Monday

On Monday morning we met at the Moab Brewery parking lot to pick trails to run. This day we decided to run Poison Spider Mesa together with Golden Spike and Gold Bar rim.

Group picture to start the run:


My jeep:


Jason getting a better angle for a picture:


Scenery:



I think this called the Wedgie:




Getting some picture of the arch:

We are a little high:


Another trail on the side of the canyon:
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He is falling!
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The road below. We drove this road to get to the start of the trail.
[img]http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x135/rubicon4x4/Trips/Moab_2009/mon/moab_mon022.jpg[/img]

Can you see the truck pulling the trailer?
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How about now? (nice zoom)
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Trail shots:
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[img]http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w59/RubiconTX/trips/moab/mon/th_Moab10.jpg[/img]


We finally got to the golden crack:
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[img]http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x135/rubicon4x4/Trips/Moab_2009/mon/moab_mon048.jpg[/img]

The gooney bird marks the end of the trail.
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This day we finished closer to 8:00pm. We stopped again to help out some motorcycles that had blown a rear tire tube.
There was a lot more obstacles, just not enough of pictures taken due to the speed we were running just to get out of the trails.

Tuesday

On Tuesday we decided to run an easy trail since I had to return home the next day.

We decided to run Top of the World. This is a very easy trail with a great view of the "Top of the World".

No many pictures today but we did have a minor mishap. I was running at the rear of the pack of only 4 jeeps.

During one of what looked like an easy ledge the jeep that was in front of me (John) decided to try a little harder line. He was having some problems climbing the ledge and was giving a little too much gas. His jeep started to jump up with the extra throttle during one of those hops I heard a pop. He stopped back down a little and started to try another line. I was still behind in my jeep and started to see something flailing around the rear of his jeep. Apparently his rear axle had broken and was swing around. I got off and told him to stop.

We looked under his jeep and saw the drive shaft just hanging down. We thought no problem, we will replace the drive shaft with a spare some else had. Upon closer inspection we noticed that the actual rear pinion had snapped off!



Wow, this was not good. Apparently John had upgraded his rear drive shaft and axles shafts, so the weak link was the pinion.

We removed the drive shaft from the jeep and our plans were to drive in front wheel drive the rest of the way. But as soon as he started to move we heard some popping noise coming from the rear carrier.



With that we new that we had to remove the inside part of the pinon that was rolling around. We started by having John remove his rear gear oil. I provided a plastic container to capture the oil to eliminate any trail damage. Once all the oil was drained he removed the screws holding the cover. When we was prying the cover off it came off rather quickly and you guessed it, it landed right on the oil container giving John a nice gear oil bath.

After cleaning up most of the oil spillage, we jacked up the rear of the jeep with the stock jacks and used a highlift to secure the body of the jeep. We then removed the tires, rear brake caliper and the drum/disk to get to the axle retainer bolts. We removed the 4 bolts on each side and removed the axles. After that we removed the rear locker and this is what came out:



We put everything back in and continued the trail. Here is evidence that we cleaned up all our mess.


We used a strap to help John along.


Top of the World views:



And the chair come out.


Mac gets a little close to the edge. He later told me that he could feel the rock move a little as he sat there!


Nice scenery:
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It is a long way down.
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As you got closer to the edge you could just fill the wind blow you back! It was really an awesome experience!

[img]http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x135/rubicon4x4/Trips/Moab_2009/tue/moab_tue016.jpg[/img]

My jeep:
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On the way down:
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[img]http://i184.photobucket.com/albums/x135/rubicon4x4/Trips/Moab_2009/tue/moab_tue023.jpg[/img]

The easy trail turned out to be a harder one. But it was nice to learn how to remove a rear locker out of a rubicon.

Wednesday

On Wednesday it was drive home day. Took off from Moab at 8:00am (central) and kept on driving until I got home at 3:00am. That's about 19 hours on the road. I stopped to refuel when the tank hit 1/2 to 1/4 just to make more frequent stops.

On the way home I took US191 (from moab) to US491 to I40 to US 285 to I10 to US290 and into south Austin. A more direct route but not very scenic.

It was a nice long ride but I was glad to get home.

Awesome write up and pics. Thanks for sharing! Now, let's get back on those fenders, k?

J/K. Glad you made it back in one piece! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/cheers.gif" alt="" />

Looks like it was an awesome trip! Thanks for sharing. The pics are great! <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/cheers.gif" alt="" />

Thanks for posting the awesome pics and flicks. Were those taken with digital cameras or with a cell phone camera?