Wyoming B.S. Thread

I have been witness to 4 of these failures. When there is a mounting failure (not a joint failure) of an OE unit, it has always been a situation where at least one bolt was missing.

If you are referring to your most recent incident, IMO your failure was due to losing one bolt first. Even though you had used red loctite on it. Again, IMO, his is a result of the weight and mass of the 35s. I am willing to admit that this can happen to 33s too. In fact, I have seen it, but never when loctite has been used. Not using loctite is user error, a maintenance issue.

The scary part of your most recent failure is, there appears to be no way to prevent it.

And I wasn't talking about Josh's incident. His failure was not with an OE unit.

 

actually...You're both wrong! sorta..


When i got home and was reconciling about all the trip. I remembered a very very bad detail from the summer.

I did NOT put loctite on those bolts.

When i did the new front diff i pulled the CVs which mean the LBJ bolts came out. Of course. I cleaned them up and went to reinstall and ran out of Red loctite. I remember this as my Dad had asked to use it eariler that summer and I was mad he had used up the last bit lol I had to get the truck out of the shop so put it back together and remember thinking "I need to buy more and re do that."

Due to the silly schedule I had this summer of living in MT mostly and then camping with Devin sunday-monday and with only a day to address Frank a week. Plus the over chaos that is my job.....i forgot. I did buy more loctite. But I never re applied it.

They did however get torqued correctly. I did not skip that step which to me says that torquing is NOT the only way to ensure no failure. With loctite though Im confident things will be fine.

So that said.....







The whole thing is totally still my fault!

On the trip I thought I had loctited them. Because I did do the other side. But I didn't.

So good news is you can prevent this from happening still. So no worries there Mike @Digiratus

And Ben, Yes, the bolts failed. But I have no DOUBT in my mind that i did that ledge with only 3 bolts and more than one of those 3 were loose. So of course they let loose at that moment. But bigger tires did NOT contribute to that.

I did. By being stupid.

By not loctite the bolts.

If you think that your truck on 32s in the same situation would have faired better, you are kidding yourself.

 

Mine is off for the winter. Coming through Moab we were loaded down with a bed full of steel and welding gas tanks. No 4WD this trip...

 

Well, honestly, i know i loctited some of the bolts..but i couldn't confirm if i did them all. Least not yet. I'll be ordering new bolts with the new LBJ anyways for both sides so I'll find out later if all the bolts got the goo or not. Oh well. Hard to say when the shit ran out.

Yes definitely. My down fall is lack of time. Wont' be that way ever again as I refuse to live without a shop ever again if i want to keep doing this. Franks biggest problem has been that I never get to tinker on him throughout the week. Its always one day here and there and rushed. Not a good way to maintain any rig. Lucky for me, I think Devin realized that we wouldn't be doing much camping without a place to store the gear and let me keep the trucks working....so thats good haha

this isn't new news for you. I think I mentioned this around the camp fire even at one point in Moab about how I wasn't sure if they did get loctite. And in the photo thread i though I had said i hadn't.

Whatever.

At least some one else i know now has had the problem so Im not the only looser with BJ issues Thanks josh

 

FWIW, if there was every any doubt, this incident along with all of the other negatives regarding what it takes to run larger tires, has ensured I will never run a tire package larger than 33s.

 

again...

Tell how bigger tires made the bolts loose?

Because.....



I think that has more to do with how i drive then the bigger tires. Sure they probably don't help. But they aren't the sole reason and i doubt they make THAT big of a difference. Where all our engineer nerd friends. Crunch some numbers!

 

I actually with Monte on this one.

It has everything to do with upkeep, and very little to do with tire size. I lost/sheared the bolts back in the day when I didn't know better on 265s. Zero issue since.

 

I say this because..well its true. Yes you are 100% right, you do the same trails with 0 issues as does everyone else with me and often they are not that hard.

BUT

I drive faster. Which means all that smaller shit becomes worse for wear on the truck. You yourself know exactly what I mean. Think of when we were going up the pryors(before all the freaking stupid rain) and how rough it was. You yourself admitted to trying to keep up but couldn't. That is of course due to how the truck is built. BUT no matter how you look at it...its the same truck. The LT lets me go faster which really....isn't a great thing considering the rest of the truck Which as far as im concerned is what caused the bolts to loosen up. By going faster i subjected the truck to more vibrations and harder bumps and hits. Thus working the bolts out.

That is why i say that. And i will continue too. Until you can keep up

Two types of hard driving. Rocky technical stuff, of which i think Brett drives WAY harder than most of us, and then hauling ass. Which is what i love to do.

Also..i really want to do the rubicon..

 

huh i missed the CABDR. Must be brand new.

Rubicon isn't just a trail to me though. It looks so freaking gorgeous back there.

 

no doubt. Big ass state. Tons to see.

ID BDR route is up. Looks like it utlizes both the Lolo and Magruder. Naturally.

Wy will be very interesting to me I think. There is just so much wide open BLM you could utilize through the desert on the south half and bring it up to the many mountains in the northwest. I found a book my Dad had in a box called "8,000 miles of dirt roads in Wyoming".


He wouldn't let me take it

Then one day..take a year off and do them all back to back

Looks like you could do the NV and ID one north to south.

That would be a hell of a trip

 

mmm..not sure that is super wise unless by spring you mean june haha You'd probably have to cut out parts of it due to snow.

 

What did I walk into here, guys?

 

That's what I thought! Hey I sold that 4Runner a couple of weeks ago. Had to free up some cash as I'm in a contract to buy some land in MT. Selling the Chevelle tomorrow but I'm paying cash for the land so I got that going on. Your truck is looking good. Where is your sig pic taken from?

 

Ebook version is available here - http://wyomingnaturalist.com/html/dirt/dirt_book.html

 

So long travel is the enemy then? Lol.

 

Which 4runner? And cool. Where abouts are you looking at in MT?

Pretty much haha at least building in stages..much better if you can gusset everything and do it all at once..but who can do that? Not many

 

This one:



Got parts from Digiratus. It was wrecked and the frame was bent so I resurrected it from the junkyard.

The property is north of Libby in Lincoln County, about 3 miles from Lake Koocanusa.