2021 NorCal Wheeling, Camping, and Fuckery Thread

Homie, can you see the dust?

 

That is the Cisco Grove way. You get to a Y intersection. Straight is off to Fordyce and left goes to the peak. Something like that. Near the top is an awesome stop that has a view of that whole area.

 

Oh yeah. I been there. Love it.

sorry got confused. Thought you were saying that the other way was easier to get up to the peak.

 

Alot longer down cisco grove. Soni think. But yea, alot easier for sure

 

Yea the smoke was bad this weekend. Rolled in Friday morning. Was totally clear driving up Thursday evening.
Wheeled down to the springs, but bailed on camping there because it was gnarly

 

Dusy was fun. Some technical issues but I’ll post that later.

Stoked to see @otis24 at the end of the trail

Cool flatbed camper! I’m glad I finally got to see it in person.

 

It was good seeing you too! I thought there was a small chance I'd run into you guys there.

 

Recommendations Needed:

Since much of California, and the typical wheeling areas, are either on fire, or under a cloud of smoke from a fire, I'm thinking about heading up or down the coast.

Does anyone have any good trail+camping recommendations near Mendocino/Sea Ranch/Gualala/etc?

 

A lot of the area up there is private property. But if you look at a map and head east out of Fort Bragg, there’s a forest road that goes through the forest. Just note there are a couple of small communities back there and much of the land is owned by the lumber company. You’ll want a map. And watch out for grows.

 

https://sfbay.craigslist.org/nby/cto/d/sausalito-2004-lexus-gx-470/7364351990.html

Is this a good deal? My buddy is looking for a gx

 

Rebuilt engine due to overheating would worry me

 

yupppp

 

We're fixin to do some wheelin!

 

Where y’all headed?

 

This weekend?

 

@theesotericone here you go! I don’t have many pictures and almost none of the breakage unfortunately. I was a little stressed. Anyway…

So we started out last Friday 8/6 from Courtright reservoir and before we made it to Chicken rock or the beginning of the trail my power steering starts howling and burning the fluid. We pull over and notice the level is low so I add some and it immediately flows out again. Turns out a fitting on my steering box was loose (my brother uses the same four bolt saginaw box and his was loose too! Just not as bad as mine). So I tightened it up and howling went away after a few turns!
Chicken rock and the gate at the trail:


So we keep wheeling until we get to Thompson Hill and we stop at the base for a snack. After which my Dad drives about three feet and for some reason directly into a boulder and breaks a bolt holding the heims joint at the end of his tie rod. It was a high angle heims and required a 5or 6” half inch bolt. We scrounged around and found a four in half inch bolt and a regular left threaded heims. Which worked! So off we went up Thompson. Which was great but did require a little winching for a few of us. I was messing around though and took a line I didn’t scope out and turtled on a huge rock. Fun!

Then we made it to the top and camped at the site with the pit toilet.


The next morning we set off again down the super twisty road at a leisurely pace.
Tried to catch the five turns in about four hundred feet here. All four of us could have almost high fives here as we passed each other.


Also lots of squeezes


we made it to east lake which would be an awesome place to camp but we really wanted to camp at Ershim lake and spend two nights there with some down time.

So almost right after we left east lake my Jeep over heats and dies. What?? So we pop the hood and I try to get my low speed fan to kick on and it slowly dies out. Must be a low battery. So we start checking wires and one of the guys reaches down to check the alternator fitting and comes up with a totally melted burned up wire and says “here’s your problem”. Damn.

So we try and pull the burned up fitting off the alternator but the post is super loose and we can’t get the tiny 12 mm but off without fear of breaking the post. So we pull the alternator off and the insulator around the post looks like someone took a torch to it. Melted and the fitting from the wire looks like a goober. So after some penetrating oil and finess we finally get the nut loose and are able to pull the end cap off the alternator. Fortunately the diodes looked like they got hot but were intact. So we put it back together with a loop crimp on the alternator wire that was way too big and some washers then wrapped the whole thing in extreme tape (which is great stuff: insulates, heat resistant and can hold up to 600psi).

We figured the loose stud was rattling around and arced one too many time until the wire melted. Did not blow any fuses amazingly enough.

