Desert Trip V: Canyonlands Maze District

[r3dd0g]

The issue with the 205 is common, especially on high traction surfaces like slickrock. Basically you get differential torque between the front and rear wheels and the 205 gets stuck in gear. Sometimes if you shift from forward to reverse and blip the throttle (or reverse to forward) you can get one of the axles to disengage.

It isn't as much of a problem in a chain driven case due to the slack in the chain.

 

[Larry]

Love seeing your trip reports. If you have time and desire, it would be cool to see a more detailed map of these sections that you are posting pics of (not sure if your spot system makes that easy to do or not).

Thanks for sharing!

-Jacob

Cool They're fun to post afterwards to recount the good memories.

This is about as close as getting a detailed map can get. You can zoom in to get the lay of the land and see where some pictures were taken. It would be a huge deal to figure out where exactly all the pictures go. There is a way to do it with geotabbing with SPOT but with running several cameras and phones that are domiciled in all timezones it makes it hard to get all the times to line up correctly. My eastern time zone work phone pictures put everything two hours a head while my buddy's California camera runs everything one hour behind. Makes for a mess syncing geotab pictures.

 

[Larry]

The issue with the 205 is common, especially on high traction surfaces like slickrock. Basically you get differential torque between the front and rear wheels and the 205 gets stuck in gear. Sometimes if you shift from forward to reverse and blip the throttle (or reverse to forward) you can get one of the axles to disengage.

It isn't as much of a problem in a chain driven case due to the slack in the chain.

I’ve been running 205’s for over 25 years and this one is the worst to shift yet. The 205 I am running now is a 1986ish round pattern and I’ve read the later 205’s were not synchronized. Not sure if that is true to not but it seems to make sense as this SOB won’t even go into 4hi when the truck is rolling. It just grinds. My older 205’s would go into 4 hi at any speed and would even drop in to 4 lo on a slow roll. This one….nope. It’s a sumbish and even more of a sumbish the warmer it gets. Sometimes I think the twin stick just exaggerated it for some reason. I need to do some research to confirm these late 205’s do not have synchro’s. If that is true, I’m going to yank it back out and snag the synchro’s out of one of the other older 205’s I have laying around. This one pisses me off!

 

[ekajkrats]

I definitely understand the complexities when having several cameras. Even having the option to have them inserted is pretty dang cool.

And that interactive map is awesome! Thanks.

 

[r3dd0g]

I’ve been running 205’s for over 25 years and this one is the worst to shift yet. The 205 I am running now is a 1986ish round pattern and I’ve read the later 205’s were not synchronized. Not sure if that is true to not but it seems to make sense as this SOB won’t even go into 4hi when the truck is rolling. It just grinds. My older 205’s would go into 4 hi at any speed and would even drop in to 4 lo on a slow roll. This one….nope. It’s a sumbish and even more of a sumbish the warmer it gets. Sometimes I think the twin stick just exaggerated it for some reason. I need to do some research to confirm these late 205’s do not have synchro’s. If that is true, I’m going to yank it back out and snag the synchro’s out of one of the other older 205’s I have laying around. This one pisses me off!

None of the 205s have syncros. I thought you were just having issues getting it out of 4wd after you were in 4wd. When you're rolling in 2wd and you pop it in 4wd there isn't need for a a syncro as the front driveshaft will be spinning the front output gear the same speed as the rear output. The only reason for grinding there would be if you were attempting to do that in a turn or if you have different gear ratios/tire sizes front to rear (or unlocked hub/hubs, broken shaft etc that would make the front driveshaft not spin at the same speed as the rear).

Shifting from high to low or low to high will require you to stop, put it in neutral/park (or push in the clutch if you are manual) and shift. Attempting to do this while moving or whithout putting it in neutral will cause grinding.

 

[Larry]

None of the 205s have syncros. I thought you were just having issues getting it out of 4wd after you were in 4wd. When you're rolling in 2wd and you pop it in 4wd there isn't need for a a syncro as the front driveshaft will be spinning the front output gear the same speed as the rear output. The only reason for grinding there would be if you were attempting to do that in a turn or if you have different gear ratios/tire sizes front to rear (or unlocked hub/hubs, broken shaft etc that would make the front driveshaft not spin at the same speed as the rear).

