Idaho BS thread in the PNW

Looks like a sweet trail. would love to check that out some time!

 

Kind of starting to be an annual beginning of October trip for me. I'll likely post back here in about a year's time.

 

Literally can't stand irresponsible sxs owners. Makes my blood boil, they ruin it for everyone else. We don't even like taking ours out anymore on mountain roads for fear of someone ripping around a blind corner and taking us out. The hills are changing.. I'm about ready to move to central ID.

 

Just did Wilson creek on my f800gs and I definitely shouldn’t have been there. But visiting silver city was nice earlier in the day.

 

@m3bassman you safe back in Idaho? You had an adventure Sunday?

 

I am made it to work today but still trying to recover mentally. Really took it out of me more than I realized. It's a fun story so I'll share it here.

On Friday when I cold started my car (Mercedes) I heard a grind from under the hood. I popped it and sure enough the top idler was making noise. My Toyota has had idlers make noise before so I assumed (wrongly) that I just had a job to do when I got home. It wasn't gonna be a problem and I can address it when I get home.

Sunday, I wake up, noise sounds the same and drop my brother off at KSLC around 5:45 and start my journey home. At 7:45 the AMG throws a battery warning on the dash. I tug on the steering and instantly know that pulley seized and ate the belt, as I had lost power steering too. I didn't realize the belt also drove the water pump. So when I look down at the gauges again I see the temp is 250*F. So I hit the shoulder and shut it down, 275 miles from home. With my mind racing about what my options are I get out to confirm what happened. Coolant is spitting out of the overflow and of course there's a shredded belt still intertwined in the pulleys. Suns not up yet but it's going to be a long day.

A couple tries on the phone and I reach my wife in Boise and explain the situation. She gets ready to come pick me up but I brush that off as that means we would leave my car and that's not a great solution. She suggests a uhaul and we use her Range Rover to drag the mess back, brilliant! So I get online and look in the N SLC area and there are no trailers available. I look in Boise and one place has one. Perfect! Order it online and an hour later it's hooked and booked headed east.5 hours later the AMG is on the trailer behind the most unlikely of rescue vehicles.


I start the drive home and it is actually really impressive how the range Rover towed. The suspension auto adjusted for the weight, it didn't sway, it had plenty of power, and stopped well. At 65mph is was getting 16 mpg. I was actually really impressed. At 100 miles into the journey we hit construction, so the 4 lanes divided became 2 lane oncoming traffic. As we were about to exit the construction zone and just after we filtered back away from oncoming traffic, hell broke loose.

I feel the trailer jolt and sway, I look in the mirror to see a tire in bounding along the road towards the median. I keep it steady and point to the shoulder. The trailer brakes lock up and before I get to a stop in my mirror I see a billow of white smoke and flames.

My wife, who was awaken by this commotion is confused and all I can mumble is we have a problem and we are on fire. I grab the closest thing to me, a cherry Coke and jump out of the truck and work to put out the brake assemble that has flames shooting out of it. Took the whole bottle but it was out.

I then try to figure out what came to be of the rogue tire. Last I saw was it in the median. I'm trying to figure out my best frogger strategy to go look for it, knowing at this point it's red hot and cold start a fire. My wife points to a tire near the fence to our right in the ditch, suggesting it's ours and at first I dismiss it, knowing what I had seen. But frogger seemed pretty deadly so I figured I should at least check and sure enough the tires was ours, still smoldering from the heat. It was so hot I couldn't even touch the tire, smoke was coming from it, and the bearing material, was welded to the spindle.

I was able to then move the shitshow further right, off the pavement and settle down for what would end up a 5 hour ordeal. Don't forget I had already been stranded for 6 hours at this point...

Contacted uhaul, and while in that situation you want help immediately, it took some time to reach a solution. It took some pressing for the uhaul representative to understand the tire, was fine. The wheel was fine. This was not something they could repair on the road and they needed to send more than a tire truck. But they did listen and eventually found someone to haul us the remaining 150 miles home.

So there we sat for 5 hours, got to meet the local ISP trooper, listen to music, and just pass the time. At least this time I wasn't alone. We broke this time at 4pm and didn't have the wrecker there until almost 5 hours later.


B&W Wrecker dispatched out of Caldwell and put the car on the bed, and with the weight of the car off the trailer was able to tow it without it dragging. (I tried myself but wasn't possible) some friends stopped by when the wrecker and I were loading the car and dropped off some much needed beer.


Once the car and trailer were loaded we took off for Boise. Got home around 11 and then I had to stay up until the wrecker dropped the trailer and then brought me my car. By the time I went to bed it was after 1am. The range Rover, a true hero in this story. Uhaul owned up and paid for the tow and didn't try to push the blame on us. And the AMG is in the garage getting torn down and parts ordered.


As we transition to the present I do have it apart and it's clear that the bearing seized and the plastic pulley was obliterated.
I will get parts on order and should be right as rain with one hell of a story/experience to show for it. All of this from a $26 part failing...

 

And I thought your off-road adventure stories were good. This is one for the record books. Glad you made it home safely.

 

Thanks, it was a weird thing of a lot of things happening in a few moments followed by excruciating long periods of nothing happening at all. It was good timing on the tire falling off, 30 seconds prior and we would have had oncoming traffic next to us and a lawsuit in our hands I'm sure. Got lucky, sometimes that's all you can wish for.

 

Oh yeah that’s quite the conundrum. I was fallowing along on instagram. Glad nobody was hurt, and nothing damaged on your end other then bearing… and maybe a year or two off your life.

 

Time will tell on if I hurt the AMG. It got hot, 250F which is getting into a danger zone for aluminum block and heads. I never got a temp warning so hopefully it's ok. Was running a bit rough yesterday but that may be due to the low coolant.

 

Just spent an hour and a half installing an Amazon "leather" seat cover on my passenger side. I was probably being overly cautious about the airbag wires... now I don't want to do the driver side, haha.

 

I keep the failed bearing race on my desk at work as a reminder of colossal failure from a cheap link in a system. Cars still wounded, power steering took a hit and so hopefully I'll get the new pump in this week. Then I'll be able to test it out for health.

 

@m3bassman hey your pretty familiar with 3rd gen 4Runners right? Do you know how possible/hard it would be to swap a button shift t-case to a j-shift would be?

 

Thought I would drop into the local TW thread to introduce myself. Just moved to the McCall/Cascade area from central Texas and the built rigs I have seen every day casually driving around is so incredible, I feel at home here in my clapped out 04'.

Lucky I have a garage for the winter to prep for the spring!

PS: Anyone local need mobile welding or design? I can fab stuff like a mad man and I need friends.

 

Pretty sure it's a bolt on swap but I'm not certain how the 4wd computer would handle it. I'm guessing that the position switch on the j shift serves the same purpose as the push button. Once that switch is closed it will tell the ADD to switch over.

We'll definitely have to meet up. I'm in Cascade work at Tam. Not much for technical wheeling around here but snow wheeling is upon us.

Sunset was incredible on top of west mountain last week.

 

Sure, let's get together and grab coffee/beer, I work for myself half the week so I'm available frequently. We have been here about 2 weeks and I am itching to get out on a trail and explore. I'm not even looking for a difficult trail just something scenic.

 

I believe one is electric, the jshift is electro-pnumatic. That would be the biggest hurdle to figure out. Would bolt in otherwise as it's the same mechanically.

 

What is pneumatic about a j shift?

 

I don't drink either of those but we can still meet up sometime. I'll send you a pm. Check out Lick Creek Summit out of McCall if you want something scenic. Pretty incredible view at the top. I don't think there's enough snow yet to keep you from getting there yet.