eventfull rubicon trip (looong)

[Gary E]

Well we started the trail around 6:00 and ended up getting home around 5:00 am. The good news is Tom, Seans friend, is doing well after receiving many stiches. Tom rolled his well built Samari around 1 am And suffered from a nasty gash above his eye and nearlly had his ear scrapped off his head. It was dangling by part of the earlobe. Luckily it was not bleading but you could see white back there that looked like the bone. Sean immediatly rushed him to hospital in placerville and I tagged along. Tom was concious the whole time and was very coherant, definatly in lots of pain, but was a really tough guy about it all. Here is a pic of the Sami

[img:ba166b987d]http://home.attbi.com/~6mach9/rolled_Sami.jpg[/img:ba166b987d]

About 15 minutes into the trail I took a bad line on an optional obstacle I had done before and noticed my rear wheels were not turning and thought to myself thats not right and peaked under the car to this view.

[img:ba166b987d]http://home.attbi.com/~6mach9/ripped_dl.jpg[/img:ba166b987d]

Oops I had torn the rear driveline in two, thats not good, I still have the slip yoke so without the driveline I would spill t-case fluid all over the ground while going up hills. So we started thinking about how to fix it. We pulled it out and decided to cut off the torn ends and hopefully someone coming up the trail would have some metal to patch it. I pulled out my cordless sawzall and using this workbench and hi tech vise proceded to cut the ends.

[img:ba166b987d]http://home.attbi.com/~6mach9/sazallends.jpg[/img:ba166b987d]

Thats Sean and I standing on it with the sawzall cutting the mangled end off.

Now onto the next step finding some metal so when someone came along with a welder we could buzz it together. we brainstormed with out much luck thinking of high lift handles, without to much luck till a really nice guy came along in a jeep I think sean looked at his tail pipe and though hey that might work the guy in the jeep didn't take a second thought, and just said "cut it off" I decided if someone was going to donate their exhaust it ought to be me. So I whipped out that wonderfull cordless sawzall again and cut out from the cat back to the rear axle (I didnt want to just cut a small section and have the muffler dangling).

I know what you are thinking, you are thinking no way exhaust tubing will be strong enough to tube a driveline, well not according to jeep, my 2.25 inch exhaust pipe is the exact same size as the tubing on the driveline same thickness and everything, the jeep driveline did have cardboard inside it though?? anyway we slit the 6 inch pipe of exhaust tubing and rolled it into itself with a hammer so it would slip in the ends of the driveline. We then measured it to insure the correct length, I put it on my straitedge(hood) to try to get it as strait as possible, I expected this to vibrate really bad on the freeway. Here is a pic of the patched Driveline awaiting a welder.

[img:ba166b987d]http://home.attbi.com/~6mach9/ready_to_weld.jpg[/img:ba166b987d]

as we were waiting for a welder Sean and I came up with our T-case Condom to prevent fluid from coming out the back, It probably would of worked but luckily Gabe Showed up.

[img:ba166b987d]http://home.attbi.com/~6mach9/t-case_condom.jpg[/img:ba166b987d]

Yes it consisted of a ziptie and a rubber glove.

But then Gabe showed up.

[img:ba166b987d]http://home.attbi.com/~6mach9/Gabe.jpg[/img:ba166b987d]

Gabe was a member as the same club as Tom and he had a welder What a super nice guy he burned up a bunch of stick and spent a lot of time helping a complete stranger. In the previous picture he is wearing 4 pairs of sunglasses, that about a shade 9 right?

Here is a pic of the completed driveshaft after we got home. Notice the butchered exhaust system.

[img:ba166b987d]http://home.attbi.com/~6mach9/weldeddl.jpg[/img:ba166b987d]

I think Tom Woods has some competition, Gabes driveline service did an awesome job, I had some vibration at 60mph or so but not bad, he weighted his welds to virtualy vibration free at 70mph :) without any balancing equiptment.

The repair looked good enough we decided to continue down the trail but shortly after Tom rolled and it was more important to insure his safety.

The Moral of the Story is that there are a bunch of awesome 4wheelers out there, I really want to thank Sean, Tom, Gabe and all the others that helped. for helping me get my junk back together Everybody we met were so helpfull it was amazing We were probably dead in the water for 4-5 hours but nobody complained once what a great bunch.

[Jes]

...what a trip! :shock:
That's really good that Tom is going to be alright. Did he roll it multiple times or what? I'm glad you guys all made it out safely.
And, yes, there are a lot of awesome 4wheelin' folks out there.
Many of them are in our club.


Jes

P.S. It looks like from the pictures that "Pig Pen" has kept up the reputation of his name. :wink:

[CRASH]

PigPen called me on Saturday to give me the low down. All I can say is DAMN! :shock: :shock: :shock:

I'm glad Tom is OK, hopefully they stitched him up OK and he'll be ready to run again in no time. I'm stiull trying to figure out how the right side of his melon got caught between the rool cage and granite :?: .

