Probably should be studying for my Thermodynamics exam but whatever, this post is already overdo.
Few weeks back I got down to Moab with some friends from Bozeman and also met up with the other usual suspects for some wheeling.
First day down there we met of with some Jeep guys and hit up poison spider. Man do I have some major want for one of those new JLs, those things straight do work.
Being that this was the first real trail I had done since doing the new gears, tires, and everything else I was a bit timid and was taking the easy line for the first bit of the trail but quickly started getting back into the swing of it and started trying to follow all the lines the jeeps on 38s and 40s were doing.
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Everything had been going great so far and then we started having issues. The last climb up onto the top of the mesa into tie rod flats has a pretty big optional line that I have done in the past so I figured lets give it a go. I got up on my line and the truck was being really weird not being able to grab traction even with both lockers on and it was really trying to buck. On my last attempt it really bucked and jolted the whole truck around quite a bit. I ended up taking an easier line up to the top and jumped out to watch the other truck come up. Then as Adam, blue 5th gen, was coming up my line his front end jumped a little with a dull pop. The classic 5th gen on 35s tie rod buckle. Well shit he needs to get up to flat ground to fix that but he basically had no steering since his tires were toed all the way in. I backed down and hooked up a strap to him to help guide his front end up, and the whole way up I was hearing a solid thunk every 15 feet or so. Great, day 1 and Ive already blown the rear diff?
Got the tie rod swapped in about 15 minutes, did a quick alignment and we were off... sorta. Made it about 30 more feet and that clunk was getting much more noticeable. I jumped out to take a look and see if I could spot anything and I noticed a shiny but of metal on my upper link tower for the 3 link. Looking closer I saw the jam nuts had backed off on the upper link, the pinion angle was angling up towards the floor, and looking a bit closer the cross member where the 3rd link mounts were had buckled inwards and ripped the mount halfway off, I guess that explains the weird bucking on the last climb and clunk. Every time the suspension compressed the link tower was just smashing into the frame
Time for another trail fix, I didnt have a way to repair the link mount but I did have the stock mounts left on the drivers side, so we pulled a link off Adams truck, thankfully he has adjustable uppers, and put it into my driver side mounts. Problem solved. At this point we had been working on the trucks for quite awhile and the Jeeps had gone off to finis the poison spider loop.
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We opted to head to town and made a quick stop at the Oreilys for Adam to get some more inner tie rods and for me to do a quick alignment on his truck. We headed back out to camp and after being there for 5 minutes opted to make the quick 2 minute drive over to mess around in the dunes.
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After a solid 30 minutes of hammer the trucks and finding a nice dune to jump them off Matthias in the 80 went just a little too far right on the dune and sent the 80 HARD. It was a good 3 to 4 feet in the air. My initial reaction when the front ed popped up was "oh shit!" And what goes up must come down... The fat whale came down really hard on the drivers front tire and after looping back around it was obvious there was a big problem. The steering wheel was now off by 90 degrees, the camber was way out of whack, and something was pouring fluid. We decided this was a good point to head back to camp and limp the truck over there where the tools were to figure out what was up. But not before getting a nice afternoon stretch
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