Completed: Sunday 6/3 Badlands Offroad park Attica, IN

by **Regulator1175** » Mon May 28, 2012 10:02 pm

We will be meeting in the staging area at 9:00am. This will be an easy day out, I am taking a buddy out for him to get a feel for his newly lifted Jeep. I know that some of the normal wheelers are not able to make it, but I figured I would post up in case there was someone new in the area that may want to join us.

by **bartonmd** » Tue May 29, 2012 9:32 am

I think I may be able to make an appearance... and try out these coilovers on the woops!

Mike

by **HARDTRAILZ** » Tue May 29, 2012 10:45 am

Got scotts wedding sat but would love to try n make it

by **wink** » Tue May 29, 2012 11:48 pm

I'll see how my truck is feeling...

by **Regulator1175** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 12:35 am

The Badlands got the best of my truck today. Among the damage list is the rear drive shaft, both lower control arms, and my front differential! It looks like bigger and stronger parts will be in my future!

I found the aprox 3 inches of vulnerable area where the control arms and drive shaft drop below the protection of the frame. I sat the entire rear on a large chunk of concrete that has been added to the top of a rock garden that we usually play in. The outcome was a broken rear drive shaft and damaged rear diff, and bent both lower control arms. We then spooled out BartonMD's winch to pull me out the last 10 feet. I was assisting the winch a bit by crawling under front wheel power and my front diff made a few strange noises and the gears decided they wanted to be in multiple pieces.

The good news for all of this is that I have the majority of the parts as well. I am borrowing a set of lower control arms from Kyle until I buy a new rear axle (SS rear axle, 4.10 gears, rear locker). It will also mean that my truck will get a newly rebuilt engine sooner then I was planning. I was really hoping to see 300k miles, but the need for 4x4 is greater then that hope. It just makes sense that I do both at the same time just to make my life a bit easier.

Who wants to help me rebuild an engine?

Thanks a bunch to Bartonmd for the use of his truck and securing the trailer! Also thanks a bunch to Wink for babysitting the 3 20yr olds that I had riding along!!! They had a great time with you.

by **bartonmd** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 8:10 am

No problem, Matt! I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous as hell about loaning my manual transmission 12-valve Cummins (small rev range + wide gear ratios makes it somewhat tricky to drive with a 9k# trailer behind it) to anybody but my dad or Kevin Thomas to tow with; but I wasn't going to make the round trip up there last night, being that I work today, and I also wasn't going to leave you hanging. Could just have easily been me that needed help, yesterday, or any other day.

Mike

by **NC_IslandRunner** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 8:16 am

Damn Matt, you were getting down! Any pre-carnage pics?

by **bartonmd** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 8:47 am

Wink took video of the whole rock garden, with my video camera. I'll have to get it off the DVD and uploaded.

Mike

by **bartonmd** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 9:48 am

(and it was more like 30-40' that you had to be winched up... I was ~40' away from the hill, and was just starting the last layer on my 100' cable on my winch) :poke:

YouTube Videos · by **Trail X** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 10:10 am

Holy crap Matt. What in the world?!? I'd love to see how that happened, and what it happened on.

bartonmd wrote:Wink took video of the whole rock garden, with my video camera. I'll have to get it off the DVD and uploaded.

Oh noooo!, not again! :raspberry:

by **boog2006** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 10:28 am

Regulator1175 wrote:This will be an easy day out..........

Wow.

by **DirtyBacon04** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 10:38 am

Ohh be sure to put these pics in the "Damage Thread"! That's some good boo-boos there!

by **DirtyBacon04** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 10:40 am

Does look like the whole back end backed off a rather sharp ledge at the same time and just dropped. Sharp edge shearing d/s and damn near shearing your control arms! I would like to see the culprit!

by **bartonmd** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 10:43 am

JamesDowning wrote:Holy crap Matt. What in the world?!? I'd love to see how that happened, and what it happened on.

