Hey guys, got busy with work the last few weeks and didn't have time to check up here.
We went out two weekends ago, and I meant to take nice pretty pictures of the truck, out in nature, in interest of posting them here
Turned out the Saturday rain/ snow storm, came in early and it was, slow going in on Friday night. With the crappy weather and the state of the truck, didn't end up taking many pictures other than getting stuck. So here those are after the fish story....
Long story short, was supposed to get out of town at 5, didn't end up leaving until 7. Got off road at 10, and the rain and snow started pouring slowing us down.
Took a few winches/ traction mats to get through some of the mud over the 15 off road miles (really sludge as it had been raining in Norcal for almost two weeks). In the last downhill (100 yards from the camping site), being careless, as we were basically there, I let the truck slide into a ditch (In the pictures, the right side where I was trying to keep the truck on is sloped into the mini “ravine.” It was so slick the truck moved ten feet to the right over ten feet of forward travel. Being pretty much there, and thinking about my new 3+ more inches of ground clearance, I thought I could breakover the crest into the washout, We did, but my rear diff ended up digging in and got us stuck. Literally 6 inches of forward travel until being out of it.
We unpacked from there walked to the campsite and slept. Woke up to 4 inches of snow on the ground, let it melt and got it out and unstuck. Found out that O'Reilly had sold me the wrong CV axles and the left was about to pop out of the cup. Irony is I had just replaced both sides a few weeks before as a maintenance item because the boots after 200k mile and 12 years were a little shoddy looking. Moral of the story is to check more than just the label on the box for left and right (I am assuming it was a return or mis-boxed)
As we dug out the diff we found three broken tow straps, and a few parts from other vehicles in the liquid mud. Don't think we were the first to get stuck there that week. After digging the diff out, the rear right tire was submerged (literally) in sludge, and the right wheel was basically off the ground (Plus we only had 2wd now with the CV) and the truck was not teetering, but wasn't in comfortable position angle wise. There was no easy way to dig out that tire, so we ended up digging a 6 foot hole in the ground and throwing a large boulder with a tow strap around to it to winch to. Before the rock got pulled up by the winch the truck was on the cusp of being let loose. Of course, after we redug the hole to go again, someone came across the trail, and it took about 3 second of a bumper pull to get us out. (We weren't sure if anybody would come by that day or the next because of the weather, so it was just another hit that we could have been having fun until someone drove by) Refilling the unused hole, was depressing. We came out undamaged other than the CV, a bent rear sway bar link(Rough Country's warranty is awesome and they sent me a new one, no questions asked) and a bunch of new scratches on the right rear fender.
In retrospect, there's two ways to get down the hill starting about 150 meters up. In the summer the way we went down is nice, smooth and easy, the other way has some larger rocks to traverse. From now on, it's noted for the winter to use the rocky side as it keeps the ground together. Stupid carelessness and the “almost there” blindness at night by me was the cause.
Anyway, instead of throwing in the spare CV we cut the axle down to a stub and drove the rest of the weekend in 2wd. The locker did wonders (Also nice to rely on the 14bolt G80 and not the crappy 10). Once the mud dried out a little in the beautiful Saturday weather, we didn't run into any problems even in in 2wd.
Don't know if we had “fun” that weekend, but I can say all the recovery equipment got its use… and my new $18 Big5 special rain/mud boots are my new favorite toy.
Here's the stuck pictures…
