As mentioned in the build thread, my quarter-million mile, built-in-a-month TJ had a "deadline" of being wrapped up to run Dusy with a JK and JKU over labor day weekend. This is a story of how stupidity and overconfidence leads to fun — albeit stressful — times.
Spoiler alert for a long read: we didn't finish the trail, but we did make it out. TJ broke twice. JK lost two tires. Had to hike out for parts. But the JKU, by necessity, ran all of Dusy both ways over the course of the weekend without any real breakage.
Got started Friday afternoon — first time having the Jeep up to highway speeds for more than five minutes, and realized I was smoking. Stopped and smelled gear oil, checked axles, and found that the front locker air line had melted off the bulkhead. Axle was HOT. Figure I smoked a bearing, so stopped at the nearest Oreillys, bought a few tools I wasn't expecting to need, some extra U joints, and off we went to pull shafts in 105* heat. Thank goodness for the new awning:
Back on the freeway, she drove fine the rest of the way to the trailhead where we camped for the night before reinstalling shafts and heading up through Chicken Rock/Voyager and eventually Thompson Hill for day one. TJ did great. No breaks, no winching needed, just nice-n-steady all the way to the top.
Passed a couple of full-size rigs (you can kind of see in the background here...Ram and Suburban), which was a helluva thing to see up there. They also had a couple of TJs. Unfortunately, we would be stuck behind/with this very rude, very loud, very disrespectful group for the rest of the trip. After almost burning down Ershim camp with a can of gas out of control, I think other non-ethanol and non-plant-based chemicals came out that kept them up and rowdy until the wee hours of the morning. Camp etiquette is apparently a lost art.
Camped at Thompson Lake that night and had a great time. Woke up the next morning to some fun stretches for about 3-4 miles. Beautiful meadows and some mildly technical and tight spots, but nothing gnarly.
But then...problems. JK sliced a sidewall. No big deal. Changed it and got back on the trail.
A couple minutes later, I heard a chirp from the engine compartment that got louder, then a squeal, then smelled rubber, then saw smoke. Uh oh. This was EXACTLY at the mid-point of the trail.
Belt was gone. Upper idler pulley bearing seized and shredded the races. Time to get creative.
Modify socket and ujoint?
Too much cutting of strong metals given what we had available. What did we have that was roughly the same size as the idler pulley itself? Oh...aluminum body lift pucks! We needed to grind down the hardened steel washer/flange so that it would fit the hole, then cut a socket to fit inside that, then bolt the whole thing back to the aluminum bracket in the compartment. Trail side machining at it's finest:
It bolted up, but only on a couple threads, due to the width of the puck. It looked good:
It acted like this:
Well, dang. We were SOL. Time to tow at least to Ershim and figure something else out.
Now, towing without power steering really really sucks because a) it's a lot of muscle and b) you can't dodge stuff easily. Because Dusy is so tight, we dragged the right fender into a tree and the left into a rock within the first three quarters of a mile. Oh well, an excuse to get flat fenders.
Shortly thereafter, I get pulled sideways into a hole, and lose a bead:
Get that back on, and a half mile later, JK cuts his SECOND sidewall. Uh oh. No more spares. JKU runs 8-bolt axles and the wheels don't match up. Things went from bad to worse:
It's getting late. We have the wife and kids to think about, so we pile all the essential gear into the JKU, tarp the broken rigs, and leave 'em trailside. The families hike the last four miles to camp at Ershim Lake while two of the three dads haul ass to set up, and try an overnight haul down to get parts/tires and come back.
One mile in, the skies open up for a sierra thunderstorm. We change plans, stay with the family at Ershim, and use the sat phone to coordinate a parts run from a buddy. We'll drive the JKU and hike the families out to the north trailhead in the morning, send them down the hill with the "rescue" cars that are delivering parts and tires, then drive the JKU back in to fix the two broken rigs and finish the trail.
