I FINALLY got this thing out on the trail this last weekend after 2 years!!! Unfortunately I had some clutch problems so I couldn't doing any crawlin' but we did hang out on the desert roads for about 3 hours!
First I did some flex testing in the garage the night before.
Not too bad. The front is going to rub a little bit but it's on a very round and smooth part so I'm not worried about it. Eventually I'm going to build some new leaf spring perches out back to get a better shackle angle and when I do that I'm going to add a 1" spacer up front which should clear up this issue. (It only rubs at full lock)
I'm really happy with the rear wheel wells. There is all kinds of room in there! This is not full stuff...
When we arrived...
Here's where the story has a not-so-funny turn...after we get there we head up the wash to the beginning of the trail and the clutch is acting like it's never been bleed and is full of air! I decided I'm not going to take the first obstacle (~6ft tall dry waterfall) and decide to take the bypass - as soon as I turned for the bypass I heard a "pop" and my clutch went dead! I've had some problems with air in the line lately but this was new. As it turns out the "clutch pivot ball" shattered (it's the piece of plastic on the end of the clutch slave cylinder). Once my buddy and I took it apart and I figured out what it was I decided I'd try some of the smaller stuff without a clutch. All I can say is...that's no fun at all! I was able to hammer my way through a short rock section with small boulders (1ft to 3ft?) but decided to stop crawling after that. However; I've been around big trucks my whole life and knew I could shift without the clutch as long as I wasn't in the rocks so I decided to hang out in the desert for a while. Overall we were there for about 4 hours - 3 of those were spent exploring in the desert.
Here's where I turned for the bypass. This was taken after I figured out what was wrong and when I started up the trail with no clutch.
Towards the end of the rocks...
Here's a better shot of that rock garden; this is my buddy's TJ (Dogman from Jeepforum.com)
And the obligatory poser shot...
Just a random pic from the day...
Loaded up and headed home...
Overall it was a good day; I didn't get to crawl that much but still had some fun. This was a shakedown run so I definitely found some things that need fixed.
Clutch - pivot ball has been replaced but it still is not bleeding right? I'm headed out of town tomorrow so I'll be doing a bunch of research this week and hopefully fixing it next weekend before a Monday run.
Exhaust was hitting - has been cut
Bumped my head on the cage a couple of times so I'll be putting some padding on the A and B pillars by the passengers heads.
There was a popping noise coming from the front - haven't figured that one out yet. I'm pretty sure it's the fender (it's not screwed down on the bottom yet) so I'll take a look at that next weekend.) - Fixed...forgot to tighten one of the front shocks all the way
The seat belt was pretty loud - wouldn't mind putting something over the ratchet mechanism to keep it quiet.
The fuel filler neck was bouncing around. Short term (i.e. trail) fix was a zip tie, eventually I'm going to take some 1.75" tube and come off the rear down bar and bolt the neck to that but I'm going to wait until I know what I'm doing with the rear first - i.e. basket, no basket...
I need some storage! Now that the cage has been started I can start planning my storage, i.e. spare tire, rear basket...etc.
I also can't wait to put some bed liner on the inside. Overall it's pretty noisy, I was telling my buddy it's like driving an old Willys...
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