sschaefer3

What a trail. Worthy of the name. All we have is my cellphone pictures.

I took my buggy through the first part, after a few tries we figured out how to get through. Then another group showed up and assured us they would be through the first in a few minutes. An hour later they completed the first section.

Nice Built CJ Flops:










Then Kent and Brian took on the first section. Kent lost a front fender.




At this point Brains back 4Runner started running out of gas.

Another group cam up behind us and we befriended them and we helped each other through the rest of the trail. They tough us how to sifen gas.

Before they made it thorough the first section a CJ flopped.













Righted the Jeep, no one hurt and the Jeep was fine as well, no damage.

We continued on and Kent's Tacoma broke a driver side Dana 44 U-Joint. He competed the rest of the trial under 3WD. Quite a task.

We finished the trail in complete darkness, we started out at 8:30am and ran through Upper Woodpecker first. Ended back up at Cottonwood Canyon and the 79 at around 7:30-8:00pm.

One hell of a trail.

wormhole

So what's with the jeeps flopping?

I guess that's one of those jeep things.

sschaefer3

One has steering issues and the other it was the short wheelbase. We played it safer as it was our first trip down the trail.

westy44runner

Wow...that looks like an eventful day. Cool trail.

Did Kent try the big notch, where that CJ flopped? Hard to tell from the photo but it looks like that is where he got his fender?

Join the club...my passenger fender resembles a prune these days.

Harder than the beach??

sschaefer3

As hard as the beach. It's really a good one, but certainly hard. A lot harder than Axle Alley.

Bighead

Nice pics Steve. That looks like a heck of a trail.

AxleIke

SWEET!!!!

Man you guys know how to have fun. I have GOT to get my ass down there to watch the big guys play.

Thanks for sharing. I love the AZ trip reports, they never disappoint.

Bighead

Agreed but with as much as I have been wheeling I should just sell my 4Runner.

How did the buggy do Steve? Any problems?

AZ4ME

iTrader: (1)

None of us tried the first notch. Schaefer and I seemed a bit too narrow and Kent wanted to take it somewhat easy.

His damage occured just after the first notch when he got in a bad situation where he couldn't back up and going forward was going to tear the side of his truck off. We were able to free him with some creative winching before he got too much damage.

The trail wasn't super hard (don't get me wrong, it is a difficult trail). We just didn't have a good day. A lot of things just seemed to go wrong. Schaefer's rig, as always, did really well. Those TSL's on his buggy seem to do quite well. My 36" tires were just too small for some of the obstacles without stacking.

westy44runner

Thats cool. I've seen that notch...it looks nasty for less than full width axles.

Yeah his buggy is so light it doesnt take much to get it up and over it seems like! Those narrow and tall tires surely dont hurt it either!

sschaefer3

Traction Bar Iced the cake. It's working well. Finally got the steering all set as well with the big arch.

Now I just have to get all the disc brake stuff on.

dropzone

iTrader: (6)

looks like a cool trail and nice to see some great team work across brand lines

Albuquerque Jim

Nice...someday I'll join ya.

kent

Here is the broken u-joint. AlloyUSA filed for bankruptcy and it's assets bought off by Omix. Omix will not replace this since they only bought AlloyUSA's assets(no more 10 year warranty!). If the ears are not too bent out of shape, I'll see if I can put another u-joint in there. Probably the Longfield 300Ms since they are a little cheaper than the CTMs.

Hayes

Dang, t hat sucks... Sorry to hear they wont honor the warranty, seems like they will lose more money via business that wont come back than by just replacing the part.

Bad business decision, IMO.

sschaefer3

I have been on contact with Chuck and Steve via e-mail and the telephone. They would like to go out with us again.

They have Jeeps, but at this point in the game, I really don't the think the vehicle type matters, it only matters if they can hang. They can.

Vermejo

Nice, looked like a nasty day. How about some of you guys come down in February to Las Cruces for the Chile Challenge? Plenty of open spots for the extreme stuff (aka) the stuff my rig will not be near. I’ll show a good time for any that makes it.

https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f15/...2009-a-159202/