TX to AZ and back - Let the updates begin.

[uglyota]

is it EB-based? I think he's in one of the BTG vids

[Lynda]

I think i am glad i did not get to go with you all.

Oh Busa you would have LOVED it. Seriously, Highway to Hell was the coolest run at night! I think we got back at like 3:00am. Jacob just slept in the back of the Jeep the entire time, it was awesome. Three stage has always been my favorite night run...I think this beats it out ten fold.

At least now we know where the trail is so we can head it up again in another 5+ years

[redcagepatrol]

is it EB-based? I think he's in one of the BTG vids

yes and yes. Met some of the other BTG guys in Tuscon for the WeRock comp also - lots of KOH rigs and shirts etc... out there.

[Busa]

Not 5 years like latter this year!!

[robertf03]

what is btg?

[Doug Krebs]

what is btg?

Bind, Torture, Gag!

[redcagepatrol]

Built To Grind
http://www.azrockcrawler.com/

[uglyota]

cool!

[Seth]

badass. very jealous. er envious. whatever.

[Graystroke]

great pics. those last ones in that crack are impressive. it looks like that thing can take a windshield out fairly quickly!

[Lynda]

Not 5 years like latter this year!!

Chili Challenge?

[Busa]

I may be going to KOH with PSC next year. If not then maybe Chili Challenge.

[redcagepatrol]

a write up!!!!!

Moderators - feel free to move / post to the "Trip Write up Section"

It ended up being a little over 5 pages in Word.... Read the word document, I removed the first few days to make it paste

The 2009 AZ Trip Write-up

Tuesday 3-31-09
WOW – time to get parts and get on the road… Head to Discount tire. I get a new trailer tire to replace my blown one, David buys three new tires and rims. David heads to Sprint to get a phone but they will only overnight it to his office on warranty. Whitney overnights it to a UPS store in Phoenix. We then find a spare hub for David’s trailer, go get a sit-down lunch in Old town Mesilla and get on the road. While on the road I make about 100 phone calls to get a leaf spring for David. We have 1.5” lift springs and a spare Warn hub overnighted to the Phoenix 4-wheel parts and also end up finding some stock leafs on the other side of Phoenix that David heads over to get. No problems on the road to Phoenix. Greg and myself head down into the desert and set up camp while David and Kopecki head over to some guys place to get the springs. After Dave and Kopecki get back from the other side of town, we light the HUGE fire with crating drops that Higgs brought along and drink heavily till the wee hours of the night.

Wednesday 4-1-09 (April Fools day, hmmm what could that bring?)
Wake up late morning in the middle of the desert. Pop out of the tent and realized that we choose a pretty mice place to stop last night. Sweet scenery! Anyways, now time to get to work before hitting the trail. David starts to change his leaf spring while everyone else tears down their tents and stuff (Dave slept in his truck). He gets his leaf spring changed and realized that the CV on his rear driveshaft is gone. As luck might have it – Higgs had a spare that FIT! – so a little more time goes by while we change his driveshaft. Off to the trail, it’s around noon. I have a map, a book, and some GPS coordinates and thought the map might work – wrong – there are hundreds of trails that criss-cross all over the desert. While on the main road, David sheers six of his eight steering knuckle bolts. We park the sick cruiser in middle of road and Higgs takes him back to get the tow rig with trailer. It was quite a feat to get the truck and trailer in there – and then turn around to head back out. Have you ever seen a Duramax lift a tire or two – with a trailer behind – I have, fun stuff. So, David heads into Phoenix for repairs and to pick up us cell phone while we attempt to find the trailhead. We find the gatekeeper (so we thought) for a trail called Woodpecker using the GPS. The beginning was sweet but then it just turned into a rocky wash and the GPS said that we were 3.2 miles away from where we really needed to be. We turned around… This was like a two hour adventure to no-where-land – sucko. So we drive around for a while longer letting the GPS tell us which way to Highway to Hell. We talk to a group of other Jeeps on the way and they say – yep you’re going the right way but when you get there turn Left not Right or you’ll be there till midnight. (Left is Woodpecker, right is H2H). We get there, it’s like 2:30pm or so, we turn right next to a shrine of broken parts and said “Those old guys don’t know what there talking about” “We won’t be here till Midnight”… We ate some lunch before starting sat under the shade of Sumo parked on an incline. We all scattered when a lonely scorpion attempted to crawl across our food, welcome to AZ!

