First wheelin with the SFA (lots of pics)

[JoshC]

Well, we went wheelin last night. Everything went great. The truck did awesome. Flex was good, lockers worked well, tires were BAD. I pulled my brother's explorer several times and a jeep a couple of times with my front bumper. All in all, i LOVE IT!

Lets start the pictures. Here's the few i have right now of my explorer.

My friend Jamie who was riding with me, he's 6'3"!

My brother and I.

Just a cool picture after we made it to the top.

Little bit of flex.

Got in this rut and could not get back out. Got high centered a couple of times, but managed to push enough dirt away with the diffs to get up. Locker in the front made the difference.

Little dark, but this is me trying to get out of the rut.

Small climb, really steep and it was loose rock, i didn't try to hard to make it up, just went slow to see how the lockers and tires worked.

Took this today, just to show the little bit of mud i got, and all this came from pulling my brother up a hill backwards in pure mud, twice!

I'll have a bunch more to put up tomorrow when my friend Jamie gets his pics to me. I'll also have some links to some video to put up too.

 

[JoshC]

Here is why i got so muddy pulling my brother up this hill in reverse, man it was nasty! Those are 33's, look at the mud coming through the rim

Playin in some mud!

What monster flex

Hit kind of a rough spot here, it took a few tries.

Same spot as above.

Some more outstanding flex, haha

 

[JoshC]

Here is my friends 95 YJ.

Monster flex on the YJ also

 

[99exEB1]

Looks great Josh, it seems that Cory is on fire lately with all of his custom work. I'm glad to see that you are enjoying X to the fullest!! Good luck man..

 

[JoshC]

Thanks Andrew, i'm definantly enjoying it!! haha

Cory's work rocks, i love to advertise for him cause i'm always telling truth.

 

[Nate1]

*drools* One day my rig will be as pimp as Josh's... I can only hope!
Looks awsome!!!!
-----Nate

 

[jasonb]

i thought you lifted your explorer josh? looks like a low rider to me!
can't wait to see it perform this coming weekend! great pics btw..

 

[Digger196]

looks like fun. now you need to come here and i'll show YOU what real mud is that will stop a dodge with 38's! TWICE!

it was nuts!

P.S. can i come visit you some time to see the trail. looks fun but not dangerous! PM me about how far it is you think.

 

[Muskrat]

how about some front end flex pics Josh?

 

[JoshC]

I've got some front end flex shots coming. My friend Jamie took the most pictures and some videos, he's going to email all them to me today and i'll put them up as needed.

David, got to map quest and type in Hurricane WV as the destination to see how far it would be.

We have definantly got some mud here that we didn't even touch. We have hole that they call dozer hole, they tried to talk me into going but i wasn't that stupid. It's about 1 foot of water and about another 8-12" of mud under that and the angles of the sucker are about strait up!

I felt like a low rider in some spots, i was having flash backs when i was getting high centered there, but then i got out and realized that the rut had swallowed my tire!

Thanks Nate

 

[BUCHVILLEMAN]

josh,
is that you standing behind the rig in the first pic?
your skinny as a rail! and tall.
you need to come down south so we can feed you!
J/K

the ex looks absulutely killer! i know that it performs like nothing else!
I LOVE IT!

 

[JoshC]

hahaha. Not Gabe that's not me. That my buddy Jamie. I'm well fed, believe me!

I'm downloading the other pics right now, so give me another hour or so and i'll pu them up.

 

[JoshC]

Here are the other pics as promised! Got some good ones in here.

You can't see me here, i'm camflouged!

Love this picture!

Awesome action shot!

David, here is some of the mud you wanted to see! I had to pull the jeep out of this spot.

The main thing you don't see is the hour we spent pulling the jeep. Heres the scoop. My brother in the red sport started down the trail, he bottomed out big time and was stuck, so the jeep had to get out of the way so i could strap to Travis. Started to pull him out and i looked back so i didn't back over the jeep, well he wasn't back there. No big deal. Got my brother back up on level ground and saw a couple of the other guys run over the hill, not the trail, just over the side of the hill. Well that's where the jeep was. Less then a foot away from a tree and sideways on the slick butt hill. He couldn't go anywhere cause he was afraid of taking a fender out. So i pulled over the hill too, straped to him and started to pull. I couldn't do much cause we afraid of sliding into a tree. So we broke out the come-along! About 30 minutes later, he's up past the tree, so with about 90 feet of strap and chain, i'm up on level ground pulling him up the hill. It took us a good hour to get him back over. Luckily no damage! It was a blast. My explorer performed awesome. I pulled hard on the front bumper and it didn't even budge. I'm in love. Now today comes the fun part, clean up! Then it's time to get ready for tellico this weekend!!

 

[BUCHVILLEMAN]

good report! sounds like an awesome recovery. time for a winch

 

[JoshC]

That's exactly what i said Gabe! I was the one on the come-along so i was wore out!

 

[JAMIEZ71]

I just want to tell everyone how much fun we had on our little trip off-roading this past weekend. I was Josh's passenger. The skinny one as someone said. I was impressed by how good the x went. It was like being on one of our own fourwheelers. It went that good. It was funny to see Josh climb hills that most people wouldn't attempt on a fourwheeler. Keep posting those pics when you get the chance Josh. Looking good.

 

[taxx]

looks good. looks like it is time to bring the front up a bit. looks like it needs to come up an inch or two.

Looks like you had a blast.

 

[JoshC]

Thanks Jamie

Yeah it was a blast Dave. I've already brought the front up a little more then an inch. But now that it's GOOD and setteled, i'll bring it up a little more. I've got an inch and a half left to go up.

 

[BUCHVILLEMAN]

i love the adjustability with the coil over. i wish i had that option.

you rubbing anywhere at all? im rubbing at full compression/turning.

my rear sagged more than my front after SOA. im going to add a longer leaf on each side in the rear.

you get the cable actuator or did you rig the front to the existing vacuum lines?

 

[JoshC]

97 does have the vacuum like the 95-96's. So i just took that actuator off and moved it into the locked position and put vacuum caps on it. It worked great. It took some abuse too.

Rubbing-actually rubbing isn't a problem, just that small piece of plasitc that comes of the fener well. That's it, it rubs it a little bit while i'm turning. It didn't rub at all while flexing. The coils rub the buckets something fierce. Extremly loud coming down the trail, but it makes up for it in performance!