I spent the morning of the my second day of wheeling with Old Colony Four Wheel Drive Club doing trail maintenance. This wasn't planned trail maintenance, it turned out that the owner of the freshly graded trail that we drove down the day before, wasn't too happy about the ruts we put in his driveway. We didn't know it was private property (no sign or chain) and it turned the real trail paralleled his "driveway". We all walked the trail with shovels and rakes and filled holes, drained puddles, and smoothed out the trail.
After we were done we paused for lunch and headed for Old Florida Road. The Old Florida Road goes through the forest and it is one of the trails that is part of the Mohawk Jeep Jamboree. We hadn't gone too far down the trail when I noticed a horrible noise from underneath my Jeep. I jumped out and took a look underneath. The first thing I noticed was the bolt holding my rear spring didn't have a nut on it and it worked its way almost all the way out.
Before I had the Jeep up on the Hi-Lift, several club members were prying, hammering, and aligning the bolt. Someone (a guy named Terry I think) found a nut that would fit and the problem was fixed. I lowered it, and moved the Jeep forward a bit, same noise. Rick Boiros crawled under with a crow bar in hand and discovered a rock jammed against my front driveshaft. Once that was removed, it sounded much better.
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| Rick going over one of the big steps |
We continued on over several large rock steps one of which put me in a wicked (it wouldn't be a report from Mass. without the word "wicked" in it) off camber situation, but I didn't roll. After four or five tries I made it over.
Everyone made it through the trail without and use of the strap or winching, but no one dared the bottomless mud hole at the end. Jeff, our trail leader, tried the hole Friday night and was not willing to give it another shot.
| Chris taking the bypass around the big mud hole |