15th ORT in The Lone Ranger – Flat Nasty 3-9-13
After a quick battery swap Friday night, I was ready to hit the road Saturday (first time I’ve ever had a battery short internally). For the first part of the day, we hung around in the south portion of the park, jumping up and off several trails out there. In the afternoon, we wandered around the mid section (trail 20) and a few other places.
Once we aired down, we jumped on the Bunny trail and wandered around from there:
After Lunch, Bray D arrived at the park. His day hadn’t started out well, and unfortunately, it didn’t end well either. On the way down, he managed to lose a wiper blade during the rain storm, which delayed them quite a bit as they went looking for a replacement. It was nice to finally see the truck up close since it was his truck that inspired my build:
We left the entrance and ran part of Hill and Gully to the waterfall. Unfortunately, this is where Bray managed to frag a shaft and bend up his bed side pretty good (less than 45 minutes on the trails at this point). Made for some pretty shots though:
We all heard the nasty POP when the shaft went, but he was still able to crawl out of it (You hear the pieces of the U joint fall out in this vid):
Another View:
So brought an abrupt end to his fun for the day. We got him back to the cabin and went on our merry way as he fixed his broken joint. The rest of the day was a casual cruise on trail 20 (tight!) on to the creek trail down by the camp ground:
Hmmm I think you’re stuck there bud:
Yup, he was! (only strap used today):
Playing in the creek by the campground, YouTube’s ‘smoothing’ feature works awesome:
After playing in the creek, my T-case was thumping under the truck again, and it was time to call it a day anyway so we loaded up and headed back. Everyone made it home without an issue, but there was a wee bit of someone watching over me during my trip home, which leads me to my carnage report.
-One dead Jump Joint (1350/1310) in the rear Drive Shaft, I just can’t seem to keep those guys alive.
-I noticed on the way home that my stick shift was moving around quite a bit more than it should be, turns out I royally roached my transmission mount (hence the thing thumping against the cab). The skid plate is in the way right now so I can’t quite tell what died, but either I have a failed weld on the mount, or it tore the sheet metal on the mount.
-All of my front leaf spring bushings (rubber) are shot at this point, guess I need to look into poly to see if they’ll live longer.
That’s a massive crack on my drivers side knuckle (the picture makes it look like a rusty crack, I assure you its fresh). Apparently I drove 2.5 hours home on curvy back roads and interstate with the thing cracked like that.
Yikes!
So it looks like it’s possible to crack the Ford knuckles without hydro assist on them. I am still surprised at that since I don’t believe that I hit that side hard enough to damage it like I have. I’ve got a set of Reid Knuckles on the way so I hope to be back in business soon.
To end on a positive note, the doubler setup has held together now for the past 4 trips, and lots of DD use, so I think its finally happy!
Here are a few gopro vids from my friend: