About 15 years ago Myself and some friends started out on what was expected to be a 10 day 200 or so trail mile exploration to lay some tracks over a route that had been abandoned and ignored for a couple of decades. Only used by a handful of old timers prior to that. Four of us and a dog in a pair of '40s. Both on 40 inch Boggers with stretched wheelbases and SBCs. I was pushing the power through an SM465, an NP203 doubler and one of the early Orion. (#38 IIRC)
The was before we were using satphones routinely or even Inreach units. Our "Nanny" was not supposed to start to worry about us until day 12 if we had not checked in.
The first day in gave us our first omen when Kevin sheared the wheel studs off a rear wheel at the top of a long steep descending ridge, well above treeline. It was a major aggravation to replace the studs, but we carry enough tools and extra parts on a run like this that that is all it was. But the wheel that had separated... yep, it took off down the slope, gathering speed in leaps and bounds until it disappeared in the brush in the creek at the bottom, somewhere between 1/4 and 1/2 mile away... all of it way way down..
Two of us hiked down and eventually found it while Kevin repaired his rig. At first we had hoped to simply roll it the rest of the way down the creek bed to the river and come around that way to pick it up with my '40. It only took a hundred feet or so to realize that this was gonna be a gargantuan task that we really really were not going to enjoy at all. After some thought and some perusal of the slope we had descended, it was decided that the 275:1 gearing that I was so proud of would make for a fairly reasonable trip down and back up from the ridge top. The short story is, it did and we got the tire back to the top and got the show on the road again. At least to the bottom of the ridge to camp for the night by the river.
The next day was uneventful and we pitched camp about 60 miles in, right about at the end of where most people ever went on this route back then. Our third day on the trail started pretty early and we crossed the Black River and worked our way toward the more challenging terrain as the trail slowly disappeared from lack of use.
We were attempting to follow a track that had been laid down years ago and largely forgotten. We had followed it a day or two's travel past this point a couple of years earlier, but had lost it... as it turns out in a thick patch of willows in a ravine where the original "creator" of this trail had purposely made it less than obvious to follow. However, after being baffled the first time I had done a couple of overflights of the area and spotted it a bit further on. Our goal was this tricky spot so that we could pick up the route and continue on without having to blaze any new trail.
Day three saw us working out way through a couple of marshes/boggy areas that required both rigs working together to surmount. Winching through and winching out was the order of this day. The 8274 and the PTO saw a good workout.
Almost to the good part.
We had overcome the soft terrain area and were slowly motoring along at just a couple/few miles an hour pace on a fairly easy stretch when suddenly I had no power to the wheels. As I came to a stop I quickly worked the tranny shift lever, the high range/low range lever and the superlow/stupidlow lever... the 2wheel/neutral/four wheel lever too. Nothing. Everything shifted smoothly and made no difference. I jumped out and looked underneath to see if somehow both driveshafts had fallen out or something silly like that. Nothing seemed wrong.
After a bit of pondering and considering, a bit of inspection, a quick experiment or two and a sinking feeling in my stomach... a theory about the problem was surfacing. Unhappily I disconnected the PTO shaft and linkages and pulled the drive box to get a (little bit) of a look inside the Orion.
Even though I was pretty sure what I was going to see, I was still hoping not to. No luck. The Advance Adapters input shaft in the Orion from the converted NP203 had sheared right at the stepdown immediately behind the coupling to the 203. There was no way the power from the 350 was gonna get to the axles.
At this point, you could definitely say that my '40 had me stranded.
We were about 85 miles into the back country. Remember, I ain't in California, Colorado, Utah Wyoming New Mexico or any of those other places with plenty of roads and services.
That 85 miles meant I was at least 75 miles into what any lower 48er would call flat out wilderness. The closest pavement, or road of any kind was the pavement we had left from. As I mentioned it had taken both rigs working together to get to where we were. Getting back was gonna be a challenge.
We had a big meal that night. Big meal. We were after all loaded to get by for a couple of weeks. Not only were we gonna have to unload gear from the remaining '40 but we were gonna be able to carry only the minimums for all four of us and the dog to fit on the trip out. A lot of stuff, including food, was going to be left behind. In the morning we picked through all the gear to decide just what we had to have and packed it tight so that the extra two passengers and the dog could fit. Sorta Kinda. We knew that if we got through the two biggest bogs, we could make it the rest of the way without major concerns. But if we got the single rig stuck, we had a long walk ahead of us. Not to mention more creek and river crossing than I have ever bothered to count. It is no exaggeration to say that the number was over 3 dozen. Maybe over 4 dozen. Several of which were deep and fast enough to make wading across pretty problematic.
If not for the creek crossings, myself and my passenger were up to the distance if we had to do it. Kevin's wife was not. And even if we could have made the trek, it was not in any way a possibility we were looking forward to.
Needless to say we were a bit concerned as we approached the first difficult spot. We began to scout out possible ways across more closely than we ever had before. We expanded our inspection in each direction, hoping to find a new way across. Things were not looking good. After a while, a new idea came to mind and we pulled out the topo maps to take a look at the overall area. With the help of them we determined what the direction of flow had to be for the water that kept the marsh a marsh and we decided to try and work our way through the woods in an "uphill" direction to see if we could find an end to the wet terrain and therefore a way around it.
We set off through the woods, about 200 feet apart, sometimes closer, with Kevin following in his '40. If we found good solid ground, we would wave him to us. If we found sloppy ground... well, we would not call him over.
Eventually after about a mile of this, we reached a shallow tundra pond which fed the water to the marshes downhill. Right at the edge of the pond was the not uncommon ridge of rocky ground pushed up by the freeze thaw cycles over the centuries. This ridge was not high... actually below the surface of the tundra grasses and mosses. But it was enough to provide a sort of bridge across the bogs.
Emboldened by our success, we headed to the second marsh and took basically the same approach. This time we found a patch of firmer ground before we reached any sort of surface water source. We did not take the time to ponder the difference, but made our way across and put some distance behind us. By the time we stopped for the night, we had about 50 miles or so left to get to the road.
For me... those miles were some of the worst I have ever covered in a '40. Sitting on gear... slipping and sliding... (the jumpseats had long ago been removed from this rig in favor of maximizing cargo space) with almost no visibility out, an 80 pound dog in my lap and my partner's knees slamming into very uncomfortable places every so often in the rough terrain... yeah it suck. Car sick off and on as well.
Anyway, we made it back to the road and back home. A couple of phone calls to Advance Adapters to get a replacement shaft. The first comments were that "we have never heard of this happening before". My reply was "what about ____ ___, my buddy who had exactly this same failure about a year and a half ago?" After a stunned silence, the person on the phone put me on hold for a while and came back to basically say "yeah, you are right". After a discussion that was quick enough that I assumed they had already given it some though, we both agreed that the failure was due to the less than generous radius at the shaft diameter change. It was suggested that the shaft intended for the "three speed" transfer case gears and spline count would probably have less concern with this issue than the 'four speed" variant. Since I did not want to swap out all the internals of the Orion, I filed that away and said I just needed another of the same shaft that I already had. I *think* that they slightly modified the cutting of the shaft after this, but I am not sure. I do know that I have not personally heard of anyone else having this failure.
About 2 weeks later I put together a handful of friends and we took three rigs back in to repair and retrieve my '40. Got in, repaired the damage and drove it out uneventfully. Never have managed to get back out there to push that trail further. YET. The Dragons still be there.
And THAT is my "best stranded by my '40 story".
Mark...
I was just not willing to let the others know. 
