My phone goes off at 7:30a with an incoming text. Grumble, grumble. I normally don’t get moving until 9a these days. I see if from my buddy Nathan, asking “Feeling spontaneous? Wanna go wheeling?” Since the stars have aligned and I actually have a day off when he asked, “Hell yeah!” I’m now awake. And I’ll have to hurry as the group is already on the way.
And then he sends this Pic.
Well, if we aren’t driving our “new” cars, I better get one of my old jeeps running. Let’s see what state everything is in.
Homer, the 71, needs a battery and I oddly have one ready to go thanks to an Amazon screwup a week ago. But it also was having compression issues the last few times I drove it. I’m thinking sticky valve on the right bank. Not exactly fixable right now.
The Deuce starts and runs fine (maybe fine-ish is a more accurate term), but the rear tires rub on the exhaust leaving the driveway. Not the best for bouncing through rocks.
Ike has something that feels near catastrophicly wrong going on in the front end. It just feels like the motor mount is loose or some attachment on the front axle isn’t right, but all my quick inspections show nothing obviously loose or moving. While driving, it seems like it should be VERY obvious. Who knows.
Even the big, “new” jeep has been acting funny at the front, like I should check every bolt.
The Deuce seems the easiest fix. When I brought Homer home, I removed a set of very poorly installed wheel spacers. Knowing they were the same bolt pattern, I just needed to find and install them on the rear. Found them right where I left them! Miracles do happen.
Jack up the beast and remove the rear tires. Throw some locktite on the spacer nuts and torque them up. Throw the wheels back on and everything seems to clear. Do I flex out the suspension to test it out? Naw, I’ll do that on the trail today! What could go wrong?
I also throw some air in the right rear tire, as it was at about 4psi. Maybe 2. Check the others? Nope, I’m already running late, and the gas tank is bone dry.
Luckily, I have a can with most of a gallon in it laying around and dump it in. Throw some recovery gear, tools, and cooler into the back and fire it up.
It starts, thank the automotive spirits!
I hit the road and immediately try to get used to the random self steering that the Deuce is known for. The rest of the crew is already at the staging area, unloading their rigs when I pass on my way to get gas.
When I said the gas tank was bone dry? I put 11.8 gallons into a 12 gallon tank. Guess there is a little overhead inside.
Get to the staging area and meet the crew. My buddy Nathan with his 96 Landcruiser, Ben and his son in an 82 Suzuki Samauri, and Steve and Christine in their 51 CJ-3A (I think).
Looking over the classic vehicle collection, we don’t rate our chances of success very high, unlike our fun-factor.
The trail we are doing is Toquerville Falls. While there is an easier way to get there, we decide to take the fun trail that drops into the creek bed and winds in and out and through the water up to the falls.
As a great start, the Deuce is a little slow to fire back up, acting like it’s a little flooded. But it starts and off we go! The hard start persisted throughout the day.
I cruise in 2 wheel drive until our first obstacle. A fairly decent hill climb with a slight bend right at the rocky step at the top. Ben makes it up easy. Steve bounces wrong the first time, but then finds a better line the second time and pops up. The Deuce goes up, the rears spin a hole, and then shuts off. Oops.
So now I’m stuck most of the way up the hill and it won’t restart. The key just doesn’t do anything. Weird. Nathan climbs the hill as we discuss options. He just starting to push me out of my hole, when the engine fires, unlike the previous 6 attempts. Ok. Reverse, clutch, slide back down with the drum brakes fully engaged and doing very little. I hope the brakes bed in a bit more.
Once down, I realize that I haven’t locked my front hubs in yet. Doah! Lock em in.
As we descend into the canyon, I realize most of my braking is being done with gearing. Low gear is great for this. Nathan notices that front and rear axles seem to want to move at different speeds going down, with the rear sliding out to the side. Interesting, but I have no idea what that means.
We all make it down the big descent; me, swearing the whole way down. Steering is vague and often dictated more by the rocks than the steering wheel. Limited brakes, yet not wanting to heat up the drums make slowing down exciting. But I bounce down as best I can. Kind of like skiing moguls.
At the bottom, we stop to check the rigs over. Everyone seems fine, yet the Deuce is marking its territory…with gas. I know I had filled the tank really full and was not surprised to see some dripping from the rear. But what we saw was a stream. I had parked with the right rear being lowest, but it wasn’t coming out the cap. Looking underneath, we could see it was coming from the breather tube; a 1″ hose running up the filler neck.
It appears the hose was torn, and the tear went under the hose clamp. Since the hose clamp was already tight and the hose was pretty taught, I figured it was a self-correcting issue. I’ll just park on a level surface next time.
We are now at the fun part of the trail that winds in and out of the creek. While straightforward, it involves a lot of steering input to correct the rock-induced steering. Lots of little boulders to try and pick your line from. The water isn’t deep and the bottom is mostly rock.
We all have points that we have to back up and try again, but at one point I slipped sideways into 2 holes, one for each back wheel. Trying the rocking technique helped to highlight the fact that I was only in 2wd. And yes, the hubs were looked this time.
I look at my transfer case shifter, and it’s back in 4 low, but my front tires don’t spin. Weird. I do know that on these transfer cases, it is usually 4H, 2H, N, 4L, but that you can mess with the interlock pin and access 2L. I try pulling the transfer case lever fully back until it hits the floorboard, but it keeps sliding back to where it was. I manage to get out of my holes, rocking back and forth and steering to a new position.
Once on level ground, I try again to access 4L and this time, it seems to stay back. Huh. And the next few boulderfields seem to prove that it is working, with the front tires throwing water up at times. Sweet.
As I bounce along, there is a very loud bang coming from the right front every time it drops. I keep waiting for the catastrophic snap where the axle separates or the body dismounts the frame. After a while, I accept the noise and whatever fate may await me.
We stop for lunch at a shady spot in the creek. We eat our lunch and let the little fish nibble our toes in the water. While crossing back to my jeep, I may have slid on the algea-covered rock and fell flat on my back. The good news is that getting soaked turned out to be great jeep air conditioning!
We bounce along to the falls without any serious drama, just a fun time splashing around and dodging the big rocks. My whole upper body is getting tired from the constant yanking of the steering wheel caused by the rocks. It didn’t help that the Deuce runs through power steering fluid faster than gas, so my power steering was intermittent.
It’s a nice quiet day at the falls with only 1 vehicle leaving as we arrived. We splashed around and cooled off in the pools, after posing our vehicles on top of the falls, of course.
After a nice relaxing rest stop, we loaded up and headed out. The trail out was fast an straightforward, but the road had a few areas that were all rock and all bounce. Who needs a spleen anyway?
As we got to pavement, we unlocked our hubs and went for food. Getting started again, I noticed that my clutch was starting to act weird. More specifically, the pressure plate. It was acting like the clutch pedal wasn’t fully depressed, but my foot was to the firewall. I eventually got it to go into gear, and it seemed OK after that. I was as if my clutch cable had stretched, but it does have a cable. Just a rod from pedal to throwout level. Meh, I’ll look at that later.
Overall, it was a successful day on the trail. Ben’s rig was well sorted and didn’t skip a beat. The old Willys just made it look easy (though both us old jeep drivers had tired arms from cranking the bus wheel all day). Nathan’s only issue was that his AC belt would squeal and so he had to drive with the windows down. Harsh life. The Deuce made it back to the garage. I’ll call that a win.
