Katemcy

Went rock crawling at Katemcy on Sat with the black CJ. My old 4x4 club, FWD-FWD (Ft Worth-Dallas 4WD) , had their annual run. It's 800 acres of nasty granite. There were probably a half-dozen rolloevers but I only saw two. No major carnage like last year so we moved along pretty well. I was really pleased with how well my CJ got around. It was definatly one of the lesser rigs there but I was able to follow them on all but the worst of obsticals. The biggest thing was my tire size; I've got 33" tires and most were running 37" or better. That equates to 2" of ground clearance at the diffs which is a huge difference. I took it pretty easy cause I didn't feel like fixin anything. Brought my digital camera and of course left it in the truck at camp. Shadow didn't like wheeling at all. There were about a half dozen kids there so he got to do some herding. He wore the kids so they went to bed early and the parents love us.

This morning I gave it the once over and the only real damage was the rear bumber which looks like it was made of sheet metal. The slave unit on the hydrolic clutch seems to have died so getting it off the trailer was "intersting" (no clutch). I think I've got a spare slave, somewhere...

The trailer really gave me fits though. I re-wired the whole thing, re-welded the fenders, and fixed the wheel bearing last week. I had 2 good tires and 4 dry-rotted ones for the 110 mile trip. 20 miles down the road I blew the first tire. I also aired everything up again until my tire pump quit. Ya just can't buy a good $5 airpump anymore... I found a tire store in Betram and bought a good used tire for $20. About 40 miles later another tire was getting warm so I swapped out the new (used) tire. When I was done wheeling for the day another tire was flat so I swapped it out. I left around 10PM and aired everything up in Mason, 100m from home. 20m later the new used) blows. I pulled into the ditch and the tire had trashed the fender & taillight. With a little muscle and a lot of foul language bent the fender back and put on the best dry-rot spare I had left. After it's on I see it's low, only 18lbs. The other one was at 28. They both had 35lbs only 20 minutes earlier. Uh-oh... So I swapped them again, all by moonlight. I'm getting pretty good at changing trailer tires now. Then I moved the jeep as far forward as possible so most of the weight was on the good tires (the front ones) and on the Zeburban. It was 40mph the rest of the way to Llano, stopping every 5m to check the tire wasn't getting hot. I found some stop-leak and put half in both spares that were left. I alway thought that shit was snake-oil at best and I know it ruins the inside of the tire but I was desparate. The rest of the way home I stopped every 10 miles & checked pressure & temp. No more blowouts. The tire-goo sealed it well enough for the last 60m.

I need better springs & axles anyway, guess this is a good excuse to rebuild the trailer right. Then everyone will want to barrow it. :( Lucky for me it's only got an 11' bed so nothin but a CJ5 will fit on it.