Remember the rock garden that I went up a couple years ago? Same one that they added a bunch of boulders to before Matt went up it last year. They added a bunch of broken up concrete to it this year. I haven't seen any pictures or video of anybody (without a solid front axle) on here doing anything even close. Level or down the hill would likely have been no problem, but it's reasonably steep, and the rock is all round, pretty smooth river rock...

It's this hill, but with more boulders and broken up concrete added. This happened in the place in Matt's video below, where he went up the trail to the right at the end. He went left this time:

Where the drive shaft broke (and semi-likely the driver's side control arm bent) was when I was spotting in the front, trying to get him up the ledge, I couldn't see that there was a boulder causing problems for the drive shaft. This is because I couldn't see that the opposite corner as I was standing (driver rear) had spat out all of the rocks and was sitting down about 1.5' farther than last time I had seen it. We stacked up rocks in the hole, and had him get a couple feet of speed going to bump up the ledge, and he was ALMOST there, to the point that I couldn't see why he wasn't climbing up. As he backed down, and I was looking in the side to see what he was hitting, the drive shaft was off. The sheetmetal straps had broken. The control arms likely got bent as I was pulling him up that ledge, because he had no real control over the direction he was going, and I'm sure it drug his rear end up the deeper part of the ledge.

bartonmd wrote:Wink took video of the whole rock garden, with my video camera. I'll have to get it off the DVD and uploaded.

Oh noooo!, not again!

Yeah, and *gasp* I didn't put anything on the winch cable for the up-pull, either... Cable was dragging the ground (dirt, not over rock) through a lot of it, so it would have just slid it off, anyway... I did wrap a towel around it when I was outside the vehicle, re-spooling the winch line under load, though. Both my bumpers, all my own (over-built) work, real 3/4" shackles in 1"x3" shackle mounts, stress tested (I did a tree-to-tree winch-stall on that cable/hook/winch/mount several months ago, just to see...) and in good shape winch cable with little to no corrosion, and no kinks or fraying. Windshields, being laminated glass, are much better at stopping cable and hooks than rear glass, and everybody else was out of the way. As these things go, this was on the lower risk side of things.

Mike

by **bartonmd** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 10:49 am

boog2006 wrote:
Regulator1175 wrote:This will be an easy day out..........

Wow.

Plans changed... The Jeep guy's dad put a hole in his radiator (or rather, he dropped off at the shop his dad works at, and the very slow pin-hole leak when it went into the shop turned into a screwdriver-size hole when it came out) because he didn't want him driving it down to wheel before he put more street miles on it. So they were riding with Matt, and we were out doing our thing, as per SOP.

Mike

by **DirtyBacon04** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 10:52 am

Jeep took the easy route...

by **bartonmd** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 10:59 am

DirtyBacon04 wrote:Jeep took the easy route...

Those were both last year, and both he and I took his Jeep up the "left" side, after that. Most of it is that the fully locked Rubicon on 35's and long arms just made it look easy.

Mike

YouTube Videos · by **Trail X** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 11:37 am

bartonmd wrote:Yeah, and *gasp* I didn't put anything on the winch cable for the up-pull, either...

There are certain circumstances that make it really difficult to add a parachute... and I wouldn't be as worried about winch line, than a dynamic extraction. Winch line stores energy, but not as much as a dynamic strap.

by **The Roadie** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 12:02 pm

EEk. Could have lost your fuel tank as well. I really enjoy the peace of mind from my tank armor.

by **bartonmd** » Mon Jun 04, 2012 12:11 pm

The Roadie wrote:EEk. Could have lost your fuel tank as well. I really enjoy the peace of mind from my tank armor.

The edge next to the drive shaft, and its think metal guard are scraped up, but nothing I'd consider leaking. My OEM plastic gas tank skid has done very well for me, and has some nice scratches and gouges in it... I'm glad I have it, for sure, and will probably put a steel one on it at some point...

Mike

Offroad Trailblazers and Envoys