What an awesome trip! Good clean run on Green Day and Upper Helldorado, climbed the last waterfall most of the way, till I got hung up at the very end anyway. Had a great day in pritchett with a bunch of good wheelers, had a good excuse to excercise the faster driving skills (couldn't touch the coilovers at the end) and even got to watch the sunset on the spike which is one of my favorite views. I would have been fine just going home from there but herding everyone out is part of the game too. It was kind of fun emptying the tool bags and boxes to find stuff to keep Keith's pinion out of the oil filter. Even better that it worked so well. It saved everyone else a LOT of hassle and wasn't a big deal for us.
It was good hanging out in camp with everybody too, it amazes me that it's so nice to see people we only see once or twice a year.
Overall way fun.
I'm sure some may know but the pics will probably be up here soon, my diif decided that my oil filter needed some loving. Oil filter wanted no part of it. We tried a trail fix didn't work, it was a classic though. Brandon went back to town four hour round trip, got me two more with Stephan's help, both of them came back. The new filter lasted about 25 yards or so before it got some lovin that it did not want. So new bump stops out of two sockets a piece of 2x6 and a branch of a pine tree later and very slow crawling and like four hours and a flat tire we got out.
They went totally out of they way to rescue my butt, they didn't have too and I really appriciate it.
I think Dave owes Brandon whatever they bet on cuz we still beat his group out
Thanks to Scott and Steph for taking my kids out also
Do need to run the trail again to see what it looks like in the daylight
Keith was kind enough to invite me along with him.
You've, all seen most of the trucks that were there, so I'll not waste bandwidth with more of them.
Here is pics of the breakdown.
**** that front diff was hungry! it ate two oil filters both within 25 yards of each other. The mayhem that was the fix...

The drive down following Keith in the van
The van's oil pressure at 60
MPH on the drive down.
"Oil pressure? We don't need no stinking oil pressure!" (notice upper left oil gauge is bottomed out)
And now for the infamous Oil filter repair!
Then, that failed, leaked worse than the original hole!


after 4 + hours of watching others go by, and asking if any one had an oil filter, to no avail. Stephan, out of the kindness of his heart, (apparently broke every speed limit law on and off the road), returned with two oil filters and a gallon of oil.
The diff was still hungry after that repair failed.25 yards later after replacing the bad filter with one of the new ones, same thing happens again! (Imaging the sinking hearts at that point in time.)

Somehow Stephan somehow was able to keep smiling, which is more than I could say. Stephan broke out the Brain, and offered up the also infamous spindle nut-turned bumpstop!
Plus the wood block and metal strip and bailing wire.
Pics that didn't make it, were of the pieces of small diameter tubing that Stephan had me hose clamp between the overload spring and the rest of the springs on the drivers side. This effectively ended the spring wrap that was causing the death of oil filters.
We drove out with it that way and eventually caught up with the second group that was apparently lost. Stephan shadowed us to make sure we made it out.
My first BB did not burn me out. in fact I got a bunch of cool ideas for the Crew cab, AKA Dirt Nap.
Good times!

