Well. I fawked up today. Went out to Cline Buttes OHV with the local club to do some real wheeling. Haven't been on a real 4wd club trip in years. Super hot dusty day. Flat towed the samurai out there (tcase neutral, trans in second). Thought I heard a little noise coming and going from the sammy on the way out but ignored it as just towbar//chain rattles. Mistake #1.
I have flat towed it before with the 2nd gear/neutral setup with no issues. probably never again though.
Wheeled ok all day. I bypassed a lot of hard stuff, but did some things that were harder than i'd done with the samurai before. brakes felt like shit all day, pedal kept creeping down and felt mushy all day. repeatedly looked for leaky calipers or wheel cylinders but found no leaks. Master cylinder is leaking pretty good around the booster though when I got home.
Vapor-locked a lot also. the pressure regulator for the Weber was mounted to the valve cover and was boiling fuel inside it. Unmounted it and zip tied it off to the side and fixed that. Might just delete it entirely.
Felt like there was a lot of play in the t-case or front driveline. Wrote off that in my head as just noisy front locker. Turned out the front pinion has a little less than a 1/4 turn of free rotation. seems like way too much when the rear has much less. Either I set it up shitty or somethings broken. haven't got to the bottom of that one yet.
Now for the big fawk up.....flat towed it home (15-20 miles) with the fawking e-brake on! can't believe i did that. smoked the rear brakes, and they are probably trash along with the brand new rear wheel bearings. I only noticed because the little noise in paragraph one was actually loose driveshaft bolts. When I pulled into town the magnetic tow light wire unplugged itself from my truck, (mistake number 2,3, or 4?) got wrapped up in Mr. loose rear driveline, which came all the way undone and spit out from under the samurai.
![Laughing2 :lmao: :lmao:](https://data.irate4x4.com/assets/smilies/laughing2.gif)
magnetic tow light wiring is destroyed and i have no idea how or why it decided to leave the chat. Noticed the rear brakes were smoking and the e-brake handle was up when I stopped to assess WTF just happened.
Got the rear drums off which have some slight heat discoloration. Rear diff fluid looked and smelled normal so hopefully my air locker is ok. haven't looked at the front diff fluid yet. Front d-shaft is missing several bolts too. rear driveline pieces all fit back together and actually look relatively undamaged. not sure how or why those bolts all loosened up.
So at minimum I think rear shoes and drums, rear wheel bearings and seals, driveshaft bolts, brake MC, pull the front diff and figure out what it's problem is.
No pics of anything yet.
Also ordered some chinesium 4.57 gears a few days ago so i'll install them too when I'm putting this all back together.