The Reason the Stranger Was built (WY - MT Trip 2011)

[88_Eddie]

yeah, i'm really jealous. i've only been out there once and i was in 7th grade, so i didnt appreciate it like i should have.

those ghost towns are pretty amazing, looks like people just disappeared one day.

 

[superds]

I'm not sure why some of the photos aren't showing up. They seem to show up for me so you got me...

I think it was just the firewall I was behind at the time, tried a different firewall and no problem seeing them.

Your post was probably the longest I've ever seen on TRS. You get a prize:

And rep!

 

[Sunk]

Hey, I've been to Wall Drug! Cool place. Those ghost town are something else, and that scenery makes me want to get out and drive somewhere!

 

[Kage]

My God!!!!!!

NO..................Really..................MY God!.....that is some beautiful country!!!

(try not to let the prob's ruin the trip)....just beautiful!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Didn't quite ruin the trip, but definetly put a dent in it, see todays entry.

I think it was just the firewall I was behind at the time, tried a different firewall and no problem seeing them.

Your post was probably the longest I've ever seen on TRS. You get a prize:

And rep!

Thanks!

Hey, I've been to Wall Drug! Cool place. Those ghost town are something else, and that scenery makes me want to get out and drive somewhere!

Thanks again!

For fun, I'll dig up my old posts from the prior years trips out west ('09-'10). They're trips in a jeep, but you guys might like the photos

And for the last post on this trip, a bit of a downer....

Mondays Suck

You know the saying, “If it weren’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck”? Well that appears to apply well to me.

We jumped in the truck this morning and I was happy to find that the clutch had healed itself overnight. So we topped off the tank and hit the road for our last 12 hour stretch which would have put us home at 5 ish.

At about 60 miles into the trip, in the middle of BFE South Dakota, the ranger said that 3,600 miles was enough for one trip, and it was done. I’m pretty sure something in the transmission has come loose (or stripped off). As we were cruising down the highway it would have a violent ‘skip’ (for lack of better term). It felt like someone would briefly lock up the drive train. Once I pulled off to the side of the road, I found that reverse was gone and that I had limited forward ability. As I said, best guess is that something came loose or just died on us (it does have 225,000 miles on it I suppose).

So we sat here in BFE:

Looking at this:

Until AAA showed up (Tow driver was a really nice older fella):

AAA gave us a lift to the nearest city (Sioux City IA about 60 miles away) and we got lucky enough to find a U-Haul that had a truck and trailer that would work:

And then we cruised home, getting in at about 11:30 last night (So much for getting home early enough to make it to work today):

Surprisingly, when I went to get the truck off the trailer this morning, I found that Reverse had come back (with the same nasty ‘skip’ as the forward gears). However, when I got it off the trailer and into the middle of the street, I didn’t have any forward gears (really?!?!). After shifting back and forth between the forward gears and reverse, I eventually had 1st again and was able to get it back into the garage. So I’ve really got no idea what the heck is wrong with it right now, but I don’t think I’ll be making the interlake run on 9/24.

All said and done this was a 4,400 mile road trip (truck made it all but the last 600 miles). With zero of those miles being in 4 low. Yup, should have taken the econo box.

The good news is that the back up plan of getting a U-haul to drag my junk home did work (and my next back up plan of friends and family looks like it would have worked too, Thanks guys!). However, it was pretty obvious that my truck is a wee bit overweight for the U-haul trailer. That’s going by how much the trailer bent, and how hot the hubs were getting. But hey, it got us home! So I’m thinking my Mustang is going up for sale here, and a Tow Rig and Trailer are in my future after all. DD mileage be danged!


So to recap what’s broken right now:

- Brake caliper trying to take off multiple times (Fixed by jamming some metal to hold it in place at the home depot)

- Ball joints (not fixed, killed the wheeling fun for the trip, and making the truck a handful on the highway).

- Motor likes to detonate at partial throttle while cruising highway speeds (but doesn’t detonate when running WOT which is where I usually am on the highway).

- Truck likes to run hot on the highway (which has been par for the course on this truck) not overheating, but hotter than it should. Probably related to the detonation issue (dirty injectors maybe?).

- The rear end seems to have sprung a leak on the drivers side wheel cylinder, and on the pinion seal (there’s other leaks as well that I haven’t tracked down yet).

- Possibly an issue with the clutch

- And finally, some sort of major driveline failure.

Needless to say, this has been an expensive and frustrating trip, and I’m happy to be home.

If you want a slide show of all the photos Click here.

 

[Kage]

For more pretty photos out west, here's links to our prior two trips out there (links go to my local jeep board):

UT/CO 2010 (Linky)

CO 2009 (Linky)

 

[Josh40601]

man that is some gorgeous scenery my friend. You will get the truck fixed. Part of what happens when we take a 17 year old pickups and turn them into whatever they are now...

 

[Kage]

man that is some gorgeous scenery my friend. You will get the truck fixed. Part of what happens when we take a 17 year old pickups and turn them into whatever they are now...

Thanks, and yeah, I was expecting to have problems and though I had prepared for them well enough. I would have never thought that the tranny would take a dump on me while doing a realitively easy cruise down the interstate. You'd think that if it was going to die, it'd do it in the mountains somwhere when I was working it hard.

I'll get it going agian, hopefully sooner than later

 

[Kage]

Cross posting from my build thread to wrap up this one
-----------------

Good and bad news:

Good – Looks like the tranny may be ok!

Bad:
- Crawl box died
- ATF and metal in your eye hurts worse than Gasoline (and makes your eye turn a cool shade of red).
- The T-case and Crawl box is heavier than I remembered, so when I pulled it out bench press style, it promptly fell on my ribs. That’s going to hurt tomorrow


So I started out by draining the fluids out of everything. The fluid from the tranny looked good (some metal on the drain plug, but nothing excessive). The fluid out of the T case looked good too. When I drained the crawl box, the fluid that came out of that was burnt and very nasty looking

As I was unhooking the drive shafts, I noticed that the t-case to backing plate was loose (not the joint where the two Duffy Plates meet, but where the Duffy Plate meets the Rear T-case) Marked with an L in this photo:

So I dropped the craw box and t-case (on my damn chest), and tore into it finding this:

I’m pretty sure it went down something like this:
-T-case works itself loose over time
-Loose case puts additional pressure onto the crawl box shift fork
-Nylon ‘fingers’ on the shift fork get worn away, which lead to metal on metal contact with the shift fork. In the process killing the fork and allowing it to slip into and out of gear (this explains the slipping I was feeling, and why I would have forward gears sometimes, and reverse sometimes).

So in the end, the t-case coming out of alignment with the crawl box looks to be what killed it. I’m not sure why it loosened up (I might have forgot to put lock tite on it or something).

 

[Sunk]

Wow that sucks! Especially if it was something like forgetting Loctite that caused it. At leas you got it figured out though!

 

[DANIELVINCENT]

funny story is that when i was 12 i did the same trip with my mom like i went to that lodge and same shit you did

 

[tbirdsps]

Thanks for the trip photos and the comments. It brought back lots of teenager memories traveling "out west" with the folks.

 

[Kage]

Thanks for the replies folks. My wife is a much better photographer than I am, and she's been uploading photos of our past few trips here:

http://saral.zenfolio.com/ (Click on the pictures in the link to go to the album).

That site won't let me link the photos for whatever reason, so you'll actually have to go in there. Its worth it as it gives you a little better taste of the scenery that you can see out there.