The hike was about 10 miles, about 3k feet of elevation, and we had five kids between the ages of 5 and 12. Everyone was in good spirits, and the views weren't too bad, either:
Hiking through the northern 1-2 miles of trail ("Whitebark Vista") gave the two of us (TJ and JK) the heebie-jeebies on having to baby the rigs. IMO, Whitebark is WAY more technical than Thompson Hill and deserves much more notoriety and respect. For reference, the human here is about 6'3" — and this seemed like the standard obstacle for at least 4-500 yards of trail:
We decided we'd go back down Thompson after we got things patched up. Our rigs were on the other side of Ershim, anyway, so it saved us backtracking. Parts are acquired, families are tucked into cars and sent down the hill, and we make it back to Ershim in the dark after hoping and praying the JKU doesn't break on the way:
We found some yogi tracks, which raised the pucker factor on how the abandoned rigs were doing...there was a lot of food we left in there:
Wake up, break camp, get to the rigs, and everything's fine. We get 'em fixed, and head down trail. Back down Thompson is uneventful...fun, even.
A couple miles down from thompson, and I smell burning rubber. Check the engine compartment again with a sigh and find nothing. Start looking around and find the left rear rubbing on coil. Uh oh:
Bracket completely sheared from the rear. We attempt to strap it up in hopes of limping it back:
But she doesn't go. Fully prepared to ditch it trailside and come back this weekend, we are saved within minutes by a group coming up with a welder at hand! We get the rig in the air and they go to work:
We take down the model number for the welder that is now a must-bring, hook everything back up, and baby ourselves back down to the lake where we can take the high-water line and do our best moon buggy impression:
We make it out, remove front shafts in under 20 minutes (we're fast, now) and motor back home.
Overall it was a tough trip. Everything I read about Dusy held true — it's a long trail that is demanding on your Jeep. The JKU is dialed and he spends a lot of time making sure it stays that way, and that's why he made it both ways with the only damage being his driver door hinge (my fault). I should have spent more time on warm-up trails, and I probably would have found the idler pulley issue. For the JK, there's just not much you can do about two sliced sidewalls — his tires were on the older end, but I don't know if that would have even saved him.
I absolutely recommend the trail — it's gorgeous, challenging, fun, and the camping is spectacular. Just be prepared! Everyone (especially the kids) still had a blast, and made some great memories. I'll definitely be back to try again after I spend a little more time on the build.
Repair/maintenance needed post-trip:
Thanks for reading!
Spoiler alert for a long read: we didn't finish the trail, but we did make it out. TJ broke twice. JK lost two tires. Had to hike out for parts. But the JKU, by necessity, ran all of Dusy both ways over the course of the weekend without any real breakage.
Got started Friday afternoon — first time having the Jeep up to highway speeds for more than five minutes, and realized I was smoking. Stopped and smelled gear oil, checked axles, and found that the front locker air line had melted off the bulkhead. Axle was HOT. Figure I smoked a bearing, so stopped at the nearest Oreillys, bought a few tools I wasn't expecting to need, some extra U joints, and off we went to pull shafts in 105* heat. Thank goodness for the new awning:
Back on the freeway, she drove fine the rest of the way to the trailhead where we camped for the night before reinstalling shafts and heading up through Chicken Rock/Voyager and eventually Thompson Hill for day one. TJ did great. No breaks, no winching needed, just nice-n-steady all the way to the top.
Passed a couple of full-size rigs (you can kind of see in the background here...Ram and Suburban), which was a helluva thing to see up there. They also had a couple of TJs. Unfortunately, we would be stuck behind/with this very rude, very loud, very disrespectful group for the rest of the trip. After almost burning down Ershim camp with a can of gas out of control, I think other non-ethanol and non-plant-based chemicals came out that kept them up and rowdy until the wee hours of the morning. Camp etiquette is apparently a lost art.
Camped at Thompson Lake that night and had a great time. Woke up the next morning to some fun stretches for about 3-4 miles. Beautiful meadows and some mildly technical and tight spots, but nothing gnarly.
But then...problems. JK sliced a sidewall. No big deal. Changed it and got back on the trail.
A couple minutes later, I heard a chirp from the engine compartment that got louder, then a squeal, then smelled rubber, then saw smoke. Uh oh. This was EXACTLY at the mid-point of the trail.
Belt was gone. Upper idler pulley bearing seized and shredded the races. Time to get creative.
Modify socket and ujoint?
Too much cutting of strong metals given what we had available. What did we have that was roughly the same size as the idler pulley itself? Oh...aluminum body lift pucks! We needed to grind down the hardened steel washer/flange so that it would fit the hole, then cut a socket to fit inside that, then bolt the whole thing back to the aluminum bracket in the compartment. Trail side machining at it's finest:
It bolted up, but only on a couple threads, due to the width of the puck. It looked good:
It acted like this:
Well, dang. We were SOL. Time to tow at least to Ershim and figure something else out.
