Post wheeling report

I got the urge to go wheeling just for the day.  August, in Texas, 102*, little to no breeze= perfect.

At least the park wasn't busy. 

There was a cold front coming in during the afternoon, it was supposed to get down to 98*

Rich took his nearly stock 06 TJ along just in case.



We wheeled the entire north end of the property, everything had changed from March at megarun.  The easy trails
had extra drop offs, and wash outs.  We went down "old town trio" (blue arrow, that had also washed out) Rich took the bypass
and I took the trail.  It was severely off camber turning down and right to a 2-3' drop off.  After going off the drop off
I heard/felt a sound go through the chassis when we landed on the front axle heading straight down the trail.

 

 

The new steering was doing its job , but after about 6 hours the steering was not doing as good.

I had checked the tie rod ends and found no problems.

I started up spider ravine (bottom of the map) and the first right turn the jeep kept going

straight

off

 the

 trail.

 

Dang.



Rich swears it was the stump that I ran over, but it had to be the drop off. 
As soon as I fix one problem, it moves to a new spot....

 

The notch I had to put in the crossmember for the chebby Saginaw steering box turned into a crack!
It would turn left okay because the crack would shrink back up, but the right turns opened up
the crack and flexed the crossmember and drivers side frame.  At full right turn the pitman arm was 30* off of center but the tires weren't turning.
We did a 20 point turn around to get back to the main trail and back to the trailer.  I'll weld that up and reinforce it with something.  Maybe duct tape.

Also found that part of the idling problem was one of the 3 pins on the map sensor plug had backed out a little causing an intermediate short, egr sensor wasn't sensing, and the damn chebby tbi has
another vacuum leak at its base. Oh yeh, and a tps.
Beyond that- great trip.

Frame re welded...

1/4 x 1.5" bar strap

Gusset around the notch to strengthen/ transfer some of the loads

The finished product.
There may be a TJ style steering box cover in the future too.

P.S. oh yeh- after filing the base flat & rebuilding the tbi, the engine idled smoother, but would only idle at 500rpm.
After plugging and unplugging the various lines, I noticed the engine idled better after loosening
the idle air control.  After shutting it off and unscrewing the iac I heard a hunk of metal hit something- after looking for a dropped socket or something and not finding it, my attention went back to the iac, only to find that the spring was laying next to it and the plunger had shot off to
who knows where.  There's your problem....


New IAC showed up, it idles pretty nice, unfortunately it is 8pm, too late for a test drive right now.