The big, hairy, first 4wd trip...
8/16/96

The 4x4 trip I had been planning to take with Claude, Angela,
and my wife was now pretty much out of the question, the
Sammi being several weeks away from completion.

At the last minute, out of sheer pity I’m sure, my friend Ric
told me I could use his Sammi for our trip. Now, I wouldn’t
really mind bashing my own truck through the woods, but
someone else’s was a different matter. The only other
problem was that Ric’s Sammi still had the stock street tires
on it. I needed to buy some tires for my bastard anyway,
so I purchased some Armstrong 215/75R-15 Formula ATs and put
them on his truck for the trip. What? No BFGs???
The nerve!! All through the trip, they performed flawlessly,
going everywhere Claude’s CJ-7 (with BFG ATs) went, and they
were $25 per tire cheaper than the BFGs.

So off we went. Claude and Ang had some friends who owned
200 acres of land in Brown County that we had gotten
permission to wheel and camp on. There were some pretty
challenging trails and mud pits to go along with the great
scenery. Now the hills down there are dome-shaped for the
most part. In other words, the closer to the bottom you get,
the steeper they get. This very fact almost resulted in
rolling the Sammi down one of them thar hills.

I was picking my way down the side of a tree-covered hill,
and Claude was following about 50 years behind. The trail
started getting steeper, then disappeared altogether, so of
course I kept going. Then Claude called over the CB saying
that in trying to back up, his tires just spun. OK, no
problem, except that I was about 75 yards further down the
face of the hill, and couldn’t back up either. But our path
down the rest of the hill was steeper yet, and was blocked
by brush. After a short conference, we decided to see-saw
turn the Jeep around and see if he could drive up the hill
forward, which he was able to do. When I tried the same
thing (driver’s side facing up the hill), I could feel the
uphill tires lifting, but she stayed upright. Tippy? Hah! I
was also able to drive up the hill going forward.

We got into a few more tight spots, mainly involving steep
grades, but nothing the vehicles couldn’t handle. Towards
nightfall of the first day, Claude decided to head up one
particularly steep slope to our camp site, instead of taking
the easier, back way. Mistake! After they were out of sight
up the hill, Ang (who is normally a calm presence), came over
the CB and told Laurie & I NOT to follow them. They had
gotten about 3/4 of the way up the hill and were having
trouble getting traction with the dew-moistened underbrush.
So we backed off, shut off the motor & waited. Lots of Jeep
motor noise and then it appeared as though Claude had thrown
the thing in reverse & stepped on it.

Have you ever heard a particular noise that sticks in your
head for a long, long time? As the Jeep rushed down the
hill (backwards) we heard Ang let out a scream you could
hear miles away. About 1/2 way down, they swerved sideways
and backed into a fallen tree root base. OK, breathe. If
they had continued another 30 yards down the hill, there was
about a 10 foot drop to the paved road. As it turned out,
earlier in the day when riding over a log, the brake hose for
the rear wheels had been torn, leaving the Jeep without rear
brakes. When Claude was backing down a short bit to get
more momentum for going up and over a rut, the front wheels
locked easily on the slick grass.

Rule number one for any type of off-road adventure: If your
vehicle is not in top operating condition before your
excursion, or becomes damaged in the midst of play, fix it,
now!! (Lessons learned the hard way, #347) Fortunately,
no one was hurt, and the Jeep was not really damaged, save
for an exhaust pipe pinched shut & a broken taillight.

OK, time to take a break, so the four of us jumped into the
Sammi and rolled into Bloomington for some dinner and R&R.
In spite of the incident earlier, all of us were having a
pretty good time.

The next day, Claude and I tripped down to the local NAPA,
and bought some brake line. Not having ready access to a
garage, we broke out the tools and fixed it in the parking
lot. Then we picked up a couple who were friends of Claude
and Ang, and went back to ‘wheelin.


to be continued...


[Main Page & E-mail] [Contents]







This page hosted by GeoCities Get your own Free Home Page