  During my trip out & back the rest of them were hard at work getting him turned around, so I could back up into the trail and we could load him up at the bottom of the bypass/exit:   From there we towed him all the way out of the park, over to the emergency exit near Route 209  Here we unloaded his truck, and drove back to the parking lot in mine, where we jumped in Ox's tow rig and came back for his bronco. I left my bronco hitched to the trailer in Rausch's lot overnight as me & ox were planning on coming back Saturday to go wheelin again anyway with my rig. 460 for the win, it honestly did not care at all that ox's rig was on the trailer behind me. It was pretty awesome to see. It took us 5 hours to extract his bronco and get back to camp which was half-decent I thought considering the situation, but it meant we missed dinner Friday night since we didn't get back until after 8. Ok so here we go, MEB's annual Winter Ride @ Rausch Creek. There was a pretty good turnout, it looked like a dozen rigs were there yesterday, and half of em were FSBs. Unfortunately, with the crazy deep slushy snow, we ended up breaking into smaller groups, because there were many places where a rig on 35s was struggling to go. It was pretty nasty out there. The worst of it was the parking lot though, it was a sheet of ice in the morning!  Pretty much right off the bat I seized a caliper and it was dragging HARD. Had to pull the rear left off and remove it because it was killing me in the snow. Im sure theres a pic of it somewhere. Ground clearance for the win! The group I rolled with was on a minimum of 36s, and people were dragging their diffs everywhere.  Considering that we were cutting paths through fresh snow all day long, this made for some interesting challenges at times.    This was a pretty nice EB, but the Fun Countrys were not the best choice for the snow. He had lots of traction issues, despite being locked front/rear  digging in pretty hard. snow was almost knee deep in this area of the park  You wont see a rock, unless you get stuck and start digging; the snow was so deep that no one hit bottom unless they got stuck  This was a pretty wicked hill climb; Chris tried to get to the top and was almost successful before getting stuck. The dude in the blue EB (sorry I forgot his name) was going for it but back down, I assume due to lack of traction; the FCs were not the best tire for this heavy snow  Ryan givin 'er hell on the left path   You can see in these next two, he starts digging in pretty good, but eventually got stuck and had to back down   We went for it and made it all the way up the right path, so im hoping some pics or vids of that show up! ...and finally a panoramic my bud shot on his phone:  All said, I had an awesome time. The seized caliper really sucked the power down, we did way better after it was off the truck. Darrel did pretty good but being behind me most of the day I didn't really get many pics of him. I ran into several other FSB members, but we all got split up early on due to smaller rigs getting stuck, and atleast one broken axleshaft, so I never got to wheel with anyone else. There's more pics from the trip over on FSB. This year's RoundUp was held on June 27-29 at Big Dogs Offroad down in Virginia. We decided to make the trip, so we packed heavy for 4 days of camping and wheeling! Camping was at The Cove Family Campground in Gore, and was a pretty nice place to camp. We didnt get a ton of pics; we ended Friday early due to throwing a caliper clean off the front of the truck, but fortunately we were able to get parts locally and fix it for Saturday. After our trail guide's rollover me & dawn switched seats and she drove for the remainder of the day which was a nice change of pace. Theres more pics from the event in a thread over on FSB. This was a rough day of wheelin for me & ox. Pretty early on, Ox broke an upper link mount on a hill climb. Later in the day, i broke my D60 completely in half! So here's what happened. I had just gone thru Smoothie & Milkshake, RC's nastiest mud holes, when i spotted the housing was cracked. There arent any rocks in those pits, so it must have been coincidence that i decided to look at the front, and see the tube sticking out about an inch. Well, i had a ratchet strap around both radius arms, but it didnt last long....about 1000' later the front-end just fell apart. Probably a good thing i was only idling along in 1st when it happened. A bunch of Toyota guys from Right Coast 4x4 (whom me & ox wheeled with the previous day) helped to get it back together so i could drive it out and get it on the trailer. As you can see, the passenger inner axleshaft is bent. So is the ring-side trunion on the ARB as well, so we're going to have to replace some parts on that too. Hadnt been out in a while, so me & ox decided to take a trip to Rausch Creek  Pizza Rock! This area isnt what it used to be, since it got logged.    I only took a few pics during the day as we were pretty mobile, but Ox got some more, which you can see over on FSB. Decided to go to Rausch Creek over the weekend with a few buddies. It was a day full or carnage! We went to "O" Trail first, where Keith immediately blew both beads:  Ox playing on a rocky hill climb on "O", this is right at the section where i bet Ox to run it from the passenger seat last time   These were some big rocks   The view from the new Green rated trail J1  Ox:  Keith:  Steve:  Jim:  One of the few pics i have of mine  couple turns later, keith is stuck   quick tug from steve and keith is free to continue on   RIP steve's transmission  Ox was in the lead, so he got to pull steve the rest of the way outta the trail.   Oh no!   Fortunately only the outer bead popped so it was relatively easy to re-seat.  After much winching & pulling to get steve off the trail, and then after we loaded steves back on the trailer, we headed back in. Ox playing on a hill right near 'The Gauntlet', one of the comp courses  ...and stop  Probably coulda got free if the dshaft wasnt sitting on that boulder  Keith to the rescue!  Me coming up on the climb to the right, while Ox gets free   ...and back onto the trails    sidehilling, but its lost in the pic, other than the way the tire is rolling under the wheel     Thats pretty much all i got. We got in some decent trail time, just didnt have the usual photographer (my brother) runnin around snappin pics. There is a thread over on FSB that has more pics from of the trip. My drivetrain held up, but the body wasnt so lucky. The half door. You can see i hit the cab corner too    Couldnt get the door open cuz it bent around the striker. Put the full door on and couldnt get it to close- to make a long story short i bent the corner of the cab to the point that the striker bolt moved in a full inch! I was only able to get the bolt adjusted out 3/4", so you have to slam the door to get it to close. The a-pillar:  ...and finally, the trans pan:
Bent so far up that this happened:
it would slip when shifting from 1 to R, when on an incline. I wonder why! Fixed the pan, threw a new filter on, and she is good to go again! Got some free time, so heres some more pics! At that point it was 4pm, so we said screw it and headed back to camp. Unfortunately, the next morning my radiator sprung a leak, so that ends our wheelin pics! There is still a ton i didnt post, so if youre interested, here are the galleries: Friday // Saturday. Ok, to continue where we left off      Dave:  Remove the 42s, replace with 35s, and suddenly the rocks look alot bigger!
 Bill:
Bang! Oops! The two bolts holding the rear of the gas tank broke!
Ok, at this point my bro's digicam got bumped into manual mode, and this wrecked alot of photos, over 150(!) of them. I brightened them up in photoshop the best i could so some are clear, some the colors are washed out, and some i still couldnt fix. This is why it took me so long to get these posted! This is Pitman Rock. Ox was the only one who was able to get on top of it, rest of us didnt have the ground clearance. From this side it doesnt look too bad, but its multiple steep staggered ledges with a muddy stream running below it. Ok that puts us a little past the halfway point for saturday's pics! Ill post up some more tomorrow! |
