The Lone Ranger – Kage’s ’94 X-Cab Leaf SAS and Bed Bob

[Kage]

did you still end up going? i figured yall would cancel since the rain. that place turns into a swamp.

Nope we went and had a blast! Yup, it was a bit slippery and I went through alot more mud holes than I ever wanted too but we survived just fine.

I managed to cave in my passenger side door pretty good (to match the drivers side I suppose). Slid down a hill and managed to tweak something in the front as it pulls to the left pretty good right now (Not sure what bent, but something did, I'll find it when I clean it off tomorrow). During that episode, I'm betting I'll have an awesome feeling neck tomorrow, or a sever case of whiplash (the cage works WELL!).

I also managed to justify the winch again as I slid down into a gully tha I couldn't get out of to save my life.

I didn't take too many photos, but I'll upload what I got, as well as those I steal from the Jeep board.

Next stop, SMORR in October!

 

[railman]

I can't believe you think Interlake is huge.....

we can hit all of the trails at I-lake in a good day.....

Turkey Bay is a heck of alot larger....you would be pushing it to hit all the trails in a full week....

can't wait to see the pics

l8r, John

 

[Kage]

I can't believe you think Interlake is huge.....we can hit all of the trails at I-lake in a good day.....

Turkey Bay is a heck of alot larger....you would be pushing it to hit all the trails in a full week....

can't wait to see the pics

l8r, John

It probably seems huge to me as we've never been there when its been dry. So there's quite a bit of the park we haven't gotten to see yet.

Size wise, its on the 'larger size' of the spectrum from what i've grown use to wheeling (Started at 20 acres, then up to 600, now there's parks that are 1,200-900 acres, so Interlake just seems big).

I still want to get down to Turkey bay, but its looking like that'll have to wait until next year since we're rapidly approacing the Hollidays.

 

[Kage]

Interlake 9-24-11

I'm still hoping that some folks put up some more photos from this trip as I don't have too many to share. But here's what I've got...

We covered about 11 1/2 miles of a very sloppy Interlake area. It rained on us all the way until Noon:

Group at the main lot:

Somehow I got elected trail guide and we headed off into the park:

For some reason, people like to follow me around, so we started wandering around and I manged to immediately led the group to a very slick, muddy hill climb

Videos (click the picture):











We pushed on through the soggy park slipping and sliding around:

We all started playing around in this hilly area when a friend tried to dump his YJ over (Pics and vids dont' do it justice, I still don’t know how he missed that tree):

Video:




And for the damaged, the worst of it was when a tree and I weren’t getting along, I wound up caving the passenger side door in, and tweaking the cage a little bit (I knew I should have added another bar!):

I also have killed my upper ball joints on the drivers side, and I’m sure the passenger side isn’t far behind. This is rather disappointing as I just put the dang things in less than a week ago (I’ve got all of 200 miles on them right now). I ran the truck across a scale tonight and confirmed my fear.
The front end of the truck (half tank of fuel, not tools in the back, spare tires, and me with the wife) weighs in at 3,000 lbs. (total truck weight of 5,800 lbs). This is going to cause me some grief as that 44 is only rated to 3,500 lbs. So I’m betting that I’m going to get use to swapping ball joints.

Looks like I need to save my pennies up for a Dana 60 after all.

Link to slide show of my photos:
http://s158.photobucket.com/albums/t101/KageOO/1994 Ranger/Interlake 9-21-11/?albumview=slideshow

-------------
As of right now, the truck is nearly ready for SMORR on 10/15. I still need to finish up swapping out the ball joints (Hopefully this set lasts a bit longer) and fix a leaky wheel seal in the rear.

The take off tires I'm running worked alot better than I thought they would, so I'm pretty happy with them at t hs point, even with all the drama that came with getting the dang things.

I'll add more photos to this post if more get posted up.

 

[Kage]

TWF Update

I just wanted to post what the resolution was with TWF and my balancing issue was. It turns out that I had a ‘bum’ PVC insert that was causing all of my issues. TWF Sent me another Insert and now life is good.

TWF went a step further and made things right which was nice of them considering how much of my ‘free’ time I had wrapped up into trying to solve this issue.

The bottom line is that my experience was out of the ordinary with TWF’s product, and I don’t think that my issues should scare anyone away from purchasing from them. The communication issues I was having sucked, but hopefully they’ll work on resolving them in the future. Things get dropped when you’re running a small shop, I get that as I have worked in several small shops during my career as a machinist.

Going forward, I’ll give them another shot if/when I have a need of their products in the future. So take that for what its worth.

 

[06RangerXLT]

nice wheeling pics and glad to see they ballanced up! id love to see pics of em!

 

[Kage]

nice wheeling pics and glad to see they ballanced up! id love to see pics of em!

Sadly, I've only got the two photos of when I first mounted them up. I was hoping that Id get a couple of 'actoin' shots with the new wheels/tires this past weekend, but no luck.

