I had an interesting day. I went on a trailride with 10 Jeeps in various states of disrepair and one rad '85 Toyota flatbed Mini truck.

I haven't uploaded all of my pictures yet but here are a few to give you an idea of how the day went.










More to come. It was rediculous.

 

Ok, here's more... This might be long.

Official trail report is being formed now on Colorado 4x4.org

Everything about this trip was a delay, mostly due to lack of maintainence and poor driving technique.

It started at the parking lot that we picked as a meeting place. Everyone was on time but they all wanted to BS about what great drivers they are rather than get ready. One guy came up from New Mexico with a J-10 (old huge fullsize Jeep pickup) on a trailer. The thing is so huge he has to put tiny tires on it for it to fit on his trailer. Once he unloaded it he had to put the trail tires on. This whole process took 1 hour from the "ready" time of 9:30 am.

After the trailer queen has her new shoes on, the leader of the run decides we should air down there to "save time". Ok, we air down. With my awesome Staun Deflators i'm done in 2 minutes.

30 minutes later everyone is done airing down.

In the meantime I went to offer use of my deflators to the trailer queen pilot since he had already held us up for an hour. They work fine on 3 tires, they are done in <3 minutes. (35x12.5x15 tires take longer.) On the fourth the valve is clogged so it took 20 minutes to air down that one tire from 30psi to 17. I did the airing down while the owner went somewhere to BS with the guys. Whatever, i'm still happy to be going wheeling.

Finally at 11:05 we roll out of the lot, aired down and ready to rock.

I'll skip ahead to when we get to the trail, we needed a 10 minute pee break on the way.

Finally we are wheeling! About 2 blocks into the trail we have a breakdown. A white Cherokee can't get 4WD. The owner spends 30 minutes wrenching on it and decides its broken. (as pictured above) He rides with his buddy the rest of the way leaving the wounded Heep to fend for itsself.

We proceed untill the trailer queen breaks a shift linkage. Owner fixes it in 10 minutes. ( as pictured above)

We finally hit the obstacles at around 12:30. Pictures of them are found
on my Webshots page.

Everyone makes the obstacles without delay.

Right after the obstacles a blue TJ Wrangler flops on its side due to driver error as pictured above. He was showing off or something. the trail is plenty wide and flat there. Uprighting it takes about an hour. Afterword we all make it through the same spot without incident.

Then came the icy places. The non locked rigs in our group really struggled on these hills. The terrain was a moderate incline with randomly strewn 10-24 inch boulders poking up through snow , ice and ruts. Much spotting and shoving of Jeeps was needed here. The trailer queen got insanely hung up on a huge 3 foot tall rock as seen in the (Stonecutter) pictures on Webshots. Why he tried to drive over the rock will never be known. There was plenty of room to go around. It took 30 minutes or more to free him by stacking a huge pile of rocks that I call the "Monument." The Monument is seen on Webshots also. While stuck the shift linkage on the trailer queen broke again. More delay resulted, more bailing wire wasted in the repair.

My new tires and old locker worked flawlessly here. I barely slid or spun at all. When I was moving I was having a blast. Too bad I only got to move 50 yards every 30 minutes on this section.

Our group cought up to a pair of old rigs with open diffs that were totally struggling on the hills. This caused another hour delay or longer. I don't know because I left as it got dark. Darkness fell, the ice got slicker, the trail seemed to get steeper as it went along. I was getting tired of waiting at the back end of the line.

As I waited, I talked to the female passenger in the Trailer Queen truck. She told me that what she was riding in had no working headlights. This fact and the darkness persuaded me that I didn't want to stay to see the end of this fiasco. I left and led a small group of "quitters" back home.

The point of this essay? The points are:

Fix your busted parts at home.

Be ready to roll at the ready time.

Pay attention while driving so you don't get stuck or roll over.

That is all, thanks for reading.

 

Matt, good reading.
Seems that most of these guy's were very ill prepared.

I can understand the frustration of having to wait each time one of them broke down.

And rolling that blue one in an area where it should not have happened?
Priceless

I bet they had envy of your rig when they saw how it performed out there, but getting an owner to admit it would have hurt their Jeep pride

 

Man this is some funny stuff. Matt you should be a wheeling trip commentator!! Sure makes me wish I had a locker just thinking about spinning up them hills.

I totally agree with you the being prepared thing. I once went out with a buddy way out in the middle of nowhere.. just us two and an annoying chick who convienently forgot her shoes. I ask before we even hit the trail if he's got a jack, shovel, spare, ect. He says yup it's all in the delta box. Well next thing I know we are highcentered about 30 miles from anywhere on the top of a mountain. I go to get the stuff outta the box and it's empty!!!:eek: He says oh crap I forgot I took it out a few days ago to wash out the box!!! Now I am really pissed and we are outta beer, the chick is bitching, and we are 30 miles from any kind of civilization, road, person, ect and on top of that we have about 2 hours of daylight left. LUCKILY I had backpacked the backside of the mountain the weekend before and knew a trail that led down to a camping area. We headed out.. did I mention the chick had no shoes??? The trail was steep and rocky for 7 miles down off the mountain and it got dark!! Luckily we made it down in one piece and very luckily someone was at the campground. By this point I am so pissed I am not talking to either of them so I go knock on a camper door pay them 20 bucks to take us to town. Next day we got someone to take us back to the truck and winched it out with a highlift jack. After this little FIASCO I said never ever ever again will I go through that. Now that I think of it things could of gotten really bad up there. If the weather had changed suddenly, one of us got hurt hiking in poor clothing, no one had been at the camp... sheesh Well anyways I lived to tell about it and now I can laugh about it but moral of the story is be prepared for ANYTHING!

 

Actually, MOST of them were very well prepared. Some of them are really hardcore. Just the 2 or 3 that weren't kinda ruined it for all of us. In all fairness the White Cherokee (XJ in Jeep language) broke in a very unpredictable way. There is some vaccum activated fork on the front axle of those things that is similar to the Toyota ADD system. The fork itsself broke so the axle wouldn't work. That's not being unprepared, just bad luck and poorly designed weak parts.

What was most frustrating was the lack of vehicle control skills demonstrated. The guy that flopped was looking behind at a tree branch that was threatening his new canvas top rather than watching where he was going. On the way over the canvas ripped alright. Also his fenders and door were dented and scratched pretty well. He was very lucky to not have injured his passenger or himself. A little rock that got his passenger door was VERY close to the glass that could have broken and perhaps blinded or cut the passenger.

The Trailer Queen guy from NM decided that 2 lockers and 3 inch lift means try to drive over a 3 foot rock dead center. He was hung up on the front diff at first. he chose to nail the throttle rather than back off of it. This caused the rock to grab the tranny and exhaust while completely lifting both front tires off of the ground as seen in the pictures labled Stonecutter on Webshots. He was a nice guy, just not a very good wheeler. He broke down twice for the same stupid reason and got stuck in a big stupid way once.

Posted by UK Meyers:
I've seen this kind of thing to. It sucks. Now I carry almost everything with me to make up for what someone else may have forgotten. When I was in Arizona wheeling with Steve Schaefer someone said, "Matt brought his whole garage so we should be OK." Sure enough we needed one of my jackstands and jack when someone got a flat. I'm almost to the point where I want to carry spare Jeep parts with me if I continue to go wheeling with these guys.

We all have to learn somehow I guess. I've done some bone headed things on the trails also. Nothing quite like I saw Saturday though.

 

Youd be pedaling parts like a bleacher hot dog salesman at a ball game.