I awoke to the sounds of John and Dave prepping the CJ for their drive back to town. After they left, Sue and I went for a walk to that arm of Loon Lake that she found yesterday. Beautiful place. We (i.e.: someone else instead of me) began to pull the rest of the Bronco's broken shaft out and extract the third member to ready it for the replacement axle shaft. That's when we found more bad news. The broken shaft had cammed sideways and damaged the bearing surface on the Detroit. The adjusting collar was destroyed, as was the bearing. Dave must have asked for the the full meal deal. The Detroit would require some shop tools and other parts which we didn't have. We packed up the Detroit (damn, is that thing ever heavy!) and Rob and I drove Project YJ back to Placerville. Back in town, we found John Barron working on his third member at Warden's Auto Repair. Danny had given John some workspace and access to his tools. Dave, meanwhile, had driven the CJ to Sacramento to a Bronco shop to obtain a new axle. Rob showed Danny the damaged Detroit. Danny thought it looked ok and could be repaired. He immediately ordered the required parts and set about to remove the broken pieces and clean it up. Meanwhile, Rob and I went for lunch and then tried to make the next three hours go by as quickly as possible.

So there we were with two downed vehicles. A Land Cruiser with a broken pinion shaft...

and a Bronco with a broken axle shaft.

While preparing the Bronco for the arrival of the new axle shaft, we discovered that the axle had suffered more damage than we anticipated.

A job well done! You can see John's broke pinion shaft and Dave's damaged Detroit. Notice the damage to the Detroit's bearing surface and the chewed up adjusting ring.

When Dave came back with the new axle shaft, we spent some time fixing the CJ's idle problem (but first I listened to him blow off some steam about the surly service he got from the Bronco shop in Sacramento). Dave partially disassembled the carb and found that one of the ports was clogged by a piece of grit. I helped him re-assemble it and consider myself totally blameless for its rich running condition later on. Meanwhile, back at the camp, the rest of the group either slept or did some exploring on foot or by vehicle. They also watched continual fly-bys of helicopters ferrying equipment to Rubicon Springs in preparation for the coming weekend's Jeep Jamboree. In the afternoon, several groups of vehicles drove past the camp. Ironically, the first group that happened by consisted of two built Jeep TJs. They stopped to talk to Jonathan about the broken Bronco and 'Cruiser. They shook their heads in amazement that we actually knew how to field strip and repair the axles. They then left to continue climbing up the Granite Bowl but they were stopped minutes later when one of the Jeeps stripped some teeth off the ring gear of an ARB-locked Dana 44 rear end. Fortunately for them, Armin had wandered back from his hike and explained to them how to pull out the axle shafts. In the end, they drove the stricken Jeep back to the main road in front wheel drive.

We finally left Placerville around 4:00 pm, stopped briefly at Camino Flats for a few blocks of ice and a cheapo styro cooler (which pretty much disintegrated when it got back to camp) and reached camp by around 6:00 pm. Everyone was happy to see me but only after they confirmed that I had, indeed, picked up some food from Del Taco (at Dave's expense, of course). After we finished working on the trucks, we all went back to the lake for a swim. It was too late to start on the trail so we sat back and enjoyed the evening (i.e.: beer) and dreamt of the flinging that would surely happen the next day. By the way, we thought the trucks were fixed but we were wrong.

At least we picked a scenic place to break-down. In the background, right-hand side, you can see the Loon Lake dam. Yup, we broke THAT CLOSE to the trail head.

One arm of Loon Lake was less than ten minutes' walking distance from camp. The water was warm and the large rocks were perfect for diving.

The Granite Bowl's scenery was outstanding.

When we returned with the parts, the pit crews swung into action.	There was a bit of a competition going on and Dave lost, finishing his repair a few minutes behind John.
Since it was so late in the day when repairs were completed, we opted to stay camped for the remainder of the day.	We had a relaxing night and dreamt of tomorrow's trails.

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