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Lady4Wheel joined the community
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Gadget took a bit of a beating on our Dusy-Ershim CA adventure! click here for trip report/photos... i just finished getting her mostly all cleaned back up: took a stiff wire wheel on the grinder to the sliders to remove all the new jagged edges sprayed some Krylon satin black on the sliders, wheel rims, and diff covers where the boulders had established their dominance! inside all blown out, vacuumed, wiped down, and some Chemical Brothers leather scent deodorizer spray to remove the smell of campfires and 4 days of sleeping in there without a real shower! adjusted the drag-link to re-center the steering wheel (tie-rod had gotten rotated up a little) need a new Nemesis rear passenger fender flare still also still waiting on a replacement passenger mirror from eBay (OEM salvage part) the top did take a few tree hits, but those scratches will probably buff out the next time i decide to get Gadget detailed. my roof rail gas carrier took a good hit too, but just slid backwards a couple inches - i was super lucky it didn't rip off a chunk of the rain gutter!
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Don't forget your salsa or dip for the contest!!!!! There will be a new tradition started with this year's winner... what could it be?! ALSO... we're stepping up the prize this year! Annual Salsa & Dip Contest: Enter your homemade salsa or chip/veggie dip! Keep on ice until Saturday evening. Offroad Passport supplies the chips, but you're welcome to bring more (or crackers/pita/etc.). Everyone come hungry! Enjoy the chips, salsas and dips and VOTE for the winners! Salsa and dip contestants will compete for 1 prize this year. However, you can enter as many salsas/dips as you want! -
Glad you guys concurred this trail. Ryan, you need to carry flex seal for those nasty leaks:)
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Wonderful photos! Makes me wanna to check out the area only via a little more sedate route☺️. Glad you’re home with no serious damage..
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...that's in the contiguous USA and "as the crow flies". Check out this interactive map project that shows how remote everywhere in the US is based on the distance to a road - or you can see it broken down by proximity to roads and "tracks" (i.e. include 4x4 trails, etc.). https://ryansajdak.com/remote/
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You guys should try retirement. Just sayin'... -
Unfortunately have to also drop out....Al -
Added a +1 to us. See you soon!! -
Thanks @OnPointOffroad , you're awesome! -
Awesome pics! Glad you guys had fun and came home safe! smiles, ladybug
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Tell me about it!! Over my "free" trial of adulting..... -
Unfortunately I'm not gonna be able to make it this year. Responsibility and adulting reared its head out of nowhere so I have to handle it.
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yes, "Hope", with her wide hips would have taken a beat down! ;)
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Great trip reports and what an experience!! Our wide Jeep would have been so crunched on this trail!
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That's awesome. I know our Jeeps love Onpoint! -
Thank you very much to club sponsor @OnPointOffroad who has donated two gift certificates for the raffle this year... Your one stop shop for repair, modification and complete maintenance on ALL your toys and daily drivers! 50/50 Raffle (and more): Back by popular demand is a 50/50 raffle! Tickets on sale Saturday afternoon/evening. 1st place winning ticket drawn Saturday evening - the winner gets 50% of the ticket sales! (The club keeps the other half.) 2nd and 3rd tickets drawn each receive $175 gift certificates from club sponsor @OnPointOffroad $5 per ticket, or $20 for five tickets (bring cash). Must be present to win!
