Build: 2000 LX470, Our first foray into off-roading and Cruisers

[KCoverland]

Chinamen Gulch was next.

And yes, it is pretty rowdy, our assumption was correct! But again we made it through!

I should mention we didn’t pull winch line on this trip a single time.

 

[KCoverland]

Our last trail we were going to hit was going to be an easy one to end the week, so we ran Mosquito Pass in the morning of our last day before we headed out. Unfortunately it wasn’t passable yet, so it added another hour onto our trip home from having to backtrack, but it was still beautiful all the way up!

Thankfully the backtracking down the mountian took us to a fun little track called Birdeye Gulch. And that’s how we ended the week!

 

[KCoverland]

After getting home to KC and cleaning the truck up, it was obvious the new armor was worth the extra weight! Plenty of scratches and scars, but absolutely no deformation on anything, including the front bumper that I had to push into a rock on Holy Cross to make it up an obstacle!

Plus I got my first little bit of rock rash on a body panel on Chinamen Gulch, just barely scraped the rear drivers fender and door handle.

All in all, I can’t believe how well this truck performed on this trip, and I am feeling more and more confident to run Rubicon and Fordyce this September!

That’s all caught up for now, but I do have some more great pictures from my friend Andrew at our Kansas City Toyota Club meetup today, so I’ll throw those up as well!

 

[KCoverland]

Life is better when you are surrounded by other like minded people!

 

[ClassyJalopy]

Very cool updates. Did you find out what caused the sudden wheel loss?
Big kudoos to your wife on keeping it the right side up!

That night at about 10:30pm my wife and I hit the road, headed west towards our friends in Colorado, and then Utah. Unbeknownst to us, just outside of Abilene KS on i70, we would lose our drivers rear wheel. We did atleast one full spin and ended up in the center grass median facing oncoming traffic, which is about the worst possible way to wake up from a nap

Thankfully my wife Gigi kept her head on straight, and kept the LX on its wheels, even in a 60mph spin across the highway.

This is how the trip started, which got my brain into “solutions” mode right away. But first, we needed to get off the highway. We were loaded up onto a rollback and taken into the thriving town of Abilene KS at about 3am, parked the truck in the Orilley’s auto parts parking lot, popped the tent, fired up the heater, and finished off that nap.

Once they opened it was time to get to work, damage report was shockingly minimal: 5 wheel studs, lug nuts, brake rotor, pads, and the bottom half of the lower mount for the shock.

It wouldn’t have been a big issue, aside from the fact that we are still on AHC, so the shock is not an easily replaceable component without taking the whole system down. We got the other pieces of the puzzle figured out relatively easily, but what took some thought was how we were going to make this now very broken shock work for the trip we had just started.

I made some calls to a friend in KC who was able to go get some tubing that was the correct inner diameter for the shock bushing, had them drop it off at my house, then had Sam Prokop (who was in KC getting his new Valleytech rear bumper installed that day) pick up that tubing, my 110v welder, and some other basic metal fab tools from my house and deliver them to us in Abilene. About 2 hours later, after borrowing Orilley’s extension cord for my welder, doing some trimming and fab work on the shock mount, we had fixed all the issues, and we’re back on the road headed West.

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[KCoverland]

Very cool updates. Did you find out what caused the sudden wheel loss?
Big kudoos to your wife on keeping it the right side up!

I am still not 100% sure why the studs snapped off, but it wasn’t because of loose lug nuts, so I’m expecting there was atleast 2 cracked lug studs which then broke the other 3 studs off.

Most likely the studs were over tightened over the course of many years of wheel and tire changes.

 

[Marvelicious]

Nice rig, and a great thread.

I'm wondering about your long-term impression on those Vision beadlocks. I'm looking at the same style for my 80, but I haven't seen a lot of real-world feedback on them. Are you having any more problems with the bolts snapping? It seems to me that would be a bead thickness problem that can be solved by anti-coning rings, but Vision doesn't seem to acknowledge that as an issue, even though every beadlock with a similar design has the same problem with thick-beaded tires.

 

[caffecapri]

This is a fun read. Plus you’ve turned that tan mall cruiser into a beast I’m drooling over. Well done and keep the updates coming.

 

[Trapper50cal]

Great to see someone dive in and use one of these rigs as intended. It sure is a load of fun, and you meet some great folks.

 

[KCoverland]

Nice rig, and a great thread.

I'm wondering about your long-term impression on those Vision beadlocks. I'm looking at the same style for my 80, but I haven't seen a lot of real-world feedback on them. Are you having any more problems with the bolts snapping? It seems to me that would be a bead thickness problem that can be solved by anti-coning rings, but Vision doesn't seem to acknowledge that as an issue, even though every beadlock with a similar design has the same problem with thick-beaded tires.

After getting good USA grade-8 hardware on them, WITH the beadlock ring shims, they have been solid with no issues losing bolts or air. Prior to that I would have said to avoid them at all costs.

They have tackled some gnarly trails over the last couple of months, so I'd say that they have regained some of my trust, thankfully!

 

[KCoverland]

Sorry it has taken so long to get back to you all with an update on the last few months!

Since August we'd been busy getting everything setup for the 4500 mile trip out to Northern California for the 35th annual TLCA Rubithon, and (from everything I have found) the first 100 series through the Fordyce Jeep Trail.

