okay, went and worked on a trail at my friends house tonight, that we have righfuly named "carnage creek". weve got about 200 yards of it done so far, its an old dried up NASTY creek bed. i and my brother following me in his toyota got as far as we have cleared and found a decent place to turn around at. we got turned around with me leading us back out, about 1/4 of the way out all the sudden my steering goes funky and snap, crackle, pop, now i have no steering, no front wheel drive, and the front of my jeep just shifted about 4 inches to the right. i said some choice words and leaned down from inside the jeep and looked underneath and saw my driveshaft hanging, i think no biggie, snaped another joint, i have a spare and some straps on me. (by the way its about 9:45 PM at this point, we started about 7, it gets dark at 8:45) so i shut it off and hop out, i walk to the front to get a better look, and see my track bar and axle mount hanging almost to the ground. look some more and notice my passenger side LCA mount is about as f-ed as it can get without breaking off the axle. and somehow my u joint didnt break, but on the front pinion yoke, the little ear that keeps the caps from being able to slide out, somehow broke, letting one cap jump out, then the other side, and let the joint get out, and all of this happened without the straps that hold the cups getting messed up?????? by the way, did i mention that my brothers toy is behind mine, with no other way out, its 10 pm, and he has to be at work in 6 hours to work a 14 hour shift? i go into trail fix mode, winch the front of my jeep sideways to a tree to center the axle again, noticing in that process that my passenger side shock is trashed from being slammed into the unibody rail. so i get my axle centered under the front, and run a section of smaller chain from the steering stabilizer mount on the axle, to the opposite side unibody rail, i think good, im halfway to haveing a makeshift way of keeping the axle centered. i go to look for my other peice of chain to go from pass unibody rail to oppossing axle, and remeber i left it home when i cant find it. by the way, we didnt have any flashlights either. only 4 cell phones to use for light. next, i realize when i winched the front of my jeep back over, i nearly pulled the driverside tire off the bead, thats wonderful. my brother remebers he has a 12 volt compressor in his tool box that has a built in light. we put some more air in the tire since it only had about 6 psi in it. i make use of the newfound light source and set pondering under my jeep trying to figure out what i could substite for chain to hold the axle from moving the other way, dont quite think duct tape and/or zip ties are gonna handle this one. then my brother starts to complain about needing home and how his wife is gonna be pissed at him, and how he has to work in the morning. so we leave the jeep and the toy, get a ride in my other friends jeep(owner of the property) and get back to my house to my truck and take my brother home. tommarow after work i gotta go figure out a way to get the heep out of there. am i on the right track with using two peices of chains to form an X to hold it close to center. leaving enuf slack so the chain wont break during flexing, but not so much the axle just flops around????i think i can limp out with the lca mount screwed up, the other side looked ok. and im gonna throw 2 new caps on the u joint and hope they stay in for another 150 or so yards. this is not an easy trail by any means. my jeep was having a time making it thru some of it before it broke. and my brothers 84 toy pickup on 33s, locked in the rear, and flexy suspension was having a very hard time with some of it. there isnt more than a 20 yard, at very most, break between pretty good obstacles. i dont have any pics of it yet as this was only the 2nd time out on it and i havent taken a camera with me yet but i will get some taken tommarow and post them. how would u fix this just to get it off the trail.
kolby
kolby
