Carnage at 360 trails in Dallas.

[Tom Wilk]

Gerald, its not worn out, but there is some slop in there that wasn't there before. Still has the limited slip action, but I think I took some surface off the clutches. I'm pretty doggone sure its just wear.

There's a small amount of end play in the axle shafts, and there's a little movement in the spider gears which leads me to beleive that the clutches have seen some wear. Since the clutches are very thick and the spring pack keeps them tight against the sides of the case, the limited slip action is still there, but if I rock the vehicle back and forth very hard, you can see the slack in the spiders being taken up as the clutch moves against the housing about 1/16" or less. That play wasn't there before. I pulled the cover off a couple of weeks ago to inspect. I also checked the breakaway torque which is still 100 ft-lbs.

Oh well, next year I'll be putting a locker in, I think.

 

[tdavis]

Geez Gerald, your just going to have be more careful with that vehicle.

I mean, really. You need to wait till a ford rep is around to do stuff like that!

As for the dings/dent. Don't worry, the first hurts the most. The second hurts some. The third is hard to find between the first and second. And the fourth one? Who cares!

And yes, I'm giving POR's hell. Calling a lifted and locked Navajo/Explorer "stock". sheez.

 

[Gofast]

Smileys Fixed!

Well the only damage ( other than the pocket book ) was a bent drag link! Yea! It only cost $425 to get it straight again. Almost, anyway. See my post under suspensions on my Caster question. I also got new eccentrics included for that price.

I believe that I bent the drag link when I was wedged against a rock and fighting hard to turn the other direction.

I will take a short break ( hate that word ) from wheeling this weekend and go to Galveston and enjoy the waves on my Yamaha Waverunner.

Thanks Rob

 

[Paul Gagnon]

Ummmm... guys I hate to sound insensitive but where are the pictures? Sorry to hear about the dents and stuff I hope it doesn't turn you guys off of wheelin'.

 

[GJarrett]

Pictures?

That would be like taking a photo of me without my makeup on!

Seriously, I'll get to it in awhile. Right now I got a lot of personal stuff going on, Paul. Check the Moderator forum for my msg.

 

[Tom Wilk]

Gerald, I know this is the wrong topic, but since the topic came up in this thread, I decided to mention it. I have also described this in the OME spring thread.

There was this clunk in the back end of my Explorer that I had attributed to the rear axle. Specifically, when I cornered hard, it sounded as though the axle shafts had sufficient end play to clunk as I entered and exited the corner. I thought that I had verified the noise by violently shaking the vehicle side to side and listening. It really sounded as though the clunk was coming from the axle.

What a pleasant surprise to find that it was not the axle at all. What I was hearing went away when I installed the new springs. I've since thrown it into corners with reckless abandon, with nary a peep out of the rear end. It was quite a relief, to say the least. I had been babying the thing thinking that something was about to bust, despite having inspected the differential for signs of damage or excessive wear.

Rob, glad to hear it was only the drag link. A bent axle would not be on my list of things I would like to have happen.

 

[GJarrett]

Oh-oh....

Well, it looked like a bad (but still relatively minor) "Whoopsie" to me; but since this is a nice new daily driver and the paint needs to match the clearcoat/etc and it seems that I didn't notice the need to also replace the fenderwell trim and all kinds of other ad infinitum and etc...

I myself will replace the front bumper, wheel trim, and etc; and aside from my labor and paying for those pieces (cost: many, many hundreds of dollars) it'll be another $1500+. I'm looking at between $2-3 grand out of (my) pocket that I don't have.

It has not escaped my attention that when I had my first major "Whoops!" in Oklahoma (when I pretzeled my running board) that I commented to Rob Gofast that at least I only had to pay for a running board and not body damage; my board protected my body.

I removed my running boards for this run to regain 2.5" of clearance and fabricated angle iron skidplates to protect my bottom. They didn't protect my rocker panels and my lower door panels though. I think I will go back to keeping my running boards next time and pay for those instead. I would have certainly grenaded the running board on this slam, but it might have held the vehicle off of the body damage. That running board juts out over a half foot. That's a lot of protection.




[Edited by GJarrett on 07-02-2000 at 08:38 AM]

 

[BigDave]

I too know the saving effects of the under the rocker panel body moulding and running boards. I don't have running boards, but I do have the moulding and that saved me from putting dents in the rocker panels at Attica. Andre, who has 31's (as opposed to my stock 235's) damaged both his rocker panels. I just scraped the fiberglass pieces and popped them off the mounting bracket things. Saved me from body damage that i couldn't afford to repair.

God save the body moulding.

 

[GJarrett]

Oh crap

You can add a blown rear axle seal to the carnage list. Check the General Explorations forum.

This was one heckuva bad trip.

 

[GJarrett]

Layover pic

Okay Paul and Tom, you wanted a pic so here it is! (Finally!)

Well I finally developed my roll of film (I finished it on the CCR2000 run) and found a scanner. The scanner sucks so this is as good as I could get the pic to come out:

It's a little hard to tell, but the gold trim on both fenderwells also got pretty screwed up. You can see where some of it got ripped out behind the front wheel; the rest got scraped up, but since it is pliable, the shape wasn't messed up too bad.

The side mirror luckily not only turns inward on impact; it also slides up! The mirror actually got pushed up several inches on its pivot mount and was hanging off of the top. All we had to do was fiddle with it awhile until it snapped back down into place. It is obvious that the front door bottom took most of the hit.

The picture doesn't capture the depth of the ding on the front door; it went all the way in to the interior door bar that strengthens the door in case of side impact. If you look closely at the rear of the front door you will see that when closed it still stuck out over an inch. The doorskin just folded in.

The white spot on the upper portion of the rear door marks where the back part of the vehicle laid down. I think I can get a paintless dent popper to fix that before getting it repainted again.

The Herculiner did a good job of covering up all that stuff on the lower doors. It's hard to tell in the picture but the rear lower door was pretty messed up too.

[Edited by GJarrett on 10-02-2000 at 01:29 PM]

 

[Rick]

After seeing your truck in Colorado I would have never guessed the damage had been so severe. That was quite a hit. You did an excallant job of covering it all up.

 

[rpenner54]

Rick those hits you have on the bottom of yours would be invisible with this stuff on. I know cause I got about 3 on the bottom of mine that were simular and Herc covered up the majority of them to the point where you have to look pretty close to see it.

 

[Rick]

My hits are gone. I wanted the body shop to leave them. I told them they added "character". They told me that they wouldn't leave them on anything they were putting their name on. Oh well... They are putting some type of Herculiner like material on the bottom of the doors and rockers though. I'm not sure what brand they will be using though.

I should be getting the truck back on Thursday if all goes well. My powder coating should be done on Friday.

 

[Tom Wilk]

OK, Gerald, we have the before Herc picture, we need an after pic. Seriously, that was some pretty nasty damage to such a well kept rig. Glad that things are fixed up a bit for you.