Vanilla Gorrilla blog

It has been interesting driving while breaking in the gears. My wife is not so keen on the barking tires. Oh well. Ill be swapping in a grizzly when these get swapped into stephs rig.

Anyways. Got the exhaust fixed its damn sexy actually. Ill post up some pics in a little bit. Got a slimmer flowmaster 50 series i think. Tucks up nice and high and im now exiting out the side over the rear of the leaf springs. Its got a pretty good tone but not too loud.

During my breaking in the gears i found a pretty good drive line vib. It was there before but hoped it was a driveshaft. Did a few swapperoos and it was still there. Found that when i bent my rear DS in reno i must have bent the output shaft on the tcase. So i grabbed a spare out of the garage and got to work this morning. Trimmed the snout and did the hackntap to the out put shaft. Got it all swapped in. Vibration gone. Super stocked.

View from the back

Side

Tucked up and over the shock hoop

And the fruits of todays labors

Damn I like where that exhaust exits!

You must've really gordosmasho'd that ds in reno

The vaniller goriller grows stronger each day

The dust cloud will not be missed

Tell me about it. Thew on some rock lights last night. Changing the diff fluids tonights. Only have about 200 miles on the gears. I hope thats enough breaking period for a long haul. A few small things tonight and in ready to go

I had the same on my gears last year Gordo. Maybe 150 or so before I drove to deer valley.


In pollock pines now! See us soon bud

Damn Gordon you wrench your butt off like no ones business. I can't believe you are gettig all that done so fast

GordoSmasho said:

Tonight i got the new ebrake cable in, bled the brakes with my lovely wife helping me, patched up my fuelpump access port, new plugs wires cap and rotor. Fires up faster and runs smoother than it has since i put this motor in. Really strong. Real stoked to drive it and see how it handles the trail engine wise.

Maiden voyage went well. Diffs are quiet and smooth. The only noise really is coming from the tires now that the rear is spooled.
No DW, drives straight and true, and maintains speed in od without working hard at all. Feels like a new jeep on the road. Super stoked.

Now just for a few small things. Oil change and exhaust fixes. But either way this thing is flying.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the brake bleeding creds

This thing is pretty sweetttttt
I love the white 2 door

Thanks luke. White is deffinately my favorite color.

So.... This was my rig at 3:30 am sunday morning.

Didnt sleep that night and left the house at 5:30.
Made it all the way through the rubicon. Tried just about every hard line and obsticle there was. Didnt disapoint, though I did get denied a few times.


Ill post up more in the sierra fest thread when we get back home. Ill also elaborate on that first pic later. Off to hermit valley in the morning.

smasho out

Love the build and am looking forward to seeing it tomorrow at hermit.

So I put the wrong day in that last post. That first pic was 3:30am MONDAY morning. And then made it to the trail head at 9:15 with no sleep.

Wow that was a whirlwind two weeks. So i guess its time to do a little update from sierra fest.

So i though i had everything all buttoned up and ready to go before the trip. Was just about to start packing sunday night for our early monday departure for the rubicon leg of sierra fest. Opened up the rear diff cover to change the fluid after the regear, it was full of shavings. I guess my expiriment of just welding the gears in my lincoln locker had failed. Every weld had broken and had filled the diff with shavings. I found this out at 8:30pm sunday night. I immediately got to work. Pulled the whole diff appart and welded the crap out of the spiders and added some plate to lock everything together.

Cleaned out all the bearings and housing and put it all back together. Finished up at 4:30 am. Took a shower Packed for an hour and me steph hit the road at 5:30 for the rubicon. Got to the trail head at 9:15. Got about 30 min of sleep while steph drove for a bit. During the night it had also become my birthday haha. A hell of a way to start it sierrafest.

Made it all the way there with out incident. Started out with the other 19 rigs. Pretty awesome site.

I opted to skip soupbowl as my confidence was a bit low and it was raining. Did all the other hard lines i could find. Got stuck once on the first day. Exposing my shackle issue. They are massive and hung me up a few times durring the week. Not going forward but backing up is hell in tight spots. Got to camp around 5 and started setting up camp in the rain.



Did some exploring on tuesday. Some really beautiful views up there. Also took a look at the helicopter crash from the week before.

Did true old sluice box up as a tuesday night run. Got patrick eric and tim to go too. It was awesome. Needed a tug at the first major obsticle, due to a bad line choice, and the fact the once again i could not backup because of my shackles. A good time was had by all though.




Steph drove on the way out on wednesday.
Took a pretty cool option line on Big sluice.


She did really well. Actually did cadillac hill on her own as i rode with mike on the way up. Super proud of her.

For the first time we got done with a trail run and i aired up the tires and drove without having to do an alignment or tighten anything. It was fantastic. I guess thats also an attribute of having a spooled rearend as well. So that was the rubicon for us. Had a great time with everyone.

Good job Mrs Smasho.... That's so cool doing Cadillac hill.... You guys rock

You ran the con this week ?

No im just three weeks behind man. Work is kicking my ass. Still have to do the hermit valley update.

Oh ok! Makes more sense.

So after spending a night in south lake we headed to hermit valley for the second half of our trip. When we arrived we set up camp and made the rounds saying hi to everyone. We did a run up dear valley to the obeservation point with knucklehead close behind. I pushed the gorilla quite hard. We made it to the top in about ten minutes. It was quite fun. We beat it pretty hard the rest of the week. Steph did the "buggy" line to the left of the steps on slickrock. Tried a few interesting lines near the steps. Needless to say I was really happy with how it performed with the new gearing at the spooled rearend. I know I will have to be rebuilding it again soon but Ill run it till it starts making noise and rebuild it again with a grizzly probably. The jeep drove home without incident.
Had a blast hanging out with everybody.
Dont have many pics from this leg on my phone. I posted a link in the sierra fest pic thread.