Johnson Valley run May 2-4, trip report

[cbassett]

Spent last weekend at Johnson Valley.

David L came down too with his ZJ.
Tim T road passenger with me.

Drove down after work Thursday night, spent the night in Walmart parking lot (what's up with Von's not being open 24hrs??)

Friday morning setup camp on the lakebed then headed for Aftershock. Got a little twisted around on the way there, ended up running the trail backwards. David's shock brackets ripped off the "frame" (taking bits of the frame with, on Aftershock. Battery welded them back on. I chopped up my recovery chain and fabbed up some limit straps to keep his coils in check.
Since we were in the area we decided to run Clawhammer backwards as well. At the bottom of Clawhammer David busted a front shock at the stud. We decided to head for camp.

Saturday morning we ran to town and got David some new shocks. Unfortunately Kragen didn't have a front shock to suit his application. We tried to weld the stud back on, but his battery had had about enough of that action the day before- so we couldn't apply a decent weld. David opted to ride with us today.
We broke camp and headed for SledgeHammer. As we started in the trail, some folks coming down told us Grimm Jeepers and Total Karnage were up on trail with a Toy pickup broken down and sitting sideways in the trail. Sure enough, when rounding the corner at the 2nd big ledge we saw the Toy blocking trail. This made Sledge interesting real quick, because to get around this rig I could only take an optional and much harder line up a couple big ledges. After some work, got around this rig and caught up quickly to Grimm. Unfortunately, they suffered more breakage on trail. Helping them at times, chatting at others, we eventually finished out Sledge, and decided to join Grimm and Total at their camp. Ran into Jack, from CTM, in camp when he lended his welding services to the aforementioned broken Toy. Jack is about the nicest person I've ever run into when wheeling. He's doing some neat stuff with his joints and hardening testing with joints and shafts, so it was really cool to chat that up with him.
Sunday morning, Grimm and Total decided they'd had enough carnage so they packed it in and headed back to Vegas. David, Tim, and I broke camp and headed for Jackhammer. As we started climbing Jackhammer, we were joined by "Keith" in a nicely built FJ-40. he decided to run the trail with us. I have to say Jackhammer is probably the most fun and the most technical trail I've run. To put it into Rubicon-perspective...(Jackhammer is like Walker hill-meets-Little Sluice-meets-Old Sluice, if such a trail ran from Loon to Spider). Jack is 1.8 miles long. We took a few breather breaks, and a while at the top to checkout the view. Four hours from starting the trail we were back on the desert floor.
Ripping a limit strap and subsequently popping off the other-side's upper shock mount on the beast, we decided to call it a day, and headed back to the lakebed to setup camp and start in on more carne asada.

Man does the wind blow down there! There were quite a few times where a dust cloud would work it's way across the lakebed, and when it hit you you couldn't see 20 feet in front of you!

This was one kick-butt weekend!

Wednesday will be spent fixing the carnage received:
-Limit strap
-Upper shockmount
-Exhaust leak. Heat shield screw punctured the top of the muffler, D'oh!
-JJoint popping. It's been wanting to be R&R'd since before this trip.


Pics here. They're hi-res; don't have time to resize right now.

Enjoy....


http://home.off-road.com/~bassettsbe...April2-4_2003/

[papromike]

Chris, dude....you guys need to get some swaybars on those things.........


those cabs look really flopped over to one side,,...if you had anti-rocks or something similar, they wouldnt look like that..

[cbassett]

okeedokee Michael.

Or how about I wait until swaybars fall out of fashion again.

Fact is my rig runs very balanced. Some of the pics would make you believe otherwise. Some of the pics, the trail was crooked.
If I hear of someone shopping for swaybars though, I'll be sure to send them to everyone's favorite mfr in Anaheim.

[papromike]

Uh, yeah, it looks like your rig is very balanced...with the coils hanging out on the ground and such...


LOL........Just poking at ya....

[sethmark]

Hmm... I see pics of Chris's piece of crap sucessfully running hard trail in johnson valley.

I don't see any pics of mikes' running anything anywhere.

Maybe Chris has the experience to determine what he likes best in his own rig?

NAH! Couldn't be that. There's only one right way to go wheelin and that's in a TJ. Everyone knows that!

[Paradiddle]

Originally posted by sethmark
NAH! Couldn't be that. There's only one right way to go wheelin and that's in a TJ. Everyone knows that!

Seth - you do know that Mike doesn't have or want a TJ - right?

Glad you have fun Chris - those trails are a rush. I thought your ZJ was silver?

Jeff

[sethmark]

Yep. Seen his ZJ live and in person.

[papromike]

Yep, Seth you have seen mine in person and you know its too

purdy to take up to JV...Maybe someday, but not now..


and Besides Chris wins the "ugliest zj" contest every year....so I

have to give him a little #$!@ every now and then....



Hey chris what happened to the Chargold?....looks like Cerulean

Blue Krylon now!...

[cbassett]

Those trails definitely are a kick. It was fun running with a very capable FJ behind me too. He was on 37" MTRs, so we were similar height in that regard.

As I shared with Seth offline, I'm gonna drop the Swampers. They did every big as good as the MTRs, and it's a blast to see just one lug pull you up a rock. But my outer lugs are hurting; one tire has a clean sweep of the outer lugs' corners for about a foot. I really want a 37-38" tall tire, so I'm thinking about the MTR again. Grooving the center lugs on my 35s made them tolerable up here, I just wanted more tire.

LOL Michael! Yeah, the 'unbalanced' pic you're picking on is because my limit strap broke; Damn Stay-aways!

[Timzjatl]

Looks awesome! Glad to see a ZJ on trails like that, I'd love to try that sometime. like the new color, I've conscidered giving mine the krylon touch lately too, much easier to touch up the body dammage!