Rubicon Run, 8-26-16

[Desert Dog]

The Infectious Off-Road 2016 Rubicon run started off on Friday morning. We had 7 rigs ready to hit the world's most famous 4x4 trail.

Dirty's YJ broke a shock mount and rear driveline within the first mile of the trail, and his trip was ended with a tow back to his trailer. Shortly after that, Henry broke a hub and something else in the axle at about 2 miles into the trail, and limped back off the trail in 2-wheel drive. Floppy's buggy suffered broken welds on his cross-member, which caused his axle to rotate and take out his front driveline. Although Floppy welded his rig back together on the trail and made some creative temporary repairs to the driveline, he never made it past mile 4. By the time we hit Buck Island, Vicky's rig was dead and Rene could barely steer his Scrambler. Vicky's FJ80 was losing power steering fluid and coolant as fast as you could add it, his battery was dead, and alternator not working. With most of the rigs down, the decision was made to get the hell off the trail on Saturday morning. On the way out, Vicky's rig had to be resurrected from the dead constantly, Rene's entire steering box mount broke off and had to be re-welded, and Aaron's temporary repair to his front driveline gave up the ghost. Vicky's poor rig looked like it had been through a meat grinder. It took us all day to go 5 miles!

Tired and beat up from the trip, we camped at Loon Lake, bathed in the lake, drank, ate like kings, and slept well. Not the smoothest trip, but everyone came together and got every rig off the trail and home. The weather was perfect, but the meat bees (Western Yellow Jackets) were horrible on the entire trail.

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And a video of the run: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=da41vE0I_k0