Highway to Hell trail, Florence Junction AZ:
The start of the trail was sweet – a big crack that you had to straddle and if your sidewall slipped off the wall, you lose your passenger side or lift your front driver side to the sky. Anyways, Lynda is first, then Higgs, then Kopecki. We all make it thru that first challenge. The next major obstacle was an off-camber ledge tat sloped into a wall on the right side. Lynda and Higgs make it up after a few different lines and then it’s Kopecki’s turn. He starts to climb up and “pop” back right shaft lets go. It’s a full floater and he has a spare so this should be easy right?

Changing the rear axle shaft:
Step 1 – pull full floater axle bolts out – sounds easy right? We split TWO 5/8” sockets, had to upgrade the breaker bar to a five footer, and then striped out the head of the last bolt. Now what? We try a vice grip, but of course that didn’t work – but wait, there’s hope. We brought an electric grinder and we have an inverter. A few short minutes later, we have the head of the bolt ground off. OK, so the shaft should just slide out now right? Nope – chisel, hammer, prybar, grinding more on bold head, they shaft only wiggles a little. Someone came up with the idea that it might be bound up inside so we drove the truck a little backwards and it came right out. Finally, shaft is out, but it broke near the splines, need to get the broken parts out. Not a problem, our fully prepared driver brought a telescoping powerful magnet but it wasn’t long enough. Taped on an a pipe extension and started getting out little pieces but no splined big piece. Pull the other side shaft but the cross pin is in and even a narrow CB antenna couldn’t make it past to push it out. The telescoping rod ended up pulling apart inside the axle and at that point we decided to put the broken shaft back in and drive in three wheel drive. Higgs and I walked the trail for what seemed like a very long ways and we decided that there weren’t any more rear hard obstacles and that it would be easier to go forward instead of turning around. So we drive about 50 yards or so and then he breaks the front right outer shaft… WTF!

Changing the front right outer:
Have put together spare – yep, shouldn’t be a problem right? Problem one – had to strap the suspension to the axle to use the Hi-lift. Problem two – lug nuts must’ve been put on with a 8 foot cheater because that’s what it took to get them off… The drive flange splines were messed up where the shaft broke and the needle bearings inside the spindle were shattered. We were able to fix the splines with a triangle file (yes he carries one) and he also carries a spare spindle – so all is good right? Old shaft out, new shaft in, new spindle installed, attempt to put bearing hub on – it won’t slide on. Try to hammer it on but it still doesn’t seat and now it won’t come off! The seal and bearing stay stuck to the spindle while the bearing hub and rotor assembly are pried off. A pry bar, chisel and hammer get the bearing off the “new” spindle. Swap back to the original spindle, put hub back on but spindle nut won’t spin on. So, one hammer hit at a time with a chisel – for both nuts – and three different people taking turns, we eventually got the bearing hub tightened up. Everything else went on without a hitch, back to heading down the trail – at least for a few feet… when we notice that the back right is locking up… and it’s already dark…

What’s up with the back right?
Decide that the broken shaft that we put back in must be binding up – we pull the shaft and start driving again, tire is still locking up! The only thing left that could be locking up the tires is the brakes, tire to take the tire off and remove the brakes… Again, need to strap suspension, but this time the strap brakes, have to get a second strap and then get it up. Luckily the bearing hub and brake drum actually come off easily on this wheel. We take the brake shoes off, clamp the time, put it back together and suddenly it actually seems to move down the trail pretty good without that tire locking up. Turns out, that was probably why the rear shaft broke in the first place and started this ordeal. Back to driving down the trail in three wheel drive, I walk in front with a flashlight and spot to help us avoid any possible problems and allow us to get off the trail at a decent time.

So we continue down the trail, Lynda’s rig looks sweet up front with the rock lights, Jake is sleeping in his baby seat, it’s getting cold now. The obstacles keep on coming, one after another, harder and harder. I’m having to spot Lynda (leading the group) on huge walls and ledges and then come back to find the easiest path for Higgs (with a strap hooked up to Kopecki) to make it up the obstacles. We don’t make it too far and Kopecki loses his steering. Upon inspection, the pitman arm has split and the sector shaft is just spinning inside it. Kopecki fires up the welder and welds the nut to the pitman arm to the shaft. We drive 50 feet, breaks again. Battery dies, have to jump start, repeat process of welding (weld a little differently), drive 50 feet, breaks again, Jeep dies again, have to jumpstart, Jeep radiator cap starts leaking, happens to drip on our head where he is welding, making welding and work even harder to do. I don’t want to try and remember how many broken welds that we had, but during one of those repairs, another scorpion showed it’s prickly tail and had to be smashed before we could lay down to do the welding.
Eventually, the sector shaft brakes in half and the pitman arm falls off… We fire the grinder back up and cut off the previous weld to start over. This takes a while since it’s a ¼” grinding wheel and not a cut-off wheel but he gets it done. Nothing like grinding sparks and welding flashes in the middle of the AZ desert… With the freshly ground parts, Kopecki gets a good weld and we are back on the way. He takes it VERY easy with the steering (multiple point turns etc…) and we eventually get off the trail and back onto the road to head back to the camp. On the way, his Jeep dies, we head back to him and his welding machining thing is glowing red. Higgs hooks up the strap and we just tow it back. We were planning on getting a hotel, but it’s like 2 in the morning so we just pitch a tent (the ones that we put away in the morning) and stay the night in the desert again. David O was there waiting for us (asleep). Did I mention that we skipped dinner and beer drinking, all work, no play… It ended up being a pretty sweet right run though.