Checked the fuses and had someone jump me. It worked! For about a minute until I blew a 50amp alternator fuse. Shoot. Thought maybe it was due to the jump or something so I put in my spare and promptly blew that too. Aaaahhh.

So we figure we’re about 4 miles from Ershim so let’s swap batteries so someone can charge mine while I drive like a bat out of hell to see how far 12volts will get me.

So while all this is going on my brother decides he should check the heli-coiled stud he installed on his D60 leaf spring plate a couple days before we left for our trip. Still right so he checks the other one… sheered at the top of his cast iron diff. So no way to get it out. He still has the ubolt and one good stud so he figures time to go easy and ratchet strap!


He made it over half the trail with this fix!

I proceed to drive as hard as I ever want to drive and made it all the way to Ershim about 15 minutes before anyone else. Still had 11.6volts left in my borrowed battery.

My dad pulls up and says his alternator gauge has been tacked out charging my battery the whole afternoon and it still wasn’t fully charged. I must have totally drained it.

We set up camp and decide to check my electrical again in the morning and make our way out. Which meant no down day but at least we’d have two full days to limp out.


So we go to sleep and I’m kind of stressed about what could be a very long couple of days… After some sleep and a lot of tossing and turning I get up and my dad is already packing his gear and says I’ve had epiphany (he being God fearing, attributes to divine intervention).

We leads me over to my fuse panel and points out a second 50amp fuse slot that has always been empty for me and says there’s your problem. You have a motor out of a grand Cherokee which had lots of electrical doodads so Chrysler at the time put on a big alternator and utilized two fuses. While a bottom of the line wrangler didn’t need much to run so they put a small alternator and only bothered with one 50amp fuse. So when I ran my winch on day one it drew my battery down pretty low then to add on my high out put electric fan which pulls some major amperage the over sized alternator decided it could keep up with it all (which it probably could) but not through one lousy 50amp fuse. Tada! We found the issue.

But I was out of 50amp fuses…

It turns out that when my dad was working on installing the electric fans he chose to use some fuseable wire instead of fuses! So snipped some off and made the fan one shorter but with a coupe male spades we had a fuse.

All the while Gregg (“here’s your problem guy”) decides to make another fuse with some 12 gauge wire and a couple of male spades and wraps the whole thing in extreme tape. He figures the smaller gauge wire should melt right around 50amp or so or will melt my wire loom. Hard to tell.

So I plug in the fuseable wire and started the Jeep (remember the battery was almost full so the alternator didn’t wind out like before when it was drained). We checked the draw with the headlights and the fan and the heater fan and only got up to 44amps!

My dad and I decide that two is better than one and we plug Gregg’s fuse in too!

In all their glory


It totally worked! Made it all the way to the parts store in Madeira where I promptly bought 3 fuses and replaced them and a spare.

So after that it was smooth sailing and I was able to relax a little (still slightly afraid the alternator would fail) and enjoy some good scenery and wheeling!



Peaking out at 10100feet. The whole trail is above 8000’



Dropping down into Keizer pass. Crazy hard part of the trail. This is the s turn I almost rolled end over on. Thankfully full width axles provide lots of unsprung weight!






And out!




Unfortunately that is not all…

While we were airing up my Dad noticed that at some point he had broke both front leaf spring main leafs! And we still had about thirty miles back to Shaver where his truck and trailer were. So I have some clamps someone gave me for this but usually we use two clamps on one broken main leaf. He had to use just one clamp per front spring. Needless to say it made for a nerve racking drive with frequent stops to check the clamps. He made it.

And there is the trip report!

 

That sounds like the perfect Dusy trip. I've never run it and had someone in the group not break something. Usually multiple things. lol

 

No doubt but definitely more carnage than we’re used too.

Also ignore all the typos and grammar. I did that post on my phone…

Definitely is one of my top three wheeling trips.

Other crazy thing is we never saw another rig. We had the whole trail to ourselves all weekend!

 

Have any of you guys been at Genoa peak in South Lake Tahoe? Is it worth going? Thinking of going tommo.

 

There was a bigger group of like 6-7 jeeps maybe 30 minutes in front of you guys. nice timing