Chandler's Battleship of Doom

It's not going to rain...the weather changes so much now im not concerned with it

 

Fender bender and insurance is paying for him another one

 

Haha I know, the weather in the south is stupid.

 

Ah. I thought that was a while ago.

 

It was suppose to rain this past week and never did

 

Was. Took I think 8 weeks to get another

 

Don't know how much I'll hit considering I have to drive it 3 hours home. But I'll watch and ride/spot if needed

 

I'm going to hit some trails in mine. Nothing crazy though cause they're some crazy hard trails there

 

I'll hit all the medium stuff and maybe one or two of the difficult

 

That's about what I was getting with stock gears and 35's. It went down after 4.56's.

 

Going to try, right now I'm not seeing an issue. Hopefully the weather looks alight a day or two out so I'm not driving that way for nothing.

Finally getting my replacement, I made the order right after everyone the black Friday special so that didn't help. But as you can tell its not like I really needed one so I haven't been worried about when it was coming

Damn, yeah I had to try pretty hard to get that much. The usual tank is 13ish mpg, but usually I'm driving either short distances or highway. This driving was all 2 lane country road with trees to block the wind





Okay so now to figure how I want to pick up my bumper. Drive there without a bumper and put it on in the lot, remove the swing out, or throw it on the roof rack and get another hd racket strap

 

can't wait to meet you buddy

 

If it does rain (doubtful) a few of us will be going to WindRock in Tennessee. It's a huge park and I've heard when it rains it doesn't turn into crap. Just food for thought. I'll be going there if it does but I doubt it'll rain

 

I'm going too

 

I plan on hitting that and URE this summer hopefully ha

 

Good deal, yeah I plan on making a little trip out of this so we will see.

 

So decided to attempt to remove the swingout, last time I tried it was pretty difficult and needed help from someone to hit the arm to pop it free. This time it came right off after a couple of wiggles, so I drove out to FedEx to grab my package. Pretty tight squeeze after removing the pallet, huge box thats for sure. Last time I just threw it in the bed and closed the tailgate. But the bumper looks good, the powder is a little different texture wise and had some build up in the recovery mount holes but I'm assuming this is where they were having issue with the powder coat, overall its fine though.

Decided re seat the bead on my factory wheel to see if I could do it with just the compressor. Seated just fine so I ran to a different wall mart and grabbed some nice airsoft BBs to throw in the tires this week for balancing purposes

 

Spent Saturday over at @G.T. place and took care of some odds and ends. I put "balancing beads" in my wheels and we took my truck to grab some food real quick and my steering wheel shook so bad like my front end was going to fall apart, and both of us couldn't figure out why in the world it would have a negative effect. Well eventually I said fuck it I'm taking them out and we probably spent about an hour trying to make shift a vacuum attachment that could fit in the wheel to suck them out haha. Well finally neither of us could figure a way so I figured what ever ill drive home and figure it out, soon as we drive to dinner no more shaking and completely fine Pretty funny stuff tho

Well I planned on hitting up Flat Nasty OR park with @Sacrifice but with the rain I wasn't sure how things would play out especially a park neither of us have been to. Well some Facebook searching turned up that the park is open 24hrs 365 days a year no matter what So around 9 at night we decided to make the drive in the morning and brave the rain. So I headed over to my storage unit to throw the swing out back on so ill have my spare for the following day and grab my recovery gear, and right before I was done I noticed my skid plates were against the wall. So I unwilling got down on the wet ground in the dark to throw the skid plates back on . Got home about 12 and had no idea in the morning that it was daylight savings so I lost an hour of sleep.


Finally we got to the park
IMG_1112 by Chandler Coe, on Flickr

So we decided to stick to the easy trails at first to see how the park is and get a feel for things, well the moderate trail was the closest so we hit up that instead, of course we had to do some poser shots
DSC06041 by Chandler Coe, on Flickr
DSC06044 by Chandler Coe, on Flickr
DSC06049 by Chandler Coe, on Flickr

So after playing around on a couple of trails the easy/moderate trails were a little off when it came to the rating, some easy were harder than the moderates and some moderates were easier than the access road in some areas. Well we decided lets try a hard, it started off as a steep muddy hill down into a ravine which reminded my of Devils Staircase in AZ but only this downhill you are inches away from a dirt wall with roots sticking out and bunch of little rocks, a pinstripe maker thats for sure. Well both of us escaped any serious scratches, and at the bottom of the hill was a nice rock garden waiting for us. Well we thought to take the bypass but said fuck it we have enough gear to get us out, well that turned out to be a big mistake.

DSC06064 by Chandler Coe, on Flickr
So this is the area we got caught up in, huge rocks and trees on both sides make sure you stick to the trail. Well first attempt was putting a tree into his door, like pressing against it. No way we were going that way without some serious damage, so we tried the other side of the larger rock.
IMG_1104 by Chandler Coe, on Flickr
IMG_1105 by Chandler Coe, on Flickr
Well that didn't work With both front tires suspended and only one rear tire touching the ground we had a little bit of an issue. So with the truck being completely stuck we had to break out the winch, first we tried winching forward but finally got pinned on the rock and we weren't going forward anymore. So I hooked up mine and winched him back so we could set the tires in a better place, hoping that would get at least 2 of the tires on the ground. After getting into a good position the truck slides off while going forward causing the drive shaft to get stuck on a rock already putting a nice gash in it So after going through a bunch of options we winched off to the side and used a rock to get over the big ass rock
DSC06053 by Chandler Coe, on Flickr
DSC06050 by Chandler Coe, on Flickr
Finally free at last! below you can see some of the nice marks left behind
DSC06065 by Chandler Coe, on Flickr
So after that ordeal I went back to my truck and took the bypass road because we weren't about to go through that ordeal again. Well getting off the train and onto the bypass is a task in itself and not friendly to longer vehicles
IMG_1107 by Chandler Coe, on Flickr
So I took that picture thinking "hey I could post this and tell people this is why you should have a kick out" Well soon as I got the tree past the kickout it slingshotted into my bedside between the slider and the tire. I just watched that tree bitch slap my truck and now the tree is stuck in-between my slider and tire Well after some spotting and multiple point turns I made it out of that little gap and we took a break
DSC06066 by Chandler Coe, on Flickr
DSC06067 by Chandler Coe, on Flickr
So after that trail we decided to stick to some easy going stuff for a bit, we still got into some fun areas but stayed away from the large rocks haha. Heres some random pictures, If you look under my fuel door you'll see the new addition
DSC06072 by Chandler Coe, on Flickr
DSC06073 by Chandler Coe, on Flickr
DSC06058 by Chandler Coe, on Flickr

Afterwards we grabbed a quick bite to eat before parting ways
IMG_1114 by Chandler Coe, on Flickr
IMG_1115 by Chandler Coe, on Flickr



Bonus picture of a Cobalt dragging a 12 pack of mellow yellow down the highway for reading all that shit

IMG_1116 by Chandler Coe, on Flickr

 

Looks like even with the damage you guys had more fun today than I did.

 

That is awesome