After Hot Springs Jeep Jamboree I never even looked at the jeep or unloaded the van, I knew in less than a week I would be making another trip so: it drove on the trailer, hopefully it will work when it comes off.
Made a trip over to Windrock to wheel with Wildman and his son. Arrived Thursday evening and did a solo ride up to the new Trail 20 overlook. It is actually pretty good view, not a hard trail to get up there right now, but due to it's steepness and the amount of water in that section I think it is going to rut out over time. I took a few easy trails on the way back (G37, 5, 81 just to see how things were and I was amazed to see a lot of icicles still hanging off of rock ledges. Access roads were also full of water and mud holes, so I knew to put the half doors back on for wheeling the next day. On the way back to camp I drove by Wildman's cabin and he and his son were there; they said that they had to change a Ujoint in the Cherokee's front axle shaft and that 9am start would be good. I Headed back to camp and my buddy TJ had arrived while I was out riding around. It was TJs B-day weekend and he was eager to escape Memphis for the weekend but his jeep wasn't together so he decided to come over and ride shotgun with me.
Friday morning we met Rick at his cabin and they were just finalizing the 2nd ujoint change (had to replace both). I asked them if they had a list of trails that they wanted to hit and Walden's Ridge was on the top of Jeremy's (Rick's son's Brother in law) list. Walden's ridge always seems to be on the list, I think it is because it has so many youtube videos out there. After I did it the first time, I said that I would never do it again, but it seems like every time someone new goes to the park they want to hit it, and I have now done it four times. The first two sections of Walden's Ridge are kind of a mind freak because of the drop offs next to the trail, then the rest of the trail is mostly trail riding and not usually (note: I said usually) much excitement.
Friday morning:
Me and TJ in my TJ on 38's
Rick in his TJ on 38's
Josh and his family in a Cherokee on 35s
Jeremy in a LJ on 37s(?)
We left Rick's cabin a little after 10am and drove the road out to Walden's ridge.
Gate Keeper:
Upon arriving at the Gate Keeper I walked everyone up and showed them the drop off on the other side and the easier (not easy) line up on the Right Hand side, and I said that I was going to try the harder line on the LH side, what makes the LH side harder is not really the steep stair step up climb (which is hard) but right after that is big rock splines that you have to cross while staring straight at the drop off that would be your death. I struggled a little on the stair step up climb due to my break over angle (damn rear stretch
) but after I got myself moved ever to where my link mounts weren't hitting it climbed right up (probably due to the rear stretch
). Up and over, stared at death, yelled at TJ to spot me and yelled "are you sure" a few times and then found my line to work myself out of the gatekeeper. Success!
Rick was up next and after seeing me go up the hard line he was eager to give it a go, he got his front wheels up and over the step and was hung up in the same spot that I struggled, when he tried to back up his engine skid got caught on the ledge and it ripped the fasteners out of the rear side and the skid was now hanging down. I yelled to stop and let's remove the skid right there before it gets caught on anything else and makes it worse. While removing the skid we also noted that his front pax brake line at the caliper was leaking, so we pinched off the brake line going to the caliper with vice grips and zip tied the vice grips in place. Rick was pretty disappointed and was saying he was going to head back to camp, and I was trying to convince him to stay out and ride. He was rightfully concerned about the exposure of his trans pan and engine oil pan due to no skid and I assured him that all the "rocky" sections which would be an issue had bypasses and that he should ride along. He did stay out and his Jeep did well the rest of the trail. Rick took the bypass around the gatekeeper and was to meet us at the beginning of the next section called "boat ramp".
Josh in his Cherokee was next and he decided to take the RH line. He got up on top of the ridge pretty easily but getting him across the spline top was a little tricky with his 35" tires and wheelbase, but success.
Jeremy in his LJ did the RH line and after I just spotted the cherokee across the spline, it was pretty easy to spot the LJ across. Success.
