1TONZR2
Big mudda fugga!
a few of my buddies from back home were heading to Harlan this weekend and they asked if I wanted to meet up, so I got my rig together and headed up there for a great weekend of wheeling.
Thursday afternoon we left Jax around 4 and headed north, made a pit stop in Savannah for dinner...
Friday wasnt too bad, it had rained a little bit so everything was a little wet, but it wasnt raining when we were on the trail. on the second major trail, I busted the passenger side lock out on this spot. Like I said before, it was wet and muddy, trying to bump over a small ledge and had about 1/2-3/4 throttle, rig went up and slid over, tire hit the rock wall....boom so I played the rest of the day in 3 wheel drive...did Rail Bed in 3 wheel all the way to the end, had to winch out of the exit..lol
after leaving Rail Bed we took off to head toward upper rock garden...one of the trails was a long, slick hill that you needed to keep momentum on, so I went up got about 3/4 of the way and the passenger side tire hit a rock that was sticking out of the hill side.....broke all 4 bolts off the high steer arm.....knuckle is fine...after some rigging, we were able to get it back to camp where we could try and figure out what we needed to do. we tried pretty much everything in the book to get the broken bolts out of the knuckle....got one of them out.....then the rain came and it DUMPED pretty much all night. so we had to stop and wait till morning to finish. the next morning we went to work on it, located a drive flange from a guy that was already broke and was heading home, got that installed and started working on the knuckle...
one of the guys that was with us mentioned welding the steering arm to the knuckle, which was my last option....so we busted out the welder.
we also welded a bit on the other side for good measure, since the bolts had came loose on it....but we didnt pull the tire to get a good weld all the way around.....MISTAKE after wheeling all day on big muddy hill climbs, Upper Rock garden/Can Opener, middle rock garden, Big Perm/Bruiser, and lower rock garden forward and back, then my buddy drove it on lower again...about a mile from the camp ground, another rock jumped out in front of my driver side tire...BOOM same thing....got it back to camp using my winch and my buddies Zuk to steer it....LOL
here are a few more random pics
Thursday afternoon we left Jax around 4 and headed north, made a pit stop in Savannah for dinner...
Friday wasnt too bad, it had rained a little bit so everything was a little wet, but it wasnt raining when we were on the trail. on the second major trail, I busted the passenger side lock out on this spot. Like I said before, it was wet and muddy, trying to bump over a small ledge and had about 1/2-3/4 throttle, rig went up and slid over, tire hit the rock wall....boom so I played the rest of the day in 3 wheel drive...did Rail Bed in 3 wheel all the way to the end, had to winch out of the exit..lol
after leaving Rail Bed we took off to head toward upper rock garden...one of the trails was a long, slick hill that you needed to keep momentum on, so I went up got about 3/4 of the way and the passenger side tire hit a rock that was sticking out of the hill side.....broke all 4 bolts off the high steer arm.....knuckle is fine...after some rigging, we were able to get it back to camp where we could try and figure out what we needed to do. we tried pretty much everything in the book to get the broken bolts out of the knuckle....got one of them out.....then the rain came and it DUMPED pretty much all night. so we had to stop and wait till morning to finish. the next morning we went to work on it, located a drive flange from a guy that was already broke and was heading home, got that installed and started working on the knuckle...
one of the guys that was with us mentioned welding the steering arm to the knuckle, which was my last option....so we busted out the welder.
we also welded a bit on the other side for good measure, since the bolts had came loose on it....but we didnt pull the tire to get a good weld all the way around.....MISTAKE after wheeling all day on big muddy hill climbs, Upper Rock garden/Can Opener, middle rock garden, Big Perm/Bruiser, and lower rock garden forward and back, then my buddy drove it on lower again...about a mile from the camp ground, another rock jumped out in front of my driver side tire...BOOM same thing....got it back to camp using my winch and my buddies Zuk to steer it....LOL
here are a few more random pics