Now, towing without power steering really really sucks because a) it's a lot of muscle and b) you can't dodge stuff easily. Because Dusy is so tight, we dragged the right fender into a tree and the left into a rock within the first three quarters of a mile. Oh well, an excuse to get flat fenders.
Shortly thereafter, I get pulled sideways into a hole, and lose a bead:
Get that back on, and a half mile later, JK cuts his SECOND sidewall. Uh oh. No more spares. JKU runs 8-bolt axles and the wheels don't match up. Things went from bad to worse:
It's getting late. We have the wife and kids to think about, so we pile all the essential gear into the JKU, tarp the broken rigs, and leave 'em trailside. The families hike the last four miles to camp at Ershim Lake while two of the three dads haul ass to set up, and try an overnight haul down to get parts/tires and come back.
One mile in, the skies open up for a sierra thunderstorm. We change plans, stay with the family at Ershim, and use the sat phone to coordinate a parts run from a buddy. We'll drive the JKU and hike the families out to the north trailhead in the morning, send them down the hill with the "rescue" cars that are delivering parts and tires, then drive the JKU back in to fix the two broken rigs and finish the trail.
The hike was about 10 miles, about 3k feet of elevation, and we had five kids between the ages of 5 and 12. Everyone was in good spirits, and the views weren't too bad, either:
Hiking through the northern 1-2 miles of trail ("Whitebark Vista") gave the two of us (TJ and JK) the heebie-jeebies on having to baby the rigs. IMO, Whitebark is WAY more technical than Thompson Hill and deserves much more notoriety and respect. For reference, the human here is about 6'3" — and this seemed like the standard obstacle for at least 4-500 yards of trail:
We decided we'd go back down Thompson after we got things patched up. Our rigs were on the other side of Ershim, anyway, so it saved us backtracking. Parts are acquired, families are tucked into cars and sent down the hill, and we make it back to Ershim in the dark after hoping and praying the JKU doesn't break on the way:
We found some yogi tracks, which raised the pucker factor on how the abandoned rigs were doing...there was a lot of food we left in there:
Wake up, break camp, get to the rigs, and everything's fine. We get 'em fixed, and head down trail. Back down Thompson is uneventful...fun, even.
A couple miles down from thompson, and I smell burning rubber. Check the engine compartment again with a sigh and find nothing. Start looking around and find the left rear rubbing on coil. Uh oh:
Bracket completely sheared from the rear. We attempt to strap it up in hopes of limping it back:
But she doesn't go. Fully prepared to ditch it trailside and come back this weekend, we are saved within minutes by a group coming up with a welder at hand! We get the rig in the air and they go to work:
We take down the model number for the welder that is now a must-bring, hook everything back up, and baby ourselves back down to the lake where we can take the high-water line and do our best moon buggy impression:
We make it out, remove front shafts in under 20 minutes (we're fast, now) and motor back home.
Overall it was a tough trip. Everything I read about Dusy held true — it's a long trail that is demanding on your Jeep. The JKU is dialed and he spends a lot of time making sure it stays that way, and that's why he made it both ways with the only damage being his driver door hinge (my fault). I should have spent more time on warm-up trails, and I probably would have found the idler pulley issue. For the JK, there's just not much you can do about two sliced sidewalls — his tires were on the older end, but I don't know if that would have even saved him.
I absolutely recommend the trail — it's gorgeous, challenging, fun, and the camping is spectacular. Just be prepared! Everyone (especially the kids) still had a blast, and made some great memories. I'll definitely be back to try again after I spend a little more time on the build.
Repair/maintenance needed post-trip:
- Front diff (whatever issue might be, assume bearing)
- New control arm/track bar brackets in rear — thinking Barnes or Ruffstuff
- Reseat bead on the spare
- Might just find a whole front Dana 44 or other front axle. Either way, chromoly front axles.
- New steering box...redhead for now, likely hydro in the future.
- Gas tank skid and maybe an oil pan skid even though I didn't drag it once. Savvy, probably.
- Front fenders...probably MCE
- Lights...running the slightly upgrade headlights alone kind of sucked, and I was left wanting in the dark.
- I'll also put together a much more complete parts and tools list, especially things in the same family as something like an idler pulley. Things that don't take up much space/weight. The age of this motor and Jeep overall necessitates keeping the "what if" things at hand.
Thanks for reading!
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