Shifting from high to low or low to high will require you to stop, put it in neutral/park (or push in the clutch if you are manual) and shift. Attempting to do this while moving or whithout putting it in neutral will cause grinding.

Like I say, I've been wheeling 205's more than half my life. This blue truck alone has had 4 other 205's behind various other engines and transmissions and this is the only one I've ever had that will not shift into 4 hi while rolling. All the others would even shift into 4 low on a very slow roll. I wonder of the ORD modified shift rail (or my install/tcase rebuild) for FWD has anything to do with it not shifting right. I don't think legs and feet were intended to be required to shift this damn thing


Thursday continued: Doll House to Hans Flat

So a couple hours after we got past the slow moving technical part of the trail the landscape opens up to a wide open sandy savanna where you can really move along for a while. It was nice to actually move faster than 3 MPH for a change

At the end of the sandy road is the cross road to either take the trail out to Hite just how we came in or go Right and head out through Hans Flat. Since none of us have done the Hans Flat route before we figured we should do it and see what it is all about. 17 more miles to Hans Flat, which will take a few hours. While the trail from here on out is not really technical there are some washouts in the crook of the switchbacks that are a bit hairy, many random boulders that rolled into the trail and the trail gets steeper, and Steeper and STEEPER until your sphincter starts pinching holes in the seat as you approach the top. This route basically brings you straight up a huge cliff wall.

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Views along the way up[/FONT]

View from the driver’s seat. Doesn’t look bad in the picture but was pretty interesting at the moment.

Stopped for pictures several times on the climb up and out

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This was my copilot for the week. She is actually my mother in-law! My wife is not into the outdoors nor is my father in-law but she loves to go wheeling and camping. She is also pretty easy to have around for a mother in-law….even cooks and cleans! [/FONT]

At this point the Doll House is now about 6 hours behind us. It is wayyy down there a couple tiers down and out of sight.

This is just one of at least 80 to 100 switchbacks to get to the top. This was well before the trail got so crazy steep.

On to the videos of the climb… These are long videos. Probably longer than most of our attention spans so I’ll give you some hints at what times to speed the videos up to.

The beginning of the climb starts off innocent enough. It is just steep as hell which the GoPro doesn’t serve justice as to the angle. Pretty long boring video actually

[FONT=&quot]Tight hairpin at 2:15, 4:45 and another at 8:15. The one at 4:45 my bumper got pretty friendly with the wall. [/FONT]
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This one is the last one as we climbed out. We finally crest the top of the climb at the 4:45 mark

My buddy Ty snapped this picture as we crested the top. You can actually see him in the GoPro above taking the picture

Views from the top. Some of the trail we came out on

Man, am I glad we didn’t try to pull our little off-road trailer up this route back in 2010 when we did the Doll House and Ekker. This is just a glimpse of a few of the switchbacks. There are tons of them!

More later….

 

[y5mgisi]

Damn dude! Just so pretty!

 

[r3dd0g]

That is awesome! I would love to do those trails someday.

 

[Larry]

Finishing up with Thursday.

So we arrive at the top of the Canyon at Hans Flat and stopped by the Rangers Station to say hi and let them know we were out of the area. As usual with Ranger’s Stations it was closed. We were also bummed there wasn’t a place to dump trash as all of our Trasharoo’s were plumb full. No surprise though as the Ranger’s Station to the highway is still 40 some miles of a dirt path which is probably why they don’t have a trash dumpster around.

From that point on out it is all BLM land so we can camp pretty much wherever we want so we peddled down the road for a few miles to a trail that shot off to the South that looked like a promising place to stay the night. At this point we said our goodbyes to two of the wagons that moved on out. My buddy Bill with the white Dodge wanted to head back home to Pueblo while my buddy with the green Jeep headed out to Boulder, UT to spend some time with his brother. While we aired up the Dodge and Jeep my buddy Ty took off down the trail to spot us a camp site meanwhile the clouds were building thick and fast with lightening all around.

We ended up in cow pasture. There was cow crap everywhere! Quite a bit different than where we’ve been the last few days! Much higher altitude too.

Dinner and party time!

View to the west before the sky opened up and soaked us

Friday morning: Hans Flat to Moab

We packed up pretty early but not early enough for Don. He took off while we were all still eating breakfast.