We were all off the Gate Keeper and were driving towards boat ramp when I heard someone yell my name from behind. I stopped and yelled back Josh said he had a steering issue. I made my way back there and his Driver's side TRE nut had ripped off the TRE threads, the Nut threads were completely ripped out and the TRE threads were boogered up bad enough that a nut would not go on, so we welded the TRE to the knuckle and game on.
Boat Ramp:
Usually there is a big water hole at the bottom of the rock slab and it is almost impossible to make it up the slab. Today the hole was dry as a bone? In addition, there used to be a downed tree on the RHS that made you have to go more left (where it is undercut), that tree is now gone. So as I approached it I saw that the hole was dry and I saw the RH line and I just one shot it. Wow, that was pretty cool. After that Rick made it up after finding the line and Josh one shot it. The LJ took a bad bounce and we decided to just pull cable in order to avoid any issues.
Ridge:
We were all up the boat ramp and on the ridge. This section has drop offs on both sides and has some off camber rock climbs until you get on the very top which is a rocky section that you have to drop straight down off of at the end. It is pretty freaky, but not that hard. I drove it out and then I ran back and spotted the rest through. I think the stoke was pretty high after doing the actual ridge and we continued on.
Trail:
We did some trail riding for a while, not too technical, few mud holes, going around a lot of trees, up through some "ditches" that you run as a V notch, pretty boring stuff. We then made it to another technical rock section. This section has a step up climb then a you have to make a hard right and go across some big rocks with some big holes in between. Of the 3 previous times running this trail, I made this 2 out of 3 times, the the time I didn't make it I successfully spotted Jeff and my buddy Beeker up and through but I just could not get up the first step due to the mud at the bottom. Well today it was dry and I walked right up the step, pretty happy with myself I made the right and took the normal high line until I ran into a newly downed tree and couldn't continue on that line. I repositioned myself over and that dropped my right tire down into a hole and caught my rear diff. I had to get over to the right farther to avoid the newly downed tree and the diff catcher. Well as I tried to move myself to the right I picked a bad line and flopped it over onto the passenger side. It was a pretty slow flop, as the front drivers side tire started to come up I pushed in the clutch and was expecting the jeep to roll back and the raised front tire to drop, but what actually happened was that when I pushed in the clutch it allowed the jeep to roll forward (not back) into the hole deeper, I didn't even try to hit reverse I just said to TJ "you know we are going over" and he responded "yeah" and then we hit. Hindsight is 20/20 and I should have had TJ get out and spot me through, but if I had to do it again, I would probably do the same thing. Like I said this section is "usually" not that exciting.
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Recovery:
Used my winch and a snatch block to flop the jeep back onto all four, where it was sitting I we had to leave the winch hooked up to keep it from going back onto it's side and due to the steering being bound up couldn't get it to roll back to be more stable. So I just pulled the plugs right where it sat, blew out the oil, reinstalled the plugs and she fired right up. Now with steering, I was able to back up and get myself more stable, pick a line, and winch myself up through.
Rest of the trail was again just trail riding, there was a few rocky alternate lines that I took and I was happy to see that on a few that those behind me followed and that on a few others they drove around. On the very last climb of the trail there was a rock sticking out that was a nice size step and undercut and I said to TJ "this is one of those rocks that just causes a lot of problems for no reason". I and Rick both made it up and over with our 38" tires with not much issue, but the cherokee on 35s struggled and the rear driveshaft ujoint left the chat. We winched up the cherokee to the top and it was all downhill from there back to the road and we descended without incident. Headed back to camp on the roads.
Back at camp Rick and his crew made the decision to pack up and head out first thing Saturday morning. We said our goodbyes and TJ and I headed back to camp.
