It's been a busy weekend. The buddy that's joining me on the trip came down over the weekend so we could dry run stuff.
This is everything packed in the Jeep.
It all fits with tools, spares, a couple tents, clothes, sleeping bags, camp stove, utensils, enough cooler space for food/beer,...etc. I'm honestly surprised:
After packing it up we took it for a drive to town to see how it would do on the road. It did well. We stopped at the brewery for a beer while we were there:
We swung by the grain truck scale on the way home and it measured out at 3940 lbs with two adults, tools, spares, camping gear, and a full tank of gas. Not light, but I figured it would be close to that. The Jeep is around 3150 with a full tank of gas but otherwise empty.
When we got home, we were messing around on one of the obstacles I have on the property and ran into a problem. When the Jeep was in an off-camber uphill turn to the left with the front locker on, a horrible popping sound was coming from the front drive axle area. It sounded REALLY BAD like the dog clutches in the locker we skipping or a hub was broken.
We took it back to the shop, pulled the hubs to check them, and pulled the diff cover to check the ARB. Nothing was wrong visually, and everything seemed to be working perfectly during testing with the front end jacked up in the shop.
I had an aha moment and thought to check the U-joint clearance to my home-made front skid plate and found this:
The yoke was hitting the skid plate. That explains the violent popping noises and shudders.
The skid plate is close to the U-joint because the engine oil pan the skid plate protects is close to the U-joint. I've verified many times that it cleared when flexed out to "worst case" scenario. However, it turns out that the actual "worst case" scenario is fully loaded, axles locked, off camber, and turned full lock uphill. That really twists up the suspension and frame and shoves the front axle about 3/8" to the left.
Finding this, I let out a sigh of relief for two reasons: 1). My new front locker was not broken. 2). we found this before hitting the Rubicon.
It's an easy fix. We cut and welded a notch into the skid plate:
This also required adding a 45 to the back of the brace that holds the skid plate:
Now there is lots of room:
It was getting late Saturday night at that point. We cooked dinner with the camp gear we packed into the Jeep to make sure we're not forgetting anything (a few more things did get added to the list). The steak and potatoes turned out great:
This morning, we finished putting the Jeep back together, loaded all the camping gear back into it and went all over the property on severe sidehills, uphills, downhills, flexed out through ditches, ...etc:
The front U-joint clearance issue is fixed. It definitely feels tippier on the sidehills when it's fully loaded, but it will handle some butt-clenching stuff.
The known issue of the rear tires rubbing on the seat belt bolts at full stuff was annoying, and as you can see in the picture above, the rear has a bit of a squat when loaded, so I decided to install some 1" longer shackles from the parts pile that came with the Jeep. It already has the same ones on the front. I have no idea what brand they are, but they seem decent
That helped level the Jeep. It looks much better now:
While the tires were off, I ground the protruding length of the seatbelt bolts off and rounded the edges of the square nuts:
Then we flexed it out:
The end result is good. The passenger tire no longer touches the seat belt bolt, and the driver side barely tickles it now.
At the end of this weekend, I think we're in pretty good shape. We've hand written a bunch of stuff on the list that I need to organize and then we'll finish getting that last little bits found or bought (if needed) and packed.
