Alabama thread!

I'm planing on keeping this one in stock form. It's my third Tacoma and fourth Toyota truck. Of course, I'm planning on a brush guard on this one. Some real good AT tires as well.

 

Depends on what you want to get into. I did Chicken Corners (easy trail, great views), Fins 'n' Things (easier than it looks. great place to learn just how capable your truck is. pants-crapping inducing grades, both ascent and descent.), and 7 Mile Rim.

Here's a list with good descriptions:
http://cruisemoab.com/trail-descriptions.asp

Here's how they rate them, and the recommended equipment.
http://cruisemoab.com/trail-rating-system.asp

Trails are rated as a function of the most difficult obstacle. Some have bypasses, others don't. Aggressive tires really are not necessary. The terrain out there is mostly what they call "slick rock" and it's almost like an 50 or 80 grit sandpaper. It sticks like glue. With our trucks, air down to 14psi or so, and you just motor on along. I saw a couple folks in FJ60's wheel stand on grades (ascending), and those aren't exactly a terribly short wheelbase. It's grippy. I'd say that Fins would be a good introduction into wheeling on slick rock for those who haven't done it. It's shocking how different it is from anything we have in the SE US.

 

hey guys im gonna wait 2 more days before posting all the stuff i got for sale in the buy sale thread and craigslist so if you want something let me know before i sell it on there!

oh and i forgot to mention in the last post i have a set of alcan add a leafs too

 

lockers front and rear hopefully, sliders and winch. A fab shop just opened in chelsea so I'm gonna check to see what they can do for me.

 

Thanks for the links. Those were very helpful. I was thinking about starting out with an easy trail or two to get used to the different type of wheeling and then move up to a few of the harder ones. I was thinking golden spike and hells revenge. What do you think about that? And then possibly running the rubicon depeding on how long moab takes us.

 

My dad's and mine. 2000 on left is dads.

 

^^ Lookin good! Hope to see y'all at the next meet!

 

welcome. truck looks good minus the front plate... lol only joking

 

Yeah, I definitely recommend cutting your teeth on something not too daunting to learn how the vehicle behaves on the terrain out there. I can't tell you how many times I watched the truck in front of me (Fully locked FZJ80, and a fully locked FJ60 most of the time) go up something and thought, "Nooooo f'ing way I'm making that," and then made it through. That was definitely the coolest thing, learning more about the capability of the truck.

Yeah yeah, these are Jeeps... didn't want to spend time trying to find 'Yotas... these were the top hits on youtube.

This is the obstacle where a couple of folks yanked the front tires off the ground in FJ60's. It's tough to tell exactly how steep it is. The only thing you see through the windshield is sky. Set up your line, then pull straight up it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwE0Zxt-Aqo

This is more of Fins that has a pretty representative sample of the type of terrain:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q0MLNtX_bw

Hell's Revenge had some obstacles that were off limits due to our BLM permit. The Escalator and Hell's Gate were both closed. Not sure if they're open with other permits or what the deal is. I honestly don't know how the permit system works with the BLM trails. I didn't run Hell's Revenge though. I do know that if you run the gate, you want someone who has spotted it (successfully) before. From what I've heard, it feels good, but then all hell breaks loose really quickly if you're off line.

 

Just bought a Detroit Truetrac LSD and gears. The gears are already installed on a complete third member. Should be an easy swap out. Never worked on gears before though. I might come banging on someone's door if any of y'all have experience with them.

 

Kyle's at work, so I'll post a few pictures from the trail ride he and I did on saturday.

The pics don't do a lot of justice, but the trail was pretty damn narrow and kyles truck with the high clearance bumpers is about as long of a vehicle that could do the trail. There were even some spots where a locker would have been nice.

Here is a pic showing how close kyle got to the ground even with the high clearance rear. About an inch from dragging his ass



Heres the front of that same crossing



A tree was down in the trail at this point so we had to make our own bypass. A locker would have saved a lot of time and multi-point turns. In this picture, kyle had to do his best to turn hard left off the trail.



The first exit off the trail (about a quarter way through the trail) is pretty much impassible. It's eroded down the center so you have no choice but to follow the rut, and there is a drop off from a pipe. Here is the angle it put kyle at.









You used to be able to get onto the trail from this part, but I would highly doubt any of the trucks here could now. At some point kyle and I are going to hike more of the second portion of the trail to see how doable it is. It gets even more narrow and windier through trees. I'd say we did about 2 miles and it took us about 2 hours. If the rest of the trail was similar to the first part, and there was an exit at the end, if would probably be a 5-6 hour trail. If there isn't an exit and you have to turn back around, it might take a while longer.

 

Looks like a fun trail.

 

^^^Looks like fun!

 

I'll say this.. I felt worthless for getting such bad pin strips at the lane.. But the bin strips I got from that trail feel more like a badge of honor! It took some fancy driving and a fuck it kinda attitude to get out there at the end! Like he said.. The pictures really don't do it justice.. I'm going to see if I can get the videos up...

 

Just curious, from the pics it looks like you could have put a tire on either side of the rut and made it all the way down with less off camber work. Was it wider than the wheel track at one point?

Armchair quarterback is the easy job. I'm not trying to say there was a better way to run it, just more of a thinking-out-loud kinda wondering.

 

Kyle, you have a tail light out.

 

He slid in. It was that nasty surface slimey mud. The kind that as soon as you step in it, you have about 2 inches of mud on your feet.

I would be curious to go back and see if you could bridge it. Either way though, If you try to bridge it and you weren't as high off the ground as kyle, you'd better have sliders. As soon as I saw we were about to drop I was just imagining kyle flipping out when he landed on the door side.

I noticed that too haha.

 

I gotcha, yeah the amount of mud caked in the tread vs what it looked like did not equal up in my head. I was like, geez, it doesn't look that muddy.

It's amazing how much some rain can change the difficulty of the terrain.

 

WOW
just got here and had no idea this forum let alone this state representation was this huge. If you guys can post 256 pages over a few years then why hasn't someone come up with a huge in state rally that we can all come together once a year
1. Clean the girl up and show up
2. Stay with the truck during the rally ( six hour deal) and have all your paper work --- accessories where you bought the stuff ----what works and what doesn't-----the cost of stuff and so on.
3. Break the rally down into classes or mod classes or simply by year model.
4. Invite some vender's and over time it just might grow ---- who knows
5. Ya just won't know till someone pulls the trigger.

HEY PM ME WITH ANY IDEAS OR IF THERE IS SOMTHING LIKE THIS GOING.

 

meh, its more like 15 or so folks chatting that have gotten this thread so long. Hell, our meet pages end up being like 70 pages long or so.