Garage Projects,  Off Road Trips

3rd ORT – Interlake 9/21/11

We covered about 11 1/2 miles of a very sloppy Interlake area. It rained on us all the way until Noon:
Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Shot of the group in the parking lot:
Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Somehow I got elected trail guide and we headed off into the park:
Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

For some reason, people like to follow me around, so we started wandering around and I manged to immediately led the group to a very slick, muddy hill climb:
Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Videos (click the picture):

We pushed on through the soggy park slipping and sliding around:
Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

We all started playing around in this hilly area when a friend tried to dump his YJ over (Pics and vids dont’ do it justice, I still don’t know how he missed that tree):
Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

Video:

And for the damaged, the worst of it was when a tree and I weren’t getting along, I wound up caving the passenger side door in, and tweaking the cage a little bit (I knew I should have added another bar!):
Sara L.: 3rd Off-Road Trip Interlake 9-24-11 &emdash;

I also have killed my upper ball joints on the drivers side, and I’m sure the passenger side isn’t far behind. This is rather disappointing as I just put the dang things in less than a week ago (I’ve got all of 200 miles on them right now). I ran the truck across a scale tonight and confirmed my fear.
The front end of the truck (half tank of fuel, not tools in the back, spare tires, and me with the wife) weighs in at 3,000 lbs. (total truck weight of 5,800 lbs). This is going to cause me some grief as that 44 is only rated to 3,500 lbs. So I’m betting that I’m going to get use to swapping ball joints.

Looks like I need to save my pennies up for a Dana 60 after all.

Link to slide show of my photos

We’d also taken a few vids, but honestly, they’re not that exciting but they were educational as they showed that my rear needs to be locked up bad, and that the Nittos worked considerably better than the .mil take offs.

So that’s all for now, hopefully things will turn around soon as at the rate I’m going currently, this truck will be up for sale, or set on fire in the near future
As of right now, the truck is nearly ready for SMORR on 10/15. I still need to finish up swapping out the ball joints (Hopefully this set lasts a bit longer) and fix a leaky wheel seal in the rear.

The take off tires I’m running worked alot better than I thought they would, so I’m pretty happy with them at t hs point, even with all the drama that came with getting the dang things.

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