One of the guys that wheels in our group lived in TN for 9 years and he was getting an itch to go back and visit.
He started planning a trip for us to go down to Knoxville and visit Smokey Mnt Nat park, Tellico, and his old stomping grounds around downtown. Unfortunately Tellico was still closed around the time we started planning and still is, so we opted for Windrock.
4 of us drove down early Fri morning (3:30 am) to Smokey Mnt. National Park. We did the tourist thing and then went to a classic car show that was absolutely unbelieveable. There were all kinds of american iron for miles and miles.
On the drive down our friend's Jeep XJ started spewing smoke from the under carrieage and you hear 3 of us yelling over the CBs to pull over and shut it down. We all run over to see what it was, and it turned to be an overfilled tranny dumping tranny fluid on the exhaust. We drained some of the fluid into an empty windshielf washer fluid bottle through an inline filter that his mechanic had put in...the same mechanic that overfilled the tranny. Other than our smoke incident the drive down was pretty uneventful.
Friday night we went out and partied in downtown Knoxville where we met up with the other 2 guys that left the NOVA area Friday afternoon.
Sat. morining we woke up and headed out to Windrock where we met up with Andy (handle name Goode) who I hooked up with on the TN regional board. I was pretty proud of our group for waking up at 8 am after getting in at around 5 am the night before. I thought we were going to actually make it to Windrock on time until the parking lot time warp hit us badly.
For those of you who don't know what the parking lot time warp is I will explain. Whenever you have a group of 3 or more rigs getting ready to wheel, as soon as you get to a parking lot or a staging area everything takes twice as long as it should and time goes by twice as fast. Luckily Andy is a cool guy and if he was cursing us for showing up so late he did it internally and never showed an ounce of impatience. In fact, he was a great host. I think we ended up getting to Windrock at around 11 am after getting lost, gas and food stops.
After registration at windrock, introductions, airing down, and checking out the setup for the downhill MTB race going on at windrock we hit the trails and had a great time.
We had a couple of issues on the trail. The 4runner in our group had a drop bracket for the rear panhard rod that pushed the rear axle into the gas tank under hard articulation. We stoped so that we could put the rod back in the stock position but had to come up with some creative engineering (read; pulling open the bracket) so that the rod would go back into the stock location.
Then the other 4Runner started overheating. It couldn't go more than 5 min. without the temps getting into the danger zone. We got the 4Runner out blasting the heat and on the highway it was fine. I just got a text from the owner saying he took the rad out and there was a ton of mud between the condenser and the rad which was probably the culprit. On a previous wheeling trip it must have gotten caked in and you couldn't by just looking into the engine bay. Later in the day one of the 4Runners busted a front CV.
Other than that it was a great day wheeling with really cool people. We found a bunch of play areas and hill climbs and had a really good time. I really wish we could have stayed another day. I am going to have to go back down there for a week to take advantage of everything Windrock has to offer.
I want to thank Andy and his friend (forgot his name) for their patience and hospitality.
Enough blabbing, time for pictures.
81 at dawn. Pre smoke incident.
Classics, they were everywhere.
Everything is strapped down and ready for trail time.
Lined up and ready for the trails
This is where the driveshaft was kissing the gas tank
Uhhh ohhhh
CV guts on the trail....not good
This was a great hill climb. We went up on the right where the piece of conduit is coming out of the ground. In this pic the FJ is going across the trail after a 3 point turn to avoid a shelf in the middle of the trail and heading over to the left side where the climb is more managable with 33" which is what we all had.
jmvar
and still awaiting modifications!
Linear Mode