Thursday 4-2-09:
We sleep in and wake up in the desert again, then load up the rigs and drive into Phoenix and check into a hotel. This will be a lick our wounds, rest, and recover day… Higgs takes a look at the bleeding (tranny fluid) Sumo and find out that the Atlas can be moved up and down by hand. We would fix it but in order to get to the bolts, the skidplate would have to be dropped. All of the links are bolted to the skid which is also bolted to the frame. Higgs decides that the spare rig will have to do for Friday up in Table Mesa. We eat a nice lunch with margaritas, wash cloths, fuel up rigs and just take it easy. After dinner we just hung out and sipped on a few frosty beverages in the parking lot.

Friday 4-3-09, Table Mesa Rd, North of Phoenix:
We arrive at the air down area fairly early and then wait for a few minutes for a guy that I had been speaking with to show up and give us a little more guidance to find the trails. We only got lost for a little while before finding the hidden entrance to Collateral Damage. This was a pretty sweet trail, Higgs cut a tire, I almost rolled Lynda’s Jeep and we had to lasso a huge rock for a winch point. Other that that and stacking a few rocks for the LJ, we made it threw with just a little extra rock rash.
Next up – Anaconda trail. We did this one back in 2003 and it seemed much harder then, no carnage or problems on that trail, but it was still sweet.
It was getting late and we decided to “Take a Look” at a trail called “Twisted” and met up two other guys that knew we were out there trying to find trails. This trail was absolutely SWEET and I’m really glad we took the time to check it out. One of the two guys that led us out there feel into the crack and I thought that he wasn’t coming out – EVER. Eventually, he was able to drive out of it, pretty impressive. David almost rolled over backwards trying to get up to that gatekeeper. The rest of that trail was manageable, narrow, and very challenging. Lynda debeaded a tire and then broke the rim. It took a while to get the tire re-seated because of the broken rim and the fact that the whole truck was wedged in this narrow trail – couldn’t push the tire over to the seat. Anyways, we made it off the trail and back to the trailers. Can’t wait to go back!

The sun was setting as we loaded up the trailers, Higgs headed North towards Flagstaff and home, the rest of us ate dinner nearby and then headed to Tucson for the night.

Saturday 4-4-09, Tucson – WeRock Competition.
There was a comp in Tucson so we stopped by to check it out and see Hal Frost in action. Cool course, sweet rigs, cool RC car comp course, interesting T-shirts, people watching etc… All in all, glad we checked it out. We left the comp at about noon or so – David and Kopecki drove straight thru, Lynda and myself stopped in Ft. Stockton for the night and ended finished the drive on Sunday.

Till next time,
Scott

[DRAGOONRANCH]

Bad Ass!

[redcagepatrol]

Carnage report - summary from above:
Lynda - PS pump seal
Lynda - broken wheel
Lynda - lost CRAWL front plate on drive home
Lynda - torn top and ripped off radio antenna
Scott - trailer tire
DavidO - PS pump
DavidO - valve stem
DavidO - rear leaf spring
DavidO - rear driveshaft (did you get that one back to Higgs?)
DavidO - steering arm bolts
DavidO - two trailer tires
DavidO - one trailer hub
Kopecki - battery? at Trees?
Kopecki - back right shaft
Kopecki - front right outer shaft
Kopecki - steering pitman arm
Kopecki - steering gearbox sector shaft
Kopecki - back right brakes
Kopecki - welding / charging system
Kopecki - spindle
Sumo - Warn hub
Sumo - Atlas bolts backed out
Higgs LJ - cut tire
Higgs LJ - bent tie rod

Everybody came out with extra scratchs and dents

Did I miss anything?

I've added a few pics from the drive home stop at the Tuscon We-Rock comp. Hal is #21 is ya'll didn't know. That engine is a turbocharged Toyota 20R and he said it was making like 400hp...