One(ish) Month Build Takes on Dusy

Slim

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Supporting Member
Joined
Jul 26, 2022
Messages
64
Location
Central Valley, CA
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:

F83FF507-3EB9-407C-AA24-49FB4D4B7AF9.jpeg



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.

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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.

D6136DB9-C384-4FB3-BFAA-ABE916654604.JPG


7CCCED5F-AFFB-4B1E-8F03-1E0AEE806621.jpeg



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.

DE83C389-F9C2-4F5D-A44D-F4BD52CBF957.jpeg






19CECE07-1667-4550-A8B3-A819CED644F0.jpeg


9BB02122-5174-4BE2-B5FD-E6B587F4B338.jpeg



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.

7FC54566-6D1B-4420-BCC8-797A02096C46.jpeg



Belt was gone. Upper idler pulley bearing seized and shredded the races. Time to get creative.

Modify socket and ujoint?
FB4124F5-21EC-4CA1-95C9-20791BD767F2.jpeg


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:

6D18BB53-A568-4890-A15B-96B51D1AF588.jpeg


AE379BDF-FBB4-4D6B-8E29-DAC03CD4EB53.jpeg


4EB0886D-CEDA-4167-83CF-23B19E48BB1E.jpeg


It bolted up, but only on a couple threads, due to the width of the puck. It looked good:


C7E58162-0F43-4128-92C3-B2A2FB8819A5.jpeg


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:
AB02FBE5-7E8F-4BE3-8ACD-15C765408053.jpeg


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:
8DCF33AC-87CF-4D3F-B1B4-9A8720DB6B9D.jpeg


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:


88998C81-45C3-4772-8E06-B962A1342751.jpeg


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:
C1C20E56-22F7-4AED-8B73-7763937CFA09.jpeg


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:

0AAB2870-62F3-417E-8D71-7E82EB89B745.jpeg



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:
DE21A96E-760D-47EB-8BF8-5D6B59BD1379.jpeg


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.

3FF1C94D-9D6F-4DDC-8206-9A8F5031C49D.jpeg


C2BF97B5-166B-4F74-9057-71216658B2B8.jpeg


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:

AB6D0C0D-8BDE-4152-83D5-6FEBD458B9B8.jpeg


F20DF131-FDD0-40A6-AAE8-145052BB5A5B.jpeg


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Bracket completely sheared from the rear. We attempt to strap it up in hopes of limping it back:
869A10E1-44B0-4EF2-B4A6-EF38B9C21C33.jpeg


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:
8E0F2ADC-6820-4E89-BCB4-99B9536CA8C3_1_201_a.jpeg


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F8D3D468-5192-4C49-BB90-EF6BE5B6E96D.jpeg


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
Likely upgrades/installs I'll do as a result of things experienced:
  • 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!

C7B7F031-927C-4DBF-A989-38A7027DD8C6.jpeg
 
Last edited:
Great adventure! Dusy is on my bucket list, it is just so far away from TN.

That upper control arm bracket with a raised track bar bracket is a known and common failure. Look up posts on this forum and you will find references onto how to reduce that load from the raised bracket. I added a welded on gusset to mine and it seems to have held up well over the last few years.

Not sure where the sidewall was slit, but I recently purchased "Glue Treads" a trailside sidewall repair kit. I found that it works good if the slit is in the "perfect location" and there is no raised lettering or tread in the vicinity, but if there is anything raised and you don't sand it flat it won't hold. I have witnessed (never did it my self) a guy zip tie a sidewall slit up pretty tight and then use plugs to seal it enough to get him off the trail. He probably had 5 zip ties and about 30 plugs shoved into about a 4" slit, but it held. He also had to plug the holes where the zip ties went through, it was a miracle it held.

I got the opportunity to use a friends Karnage Trail Welder during my last trip and I was surprised at how well it worked. It is much more expensive than utilizing car batteries with leads and electrodes, but it is very convenient and burns great. It is on my list of things to buy if my company ever gives us a bonus again (so I will probably never have one). Something to look and consider, it definitely works good.
 
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:

View attachment 357877


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.

View attachment 357884

View attachment 357883

View attachment 357882

View attachment 357885


View attachment 357887

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.

View attachment 357888

View attachment 357886


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.

View attachment 357889





View attachment 357890

View attachment 357891


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.

View attachment 357892


Belt was gone. Upper idler pulley bearing seized and shredded the races. Time to get creative.

Modify socket and ujoint?
View attachment 357893

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:

View attachment 357896

View attachment 357895

View attachment 357894

It bolted up, but only on a couple threads, due to the width of the puck. It looked good:


View attachment 357897

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:
View attachment 357899

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:
View attachment 357900

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:


View attachment 357902

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:
View attachment 357903

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:

View attachment 357904


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:
View attachment 357905

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.

View attachment 357906

View attachment 357907

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:

View attachment 357909

View attachment 357911

View attachment 357912

Bracket completely sheared from the rear. We attempt to strap it up in hopes of limping it back:
View attachment 357914

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:
View attachment 357917

View attachment 357918

View attachment 357919

View attachment 357920

View attachment 357924

View attachment 357925

View attachment 357926

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
Likely upgrades/installs I'll do as a result of things experienced:
  • 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!

View attachment 357922

Wow! Looks like a hell of a adventure!
 
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Great story and sounds like it was a interesting trip. Dusy is on my bucket list and I "HOPE" I'll be able to do it soon.
 
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