Florida forest riding...

[yellowxj]

The family and I had a good time camping at the Silver River camp ground in silver springs this weekend...nice state camp ground right on the edge of town...feels like you out in the middle of no where though...then sunday we meet with a few more xj's and went trail riding/exploring in forest near Sharps Ferry...found some nice trails with deep water...

all xj's...all the time...

Fred finds a deep spot in the trail...

Michelle's v-6 purred like a kitten on crack the whole time

Hugh's xj wades though with the unmistakeable bellow of a HO with 3" exhaust and 3" flowmaster
And that was all on one trail...Ocala Jeeper arrived to help trail guide and wound up wading in to help Tony's broken xj (hit a log underwater too fast and broke both upper control arms). That seemed to cap the day of forest riding...it took a while to get it pieced together and out, sort of under its own power...

Then Jaydee and I continued on to the bravo and alpha pits...

where Jaydee stretched the suspension on his xj in bravo

And checked the depth of the water in the bottom of alpha!!!! Its crazy...theres almost 2' of water in some parts of the bottom of alpha and the water probably covers 2/3 of the pit floor...kinda fun to drive through...

 

[2offroad]

looks like fun.

 

[Ghost]

Looks like Florida wheeling to me! The only thing missing is the sugar sand pitts!

 

[Kejtar]

Ocala Jeeper arrived to help trail guide and wound up wading in to help Tony's broken xj (hit a log underwater too fast and broke both upper control arms). That seemed to cap the day of forest riding...it took a while to get it pieced together and out, sort of under its own power...

Can you elaborate on the repair a bit? It looks like the arms are nearlly all underwater and the access to them would have been... hmmm interesting to say the least.

 

[yellowxj]

they ratchet straped the axle front and rear to try and keep it in position then tried to pull the xj forward to just a muddy area,

it didnt work real well and they wound up working in mud and water...there the full extent of the damage was exposed, both uca...I just happened to have a left hand thread rod end in my console that worked to help fix one side of one uca and they borrowed parts off another to fix the other end of the uca

but it wasent pretty. that left two xj's with just single uca's and they lost some ujoint caps in the water trying to put the seperated front drive shaft back together, so the maroon xj had to struggle out in 2wd...i put a strap on him and tried to assist him through the deep water but the strap slipped off his front hook, he tried to keep enough momentum to get through but wound up stopped in the deep part and took on a little water until I was able to recover my strap, back up, hook up, and pull him the rest of the way out...

 

[Kejtar]

that sounds like fun!

I just happened to have a left hand thread rod end in my console that worked to help fix one side of one uca

Does that mean that it wasn't a stock UCA that broke? if so how did it break? any pictures of the pieces

 

[yellowxj]

it was a 5/8" rod end (my spare was for my steering components) that snapped off where the uca material ended...(he didnt build the suspension and just bought the xj)...its got 8" coils, a mid arm lower with a little link off that to the upper axle...fun stuff