I still don't care for how they make the truck look, so I'll play around with the colors some I think. But buck for buck, I'm happy with the purchase. Its nice to be able to air down to single digits and not worry about knocking a bead off. And these rims with the rock rings seem to be stupid strong, as they took some hard hits that would have bent other steel wheels last weekend.

I want to get the tires on the rocks before I give them a true thumbs up or down. Right now I'm happy with how quiet they are on the road (Hey, I can roll my windows down without going deaf again, and this coming from a guy that had grooved swampers in the past). In the interlake goo, they did quite a bit better than I thought they would. They're no swamper, but they'll get the job done just fine at 1/3 the price. Which is fine by me as I generally tend to stay out of mud holes etc, rocks are where I like to play.

 

[06RangerXLT]

awesome. i think its the tires not the rims though. what size are they?

 

[Kage]

awesome. i think its the tires not the rims though. what size are they?

Agreed on the tire comment. They're 37x12.5 where the the Nitto's were 37x13.5, but if you measured the side wall 'lug' on the nittos they appear to be closer to 37x15.5.

 

[Kage]

Interlake 9/24/11 Part 2​

There were a few more photos posted from our run at Interlake on 9/24/11. Here’s the photos:​

Link to video of me being retarded (I’m pretty sure at the bottom of the gully is where I killed my upper ball joint by sliding down that hill and into that tree):
https://picasaweb.google.com/114016...4fNvMuLEg&feat=directlink#5659718532919260274​

 

[06RangerXLT]

awesome wheeling.

agreed on the tires. my 32" bfg muds looked small compared to my KL71

BFG

KL71

thats ok though. looks like a comp truck now with those rims.

 

[bobbywalter]

i am 3600 # on my front....if i lose front drive capacity i am fawked!!




maybe consider some 60 shafts/outers with a 35 spline d44 carrier.

seems a good compromise and easy upgrade for ya.

looks like this thing is fulfilling its mission parameters on the all around


i want to split the door about 6 in up at the back and 3 in up on the front side and fix it in place as a new jamb and limit/split the window travel for winter doors, and build the rocker sliders out more into an offset nerf.

i dont like all the busy exo cages over done and yet leave the door and b pillar open for murder, i dont understand it yet it gets done almost exclusively.

i would rather raise and interfere with entry and offset the interference with a sensible nerf system then have the tube all over.

it really requires wider axles to work right, so when narrowing full widths for whatever reason its likely not a fit for a guy with narrow goals...

figured i would have done this for myself the last 6-7 years but i can barely keep normal maintenance up on my pos.

glad to hear about twf making it right

 

[Kage]

i am 3600 # on my front....if i lose front drive capacity i am fawked!!maybe consider some 60 shafts/outers with a 35 spline d44 carrier.

I'm not entirely sure what my plan is at this point for the front end. While I hate the idea of allways being easy on it, I don't really care to drop the money on a 60 setup if I can help it.

I Hope to get it loaded up (trail ready) and run it across the scale again in the next couple of weeks to get a better idea of what it weighs in at whe 'full'.

...looks like this thing is fulfilling its mission parameters on the all around..

So far its working out pretty good Its even been plaing DD duty here this past week as I sold off my Mustang to buy the wife a newer car. My only complaint with that is these dang take offs.

They're fine on the open streches where I can vary the speed enough to keep them from wobbeling too much, but when I get hung up in traffic, it can bring the suck. I'm think its mostly due to the fact that they don't really run very concentric. Its not bad, but its probably enough to cause me my problems.

We'll see how it does at SMORR here next weeks, hopefully it keeps on rocking.

...i want to split the door about 6 in up at the back and 3 in up on the front side and fix it in place as a new jamb and limit/split the window travel for winter doors, and build the rocker sliders out more into an offset nerf...

I think I get what you're saying, but that sounds like alot more work than swapping doors whenever they cease to function

....i dont like all the busy exo cages over done and yet leave the door and b pillar open for murder, i dont understand it yet it gets done almost exclusively.

I still have a bit of a love/hate feelings for exo cages. I much prefer the looks without one, but man do I ever wind up using it every time I go out! If I didn't have a bed on there, I could probably get away with alot less tube on the cab portion. The bed portion allways seems to get hammerd every time I go out though.

Thanks for the comments guys!

 

[06RangerXLT]

get a nice offroad flexing picture so i can nominate you for OTOTM, with that truck you should get it.

 

[Kage]

get a nice offroad flexing picture so i can nominate you for OTOTM, with that truck you should get it.

That or a pic of it on its lid

I had a moment to crawl under the truck last night, it looks like some maintenance is order here.

- Both Drive shafts have quite a bit of slop in the splines. I'm debating on getting two new ones made up, or I might just get one made up for the rear and slap another front one together. Kinda sucks that they only lasted for 7 k road miles and 3 off road trips, that'll get expensive quick!

- Need to swap out my tranny mount. The one I put in there before was kinda slopply (home made jobber). So I'll see if I can't stick a stock mount back in there.

I'm ready to wheel!