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Josh's 4 door 1st gen explorer crawler (SGT Ex)




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Great photos, looks like a great trip.

Happy Birthday US Marines! Semper Fi!
 












Spent this weekend tinkering a little on Ex to get it ready for this coming weekend, as well as KOH. Nothing big, just mainly maintenance stuff. I put some new struts on the back door, which caused the door to not be lined up, so lots of adjusting there.

Next up was creating a pocket for the passenger side window switchs to go in. Because of the cage, I can't use door panels on the front, so for the longest time, i didn't have any where for the switch panel to reside. I used some copper rod and some scrap sheet metal to hold it, similar to like I did on the drive side.
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Since I was working on the interior, I went ahead and made up some covers for the center console. I used the sheet metal that was in the firewall of the red body. The pieces were not large enough, so I had to weld in a little piece on each side. I'll get the tabs welded in tonight, and button these up.
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lawd I need to have my seats recovered...
 
























Looks good dude. Hopefully ill see you at KOH . not sure if ill have my expo or courier.
 












I'm pretty sure an FB friend of mine was wheeling with you at KOA. She posted a picture on fb of your rig.

For some reason it won't let me upload the picture on here.
 






Dang, I didn’t see your sploder there. I figure I missed 75% of what there was to see.
 






I was out there cruising around. I seen Robby but for some reason I don't get notifications from messages on here to my gmail. I'm sure it is operator error.

Here is the much delayed trip report...

I went to KOH by myself and met up with my buddy who owns Coin Jar Off-Road out here. He's the one who does all the suspension and mechanical work on the Ranger. Soon as the sun was up, it was time to hit the road. My old 2500 HD 6.0 with 200K miles is a trooper!
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Cruising down the I60 there was gorgeous scenery of the snow capped mountains and green fields below
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trip to Yucca was a breeze. Truck did great, trailer towed great, traffic was smooth. Got to Boone Road about 3 hours and 15 minutes in, and then Hammertown started to come into sight
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I got there just in time to unload and cruise down to see the leaders of the EMC come in. No pics of Casey, but I did catch the Lovell Brothers and their Ranger buggy
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Then I got bored, not to mention it was 45 degrees in the sunlight, and it was time to hit Turkey Claw, as I have never ran it and always wanted to. I made it to this point pretty easily with the help of a spotter
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After the trail cleared a bit, the guys with the toyota buggies convinced me to tag along, so further up the trail we went
 






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This trail is really cool because it is challenging, but is a rock garden rather than huge ledges that are damn near impossible to go up. a vehicle with 35" tire and lockers can make it through.

As we were sitting there watching some of the buggies play on the hard lines, a group of full size square body chevy trucks came up.
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They were all LS swapped with one tons and 40s, but it was cool to see them up there at the top
 






started getting dark, so back to camp for the day.

Thursday we took off to go watch the trophy trucks, which was definitely a treat. we were able to get right up close to one of the fast sections where i met this cool guy
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the dude hand built the car to include the fiberglass body, frame, suspension, etc. had a healthy Texas Speed LS2 in it, so it ripped.

went back to hammertown to watch on the big screen for a bit and got to see the new jeep gladiator that completed the EMC
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While the axles were nothing near stock, a full bodied truck on 35s finishing is pretty awesome. Not as awesome as the truck that won, but still really cool

That night, I went with a group of very well built JKs to the top of Turkey Claw, and we ended up running SOS at night. This is another really cool rock trail that i never ran before. No pictures as it was balls cold outside (around 30 degrees at night, 20s in the mornings) so we just had fun. Only breakage was a punctured tire on one of the JKs.

Next day, we headed out to Back Door to watch some racers go up. Awesome to see them going up again. Then we cruised over to Chocolate Thunder for a while to watch them go through there.
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After that, it was time to head back to HT to see the leaders come in. Was able to catch 1-3 on the podium before I decided it was time to load up and head home.

Only got a pic of Shannon
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Loaded up and headed out around 4 PM. Traffic leaving wasn't too bad at this time yet, so only took about 45 mins to get off boone road. The sky was beautiful and the dust was almost non-existent
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Made it home in about 3 hours. One of the best trips to the hammers to date. Finally got some good wheeling in, met some cool people, seen some amazing machines, and no breakage on the Sarge.
 






So a couple of other updates, I was able to finally mount my spare tire on my trailer
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and I added some panels to the center console
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And for those who don't follow me on instagram, the Green has been reduced to a very small amount, and the truck is back to tan
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I'll be heading out to Truckhaven for TDS2019, if you see me, wave!
 






also forgot to update from the Superstition run...

Went to the San Diego 4 Wheelers event out at Superstition Mountain in January
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Seen the Blue Angels practicing having some fun
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Played on the RTI ramp with my good friend Mike and his VERY well setup TJ
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Then did some night wheelin with the TJ and we seen just how far we could push an old razor haha
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Then around 1 am i put my fan into the radiator :homer:
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We wheeled our butts off out there this weekend and ended up using a tank and a half of fuel. I have no idea how many miles that is. haha. Also have no idea how the truck twists itself enough to hit the radiator, but this was also when I busted the rear passenger window.
 












I’ve now read this from start to current. You’ve got an impressive rig. I’m pretty sure by now you’ve replaced enough stuff to formally claim “built it”.
 






I’ve now read this from start to current. You’ve got an impressive rig. I’m pretty sure by now you’ve replaced enough stuff to formally claim “built it”.

I appreciate it, but nah . Reclinaholic (Dan) deserves all the build credit. He originally built this truck 11 years ago and the basic design is exactly the same as when he built it. I will be redoing a significant portion of the truck soon, but will still have my buddy's shop do the work. I just do maintenance and attempt to fix where I run out of talent
 



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