This past Saturday a friend and I went offroading at the Lockwood Creek/Miller Jeep Trail just north of Los Angeles. My friend drove his Toyota Tacoma with 275/70/17 BFG KOs, lots of armor, bumpers, a winch, and a sizable lift, while I drove my LR3 with P265/60/18 Hankook Dynapro ATMs, sliders, and the stock air suspension.
The trail is steep dirt roads littered with rocks of various sizes. My buddy was able to move pretty quickly over the rocky areas without a spotter, but I took it slow and relied on his help to pick a line.
A few miles into the trail, I had a flat tire. It turned out to be an inner sidewall puncture. Even though I had aired down to 25psi, my sloppy rock crawling was probably the cause of this. I needed to put my bottle jack under the lower control arm to raise the wheel, but there wasn't enough clearance due to the uneven terrain and the tire being flat. I used the jack stick to dig a small depression, which allowed the bottle jack to fit. Once the flat tire was off, we were unable to fit the spare tire on, even after deflating it fully, as the wheel hub was sitting too low. Fortunately my friend had a shovel, which he used to dig a hole that the spare tire could then sit in and mount onto the wheel hub.
After another few miles of driving, I saw my friend pull off the road. His driver's front tire was tilting in a rather sickening way. Upon inspection, we saw that the nut on the upper control arm had come off, allowing the bolt to slip out of one of the bushings. After removing the tire, my friend was able to push the bolt back in. We tried to find a replacement nut from somewhere on the body of his truck, but we couldn't find anything that was an exact match, or even a near match. I told my friend to use one of his ratchet straps to hold the bolt in. We rigged something up and put the tire back on.
At this point our delays had cost us nearly two and a half hours. The Tacoma would need to be babied off the trail. After some discussion, my friend recommended turning around and heading back, as there were too many unknowns ahead, but I wanted to keep going as it seemed to be a shorter distance on the map. After re-reading the map description, it became clear that we would be encountering even more difficult obstacles if we forged ahead on the trail, so we chose to backtrack.
The trail is steep dirt roads littered with rocks of various sizes. My buddy was able to move pretty quickly over the rocky areas without a spotter, but I took it slow and relied on his help to pick a line.
A few miles into the trail, I had a flat tire. It turned out to be an inner sidewall puncture. Even though I had aired down to 25psi, my sloppy rock crawling was probably the cause of this. I needed to put my bottle jack under the lower control arm to raise the wheel, but there wasn't enough clearance due to the uneven terrain and the tire being flat. I used the jack stick to dig a small depression, which allowed the bottle jack to fit. Once the flat tire was off, we were unable to fit the spare tire on, even after deflating it fully, as the wheel hub was sitting too low. Fortunately my friend had a shovel, which he used to dig a hole that the spare tire could then sit in and mount onto the wheel hub.
After another few miles of driving, I saw my friend pull off the road. His driver's front tire was tilting in a rather sickening way. Upon inspection, we saw that the nut on the upper control arm had come off, allowing the bolt to slip out of one of the bushings. After removing the tire, my friend was able to push the bolt back in. We tried to find a replacement nut from somewhere on the body of his truck, but we couldn't find anything that was an exact match, or even a near match. I told my friend to use one of his ratchet straps to hold the bolt in. We rigged something up and put the tire back on.
At this point our delays had cost us nearly two and a half hours. The Tacoma would need to be babied off the trail. After some discussion, my friend recommended turning around and heading back, as there were too many unknowns ahead, but I wanted to keep going as it seemed to be a shorter distance on the map. After re-reading the map description, it became clear that we would be encountering even more difficult obstacles if we forged ahead on the trail, so we chose to backtrack.
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