Despite the objections by my check book, I decided to head down to moab for a pre-run for Grand Slam West (grand cherokee event I help organize every year). I spent the entire week trying to piece together a set of shafts and get them installed in time to go. With the help of Brett (running for parts while I was at work and disassembling broken parts) and Bryson (for putting together my beat up shafts and welding the joints up) I got the shafts together and I sat out in the snow in my driveway and changed them on wednesday night---ready to go....
So I get off work at 9:00 on thursday (after my 3rd 11 hour shift in 4 days) I leave for moab around 11:00 pm. I stop in spanish fork to check air pressure on a leaky trailer tire--everything is good--grab a 24 oz rockstar and I head out. Comeing down price canyon it felt a little weird, but I figured it was the rockstar and exhaustion talking. Once into wellington I notice that my trailer seems to be riding really rough--as if the shocks were out or something (I know trailers don't have shocks so save it
). I stop at Walkers and get out half expecting to see the leaky tire now flat, and the other tire on that side is completely missing. The entire tire and rim had ripped off of the axle somehow and now I had a mangled stub in it's place. I wasn't turning back (I have no sense) I filled the tire up with some more air and headed on to Moab taking it nice and slow. I roll into Moab about 4 a.m., park at the market and sleep till about 7......
So I get on the phone with my here-to-be-held-nameless trailer sales person and he says that he has an axle fully setup for my trailer ready to go. I was going to try to source it local first so he was really helpful giving me the EXACT descriptoin of what I needed '85" hub to hub, 3500lb drag axle w/ 5x5" bolt pattern'. Nobody had it locally so I talk Brett into driving to Layton and getting the axle and meeting me in spanish fork. Fast forward 6 hours and $130......
I get the axle to moab and start tearing out the other one. I get it all out (using a small crescen wrench and 2 lb sledge cause thats all I had) and then the guys I was there to meet showed up and helped me weld the perches on the new axle. All is well, I'm in reasonbly good spirits having gone through everything and not died yet, when someone notices that the damn axle I just drove 6 hours to get IS 5x4.5"!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ajaksj fjisa dfadsfsafjdajdsafjdsafjlsafjasfjjl I exclaim.
Nobody anwers at the trailer joint, nobody in town has 5x5" trailer hubs, and only 1 tire shop has 5x4.5" trailer rims. So 180 bucks later (I bought a tire because my spare was a passenger car tire which looked like it would rub and I was tired of messing around) I have a set of missmatched tires/rims/axles on my trailer and it's rolling.
The next day, despite my better judgement, I get peer pressured into dropping into the big hot tub after I had alrady told the spectators that I wasn't going to do it. I did it anyways, broke 2 shafts, a joint, a hub, and a caliper bracket off the rear axle (also ripping the brake line out of the caliper). That was awesome.
So, at any rate, for those keeping count. So far in the last 2 weeks (5.5 days of wheelin) I've already broken:
1 trailer axle
6 44 shafts
3 44 joints
3 44 hubs
1 brake line
1 caliper bracket
But the weather was awesome and I got to give some cute girls from Pocatello a ride up Dump Bump....
Let the season begin!
Cody
So I get off work at 9:00 on thursday (after my 3rd 11 hour shift in 4 days) I leave for moab around 11:00 pm. I stop in spanish fork to check air pressure on a leaky trailer tire--everything is good--grab a 24 oz rockstar and I head out. Comeing down price canyon it felt a little weird, but I figured it was the rockstar and exhaustion talking. Once into wellington I notice that my trailer seems to be riding really rough--as if the shocks were out or something (I know trailers don't have shocks so save it
). I stop at Walkers and get out half expecting to see the leaky tire now flat, and the other tire on that side is completely missing. The entire tire and rim had ripped off of the axle somehow and now I had a mangled stub in it's place. I wasn't turning back (I have no sense) I filled the tire up with some more air and headed on to Moab taking it nice and slow. I roll into Moab about 4 a.m., park at the market and sleep till about 7......So I get on the phone with my here-to-be-held-nameless trailer sales person and he says that he has an axle fully setup for my trailer ready to go. I was going to try to source it local first so he was really helpful giving me the EXACT descriptoin of what I needed '85" hub to hub, 3500lb drag axle w/ 5x5" bolt pattern'. Nobody had it locally so I talk Brett into driving to Layton and getting the axle and meeting me in spanish fork. Fast forward 6 hours and $130......
I get the axle to moab and start tearing out the other one. I get it all out (using a small crescen wrench and 2 lb sledge cause thats all I had) and then the guys I was there to meet showed up and helped me weld the perches on the new axle. All is well, I'm in reasonbly good spirits having gone through everything and not died yet, when someone notices that the damn axle I just drove 6 hours to get IS 5x4.5"!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ajaksj fjisa dfadsfsafjdajdsafjdsafjlsafjasfjjl I exclaim.
Nobody anwers at the trailer joint, nobody in town has 5x5" trailer hubs, and only 1 tire shop has 5x4.5" trailer rims. So 180 bucks later (I bought a tire because my spare was a passenger car tire which looked like it would rub and I was tired of messing around) I have a set of missmatched tires/rims/axles on my trailer and it's rolling.
The next day, despite my better judgement, I get peer pressured into dropping into the big hot tub after I had alrady told the spectators that I wasn't going to do it. I did it anyways, broke 2 shafts, a joint, a hub, and a caliper bracket off the rear axle (also ripping the brake line out of the caliper). That was awesome.
So, at any rate, for those keeping count. So far in the last 2 weeks (5.5 days of wheelin) I've already broken:
1 trailer axle
6 44 shafts
3 44 joints
3 44 hubs
1 brake line
1 caliper bracket
But the weather was awesome and I got to give some cute girls from Pocatello a ride up Dump Bump....
Let the season begin!
Cody
Last edited:
