It's a Jeep Thing, You Wouldn't Understand

As always, the scenery on Mossy Hill was beautiful

Here's Ron Gooch in his very clean YJ equipped with dual Dana 44 Scout axles and a Dana 300 xfer case

That's Keith following Gene in his CJ with SOA Scout D44s

After an easy run up and down Mossy Hill, we headed on over to the Crab Apple Lake trail. It started off with an interesting climb up a bumpy rock wall and then some off-camber driving through an eroded trail. We were about half an hour behind the first half of our group.

While driving through a deep erosion ditch which ran across the trail, Dan's Toyota pulled the front passenger-side tire of its rim. At about the same time Neil, the trail leader with the first half of the group, radioed to tell us to take our time because someone in his group had broken an axle shaft. Being a Jeep YJ owner and the keeper of the YJ FAQ, I suspected that it must be a YJ that broke. Neil confirmed that it was Chad's white YJ with the dual ARBs. After ten minutes, Dan had gotten his spare tire mounted but since we had time, we decided to try re-seating the other tire by spraying ether between the wheel and tire and then igniting it. We had seen this done on TV and it looked really cool. After several attempts and nearly setting the tire aflame, we gave up.

Pulling his tire off its rim gave Dan an excellent excuse to jack up his tall truck with his barely tall enough jack

Colin attempts to execute his cunning plan to re-seat the bead by spraying ether inside the tire...

...and igniting it with a long, burning stick. Unfortunately, the ether wouldn't ignite

We continued on our way and after 15 minutes of driving we came to a clearing with a gnarly hill climb to our right. Neil radioed that he was directly above us so we decided to try the hill climb. Colin went first in his Toyota long box. This was a short but very ugly and steep climb. Only two vehicles long, it became much steeper as you got nearer to the top. Jagged rock fins lined both sides and some were under cut as a result of previous fourwheelers trying to claw their way past this obstacle. Colin took a line to the right and nearly made it up before losing forward momentum. Personally, I didn't think he would make it and I had no intentions of trying it myself. But after carefully working his front wheels from side to side, he suddenly found traction and worked his way onto the shelf road at the top of the climb. Very impressive, especially since he only had a limited slip in the rear and a locker in the front.

Since he made it up, I had to try it as well. Rather than go right, I decided to head up straight and then a bit left. This would keep me between the rock fins. With a little bit of speed, I began my ascent. As I neared the top, the 33" General Grabbers started to spin a little bit but forward progress continued and I wasn't slamming into any rocks so I kept a steady throttle. Amazingly, I was able to climb onto the shelf road with little difficulty. I still don't know how I made it up. I think my 33x12.5 tires helped a lot. This was the first weekend I had been offroading with them since I upgraded from 31x10.5 tires. Aired down to 11 psi, they provided great traction.

Once I got onto the shelf, I saw Chad's white Jeep parked at the apex of a corner, 30 feet away. Working with him on the broken axle was Eric, wearing a blue mechanic's shop coat. I parked and started chatting with Chad. While we were talking, Keith was trying to get his dual locker YJ up the hill climb. He had managed to get his front tires almost up on the shelf but his rear passenger-side tire couldn't get over a very tall, vertical rock face. He decided to try to crawl up from his current position and started using more throttle. The rear wheels started hopping, I started cringing and the next thing I knew, KA-BANG! Another Dana 35 axle shaft decides to twist itself in half. We winched him onto the shelf while Eric, still wearing his shop coat, gestured for Keith to park his Jeep in "service bay #2," which was the rocky clearing next to Chad's disabled Jeep.

Both Chad and Keith were lucky in that neither of their lockers were damaged. The twisted axle shafts left shards of metal in the differentials but no other damage. Jonathan's new screw driver with its built-in flashlight and telescoping magnet was very popular among the two work crews for removing metal scraps from the axle tubes.

Chad shows off his remarkable 2-piece Dana 35 driveshaft	Keith is about to show off for the camera by snapping an axle shaft	Once the shaft snapped, there was nothing holding the wheel in the axle so we had to make sure it didn't roll out while we winched the Jeep into...
..."service bay #2"	Rob Mullen (a Toyota guy) takes the opportunity to have a close-up look at a "Jeep Thing"...he doesn't understand	The rest of the group held a silent vigil over the stricken Jeeps... mainly because their trail leader (me) wouldn't show them how to get back to camp

Of course, removing the broken parts was only half of the solution. They still needed replacement axle shafts. Keith needed a c-clip shaft while Chad needed a c-clip shaft which he would then have to modify to use the ARB c-clip eliminator kit. Since Keith suffered a broken transfer case at last year's IRC Rockcrawl, I felt especially bad that he had yet another problem this following year. He had come all the way down from Quesnel (an 8 hour drive) for this event so I wanted him to be able to run the trails tomorrow. After making a bunch of cell phone calls to locate another shaft or someone on the mainland who could pull the one from the D35 sitting outside my shop, we decided that I would go back to camp to borrow a shaft from Mari-Anne's YJ. She had an open diff so removal would be quick and easy. When I spoke with her on the cell phone, she was more than happy to lend us her axle shaft for the rest of the day. We would install that shaft in Keith's Jeep so we could at least get it back to camp. If, by that time, a permanent replacement wasn't found, I would take the ferry back to the mainland, pull my old shaft and return with it the following morning. I wasn't looking forward to that option but it's one of those things that you just have to do some times.

When I had arrived back in camp, I met up with Andy who worked at a local auto wrecking yard. Neil had returned to camp earlier to ask Andy to locate spare parts. Andy found a Cherokee rear end which would have the needed axle shaft! I was happy to hear that news because that saved me the trip back to the mainland. So Neil headed back up to Keith and his friends who were preparing the YJ for a replacement axle shaft. A few hours later, they were all back in camp and the Lion's Club caterers was waiting for them with BBQ'd steaks which they'd saved for them even though the official dinner ended an hour ago.

Meanwhile, Chad cut off the twisted end of his old shaft and limped his Jeep back into camp. Since both he and Keith had broken driver's side axle shafts, there was no replacement shaft available for Chad. He had to wait till Monday when I returned home and pulled a shaft from the Dana 35 I recently swapped out of my Jeep. Doug Butters picked it up from me and sent it over on the ferry.

Needless to say, Jonathan and I felt that we made the right decision in ditching our D35 axles two weeks ago in favour of the stronger D44s. It's a Jeep Thing and We DO Understand.

...lars

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