Novak Conversions Jeep Wrangler TJ engine mounts

Nashville TJ's Build - Continued

Well, thanks to UPS - the driveshaft showed up right on time. They estimated it would be here by 1:45 - and damn if it wasn't. Take that Fedex!

And man, this thing is beefy. The old shaft weighed 24 1/4 pounds. The new one is 30 1/2 pounds. So, the pig gets a little piggyer...

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Threw it in - just in time to pound on it a bit tomorrow. Hopefully Victor takes it easy on me.

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NashvilleTJ said:
Well, thanks to UPS - the driveshaft showed up right on time. They estimated it would be here by 1:45 - and damn if it wasn't. Take that Fedex!

And man, this thing is beefy. The old shaft weighed 24 1/4 pounds. The new one is 30 1/2 pounds. So, the pig gets a little piggyer...

View attachment 279144

Threw it in - just in time to pound on it a bit tomorrow. Hopefully Victor takes it easy on me.

View attachment 279145
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Driveline gettin to be a flywheel.
 
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Well, with the new driveshaft and antenna installed, I headed down to Hawk Pride Off Road Park in Tuscumbia, AL over the weekend. I met my friend Victor Gasior (@gasiorv). Victor captured this video of the day by mounting his GoPro on the rear crossbar of his cage. He did not get video of the gnarlier stuff we did during the day, but I love the perspective of this video. I've never seen the rig wheelin' from this angle before.

Great day. Beautiful weather. I had an issue around mid-day with my thermostat starting to stick, and the rig overheated heading back for lunch. Pulled the thermostat and wheeled the rest of the day with no issues.

Our last trail of the day was not kind to Victor. More on that later - but if you follow Victor's build thread you already know. I've got a bunch of GoPro video following Victor up a bunch of these trails. Once I weed through those, I'll get them posted.

Big thanks to Victor for putting this together.

 
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Here is another pretty cool run - it's called Merlin - and Merlin is no joke. This video is edited, but it does show the trail start to finish. It's gets more and more gnarly as you go along. The vids never do it justice, but it is definitely a fun trail.

And yes - that is Victor dominating. He works some magic with that rig (Maybe we should call him Merlin...)

 
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NashvilleTJ said:
Here is another pretty cool run - it's called Merlin - and Merlin is no joke. This video is edited, but it does show the trail start to finish. It's gets more and more gnarly as you go along. The vids never do it justice, but it is definitely a fun trail.

And yes - that is Victor dominating. He works some magic with that rig (Maybe we should call him Merlin...)

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@gasiorv is the exit out of Merlin a lot different from January?
 
Brianj5600 said:
@gasiorv is the exit out of Merlin a lot different from January?
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Yes. They bulldozed the righthand side (at minute 14:32) to give an easy out (actually because they were doing work on the big hill main road). Before you either had to take the hard line that Jeff took, or go hard left and shoot up over the bank. Jeff still took the hard line out in the video and made it look easy.
 
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Brianj5600 said:
True that. If you took the bypass, it is nasty.
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Haha, I took the bypass because my wife finally told me she had enough! She is usually pretty calm and even falls asleep in the jeep, but she got a really good and up close look at the ground just before the exit and she said she needed a little break. Not to push my luck I obliged to her request. I also had to fix the speaker pod which was hanging down after I rubbed the roll bar along a tree and it broke off the attach zip ties.
 
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Here is a video of running Goose. Goose was not kind to my buddy Victor. At the end of this clip Victor breaks his front differential.


We then pulled cable to yank him straight and up the hill - during which he broke his driver side rear axle. Suddenly down to one wheel drive, we winched him to the top of Goose - and then popped the front passenger bead dragging him across a rock...all within the space of about 20 yards.

After we reset the bead, we were lucky enough to be at the end of Goose, and onto some easier trails which led back to the parking lot. Victor was able to make it back in one-wheel-drive - albeit with a bunch of cracking and popping along the way.
 
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Wildman said:
That was one of the reasons I got the CRD60. I'm gunna hate it if I have to take mine out and replace it. But I don't know that I'll ever go any larger than 38" tires. But I said the same thing about the 35" tires when I first built my rig.
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We all say that...If I only went up one more tire size, I could do so much more! We know where that takes us....next! :)
 
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This is a nasty uphill climb called Upper Brokefoot. This video was taken by Victor's wife from his rig. Victor has already posted this over on his thread, but I figured I'd post it here as well. Thanks Victor!

 
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NashvilleTJ said:
This is a nasty uphill climb called Upper Brokefoot. This video was taken by Victor's wife from his rig. Victor has already posted this over on his thread, but I figured I'd post it here as well. Thanks Victor!

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Holy crap! Those rocks looked like they had ice on em, as much as you were sliding around!
 
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