Death Valley Run Nov 20-23 & 24 (bonus day)

Glad you are safe. I know it was a crazy ordeal but God forbide you were on the highway heading home doing 75 and have a failure. I assume you are back in San Diego? I am at the 210 and 15 if you need anything let me know Brian.
 
To clarify, no one left me.

By the time the others saw my truck Rob and I had driven away (in search of a trailer) with a note left on the truck.

We were the first to leave camp at 7:45 and I broke down about 5 mins later down the canyon.

Oh man that sucks :(

Though a perfect example of the benefits of not wheeling alone! (Even though I do it sometimes :/) You never know exactly when something will happen. Having someone with you to get out is insanely, possibly life savingly helpful!

I took the Warthog through Goler Wash and Warm spring canyon on Friday, then up to Eureka Dunes and Dedecker Canyon/Steel pass on Saturday and out North Pass on Sunday. Sometimes I feel bad about how much torture I put the poor thing through. With the washed out trails it was 80+ miles of driving on rocks and boulders the entire way! Must have put a couple million cycles on the coilovers and control arm joints O.O

Awesome that you got yourself out rather than paying through the nose for a rescue! Kudos to your wheeling partner too! :)
 
This is what broke apart. The doughnut hole at the top split apart. At first I thought it was the Built Right UCA that failed but closer inspection shows it was this part. The ring split apare and the UBJ fell out.
 

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Glad you are safe. I know it was a crazy ordeal but God forbide you were on the highway heading home doing 75 and have a failure. I assume you are back in San Diego? I am at the 210 and 15 if you need anything let me know Brian.

You know .... yes good point.. But at least then insurance would have paid for it. We'll see what they say. I'm not going to lie about being on a dirt road.

Thanks for the offer! Yes I'm home. My financee even reported Rob and I missing when 5am the next morning came and we weren't back yet. I had told her we'd be home by 10 or 11pm.
 
This is what broke apart. The doughnut hole at the top split apart. At first I thought it was the Built Right UCA that failed but closer inspection shows it was this part. The ring split apare and the UBJ fell out.


Aww makes sense. I knew you had upgraded upper control arms. Just last week I was looking at the total chaos spindle support you weld in, I push my car pretty hard, will be ordering it soon now.
 
Spindle support?

I did not know about this but I will definitely be buying these. I recommend EVERYONE get them added if you do offroading. To think a $40 part MIGHT have prevented what ended up costing me a whole day and several hundred dollars (could have been thousands with rescue services pricing) is very frustrating.

Total Chaos 59697 WELD-ON SPINDLE GUSSETS for 3rd Gen 4Runner
Total Chaos 59697 WELD-ON SPINDLE GUSSETS

:zoom:
 

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Spindle support?

I did not know about this but I will definitely be buying these. I recommend EVERYONE get them added if you do offroading. To think a $40 part MIGHT have prevented what ended up costing me a whole day and several hundred dollars (could have been thousands with rescue services pricing) is very frustrating.

Total Chaos 59697 WELD-ON SPINDLE GUSSETS for 3rd Gen 4Runner
Total Chaos 59697 WELD-ON SPINDLE GUSSETS

:zoom:

That's it!!!


I just ordered it earlier just need to have them welded in once they arrive.

Also solo motorsports in West Covina has whole spindles already upgraded.
 
I don't think it would have been an easy trail fix. The only way I could think of it working would be to weld the bolt from the uniball directly to the spindle. One of the Tundra guys did have a welder with him. But, if it did hold, it would have only gotten you to the pavement. So you would of still needed the trailer, and if you stayed and tried to fix it, you would of lost your opportunity to get a trailer that day.Those spindle gussets keep the spindle from bending, but I don't see any reinforcements done to the bolt hole where yours broke. I'm wondering if that hard impact from the day before possible cracked the spindle, and cottonwood just finished it off. It also looked like you'll need a new abs wire. I'm glad you made it out. Sometimes when things go terrible wrong it just adds to the adventure, and it will be a great story to tell for the rest of your life.
 
Well I was due to replace the wheel bearings anyways. Might as well do it now.

Can I use a used part for the hub that holds in the wheel bearing and the UBJ spindle? I don't see why I should pay $350 for a new part.
 
Aww makes sense. I knew you had upgraded upper control arms. Just last week I was looking at the total chaos spindle support you weld in, I push my car pretty hard, will be ordering it soon now.

Brian - first off, I'm glad you came out of that situation with minimal bodily and auto damage! You have some angels watching you :flypig: How did you know that something was wrong?

Regarding the Spindle support, I head about this and was considering them. However, how would would these gussets help in your situation Brian, it sounds like the the control arm bolt came lose from the spindle housing, correct? Or did your spindle snap?

Spindle support?

I did not know about this but I will definitely be buying these. I recommend EVERYONE get them added if you do offroading. To think a $40 part MIGHT have prevented what ended up costing me a whole day and several hundred dollars (could have been thousands with rescue services pricing) is very frustrating.

Total Chaos 59697 WELD-ON SPINDLE GUSSETS for 3rd Gen 4Runner
Total Chaos 59697 WELD-ON SPINDLE GUSSETS

:zoom:
[MENTION=71309]Lego3k1[/MENTION] Do you know how much they sell them for? / install them?
 
