It's about the Journey

For Thanksgiving vacation, Kami and I loaded up the trailer and headed out for our Jeep's maiden voyage. We had this trip planned with a few friends from Colorado for a few months. I wanted to have it finished a week prior to this trip so we could run her out to little moab for a quick shakedown (deep inside I always knew that wasn't going to happen). I ended up spending black friday at carquest picking up some last minute parts for the Jeep and the tow rig (got there right as the doors opened at 7:30 :D ) Then we loaded up the families to head down to Farmington.





The cool thing I found about Farmington was that the trails were pretty short, and we ran quite a few in 2 days. The pictures below were taken from both days, and the only trail names I remember are: Lower rim trail, Arch trail, Rjs, Waterfall trail, and the Anasazi Refigerator.

























The only carnage was on an obstacle called the Anasazi icebox (IIRC). It is basically an intersection of 2 cliffs, with a massive void between them, seen here as I was getting lined up.



And here you can see, my back end should have been a few feet to the driver's side.






The passenger rear dragged the front end to the right, which got me in a bad spot on the obstacle, forcing me to back down.



When backing down, the front driver side ended up on the other side of the crack, and flopped us on the passenger side. Hindsight is 20/20...



I was slightly disappointed that we got body damage so quick, before it was even finished, but... c'est la vie :D






We only had a few minor issues, all of which we were able to work around. First was an issue with a leaky pinion seal on the front end (installation error – my bad). This caused some gear oil leakage throughout the first day. While repairing the seal on Saturday morning, I noticed a serious issue with the passenger side axle end lower control arm bracket. One side had only been tacked in. Again, my bad. I felt I combed through the rig pretty well, but obviously this was a huge oversight. After breaking the tack welds, the other end of the bracket retained the control arm while slowly bending out. This was a serious issue that I initially thought would bring an abrupt halt to our trip. Chris made some phone calls, and got the number for a local 4x4 shop in Farmington. We ended up hooking up with Shane at Off Again 4x4, and he dropped everything he was doing and torqued down the pinion nut, and fully welded the control arm bracket. I owe Shane big time, he saved our trip!!! The other two issues were a coolant overflow leak, and the back tires rubbing the tub at full stuff. Neither of which were major enough to address immediately.

It was a great experience for both of us to get the jeep back on the trail.