We're always messing with each other on the trail with stickers, dildo magnets or anything else to poke fun at each other. This year I bought a bunch of gay magnets and I stuck them on a few rigs at the trailhead that day. One pictured here
It was around 2pm at this point, maybe a little later and we planned to run the whole trail from Eagle to Meadow so we knew it would be dinner time or later by the time we made it back to camp. Somewhere around sunrise hill the buggy started to missfire again, caused by some sort of ongoing injector issue he was having. He cleaned them the day before and it was running fine but it acted up again, down a couple cylinders by the sound of it. The K5 smoked another relay, it needed a 50 amp and we only had 30's so it kept blowing them.
About a mile before WH1 I hit a boulder with my front diff which stopped the truck in it's path. I didn't think too much about it until we got 100 yards ahead and the truck started missfiring and died at the top of an off camber obstacle. The truck wouldn't start and I was running tail gunner so I radio'd ahead. I thought it was the fuel pump so I popped the hatch, opened up the pressure side and fuel sprayed out. Definitely not fuel so I started to think something got knocked loose when I hit that rock earlier. I went around and checked all the wires on the engine, relays, PCM plugs, battery terminals etc. and couldn't find anything. By this time a couple trucks came up from behind so my buddies pulled me out of the way. I noticed a CEL on my howell harness was lit so I went to grab my scan tool however I couldn't find it, my dumbass left it in the backseat of the Ram. Two of the other rigs in our group were at WH1 with the Nor Cal Crawler club so we radio'd up to see if they had a scan tool, and they did. Shortly thereafter we hooked up the scan tool to find misfire codes. I also found no rpm signal when I was cranking so I thought it might be the crank position sensor. Every sensor on this engine was replaced with new AC Delco parts and every sensor from the original engine was kept as trail spares. It's getting dark at this point but I found the old dirty crank position sensor in an open sandwich bag so we decided it was best to try and swap that out, right? Tyler sat in the engine department with a 10mm ratcheting box end and I was under the truck guiding the wrench onto the bolt head. It's a real bitch to get too, no doubt, but doable....
Everyone in the group was expecting the truck to fire up but it didn't. No change but I noticed the voltage was dipping in the 11's during cranking so we hooked up jumper cables. No dice. More googling, phone calls to the tuning wizards and they all thought the CPS should have fixed it and they questioned if the old sensor was good. I had a video of the engine running and the seller seemed legit but you never know.....
At this point it was around 9pm, everyone was getting tired and we had several hours of wheeling ahead of us including 5 winch hills. The decision was to tow my rig to WH1 so it was safe overnight with the Nor Cal Crawler club and come back tomorrow with a fresh outlook and parts.
Towing my dead pig truck around hair pins without steering and up obstacles was a challenge to say the least. We started with the K5 and a kinetic robe and added the CJ7 in front of the K5 after it failed to pull me up a hill with boulders and loose rock. Somewhere on the hill climb the K5 battery tray loosened up that was relocated near the rear passenger seat. The truck died but we figured out a temp solution for the battery, tightened the terminals and moved on. Eventually made it to WH1 with raw hands and sore forearms from trying to keep the truck on the trail as I bounced off rocks
Luckily the K5 had two open seats so we jumped in there and headed for camp.
to be continued.....
Called ahead to the buggy and asked them to add a propane bottle to our order.
