2013 - Moab, Utah - May 8-14 (Explorer Forum Run)

[KF5ZXT]

Not really


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[TxPlates]

Boring. At least you get to make numerous stops.


"And you are?"

[TxPlates]

Well for those of us who did not go, the group has officially arrived.

Have fun guys!

[KF5ZXT]

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[BigTim55]

Did you get the part you needed?

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[TxPlates]

Yea he did. Looks sweet, sure wish I had been invited....


"And you are?"

[TexasArmadillo]

A face only a mother could love. I wish I was there too. I flew over Moab last week.

Juggling more fur balls than a constipated cat.

[Kris Guilbeaux]

[TxPlates]

Nice pic.


"And you are?"

[Kris Guilbeaux]

Well Randall gets his tru k to Moab and has transmission issues. Oh and we are a bit ineberates d!!!!

[TxPlates]

Appears via fb pictures that y'all had fun. Have a safe trip home tomorrow.


"And you are?"

[TexasArmadillo]

Check out EF as well. Lots of pictures from Rick.

Juggling more fur balls than a constipated cat.

[KF5ZXT]

Or, go ahead and cross post them here.


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[KF5ZXT]

Here are some cross posted from EF.


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[KF5ZXT]

And some more:


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[KF5ZXT]

Oh, you want more? (Also stolen from EF)



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[KF5ZXT]

More steals.



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[KF5ZXT]

A couple of mine.



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[KF5ZXT]

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[TxPlates]

Sweet maybe next year....


"And you are?"

[KF5ZXT]

Same for me. :Lol

Let's do it!


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[BigTim55]

Looks like fun! Hopefully next year I can join

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[KF5ZXT]

Just got home. We had a leaky trailer tire, which I replaced with the spare, then of course proceeded to blow a different tire, so we had to take care of that. Also, my trailer brake seems to have stopped functioning about halfway home (not the first time this has happened to me, both with highly recommended Prodigy P3 controllers). Also had three other people in an extended cab, two of them women, so lots of delays. Lol. So it was a fun ride home.

Prior to that, I was supposed to pick up my explorer a while back from the shop in preparation for this run, but things kept coming up. I wanted to leave for Moab Tuesday night, so I went up to the shop to go get it. It still wasn't quite ready, so I stayed up there about six hours 'observing.' It all seemed to have gotten buttoned up, so one of the shop guys drive it around the block. He noticed some slop in the front diff, so we decided to open it up and look at it before I loaded it up on the trailer. In addition to the preload being wrong on the pinion bearing, turns out that the gear set inside was a 4.88, not the 5.13 that I was led to believe was already set up in there from the guy that I had bought the axle from.

We called it a night and set out in the morning to locate a set of high pinion Dana 60 gears. Between myself, the shop that I use, and a friend of mine (Craig), we called everywhere in Houston, and finally found a place that had one on hand, almost two hours away from either me or the shop. The shop sent someone out on the nearly four hour tour to get the gear set. Once they were at the shop, they got them set up, I drove it around the block and loaded it up in the trailer, and headed out straight from the shop at about 2:30 pm, Wednesday. Needless to say, I had zero time to test or prep anything on the truck before heading out. For this reason, I was pretty sure I'd be sticking to the bunny trails to test things out.

Once we got to Moab, naturally a few issues showed up. My new power steering pulley was set too far back, so my drive belt started shredding. Fearing that I'd be going through belts quite frequently, I went to a couple shops and bought some spares. Turns out that I never had to replace a belt, since the belt self clearanced itself by one rib to fit the system. That, and I didn't really end up driving it enough to get it to fully break.

There is also a hiccup of some kind in my full hydraulic steering that made the truck a little difficult to control on the pavement. An officer kindly flagged me down and let me know that I needed to figure out how to control it before he saw it in the street again.

Another reason that he pulled me over was the fact that I was blowing white smoke and transmission fluid all over his nice patrol vehicle. Everyone who knows me knows that I've had a couple transmission issues pop up in my wheeling adventures. In my previous two trips to Moab, in 2001 and 2002, I managed to blow the front main seal on an A4LD before ever completing a trail. In those two years, I ran only the Eye of the Whale scenic park trail with one these said transmissions. I figured I had managed to do the same thing this time with my 700r4. Ted (TBars4) suggested that I check the pan bolts, which were all a little loose. I tightened them up, added some fluid, and tried to drive it a bit more. There was still a leak, and I was still blowing white smoke. Turns out that the pan gasket had pretty much disintegrated, which is why the bolts seemed loose. I went out and got a new filter/gasket set and Kris Guilbeaux kindly got up with me at 6 am and aided me in installing the new gasket and filter in the Shell station parking lot in the morning before the days' City Market meet up.

Later that day, after an engine backfire that Ted informed me of (I must really be getting deaf...), I apparently blew a vacuum cap off of the vacuum tree. Brian lent me some hose and a bolt to cap it off, and then I discovered a second leak in the tree and doubled over the hose to cover both 'branches.' Vacuum issues resolved, I once again set out to drive some trails. Apparently one of the two vacuum leaks had been there the whole time, because now my brakes were almost completely locked up. I had replaced the master cylinder with one from a 2001 Dodge 2500 diesel with disc brakes front and rear (bolted right up) to help compensate for my new one ton brakes. Now the brakes were so locked up that I couldn't get up a hill under full throttle in first gear, four wheel drive. Well, at least the brakes work. It seems that the spring in the booster needs to be adjusted. Feeling a little disgusted at this point, I pulled the truck over and climbed into the rental Jeep that my brother had been driving. I guess he felt bad and insisted that I drive it to the Top of the World.

Top of the World was a fun trail in a pretty stock Jeep, who's suspension mods consisted of a shock extension and a coil spacer.

We come back down from the Top of the World to get my truck, figuring that surely I'd be able to drive it downhill back to the trailhead, where my tow rig awaited. We get to the truck and see a flat tire, with Rick waiting nearby to help me fill it back up with his on-board air setup. The recentered H1 rim was leaking in the seam between the outer two shell halves. I must not have gotten that o-ring seated in there properly. We get the tire filled back up, and I start downhill with Ted watching over me, as he had all weekend.

The brakes were so locked up, that I couldn't even manage going downhill. At a top speed of about half a mile an hour, and the temp gauge quickly ascending due to me redlining the motor, I get about halfway back down the trail, before the tire is too flat to really move. We attempt to refill it again with Ted's on-board air setup, but don't get much farther. I hop in the Jeep, and head down to bring the tow rig up to where my explorer is instead. Of course, I manage to get the Super Duty stuck trying to turn it around with a trailer on the trail. Ted did the honors of pulling me out, to which he was very pleased. After all this, we're naturally a little late getting to the Branding Iron for dinner, and miss the group photo. Sorry, Ted.

I can't remember exactly when, but somewhere in there, I had a radiator hose pop off. Thanks to MrQ for allowing me to borrow some coolant.

Also, thanks to everyone else that both helped and put up with me on the trails, particularly Ted and Guilbeaux.

Don't ask me why I decided to type all this out on my phone. Also, I'm sure I'm forgetting some other mishap. Haha



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[TexasArmadillo]

Brother, you need a beer.

Juggling more fur balls than a constipated cat.

[TxPlates]

Wow, definitely beer time.


"And you are?"