Saturday morning:
There was event called shamrock shakedown taking place at Windrock and I ran down and talked to the event coordinator. He was pretty cool and said to show back up at 10am for the rider meeting and just to jump in with a group. I showed up at 10am and talked with the "extreme" group. I never seen a group so beat down from the day before, they said that they had all kind of issues the day before and didn't get back to camp until early morning and thus they were planning on doing an easy trail ride day. Not only have I never seen such a beat down "extreme" group, but I never saw a group in such agreement with just doing easy trail rides?!? Anyway, I decided to not go with them and joined the hard group, which was a pretty big group. We headed out and ran a few trails and we stopped to take a break on an access road. I was getting pretty bored with this group and talked to TJ about going off on our own, I then went and talked to the group leader and he said that they were going to go run a trail that I had never run before and then were going to call it an early day. Since I never run that trail before I decided to stay with the group and then I could go off on my own after that trail. Well, when the group started going again, a small group of Toyotas hung back, since I was the last rig in the line, I just hung back trying to stay last (that way I could bail at any time). After a few minutes the Toyotas started moving and I followed. When we got to an intersection, I just followed them, never thinking that they were turning away from the group. I was blindly following when I realized that we were not heading in the direction of the trail that the guide said we were going but were heading in the direction to run a pretty hard Trail 3. When we got to Trail 3, they stopped, we all jumped out and asked them if they knew what they were in for, they said that they did, and I was like "all right!" I mistakenly followed the right group!
FJ80 on 37s
Small toyo pickup on 37s (which must have had a crawl box)
Newer Toyo 2dr pickup with IFS (i think on 37s, maybe 35s)
Newer Toyo 4dr pickup with solid axles on 37s.
3rd gen 4 runner that had been solid axle swapped on 37s
Me
Bottom of Trail 3:
The FL80 impressed the hell out of me in the rocks, he made it pretty easily.
The small toyo on 37s crawled everything, it was amazing
The 4dr did pretty darn good and made it
The IFS had to winch but gave it a good go
The 3rd Gen 4 runner was just scared of his rig and had to winch, I later found out that it was its first time out since being axle swapped and he was not yet familiar with it.
I picked the hardest lines I could and struggled but made it through.
Middle section:
We all walked up through, no issues.
Upper Section:
They took the right hand line which is the easier line (not easy, but the easiest of the three options). A few struggled but all made it to the top.
At the top we stopped and the guy in the FJ80 came back to me and asked about the other two lines at the top and I said that I have done the LH line and there is high risk of body damage, but never done the middle line and I wanted to try it. He said, we came to wheel rocks and we are at the rocks, so let's do it!
Upper Section Middle Line:
I made it up through and it was fun!
The FJ80 couldn't make the pinch point at the bottom due to risk of body damage but found a bypass that he was able to get around that section and then he made the rest of the trail pretty easily. After seeing both of us do it, the small toyo with the crawl box decided he wanted to do it and he crawled it basically one shot from bottom to top, I was highly impressed, it was not easy!
It was now getting late and they said something about going to the new overlook, I said I knew where it was and it was worth going to, so we headed to the top and stood around and talked about other trails/parks/events, it was the perfect end!
Jeep to do:
- Got a clunking noise when descending and I am on and off the throttle. I thought it sounded like it was coming from front suspension but TJ thought it was coming from trans/tranny area. My hearing is starting to get like my Dad and Uncle where I am starting to tilt my ear towards people when I ask them to repeat that and TJ is much younger and has better ears so will start looking in the trans/tranny area.
- Bent the backing plate on the rear axle, driver's side which was causing an irritating rubbing noise. At camp Fri morning I went to pull it apart to see if I could bend it back but when I went to remove the wheel spacer so I could remove the rotor I snapped off the first wheel stud I went to remove. Since the other four were also red locktited on and I had no heat readily available I just decided to leave the other four alone and run on four. So I need to pull that all apart and figure out the backing plate running and install new wheel stud.
- When I flopped there was no evidence of any fuel leaks but on Sat I kept smelling fuel. I looked all over, followed the fuel line from pump to injector rail and no signs of a leak. So I got to figure out where that smell is coming from.
- Windshield cracked on passenger side, but I don't think it is going to grow so most likely will run it as long as I can. If it starts growing I will need to find a windshield frame in order to put new glass in.
- While on Trail 3 I had a high idle issue that would come and go, I think it is a vacuum leak but it is not so bad that it is apparent, so I need to find that.
- Need to clean it up and give it a good inspection prior to May.
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