Ok, story time! KOH was a blast as usual and it had some unforeseen issues as always lol
It was my first trip with the new to me truck and we rented a trailer to sleep in....It was nice to have shelter on the lake bed for the first time ever! I will never go back lol. I love camping but KOH camping is usually miserable. To be honest, if there was one year to camp, this was the year to do it. It is the nicest weather I have ever remembered.
Here was out setup.
We hope to purchase a trailer in the future for trips like this.
We arrived Friday night and on Saturday we just wheeled Chocolate, so not much wheeling, we were helping everyone get camp setup and people were arriving throughout the day.
I have gotten so bad at taking pictures, he is a picture of me on Chocolate.
Sunday, we ran turkeyclaw and Blueberry, we spent a good chunk of the day getting my buddy's car ready for tech for the EMC race, he was in the 4500 class.
Sunday evening we went back to Chocolate and I helped recover a toyota with a broken output shaft from his trans. I pulled the dead weight up the top of chocolate and to the sand hill. As we hit the sand hill I pop a front 1350 u joint. I wasn't too mad, that u joint was 6 years old and I even thought about replacing it before this trip....I had a spare driveshaft and a single spare u joint. I just swapped the u joint when we got back to camp.
To get out I backed all the way up to the rocks in 2wd double low and banged through every gear into overdrive carrying speed to the sandhill. It is bad enough that I have seen guys in 4wd not make it up, but with the 43in Mickey "paddles" and a 6.2L she cruised on up, I was told I hit on rock on the sand hill and caused me to lift my front tire and carry it in the air for 6 feet or so. I really need to get better about pics and videos and that was a moment I wish I caught.
Monday, I left the lakebed. My buddy's 4500 car bent and tweaked the front housing, cracked the truss, rosette welds and completely ruined the diff. I took my truck and UA trailer back to his house. They tracked down a G2 housing and got to work. I didn't get back to the lakebed until Tuesday early evening.
We had our share of issues getting the new axle to work. My buddy was running a JK44 under there and 30 spline shafts, the G2 44 housing was built around 35 spline shafts. We were SOL on getting that axle to seal up but with some time and research I found that a 1972 Ford Bronco SMALL bearing rear 9 in axle seal MIGHT work. That ID of the small bearing housing and the ID of the G2 housing were the same, the shafts were 31 spline vs 30 so we ran 2 seals per side and had speedi sleeves on hand to bring up the OD of the shaft. We didnt use the speedi sleeve but could have solved any potential seal issues.
I was impressed with the G2 housing, I thought it would be garbage but it isnt, it has side adjusters, big bearing caps, bigger tubes, its a nice housing. My job was to do gears and seal issues along with axle removal and teardown.
Trying my best with the time crunch....
Wednesday was prerunning. We pre ran the desert section from Cougar Buttes back to hammertown. The course was much rougher in the desert then 2019 when I preran. It was much more choppy. My front 2.5 coilovers did great but my rear cheapo bilsteins got wrecked, I have never seen them get so destroyed before. They were billowing white smoke and lost all the oil. I will get back to that later. After prerunning we went back to camp and watched the shenanigans at backdoor and chocolate. I ran up chocolate again but with 5 of us in the car, and 5 in my buddy's 80 series cruiser. We were having fun and laughing as we had a big group watching all these people crammed in there. The hummer used to get so much crap from hecklers but no one gives me shit anymore. A toyota behind me rolled on the line I made and I turned around to roll him back on his side.
Thursday
We helped fix a UTV that bent a crossmember into his driveshaft, after all other methods were attempted with no success we rolled it over and winched it back. Worked out perfect.
After that was fixed we ran over to watch our buddy do some minor shock tuning, unfortunately the legit shock tuning with tearing down shocks wasn't going to happen with time lost from the axle housing ordeal so they did external bypass tuning.
After that we had to go "sweep" the course for the UTV race to make sure the racers were all accounted for. We ran down spooners and then up outer limits. We got 1/4 way through when we got the call everyone was accounted for. It sucked! I wanted to finish outer limits so bad, I have run the first portion countless times but always turned around due to someone breaking. My buddy I was with wanted to turn around because we had a long day tomorrow with our other buddy racing. So we went back to camp.
Friday
Race day, our buddy had some fuel and electrical issues early in the day but other then that he ended up finishing the course!!! He didnt get an actual finish because he timed out but he did in fact finish! Now he just needs to get faster! lol
Setup at the main pit....
Saturday we just sat back and watched the race, then packed up and drove to Santa Clarita CA to drop off the rented trailer, stay at the in-laws house and sunday AM we took off back to Idaho!
All in all it was fun as always, as for changes on the hummer I was very happy with it. I need to really figure out a shock setup for the rear. I am still running stock leafs sprung over and just regular ole shocks. I cant take advantage of the badass 2.5 fox coilovers up front until I do something in the rear. My options are 3 link it and do a coilover or keep the leafs and do a quality 2.5 shock (basically what I have up front, minus the coilover) or a bypass out back but I don't think I have enough up travel (4in) for bypasses.
I also need to go through my driveshafts, I had one u joint failure, which isnt a big deal but I have cut, lengenthed, changed yokes, etc. numerous times on both front and rear shafts for all the changes in the 6+ years, at this point most of the splines are hammered, some u joints are old....I just need to get a fresh set and keep these as spares.
