Possible day of wheeling at Anthracite this Sunday July 30 (1 Viewer)

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shmukster

shmukster

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Greg and I may be wheeling at Anthracite this Sunday, at present depending on Greg's schedule and the weather. It would be nice to have a few more trucks. Intention is to explore and map out the western reserve- the area across route 125 from the staging area. Anyone interested?
 
Sunday weather looks excellent! We're going to scout out the campground as well.

Maybe the official club run in August can start on Friday night for some of us...
 
Well, shiznit got all kinds of out of wack today...


IMG_3971.JPG


This is SOOOOO much worse than than it looks!
 
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Many, many thanks to @shmukster and @thegadgetguy for their assistance and patience. It was an "interesting" day.

My '96 is having a sleepover in the Western Reserve...I hope it's still in one piece tomorrow morning...
 
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Yeah... you've definitely broken some things... do you have a front locker?
 
She looks a little pigeon toed!
 
The bent (badly bent????) tie rod was not the worst problem. The attachment point for the driver side lower control arm was broken off. The passenger side is cracked and displaced, too. Ended up with the axle being twisted upward in the rear with the driveshaft waaaaay out of position. Had it roatated just a little more I think the bottoms of the coil springs might have popped out the front!

Of course this happened way the hell far away from the entrance/exit to the west property. And on a very rocky downhill section coming down off Fern Ridge. Couldn't steer the damn thing with the front wheels splayed outward on both sides. Had to hook a tow strap up to his rear bumper and David dragged the rear of the 80 back onto the trail facing backwards. There were several areas on tight turns that the 80 just wouldn't steer around and Dave and I both had to pull the 80 around some of the corners. Was a bitch. We were able to move it downhill driving backwards for a few hundred yards till we got to a spot that was somewhat level. By that time the tie rod had straightened itself out a bit and the axle was still kind of settled in it's awkward position. Drove forward for a while trying to get to the exit but then the tie rod bent again. We removed it and hoped to sleeve it with the hi lift jack handle but we couldn't straighten the damn thing.

Greg made the decision to just leave the truck where it sat, and removed whatever things of value that were inside it. We drove out to the exit (about three miles from where the truck is sitting) and had to call the office to have someone open the gate as we were way past the 2PM deadline to exit the western property. Lucky enough Greg's wife was in the area and was able to pick him up at AAOA and take him home.

I'm meeting Greg at AAOA this morning he is bringing a straight (I hope) tie rod with him. I'll drive him into the western side to his truck where we will install the tie rod and try to drive it out to the staging area. if that is successful he'll have a rollback pick up the truck for its ride back to Greg's shop in the Philly area.

Good thing is it was a beautiful not particularly hot and humid. And not a lot of traffic where we were. management people at AAOA were very much concerned about leaving a vehicle as far away from the staging area as we did- told us there has been a lot of shenanigans going on after hours on the western reserve. really we didn't have a lot of choices here- my ass was dragging and so was Greg's. We didn't get out of the park till 5 or so and that's awful late for me to be getting off the trail. Dave had his younger sister with him for her first taste of offroading- what a baptism!

We did some interesting trails before the axle problem cropped up, and saw some nice black side trails that we inspected but bypassed. The main intention yesterday was exploring and seeing what the western side has to offer for future wheeling days. I will say that the property is huge- we dove more than two hours directly away from the entrance and were probably an hour away from reaching the furthest point from the entrance. Can't hardly imagine how a group could wheel all the trails we saw and possibly be out of there by 2PM.

In any event stay tuned for today's update and wish us luck.
 
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