Great pics Mike, if it makes you feel any better about your truck not being there, the photos are always great from you.
I had a blast as usual. Brought home quite a bit of carnage. I made it back to Phoenix in 7 hours, 1 stop for fuel, one stop to "check the tires" on the side of the road. I also will be starting another thread about the 2 2010 prototype super dutys I saw on I17 with the disguised leather over the fenders!!! They ran along side of me for about 40 miles. I tried to grab some photos and unfortunately the camera was in the Explorer so they are just low res cell phone pics.
Friday:
We ran Golden Spike, a great trail but very long...especially when Kevin's track bar mount peeled the welds from the frame. He broke in about as bad of a place it could have been about halfway through a long trail, but teamwork was in full force and after a few attempts we got this together to the point that he was able to complete the trail and drive home on the highway. Even better, he had it welded last year in Moab and it lasted 1 year to the day (Friday from last year), a local 4x4 shop not only covered the work, but gave him 2 pretty slick gussets and he should be in real good shape for the future. Now talk about the perfect timing and great customer service. Furthermore we found 2 missing u-joint caps on Kevin's truck. It just turned out to be one of those days for him but his truck didn't skip any obstacles.
We split the group and were on the trail until about 9:30 by the time we got everything worked out. My truck was flawless Friday, I passed up no obstacles thanks the the spotting by 90Ranajo and with an extra 1/2 quart of tranny fluid the transmission never slipped.
Saturday we ran Spike Rivine with a bigger group and I was amazed after walking Helldorado. We passed on that trail, however I'm hoping HVAC Man surfaces some photos of his beast on that trail.
Everyone was doing pretty good Saturday and Brian1 mentioned heading down to Area BFE. He also mentioned jumping and great rock obstacles in an area where the parking lot was 100 yards. Sounds like a winner. Time to get wild I guess.
I began hitting this jump and on my final attempt I had 2nd gear pinned (probably about 30 mph) and realized on my way down that I was going to need to grab the brakes to stop in a hurry. I just came crawling off a ledge before where I was slipping so I opened up the full amount of pressure to the rear brakes on my proportioning valve. I kinda screwed up by not resetting the lever, I know better than to brake in mid air, but jamming the brakes as the truck bounced on the landing and I ripped a rear caliper right off the axle.
I got that line pinched off and the guys spotted me up another really nice rock climb after I told myself I was done. There was too many of the good guys there to help me out not to keep on running in this awesome area.
That wasn't all of it either for me, on the way back to camp my truck got some electrical gremlins (I was fighing a bad negative terminal all day) and some crazy stuff started happening such as a strong burning smell and the wipers started going all crazy, about twice as fast as high speed even though I didn't touch the lever. Then I started smoking, lost all power and died on the side of the road. It also smelled really bad like gas. I have been thinking the engine needs some love anyway but Brian1 identified gas leaking out of the header and thinks I have a dead cylinder. It wouldn't even move in hi range, I needed 4 lo to just drive off the road.
I went to unload the truck off the trailer and it was totally dead and I couldn't even jump start it with a jump box. I got everything else cleaned up and am saving this project for a few days later.
Great trip, great to see old friends and make new ones! Oh, and by about midnight last night with the assistance of a few ****tails Ralph and I are pretty sure we figured out the bank bailout, unemployment situation, auto industry and a few other issues our country is battling, he's a hellova guy and we might run for office in '12.
My pics will soon follow buy here is us in the crack
Thanks for the assist, guys...