After getting one of my main work trucks all fixed up and ready to haul the Lexus out to NorCal, I realized that I didn't want to make that long of a drive pulling the 8,000lb Lexus over several mountain passes and over the course of at least 60 hours of pulling with a single rear wheel truck. So with almost exactly a month left before we needed to be hitting the road, I found one of my dream trucks on that wonderful, and terrible place that is Facebook Marketplace. After driving down to Oklahoma and getting the truck and a fuel transfer tank, I headed home now the proud owner of a rare OBS Ford truck that would haul us all the way across the country.

The truck in question was a 1997 Ford F-350, with a crew cab, long bed, dually rear wheels, 4x4, with the 7.3 Powerstroke, and of course, in factory black paint.

 

[KCoverland]

The next domino that needed to fall into place was a trailer to haul the Lexus out on. I had access to a bumper pull trailer that would have done the trick, but I wanted to stack all the cards in my favor for my first time hauling a trailer in the mountains. With that in mind, I started looking for a gooseneck trailer that would fit the bill a little nicer than the 18ft bumper pull that would have been a little snug. After just a few days of looking, I came across this trailer just a couple hours south of Kansas City, a low profile deck, 14k capacity, gooseneck flatbed with slide in ramps, which is exactly what I was hoping to end up with for this long trip.

After getting the trailer home, it just took a few hours of cleaning up trailer wiring, upgrading the possibly original brake controller on the F350, and a little bit of welding to get it in good shape for the trip that was quickly approaching.

 

[KCoverland]

That brings us to the night before we were supposed to be rolling out of Kansas City. The last thing I had to get setup was the 50 auxiliary diesel fuel tank, I was not excited to buy diesel at almost $7 in California, so I decided when we left to get the truck a few weeks prior that it would be worth spending the $300 on a tank for extra fuel rather than spend almost $300 on a tank of fuel in California. Ended up just needing to get some PVC pipe for a riser for the pump, but that was all it took to get that tank and pump functional again!

With that all taken care of, it was time to load up all the spare parts that had been rolling in steadily over the last handful of weeks, get fuel and water all filled up, hit the scales, and then hit the open road!

 

[KCoverland]

We rolled out of Kansas City bright and early the morning of Tuesday September 5th, unknowing that the budgeted time of 30 hours was woefully under the time it would actually take us to get all the way to the Loon Lake trailhead of the Rubicon.

Over the next 30 hours, we would lose 3 out of 4 trailer tires, fight brutal headwinds that dropped our fuel consumption down to 7mpg, and eventually end up dealing with a sticking first gear in the F350 all before even getting to Lake Tahoe.

We rolled off of Icehouse road and onto the trailhead of the Rubicon on September 7th at about 11pm.

 

[KCoverland]

Now that we had finally made it to the trailhead, (abet over a full day behind the rest of the Wagon Run group we were supposed to be running the trail with) we quickly ran into the issue most people will have the first time they get to the Rubicon, and that is not knowing where the trail actually runs, so we asked a small group of Jeeps and a wicked first gen Bronco for directions and they offered to just let us run with them to Buck Island Lake where they would be camping.

That was early in the morning September 8th, and we ran with them a little over halfway to Rubicon Springs in 8 hours, and ran the rest of the way to the Springs from Buck Island by ourselves in about 4 hours.

 

[KCoverland]

Once we finally caught up with the rest of the Rubithon crew, we had a blast. The Marauder Bar is legendary, as is the raffle, the RC competition and of course the awesome community.

And of course there were some absolutely WILD rigs out there with us.

 

[KCoverland]

After a couple of days relaxing in Rubicon Springs, it was time to roll onwards up Cadillac Hill, and point our headlights east to Fordyce Creek Trail.

We made it almost all the way out before getting high centered after picking a bad line, and we did have to pull winch line once, which made me quite sad.

All in all, we made it from Loon Lake to Rubicon Springs in 12 hours, and made it off the trail only pulling line once, with only taking 2 minor bits of damage, we lost the AC condenser going through Little Sluce, and tapped the rear quarter panel at the Soup Bowl. No mechanical failures to speak of, which I was very impressed with.

Next stop was Sacramento for some In-And-Out and a shower, then to the staging area for Fordyce and Signal Peak.

 

[KCoverland]

After getting a much needed shower in Sacramento, we headed to the trailhead for Fordyce, which just so happened to be the trailhead for a much easier scenic trail that we ended up running the night before. We also needed to do a quick bolt check and top off fluids to make sure we were ready to party with Ben Calhoon, Zachary Diehl, and the rest of the Dissent crew that next morning.

The trailer makes for a nice little mechanic's ramp!

 

[KCoverland]

We drove a mile or so into the Fordyce trail to camp that night, and when we woke up, it was time to show the world what the 100 series could do. 11 miles of straight up buggy trail snaked up and down the mountain in front of us, with water crossings that are known to swallow built Jeeps, buggies, and everything in-between. This is the reason why we decided to trailer the Lexus out there.

 

[KCoverland]

Fordyce is split up into sections with hardcore obstacles affectionately named “Winch Hills”, there are 5 named winch hills, with several deep and fast flowing river crossings between them.

Here are some pictures that were taken by @Dffrent_allroad (on instagram) who was shooting content for Dissents new ultra-high clearance 80 series armor.