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Brian - first off, I'm glad you came out of that situation with minimal bodily and auto damage! You have some angels watching you :flypig: How did you know that something was wrong?

Regarding the Spindle support, I head about this and was considering them. However, how would would these gussets help in your situation Brian, it sounds like the the control arm bolt came lose from the spindle housing, correct? Or did your spindle snap?


[MENTION=71309]Lego3k1[/MENTION] Do you know how much they sell them for? / install them?


Not sure on the installed price but they are 1,700 a pair. Fully
Customized and definitely would of prevented this failure.

Here's a link to the page

Toyota Fully Fabricated Spindles | Solo Motorsports
 
The TOYOTA spindle is $50 at a junk yard and the beefing it up adapter from TC is only $36.

Much more affordable. It sounds like I'm finally going to be getting my front wheel bearings changed.

Mechanic says I'm looking at around $750 + tax for replacing wheel bearings + seals and the beefed up adapters and welding them on both sides. A lot of it is the labor from disassembling each side, replacing the seals, adding the adapters ect, putting it all together.
 
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Here are the pics ...

See the jack. What a life saver. I cannot begin to express how glad I am that I finally started carrying this floor jack with me on trips instead of the high lift jack. This is so much easier and safer to use.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003UM7B98

:bat:
 

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Thanks.

The jack was wrapped in the towel and strapped down in the back of the 4Runner. A loose jack will kill you in an accident.
 
Throws it in the back with his other tools and jack stands.
[MENTION=65101]BrianSD_42[/MENTION]

Hey B,
Seriously glad your home, and able to tell one hell of a story cause it could have been a lot worse in every other situation imaginable.
Also thank you for clarifying the scenario and situation before I started getting lynched and chastized around here by others jumping to conclusions. Without communitcations it changes everything and death valley area is no joke when it comes to that.

Much props to you and Rob.

And seriously I will knock all that out for you, bearings,seals, spindle etc to save that cash for better things like a RTT to replace your tent...lol. As I just replaced and installed all the same parts before the trip and prior to that also my 3rd gen.
Oh and now have to do both of my rear wheel bearings now that they are completely blown all the grease and leaking at the axle seal after this trip.

Even the welding if i could fit my welder to load it up...but that's not possible.
 
Oh man that sucks :(

Though a perfect example of the benefits of not wheeling alone! (Even though I do it sometimes :/) You never know exactly when something will happen. Having someone with you to get out is insanely, possibly life savingly helpful!

I took the Warthog through Goler Wash and Warm spring canyon on Friday, then up to Eureka Dunes and Dedecker Canyon/Steel pass on Saturday and out North Pass on Sunday. Sometimes I feel bad about how much torture I put the poor thing through. With the washed out trails it was 80+ miles of driving on rocks and boulders the entire way! Must have put a couple million cycles on the coilovers and control arm joints O.O

Awesome that you got yourself out rather than paying through the nose for a rescue! Kudos to your wheeling partner too! :)


At what time were you making your way through Goler Wash on Friday? We did the same things on Friday..you must have been just ahead of us.

You right in that mother nature had her way with Death Valley exposing all the rocks and washing them down trails. It was like driving on Cannon ball size rock gardens everywhere we went, relentless.
 
At what time were you making your way through Goler Wash on Friday? We did the same things on Friday..you must have been just ahead of us.

You right in that mother nature had her way with Death Valley exposing all the rocks and washing them down trails. It was like driving on Cannon ball size rock gardens everywhere we went, relentless.

I don't remember exactly but we left Ridgecrest at 9:30, stopped at Ballerat for a bit, headed south and entered Coyote Canyon at maybe 11am or so?

We stopped at Barker ranch for lunch, then over Mengle pass, checked out the cabins, then down warm springs valley. Left Warm Springs talc mine at about 4pm.

We saw only one other pair of people on the trail, they passed us at Mengle pass. A land cruiser and a truck if I remember right.

Too bad we missed each other!
 
I don't remember exactly but we left Ridgecrest at 9:30, stopped at Ballerat for a bit, headed south and entered Coyote Canyon at maybe 11am or so?

We stopped at Barker ranch for lunch, then over Mengle pass, checked out the cabins, then down warm springs valley. Left Warm Springs talc mine at about 4pm.

We saw only one other pair of people on the trail, they passed us at Mengle pass. A land cruiser and a truck if I remember right.

Too bad we missed each other!


No way..Same here lunch at Barker it must have been about 1230-100 then to mengal and then cabins then turned back going back thru mengal then past the ranch and camped in Goler Wash.

That would have been a trip to bump into you guys.

the only people we seen enter Goler Wash was the next morning as we headed out just as we started dropping down the second set of rocks there was a truck and a couple jeeps removing their sway bars to get up the rocks, but not before seeing me go too much passenger and not soon enough back driver smacking me down with a thud on my gas tank skid, they got to see what not to do, lol.

So did you guys have a good time? what did you think of Goler and Mengal? how did warm springs look? were you able to get out to the roads that way or did you have to back track out another way?
 

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