snivilous
Senior Member
I had a pretty awesome experience this weekend and figured I'd show everyone, I'll try to summarize as short as I can: Two other guys and I are starting an offroading club at the university, and we had our first unofficial "meet" this weekend, just from putting pieces of paper on people's windshields. It was just the three of us (01 4Runner, 95 Grand Cherokee, 97 Cherokee) and then a 03 Wrangler and a 87 4Runner showed up. There aren't any hard trails around here really, so we just went to this rock quarry to screw around a bit.
We went to this overlook up a decently inclined trail, and then on the way down the 1st gen popped a tire. I've never actually seen a tire get popped or have to do a roadside/trail change so that was cool. We ended up using my spare tire since we couldn't get the 1st gen's spare to lower.
After that the Grand and 1st gen headed out and me, the Wrangler, and my buddy with his Cherokee went to do a loop. I was bringing up the rear, and about a mile in the Cherokee stops and they call back that they thought they heard something break. It was a slightly rocky section on a little bit of a grade. Turns out the body/frame mount for the upper link of his 3-link had sheared off.
Crappy pic of it:
We couldn't figure out how to fix it so left the Jeep there. For those who don't know a 3-link uses three control arms to define a plane that the axle is on. With the upper link detached, the axle was free to roll around more or less. Luckily they stopped quick enough that the track bar was able to keep the axle from rotating and binding the driveshaft U-joint. My buddies dad was able to bring a MiG welder (no gas) up from Salt Lake City (2 hours away), a generator, and an angle grinder. Once we got those loaded into the Grand and my Runner we went back to fix the Jeep.
When he had stopped, the differential rotated up so we had to rotate it back down. We did this primarily by using my winch to pull the Jeep backwards. We then used a combination of my bottle jack and a come-along attached to one of my D-rings to further pull the differential to generally the right spot.
We then ground down the surfaces so we could reattach the mount.
And then weld (with a 110 MiG) the mount back on
And then we packed everything up and headed out around 1am
The mount isn't in the right spot, it's close enough he can drive it but not much over about 40mph without getting a really bad death wobble. The mount is about an inch rear of where it should be as far as we can tell and needs to be fixed. All in all, the effort lasted from 9pm-2am from leaving to get the Jeep and coming back with it. We would of left it there overnight, but other 4x4s have broken down and been stripped in that canyon in the past so we didn't want to leave it, and there was no way we could get a flat bed up there or jury rig a replacement for the upper link. All in all it was a pretty exciting and entertaining weekend with by far the hardest trail repair I've ever done.
We went to this overlook up a decently inclined trail, and then on the way down the 1st gen popped a tire. I've never actually seen a tire get popped or have to do a roadside/trail change so that was cool. We ended up using my spare tire since we couldn't get the 1st gen's spare to lower.
After that the Grand and 1st gen headed out and me, the Wrangler, and my buddy with his Cherokee went to do a loop. I was bringing up the rear, and about a mile in the Cherokee stops and they call back that they thought they heard something break. It was a slightly rocky section on a little bit of a grade. Turns out the body/frame mount for the upper link of his 3-link had sheared off.
Crappy pic of it:
We couldn't figure out how to fix it so left the Jeep there. For those who don't know a 3-link uses three control arms to define a plane that the axle is on. With the upper link detached, the axle was free to roll around more or less. Luckily they stopped quick enough that the track bar was able to keep the axle from rotating and binding the driveshaft U-joint. My buddies dad was able to bring a MiG welder (no gas) up from Salt Lake City (2 hours away), a generator, and an angle grinder. Once we got those loaded into the Grand and my Runner we went back to fix the Jeep.
When he had stopped, the differential rotated up so we had to rotate it back down. We did this primarily by using my winch to pull the Jeep backwards. We then used a combination of my bottle jack and a come-along attached to one of my D-rings to further pull the differential to generally the right spot.
We then ground down the surfaces so we could reattach the mount.
And then weld (with a 110 MiG) the mount back on
And then we packed everything up and headed out around 1am
The mount isn't in the right spot, it's close enough he can drive it but not much over about 40mph without getting a really bad death wobble. The mount is about an inch rear of where it should be as far as we can tell and needs to be fixed. All in all, the effort lasted from 9pm-2am from leaving to get the Jeep and coming back with it. We would of left it there overnight, but other 4x4s have broken down and been stripped in that canyon in the past so we didn't want to leave it, and there was no way we could get a flat bed up there or jury rig a replacement for the upper link. All in all it was a pretty exciting and entertaining weekend with by far the hardest trail repair I've ever done.
.
? These 120v welders generally need ~15-20 amp feeds, maybe a small portable gas generator along with the welder might be more appropriate for the task...
