Well I finally made it to the dunes, may have been better off if I hadn't lol.
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@BuildBreakRepeat rode shotgun and did a great job encouraging me to break shit lol, we had a blast.
The dunes in Florence are definitely a lot more gnarly than what I was used to at sand lake in Pacific city. Huge razorbacks, deep witches eye's and lots of big hills.
Started off hitting some whoops and trails around the beach. The bypasses were super cushy and the jeep was soaking up the bumps great.
About 45 minutes in we were heading across some flatter areas to the other end of the dunes. About 100 feet away from where I was going to stop and I sent us off this razorback that we both missed. About 3-4ft tall, dug a nice deep hole. Bent my drag link, and the axle a little more than it already was.
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Definitely some extra camber there lol. We jacked it up to check the unit bearings and ball joints, I'm still running my factory unit bearings with 160k miles on them, and they still seemed nice and tight.
Thought we were done for the day, so we "limped" it back to the parking lot doing 40-50mph. Once we got back the axle didn't look as bad on flat ground, so I tightened up the bypass tubes and we headed back out...
A few hundred yards out of the parking lot we found a nice ramp. Drove over it the first time and then I had a bad idea. Garret got out and I circled back to hit it a little faster. First run was about 30mph, got some air and landed nose first a bit, but not too bad. Circled back again and hit it about 40mph, landed on all four at the same time and it was awesome, didn't bottom out and was super cushy.
Then I decided to go again a little faster. Hit it about 50-55mph and absolutely sent it. Total Ricky Bobby moment flying through the air. Landed pretty hard, one of my new grill snubbers ejected itself lol. Could've used more than 10 psi in the tires too. I definitely cycled the suspension when I setup the new shocks and set bumps accordingly, but between the frame flexing up, the motor shifting down in the mounts and the trans shifting sideways in it's mount it was a bit of a mess. Front axle UCA mount smashed both of the hardlines for the trans and hit the bottom of the motor and smashed a portion of my oil pan flange. The driveshaft hit the neutral safety switch as well, so I had ATF pouring out everywhere.
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Garrett's quick thinking saved our day, he pointed out we needed to haul ass back to town before I had no trans left. Luckily we were close to the parking lot, so we hit the road with a big cloud of white smoke. Eventually made it to town and an AutoZone with the trans barely functioning. Bought some hose, a mini tubing cutter and a new NSS, got it repaired in the parking lot and drove it back home.
All in all it was a good day, I've since replaced the ZJ steering with a currie setup I picked up used, and did a full fluid flush and filter on the trans. It seems to be driving normally which is a big relief.
Definitely drives a bit funny now, but the axle isn't leaking so that's good. Going to try pulling it out and straightening it, then if that goes well I may do a custom bottom truss. Hoping the tubes are the bent part and not the inner C's, not exactly sure how I'd fix that.
Garrett's got all the videos, I'll post them up once he sends them to me, but here's a slow mo version of the big jump.
https://www.screencast.com/t/RWCgh4uuGO1
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