I assume an SYE kit is next for you? I think Jes is selling his old one.....

CRASH

[SeanP]

Well, it sure has been a long weekend. Tom had over 300 stitches and had to have a plastic surgeon completely recontruct his ear canal and reattach everything where it was supposed to be. I was amazed by the relatively small amount of blood loss, considering most head injuries have a lot of blood involved. We figured out his speaker that is mounted on the center of the b-pillar roll bar was the culprit for the lacerations. I told tom he has until this coming weekend to remove it before I BFH that evil SOB.

I didn't see the actual roll, but he went ass over nose coming off a ledge that we have all done dozens of times. After the intial roll, the Sami rolled again on to its side. Let me just say that the worst thing you can hear over your CB is that a friend of yours just rolled and he was hurt badly. We had someone with prior EMT training around and my first glipse as tom's head was a scary one. I knew that we had to haul ass down to Placerville. Gary followed me all the way out of the Gatekeeper ( I heard that you hammered your bumper pretty good coming out Gary) and he and Shannon followed us all the way to Marshall hospital. He had Xrays and IV and painkiller, but Marshall was ill-equipped to handle the tissue reconstruction so he had to be transferred to Kaiser in Sac. Once I knew he was going to be OK, I drove home to Sac (up for 24 hours at this point) and slept for 3 or 4 hours.

I then recruited a friend to go and retrieve tom's Sami and tow rig from the Loon spillway. The problem was the we didn't know where the keys were. Actually we knew his keys were in his backpack, we just didn;t know where his backpack was. We assumed the Far-N-Gone guys had it and they were at Spider. So we hiked in to spider and when we got there, we were told that, no, the Far-N-Gone group was a Buck Island. We finally borrowed a strong CB and called for someone to bring us a back pack and were delivered the backpack at Little Sluice just after sunset on Sat. We borrowed a maglite (no moon) and hiked out. We got the sami loaded onto the trailer and I drove tom's tow rig and my friend drove my Tundra home. We got home at 2:30 AM.

So, I am really glad to have good friends in the wheeling community. Gary, you saved our bacon (for the second time) and we are so appreciative of you and Shannons help. Yes, we didn;t get very far into the Rubicon but we took a couple of bad situations and made the best of them.

One of the things that comes to mind in the back country is how to get EMT help and evacuation when something life-threatening happens. I will be investing into some HAM equipment and liceninsing and learning how to get in touch with proper authorities when things go wrong (and they do).

SeanP

[FarmerMatt]

Boy the last week or 2 have not been good for the Sierra group. Glad everybody seems to be somewhat OK. My heart goes out to you guys & hope the next trip goes better. Maybe the Sami was a good enough sacrifice to the jeep gods to keep them off our backs for a while?

Matt

Take it easy out there everybody.

[Maximus]

DANG!!!! Taht was one hairy trip. Good to hear all is OK and in good spirits. It also looks like you guys are far creative than I am at fixing a busted rig. Maybe for our club we should have a refresher course on some advanced first aid, we can always use reminding for these rare but important occasions. Hope to see you all wheeling again soon.
:lol:

[Gary E]

It sounds like Tom just got away with a sore neck then? Some of those neck/back injuries never really heal. 300 stitches, man he has got alot of bragging rights on that one :) I should of realized to ask for the Keys, Since I knew they were right behind us, They were actually parking the Sami when we talked at the spillway.

We were wonding about the injuries on the right side also, most rigs I see don't have the rollbar padding, guess it does not look cool.

I was also confused with the roll, I did not see it as we were cresting over a hill. The sami is acutally parallel to the ledge. He rolled from where the picture was taken from. We did a reinactment with a toy batmobile last night to figure it out, as far as we can tell he came up on the front did a 90 degree rotation counter clockwise landed on the top of the roll cage and then did a 1/4 turn barrel roll to land it on the side like in the picture.

Coming back out of the gatekeeper I just was not seeing the line the big boulder right in the middle was throwing me off but I just applied even power with my foot on the brake like I learned at the Farmer Matt Fan club meeting and we went over it okay it did take half my bumper endcap with it, oh well.

As far as an sye, I dont know, I think I will just stick with the stock setup and just keep a spare DS ziptied to the undercarriage somewhere. I probably woule of hosed an sye ds also except they are probably built stronger, and an SYE driveshaft is a lot more expensive.

[WesternXJ]

Glad to hear Tom will be OK, scary stuff!!
Maybe we need to think about having some of the club members get some basic EMT training and buy a REALLY GOOD first aid kit. The kit could be passed around to each trail leader as needed.

Great trail fix on the drive shaft Gary, I never would have thought tail pipes and drive shafts had the same wall thicknesses.

[Gary E]

maybe its a little to organized but it would be cool to have little workshops occasionally at the meeting, and can think of two good topics, a basic emergency EMT course and a how to weld with three bateries, jumper cables and some stick.

