Well, the Gila claims a victim. Or was it "Dumba$$ drives into deep $hit"? In short, I sank the 80 this past weekend down by the Gila River. I was more or less following the same track that we ran in February, but holy cow was that hole a lot deeper now. This is the same hole that
@Otter caked up his radiator in. You can see the water line on the fender in the pics. Essentially, I toed off in it quick enough to push a wave, but stopped short when it started getting deep. When the wave rebounded, I could see the other end and thought it was doable. Little did I know there was a seriously deep section in the center that had 33" swallowing rut in the bottom. The axles bottomed out and there I was, going nowhere! I tried to free myself to no avail, and once I had about an inch of water in the floor, I crawled out the window and across the hood to the front bumper. While doing so, the horn started blaring. I hollered for my passage to poop the hood, and after getting it open, I unplugged them to silence the racket. That done, I went back to pulling cable. After I had enough unspooled to get started, I jumped from the hood to the bank and ran up the trail to find a tree to anchor to. A quick return to the 80 and a hood shimmy later, I was snaking back into the seat and reeling in the cable. I have always erred on the big side when it comes to winches. Some say 1.5X rig weight, but I like the 2X factor. Being able to single line pull in most situations is a big plus as you have to pull half as much cable and the line speed is much better. It still loaded up the Superwinch Talon 12K pretty good, but about 30 seconds later I was free and on dry land.
I thought the sum of the damage was just going to be having mud in the interior, but it also meant that with about 6 inches of water inside, everything was soaked, muddy, and stanky. That included two of my guns, all my clothes, and everything else not piled up above the flood line.
The real casualty was the 6.0 LS under the hood. The engine never shut off in the water. The exhaust was constantly blowing big bubbles, the intake/filter were bone dry thanks to the Safari Snorkel, but when I thought to check the dip stick, it was full of milkshake. I have no idea how, but the bottom end was full of that nasty river bottom mud and silt. Also, remember when I said the horn was honking? The lights were also going nuts, and when I tried to start up again, it refused to fire. The 80 Series has a security system ECU under the drivers seat that can disable the starter, and with it being full of the same nastiness, it was shorted out. I got the rig pushed off the trail and to a spot that would soon serve as our camp for the night. I was with a co-worker and his family, and he asked me what I needed. I said 8 quarts of oil and an oil filter. We both smiled and shook our heads. A quick chat yielded the plan that his son and I would take one of their Jeeps to town and grab much needed supplies. We knew right there, it was going to be a very long night(weekend). We had a sandwich and then hit the trail. Two hours later, we pulled into O'Reily's in Globe where 3 gallons of 5W-30, 2 oil filters, an oil pan, cleaners, and paper towels claimed 182 bucks out of my wallet. We grabbed some Taco Bell, because why not, and less than two hours later, we arrived back at the wounded bird. I drained the oil and it was pure river bottom muck-shake. Disgusting.
I let it drain all night long, and the next morning I spun on a new filter and poured in fresh oil. Much to my surprise, the ECU dried out enough to allow the engine to crank and it fired right up. 60 seconds of run time, and the oil/filter were dropped again. Not as bad, but still terrible. Water, silt, sludge, it was still pouring out. At this point I accepted my fate. I would be rebuilding the motor. I emptied a full can of brake clean into the pan and filter port, giving it adequate time to vaporize and flash off. I was able to move the straw around enough to get it to run clear out of the drain hole both times, but there is silt through the entire oil system, which means it is in the entire engine. I refilled the engine with the remaining oil and though about my exit strategy. As I said above, I knew at this point I was going to be doing heart surgery on the ole girl. I also knew that of all my rigs, an LS is the cheapest and easiest to rebuild. Hell, I have been wanting to turn this one up since I got it on the road, but I didn't plan on doing two builds at once. I also have a Cummins swap going on... In the end, with as stressful as it would be on the Jeep to try to tow me out, we decided not to go that route, instead I would drive out under my own power and monitor the sounds of the dying mill for the right time to shut it off before the big bang. I did the ~6 miles out with not real issues except a notable cough and stutter on one of the climbs. I will say that by the time we made it to HWY177, she was making some angry noises in protest of going any further. I parked her up and rode back to Tucson in a Jeep. Not the most embarrassing thing I have done.