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we spend the night at the Thompson Lake camping area, which already had 2 other groups setup. the last time we ran the trail i only saw 2 groups the entire time, so i was starting to worry that the trail would be crowded! it turned out we only saw a couple more rigs, a couple dirt bikers, and one SxS the rest of the trip - still much more activity than 4 years ago. we parked beside the trail while we checked out one of the many small lakes you pass by. the second day it never rained, but the sky stayed interesting which made for nice photos! we took a short stroll to a picturesque creek bellow a small camp site known as Bob's Beach. many of the creeks had small trout (or some kind of fishy fishy). apparently there's good fishing in many of the nearby lakes as well. the second day still had plenty of trail challenges, but thankfully there's nothing else comparable to Thompson Hill. it we had the Ershim Lake camping area all to ourselves that evening. most of the Dusy exists in a 300ft wide corridor between 2 wilderness areas. i'm thankful we didn't loose this trail when the wilderness boundaries were created. the third day went pretty fast. the entire trail did seem rougher than my previous trip - but we still finished in 3 days comfortably. *most* of the third day moves fairly fast. near the end you have to come down the north gatekeepers, which unlike most of the trail, will get you out of your rig to walk the obstacle beforehand! there's plenty of room to camp just past the end of the trail, with 360* panoramic views. we all got a few battle scars but head a great time. Kevin sadly not only lost a mirror to a tree on the third day, but got a major crunch to the passenger a-pillar as well. Gadget broke and bent up her passenger rear aluminum fender flare - also from a tree. Roger's beast of a machine finished with only the minor dent from day one. of course all the sliders, skids, and a couple of wheels took a beating - but that's to be expected on most difficult rock crawl type trails. this time the Dusy was a doozy for sure!
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i spent the night before the trip at a hotel in Clovis, a nice suburb of Fresno - which put me 2 to 3 hours from the trailhead still. Clovis is the last city/town of any size heading in. it took me just over 9 hours to get to Clovis from Phoenix. it was lunch time, so i tried out a local eatery (turned out to be OK, but not great). most of my photos are scenic - when the trail got rough i was usually clenching the steering wheel rather than the camera! a lot of the Dusy is dense forest, which i love since that's what i grew up with. i guess it could give some of you desert rats a sense of claustrophobia though! you're constantly steering on this trail, and to say the trail is "tight" would be a massive understatement. shorter and narrower rigs have the advantage here for certain. here's Kevin @TrailTractor coming up to one of a million of the easy obstacles. his LJ was on 35's and definitely hit bottom more often than me on 37's. his narrower track width was evident though many times when his rig sailed through a set of trees that i could barely squeeze my rig between. every so often the trail weaves through a meadow, many of which had a small creek crossing. it has been raining for a couple days before we got there and the first day continued to sprinkle on and off. there were puddles but not really much mud... the Dusy is usually a very dusty trail so the wetness helped keep that down and was appreciated by all of us - especially since Kevin and @Roger both had open-air Jeeps. Thompson Hill is the main event on this trail - a very steep, super loose, bouldery hill climb. compared to the last time i ran the trail 4 years ago, the hill was considerably rougher. it was way more dug-out in places. those extra holes of loose dirt between some rather large rocks ended up providing quite a challenge. this is technically the bottom of the hill, but before it gets really interesting. this was a sketchy spot where i kept sliding sideways and eventually had to winch. you can't tell at all from the photo, but you're looking down a steep incline here and my passenger rear is up against a hard ledge rock. the driver front kept sliding off the rock you can see here, and the other 2 tires had absolutely no grip in the loose sandy dirt. i ended up winching another 2 places before the top. Kevin winched once - which he said he'd never had to do before even after having run the rubicon multiple times and Fordyce as well! Roger's 40" tires, 1-tons, and Atlas transfer case kept him moving forward the entire trail without needing a winch. Gadget slid sideways into one tree on Thompson, which ripped the passenger mirror clean off. Roger also had a sideways slip and got a very minor dent just behind the hood and dislodged his a-pillar light bracket a bit too. Kevin was the only one to escape the hill without a souvenir! continued...
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Sorry @ob1jeeper my inbox was full. I cleared it out and can receive messages again. 🙂
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Yup, she was able to find the pieces that were disconnected and has also ordered new bushings for both of them. Thank you all for the help and the advice.
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What Diane said... I will add, that the links appear to be missing the lower bushings. Any shop selling Offroad suspension parts, should have them in stock.
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