[SeanP]

Gary, I think that you have the recreation of the roll correct. Both sides of his hood are crushed which still baffles me. It was the speaker just behind his head that cut him.

I definately like the idea of having an EMT do some first aid training at one of our meetings. I also REALLY like the idea of learning to weld with three batteries. I think Crash knows how to do this, and I would really like to have this as an option. It would be cool to have a seminar at my house and practice with some scrap metal and learn what rod to use and such.

Also Gary, you can probably keep that driveline as a spare now.

This was some bad shiat. I am really glad that tom is OK and we made it out of the trail.

SeanP

[CRASH]

I can demonstrate at our next meeting. It costs all of about $10 bucks in supplies to make a basic setup, and about $40 if you wanted the full tits model.

Of course, some welding knowledge is required, which rules out SeanP. :mrgreen:

CRASH

[SeanP]

[quote:be9b6dd522="CRASH"]I can demonstrate at our next meeting. It costs all of about $10 bucks in supplies to make a basic setup, and about $40 if you wanted the full tits model.

Of course, some welding knowledge is required, which rules out SeanP. :mrgreen:

CRASH[/quote:be9b6dd522]

Damn you, Fecko :flipoff:

[WesternXJ]

This is just a thought.......if, say, 8 or 9 of us donated $50 each, we could buy a portable MIG welder. They operate off of 2 or 3 batterys and have they're own carrying case. Just like the first aid kit, this could be passed around to the trail leaders.

[CRASH]

Still not going to help SeanP. :twisted:

CRASH

[Jes]

Hey guys, check this out.

http://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=62168&perpage=25&pagenu mber=1

This was on POR a while ago, some good info in there.


Jes

[Frog975]

You guy's are safe with me on the trip, I happen to be CPR certified. Just thought you'd like to know.... :twisted:

[CRASH]

I don't want your mouth anywhere near my mouth. That goes for the rest of you fawkers, too. :mrgreen:

If you must get me breathing again, hook me up to my QuickAir2.

Andy

[MJ Dan]

SeanP,
Wed. Just before I was leaving for the Con.I saw you were going in.
Was going to ask you how your trip went.......Never mind, I read your post.. Scary stuff.
Jeff (Sami) and I went in AM.thrs.to Spyder so he could be at "Zuks on the Rock"with his Sami buds.Then Sat.night we closed the bar at "Jeep Jamboree USA" at the springs, so I could be with MY kind (Jeeps).lol
Packing up Sun.,my weber in a camo.
bag was gone.Bear hair prints on the side of my MJ.Found it down the
trail all tore up!!
CAUTION...Bears like Loyd's BBQ Ribs.....

[SeanP]

yeah, Dan, there were tons of Samis up there. Lots of em sitting on F&R 44s with 35,36 boggers and swampers. While we were waiting at the little sluice for the aforementioned backpack we saw a guy fully getting it in the box. 5000, 6000 RPM I could not believe he didn't break. It was VERY impressive.

Hope to see you on the trails soon. I heard that you have done a bunch of work to the MJ.

SeanP

Wow that is one incredible story! I glad all went well for Tom and Gary.

[MJ Dan]

Yah Sean,
I've got the Richard G. un-patented trick steering sys.
RE drop brackets (modifyed for a better departure angle)
RE 4.5 ZJ + 2" spacers
I'm spoa in the rear now.
Took off the coating and straightened ft. bumper,also welded in 19 feet of 1/4 x 1" flat stock inside to triangulate and beef it up.
soooo far...
--
--
It never ends.....

[BrettM]

MJ Dan:

Do you have a website with writeups on that stuff? I just recently got an MJ and am looking for as many ideas as I can get. I am about to do the spring over with RE coils, adj. UCAs, and HD trackbar up front. What is the steering system you speak of, I think I may need to deal with steering as well. Do you usually go to the meetings? I need to go to one of those one of these days. Maybe I could check out your MJ then.

Brett

[Karlm]

Hey Y'all

I'm not really a member yet (Waiting for financial aid to come through later this week. 35 bucks is a lot for a college student fixin' to be a teacher.) but I am an EMT. My rig isn't really rubicon ready yet, but I'd be willing to ride shotgun if you needed someone on a later trip. I live up in Chico, so it's not that far. Its good to hear that everyone is OK. 300 stitches is a mess. I also have a buddy who is setting up an EMT re-cert test through a pal of his in the near future. If anyone is interested, I might be able to see about a deal on First Responder training or something like that. Firefighters are always down to make an extra buck. Shoot me an email if anyone is interested, I'd be glad to do what I can. (karlm@mail.csuchico.edu)

Karl

[WesternXJ]

Welcome aboard Karl. Hope to see ya on one of the up coming trips or maybe you could make a meet and greet here in Sacto?

Madmax, click on the "www" at the bottom of MJDan's post. :wink:

[Karlm]

Thanks,

I'll keep an eye out and try to make one of the functions real soon.

Karl