This was the road out. 43 mile long dirt road. You can hear how the exhaust sounds real weird before everything comes up to operating temperature.

Huh, guess who we run into as we reached the Hwy 24 intersection? Don! Still airing up and dumping fuel. Guess he wasn’t in such a big hurry after all

Airing up. Next stop Hanksville to restock on survival supplies (gas, beer, cigarettes).

The sign at the Hwy 24 intersection shows Hite is 107 miles away, which is where we entered to go to the Doll House. In all we probably rode that trail 150 miles by the time you add the miles to and from the Doll House. Very cool!

Hanksville was about 20 miles from where we excited the Hans Flat road. Very interesting place to buy fuel and goodies. Hanksville is definitely a map dot.

From Hanksville we headed back to the Hite Marina via the highway to pick up my buddy Ty’s sister’s Prius we left at the nice lady from the Hite general store’s house. From Hite it is 155 miles to Moab. We said our goodbyes to Don again while he headed back to Flagstaff.

Our plan was to camp at the Sands Flat recreational area in Moab. You know…the true Moab 4x4 park. As this point it is just us and my buddy Ty with the silver Dodge and his sister. Ty had never been to Moab before so was anxious to see what Moab was all about before heading back to San Diego and his sister going back to Colorado Springs. Well, my mother in-law called this one right. She said being a holiday weekend Moab will probably be so full of aholes we won’t be able to find a camp spot. We’ll she was right! When we got to the Sands Flats entrance the sign said all the camp spots were full. The entire town was packed with people…..CRAP! It was too late in the day to go back south of Moab to BLM land so we went with plan B. I remembered a few years prior we camped somewhere near the river on the West side of Moab so we took off to find that spot. It was a miserable mosquito invested floodplain but it would work.

Final campsite of the trip.

Right next to the River.

As luck would have it, I no sooner got the shower stall set up and the heavy clouds and lightening appeared again. Everybody was anxious to take turns through the shower as we did not take showers the night before at the cow pasture because of rain and lightning. About that time the camp host in a ragged out F150 came rolling by to warn us that we were in camped in a floodplain that often floods and to tell us there was a shower house up the road and around the corner. WOW! Were we happy to hear that! My buddy’s sister took of in her Prius to check it out and quickly came back saying no friggen way! It was horrible. Well, my buddy Ty and I wanted to see it for ourselves as we were desperate for a shower so she shuttled us up there in her fancy Prius. Talk about humiliation! Riding in Prius in Moab of all places! Yeah, she was right…it was pretty bad. The entire place looked like something from the Hills Have Eyes. It was creepy as anyplace I’ve ever been in. This place was like a large house either in major disrepair or still under construction and the showers were in the basement which looked like a prison cell. It was bare concrete and dark with one toilet sitting against the wall with no curtion or anything. The shower stalls looked like small car wash stalls or large prison cell shower stalls. The creepiest part was there were all these people around this place riding donkeys in the parking lot while what sounded like a brothel upstairs with female voices laughing and making all kinds of weird noises. I felt like a prisoner of war with shower privileges. We took our showers and called Michelle on the walkie talkies to come get us out of here! Our ladies decided not to shower here. For those of you that have camped in Moab proper probably know this exact place.

When we got back to the camper some dude in a new F550 with a huge camper had parked right next to me. Not like next to me…..but NEXT to me. There was barely a foot between his slide out and my camper! I’m like dude WTF!?? This place was wide open with places to park everywhere and he parks right on me. I’m not sure if he couldn’t see well in the heavy rain or what. Well, we got them back! I was in the camper cooking and my buddy was taking a leak behind my camper in the bushes when the rear door of our new neighbor’s camper opened and my drunk buddy says…” HI!, welcome to the neighborhood!” while he has a beer in one hand and his tool in the other . It was so funny I almost wet my pants. She did not respond. We wondered if their big arse truck would sink in the mud over night as the place was getting pretty wet with rising waters.

The next morning we found out what was going on at the weird shower house. As it turns out it was a Mormon family reunion. It probably wouldn’t have been so creepy the night before but we were partying pretty hard before going up there. The guy in the big camper next to us split at the crack of dawn to never been seen again

More later………..

