9th ORT in The Lone Ranger – Washita MX 6-16-12

A good friend of mine finally had a day off so we snuck down to Washita for a quick day trip. We wound getting out the door earlier than usual to beat the heat, which worked out perfectly.

Travel:

Just a group of two for this trip:

It was stupid dry down there, but I did managed to immediately get stuck in a mud hole (guess it wasn’t that dry after all). Once I was freed from that embarrassment, we started playing around on one of the ledges off of the main access road:

And continued to wander through the park:

I adjusted my front shackles some, so I flexed it out to see where things are sitting. It looks like I need to adjust my front straps so that I can take advantage of some extra droop:

Casper the white XJ had a small tire mishap. I’m actually kinda surprised it took us this long to kill one of these tires as neither one of us are nice to them at all:

Kept on wandering up to the top:

Big ole lizard running around these parts:

A few videos:

He made it up that too easy so I told him to move over and try the harder line. Excuse the Midwest Dumbasses laughing, things aren’t usually dry enough around here to get enough traction to ‘bounce’ on so it was a bit of a new experience for us ^_^

Quick video of the day (with the ranger in action):

At the end of the day as we were airing up, my buddy commented that the ranger was leaking more than normal. Turns out the damn transfer case decided to loosen up from the crawl box once again. We were ‘just’ outside of AAA towing range for me, and I couldn’t find anyone with a trailer to come get the truck (I don’t like leaving vehicles down at that park). So we ratchet strapped it back together and see how far we’d get:

Turns out, I made it all the way home (over 100 miles), though the last few miles I was definitely limping it as the plastic shift fork pads were gone so it wanted to pop out of gear.

The damage isn’t too bad, wasted the shift fork:

And the Range Hub got chewed on a bit as well:

The only other causality was a rear U joint, but I didn’t find that one until I got home and pulled everything apart (no vibes going down the road oddly enough).

I am also going to bite the bullet here and regear while I have everything apart (4.88’s). I’m hoping this will help keep the drive line from ripping everything apart as well as help move the truck around a bit better than it does right now. With my new cooling setup, the fan will actually engage on these really warm days when going down the road, and it SUCKS the power down hard core.

On the note of the cooling system, no overheating problems at all while wheeling in mid 90’s temperatures, so that problem seems to be solved.