My girlfriend moved in a few weeks ago, so I haven't had much time to go wheeling lately. A few days ago we cruised up Providence canyon to kill some time before going to the movies. My rear bumper was getting wrecked whenever my tires would stuff much, which was another big factor in not wheeling much. Only decent picture I got up Providence:
So yesterday I finally got around to trimming the rear bumper (again) which made a huge difference. I still rub on on the body if one tire stuffs a lot, so I'll probably just trim the body now and either relocate my flares higher or just remove them entirely.
Once the bumper was clearanced my girlfriend and I decided to try and offroad from the valley where we live to Bear lake, which is about 40 miles on the highway north-east of us. That time I got stuck in the mountains with two flat tires and spent the night, at one point there was a forest service sign that said "laketown" so I figured it was realistic to be able to get most if not all the way to the lake. We started out on a trail called Left Hand Canyon, with a vague idea of where to go.
There's a decent rock garden, though I wasn't worried since as I said I've done it a few times and the last time I went through it I was on 31s and only scraped my skids twice. After that it's mostly fire trail and essentially dirt roads. We aired down to 10psi, mainly for the comfort aspect and my figuring is with the CO2 and beadlock setup as well as having staun air downs my buddy got me for my birthday, there's no reason not to air down for added traction (not that that was needed) and a smoother ride.
It's probably 5-6 miles until the rock garden. This obviously isn't the first time rock crawling with the LT, but it's the first time doing some mild crawling with the 35s and extra wide front end setup which creates some interesting changing in driving and narrow trails. I took a few pictures here, the funny part is if I didn't have such a wide stance I wouldn't be on EITHER of these rocks and could slip in between.
For anyone who keeps up with this build, you know I'm running a 500/800 spring rate and it's not setup correctly. It works, but not perfect by any stretch. My tender spring (secondary, or top spring) is constantly compressed. So although I have a dual rate setup, the suspension isn't seeing the combined spring rates until it droops quite a bit. At ride height the dual rate slider has hit the collar, meaning effectively my ride height spring rate is just 800lbs/in. Originally I wanted the suspension to be able to fully cycle if it flexed out hard, but in retrospect I'm glad I messed up my spring rates. Because of the amount of up travel I have, I can't turn a lot at full compression. I had figured before it wouldn't be a huge issue, and I would just adapt and learn to steer only a fraction of the normal amount to the side fully compressed. Well I think that was a stupid assumption, since after crawling a bit I remembered/realized how crucial having full turning capability is let alone if you're on a tight trail trying to maneuver everywhere in a small space... So with that in mind, it's actually nice how stiff the front end is since the suspension won't compress so far to hinder my steering capability but I'm probably still pulling around 9" or more of total flex travel up front. That's not a LOT, but I'm happy since that's not even fully cycling the suspension and still getting quite a bit of travel. Not saying the spring rate is perfect by any stretch, but having it be wrong taught me a lot about what I want my tuning like in the future.
I'm happy with the MTZs so far. They have lots of traction, though I haven't pushed them hard yet. At one point there was a pretty sharp rock I couldn't maneuver around and it had to shove the rear end over and I was afraid I was gonna slice the sidewall but they held up fine. Pretty sure it's the same rock that had sliced my spare tires side wall when I got stranded...
They really bulge aired down too which I like, this is flexed out but makes me confident they'll work well in deep snow.
I liked the fact for this trip we were exploring areas I had never been before. In total we covered roughly 50+ miles offroad. Technical wheeling is fun, but ultimately stuff like this is why I decided to LT instead of SAS. I like how I can explore deep into the wilderness in comfort and cover a lot of ground fast.
We hit another junction after awhile and took an alternate path which led us into a forest. At one section there were desert hills on the north of the little valley and the south side had pines and aspens and a full forest like back home which was neat. Found some funky little ponds and random picnic tables too.
Finally we got onto what we thought was a trail going to Bear lake and got to a cool overlook.
Randomly there was another truck on the trail heading the opposite way as us, he pulled over and told us we were trespassing and asked if we were hunters... in my girlfriends blue outfit and me wearing my USU shirt. He asked if we had seen any trespassing signs which we said no, earlier there had been a sign saying trespassing if you go off trail and stay on the trail which is what we did to the best of our knowledge. After a fairly stupid conversation, we turned back. At the previous Y in the road, we had been debating to go left or right. The left had a fence with a cattle guard and gate which was wide open (no signs anywhere). We had chose to go through the gate specifically because it looked like it WAS the trail. As anyone who's gone on forest service or BLM trails knows, there's lots of gates which is what prompted us to go that way and since there was zero signs (let alone no trespassing) it seemed the likely route. What we concluded was the fence marked this idiots property, and he didn't know his gate was wide open and unmarked. Once we got back to that fork, we went the other way which we assumed would head to the lake. Earlier there had been another sign saying "laketown" which is why we were on this trail in the first place.
In the end the trail popped out about a mile from the Wyoming border on a highway that runs along the east side of the mountain range. Somehow we had gotten within a few miles of the lake, and headed in the most likely direction to get there and popped off on the other side of the mountains versus at Bear Lake which is in the mountains.
I had been on that highway a few times before since it's an alternate route for my commute to/from school, and we had a high level map which showed the highway too to confirm where we were. From there we aired up and drove about a half hour north and west until we got to Bear Lake. The CO2 setup had some issues at first, it seemed like the nozzle was clogging up and would get stuck open or not seal well with the schrader valve. It seemed to work itself out though, I'm guessing the air/condensation in the air line froze and messed with it for a bit since this was my first time using it. Once I got two tires done it was totally fine though and worked like a charm.
In total we drove over 50 miles offroad, and spent about 6 hours on trails. We didn't hit our objective of getting to the lake, but we did drive from the west to east side of the Bear River Range which I've always wanted to do. The runner did great and didn't have any issues. Hopefully next time we'll actually hit our mark.
Plus test out the bumps of course! This wasn't high speed at all, there's an insanely steep section not far from our apartment where it goes to like 60 degrees for 50 feet and worked out well. We jumped it twice, the first one we did wasn't on camera but was pretty scary. I think I let off the gas near the top and the truck rotated forward and to the passenger side pretty hard, it wasn't a brutal landing but you could tell the passenger side was working overtime trying to push the truck back over, and I think the beadlock probably helped quite a bit in keeping us together safely. The second time I made sure to hit a lot more square and be more smooth on the throttle control. Not gonna lie and say it was buttery smooth, but it definitely didn't feel like one of those harsh bottom outs where you know the bumps were fully compressed and your spine gets jarred; probably the worst feeling was how fast we bounced back up. I was hoping I would get the front revalved in the past week but obviously that didn't happen, maybe get it done this weekend since as you'll see all the tires were stuffing as far as they could. The cool part is the front didn't rub on ANYTHING, which I'm proud of since those tires took work to not rub at full stuff. Anyways, here's the video. Sorry for the quality, the camera is a lot better at pictures than videos:
