Northern Virginia Roll Call

i'm down.

is anyone planning any trips this weekend?

 

Samesies

 

My excitement for the day. Doing an FJ transfer case swap into the truck. The idea behind it is to totally eliminate electronics from the 4wd system, making it manual engagement and thus more reliable.

 

That’s a pretty chunk of aluminum and a nice bench as well.

 

It’s a hell of a bench at 8’ long and 30” deep. Weighs like 300 lbs and I love it.

 

I believe all that shit is the property of @3pooches. You should return it, promptly, before he find out it’s missing!

 

Every 5000 miles with rotation. Just a few pumps until you see grease coming out of the boot. That’s what SPC recommends.

 

Will be looking forward to the write up!

 

The write up will be how to get mad and throw things, because that certainly happened today.

 

I can do either weekend, where ya thinkin?

Do you really want us to answer that?

That sucks, hope you recover quickly!

 

I've already written the book on creative cursing while working on shit. My wife used to get concerned (especially when the kids were young and within earshot) but now she just cracks up. She especially loves it when I curse at imagined car engineers for a perceived bad design with my offerings on how to improve said design.

 

@TacoFMS & I put an fj transfer case in his tacoma a couple of years ago. It wasnt really all that difficult. You may ask him if you're having any trouble.

 

Levels or Sleepy Creek.

 

It’s all back together now. Long story short, I had to reopen the case and the synchro keys fell out. Took me an hour to get them back in a lined up. That’s where the throwing came into play.

 

that sounds like me at work

 

I tried. He refused - and very rudely i might add.

 

That will just make the write up more original and entertaining!

 

I'm in for either weekend. Hoping my backordered spingy bois arrives in time for me to throw them on, otherwise I may have to sit out. On the bright side, skids are done so I could scrape my way though lol

 

I went, but we bailed after about three or four hours. It was my first time off-roading, so mistakes were made. Plus, we brought our five-year-old daugthers with us. One was bored after about two hours and the other was terrified, so they were begging us to go back to the campsite. I finally relented when I misjudged a turn and managed to wedge myself between two trees. Rookie mistake. Between the whining kids, my bruised ego, damaged truck, and incoming rain... I'd had enough. Next time, I'm leaving the kids behind.

1. It sells out very quickly. If anybody wants to go, you've got to jump on it. It's only open to 200 entries, and returnees get first dibs. I get all the emails and will try to remember to post in here when public on sale comes up. I think it's usually in November, but I could be wrong.

2. It's almost exclusively Jeeps. I believe there was one other Tacoma and two or three 4Runners out there... and everything else was a Jeep. So, there was a bit of that typical Jeep superiority complex going on, but it wasn't too bad. I'd love to see more Yotas out there, though.

3. If you run the whole thing, it's 47 miles of trails over two days. The trails are only open for this event, so they're very virgin. Pinstriping is going to happen, no way around it. Lots of water crossings. FWIW, my stock TRDOR handled just about everything. I had to get a tug once coming out of a water crossing where I was plowing the mud on the climb, but even the lifted Wrangler in front of me was bottoming out a bit going up there. Other than that, every issue I had was a rookie mistake. There are a few obstacles that I wouldn't even try, but all the crazy stuff I saw had a bypass. (edit: I heard from others in my group that there was one river crossing that all but two or three of the vehicles in the group had to get winched up. The trail guides are very good about getting that done and keeping the group moving, though.)

All in all, I'll go back. I'm going to try to go next year, if I can figure out a way to leave the kids behind... they're just not ready for that much wheeling yet. I definitely need to get some practice in before I do, though.