 

[y5mgisi]

Wow! That would be unsettling!

 

[muddysub]

Larry, you're killing me! your trip reports always do though. next year i'll be able to do this kinds stuff, hell we might even meet at Overland Expo. i like watching your hood float back and forth in the gopro videos.

 

[y5mgisi]

Oh Yea, I meant to say that too! Well mostly just say thanks for posting the vids along with the pics.

 

[Larry]

Larry, you're killing me! your trip reports always do though. next year i'll be able to do this kinds stuff, hell we might even meet at Overland Expo. i like watching your hood float back and forth in the gopro videos.

Oh Yea, I meant to say that too! Well mostly just say thanks for posting the vids along with the pics.

Looky what showed up a couple weeks ago

Good eye on the hood hinges! Yes!! They are shot! Funny story but last year coming home from one of our trips we hit a major wind storm near Kayenta, AZ that just about blew everybody off the road. When the wind burst hit us the rear of the hood popped up a several inches and scared the hell out of me! I thought for sure the hood was coming open and ripping off! The RV about .25 miles ahead of us took on some major damage to their roof A/C unit. It has a horrible wind burst! Ever since then the hood hinges were trashed where the rear of the hood keeps popping up. You can actually see the rear of the hood popped up in most of the static pictures on this trip. For the last year I stalled off getting replacements in hopes of finding good used ones because I though only Chinese repops were available. When I got back from this trip I could not stand the hinges anymore and started getting more serious with hood hinge shopping and discovered brand new GM hinges are still available so I ordered them up that very night. Now I just need to get them bolted on

Yeah, maybe I'll see one of you at the Expo next go around. I haven't decided if I am going next year or not. It is a very long drive for me and after 3 years of the same ole same ole, I'm not so sure I want to continue returning every year. Maybe every other year would be better. We'll see. If you haven't been to an Expo, definitely go check it out at least once. Lots of cool stuff there! Lots of asshats with more money than brains there too.....like way too many of them

 

[Larry]

Even with the new hinges I suspect the hood will still move around a bit. The movement is probably normal for the large flat 73-80 hoods. Before the invent of the GoPro we probably never noticed the hood from this view before.

This is the second video I ever shot with the GoPro on the truck a couple years ago. The hood wiggled around then too but not nearly as bad as it does at the moment.

Check it out…. Racing Jeeps up a steep snow packed hill and kicking their asses. They all cheated and took the high side above where the snow had blown into the well warn in two track. The two track had at least 18” to 24”of snow in it. No replacement for displacement! burnout

[youtube]-sxVUeyB4bk[/youtube]

 

[y5mgisi]

Do you find your exhaust is ever enough to get annoying? It sounds great! But i wonder if those times where you are at low speed with with the rpm in the probably 1000-1500 range if it gets to be more than you would like?

 

[muddysub]

That looks like fun!

 

[muddysub]

Do you find your exhaust is ever enough to get annoying? It sounds great! But i wonder if those times where you are at low speed with with the rpm in the probably 1000-1500 range if it gets to be more than you would like?

I've wondered the same, I made sure mine was on the quiet side for that very reason. Your 8.1l definitely has a different sound but I imagine a lot of that is from the muffler(s).

 

[Larry]

Do you find your exhaust is ever enough to get annoying? It sounds great! But i wonder if those times where you are at low speed with with the rpm in the probably 1000-1500 range if it gets to be more than you would like?

I've wondered the same, I made sure mine was on the quiet side for that very reason. Your 8.1l definitely has a different sound but I imagine a lot of that is from the muffler(s).

No, not at all. Before the exhaust warms up it does make a weird noise but that goes away quickly. You actually don’t hear any exhaust drone or noises inside the cab like you do with the typical Flowmasters. These are actually Thrush mufflers though but they are basically Flowmaster knockoffs.

The later LS engines and 8.1L’s with the 1-8-7-2-6-5-4-3 firing order sound totally different than the older engines with the 1-8-4-3-6-5-7-2 firing order especially if they don’t have cross pipe in the exhaust. I could not stand the way this thing sounded until the cross pipe was added. It sounds cool but doesn’t sound anything like an older big block.

 

[TK]

Great Thread, looks like one hell of a road trip.

