Before leaving on the highway I opened the hood to check on things like normal and was treated to the surprise of the battery hanging sideways down near my belt. So cool!! Glad I caught that crap before the positive battery terminal grounded our on the edge of the valve cover like a friend I've seen. So I rigged everything back to normal just need a longer body ground line. So glad I had terminal cover on the positive side.
Also was treated to a nasty little surprise while articulating the rear end. A loud metal on metal sound, that was hollow......hmmmm what could it be??
Well my first guess was the correct guess. (Always makes you feel good knowing you know your shit
Weeks before this trip I had gotten stuck in Barstow. Trying to get to a remote location to film the holiday 200. Got stuck in a wash had to back up, then go up a sketchy (4x4 for sure) escape route. Went for it and got stuck half way, and tried to reverse and got that noise I just was talking about. We got out that night and I never heard it again, I assumed it was just a rock getting flung into the wheel well but I had that feeling it wasn't .....
Well I decided to get under and take a look after just pulling out if camp, passing the neighbors camped next to us I goosed it a bit and got the worst sounding metal on metal sound yet.
Got underneath, my suspicions were confirmed. I told my friend I thought I was something hitting the gas tank skid plate, it was.
It was one of the welded on counterbalance weights on the drive shaft. I guess while I was in Barstow I hit a rock that was strong enough to almost rip off that weight welded on there. It is a square snapped weight that has two tac welds holing it on. Instead of laying g flush on the drive shafts surface like normal, I had a angry little curled up sharp edge that just ripped a tear in my skid plate metal.
Since it was a busy holiday weekend I set out for tools to fix the thing. Ended up running into a retired rail road worker who had a work truck so well put together it would make a mobile big rig mechanic jealous.
In 5 minutes I had the counterweight seated flush back on the drive shaft so perfect you would not be able to tell anything ever happened. Just glad it didn't rip through my gas tank side wall. Another quarter of a inch and I would have been fixing a gas tank leak in the desert while on vacation.
Other than that I'm pretty sure I need a alignment and my spindle gussets & coil bucket gussets welded on asap.
Besides that, it was a flawless trip. Didn't loose and