 

[Larry]

Great Thread, looks like one hell of a road trip.

Thanks!


Saturday, May 24th

After the soggy and rainy night we got up early to begin the all-day drive back home to Pueblo. I was pretty anxious to get home as I was missing our little 10 month old daughter badly. This time I figured we’d take a different route home than we usually take just for the sake of seeing something different so with that we headed South of Moab about 10 miles and took Hwy 46 into Colorado which was quick jount back into the State of CO. What I didn’t realize is once you get past Naturita, CO the road is a dirt path all the way to Montrose. Not only was it a dirty road, it was a muddy, snowy mess! Not that I have a problem with that, I just didn’t expect that. After spending 6 days on dirty roads I thought we were done for a while. None the less, it was a pretty drive. Even though it was slow rolling from Naturita to Montrose that shortcut really knocked off a lot of time. We rolled into Pueblo around 5ish which was considerably faster than going up to I-70 to GJ then Hwy 50 to home or the Southern route into CO on Hwy 160.

Much different from the desert landscapes we’ve been living in for the past week plus we felt like we left summer and went back to winter

So that is a wrap for Desert Trip V! In all we ran 1,717 miles from the time we pulled out of the driveway on May 15th until we returned on the 24th. Fuel consumption for the entire trip came in at 159.39 gallons which came out to 10.77 MPG for a complete trip average. Unfortunately that MPG number isn’t very accurate as I forgot to turn off the fuel transfer pump a few times along the trip and wasted a lot of fuel by overfilling the main tank and dumping it on the highway. Typically the trip average comes in closer to 11.5 to 12 MPG for the long trips. I can only guess I wasted at least 5 gallons during the week so that would have put the MPG closer to the usual of 11ish.

It was a great trip and we all made it back home safely but it wasn’t without problems along the way. I already mentioned the front driveshaft issue that we had to do a campsite repair then I made a thorough repair to that when I got home, then there is the 205 shifting issues I need to address but the big issue I’ve been dealing with for the past 2 years is the damn 14 bolt rear axle keeps spitting oil out of the vent tube. Not just sweat out of the vent tube but spray out! This issue is driving me nuts! This problem started last year in Death Valley where it puked oil out the vent tube twice and one time it felt like the rear axle was stalling, or starting to lock up if you will. When I got home I popped the cover off and gave it a thorough inspection. All looked good so I figured it just got hot so I added a higher capacity cover along with synthetic oil. A few months later we ran down to the Overland Expo 2013. That damn axle belched out oil all the way down and all the way back. That really makes a huge mess all over the back of the camper!

So this year before we took off on this trip I pulled the drums to look at the seals and wheel bearings. I found the left rear seal leaking and a broken bearing cage on the right outer wheel bearing. Still not a smoking gun as a cause to the puking but at least it was some place to start. I replaced both axle seals, the right rear outer bearing and installed fresh shoes at that time. This time I also ziptied a bottle over the vent tube to catch any oil if it spray out again. Well hell! When we left on the 15th we made it as far as Alamosa, CO which is 1.5 hours from home to find the 12oz bottle I ziptied on already completely full of oil! Errrr. That crap carried on the entire duration of this trip. Towards the end of the trip I got tired of dumping the oil back in the axle every night so I just started emptying the bottle without filling it back up. In all it pumped out at least 24 to 30 oz of oil. I am at a loss WTF is going on with this thing.

This is how it sits at this very moment. This time it popped the right rear axle seal and soaked the shoes again. I’ve got it completely gutted and still see no smoking gun as to what is causing this. None of the bearings look like they have been over heated and I see no reason why it would be building pressure. What is a guy to do? So I have the carrier and pinion at the local driveline shop getting new bearings installed then I’ll replace all of the wheel bearings and seals we well as another friggen set of shoes! Errr…This crap is getting old. Anybody ever see a 14 bolt with a case of drippy d ick?
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My fancy oil catcher. This is 100 miles worth of oil spit on a slow state highway (65 MPH). If cruising 75 to 85 MPH on the interstate it will fill this bottle up within 150-200 miles. WTF!! We’ll see what happens after the axle rebuild

Curious if anybody has ran into this problem on 14 bolts before. I am sure open to some ideas