Montana XJ
03-31-2011, 09:31 PM
#17
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Year: 1997
Model: Cherokee
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04-01-2011, 12:16 PM
#18
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Me and a few buddies are goin down to St. Anthony's Idaho to go wheelin in the sand dues for spring break, that should be fun cause I've never driven in legit sand and dunes are sweet.
04-17-2011, 02:42 PM
#19
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Year: 1997
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So we got back from the dunes Wednesday morning... 3 days later than expected 
Here's the recap:
Thursday - Driving to St. Anthony's, when I got within 50 miles my Jeep began losing power for just a second every so often (but not turning off). Got to town and was filling up on gas when my Jeep shut off completely while idling, but it started right away so it was all still good. Now i'm driving around St. Anthony's at about 1 am and Idaho campgrounds are impossible to find, so when my Jeep started dying/losing power even at low speeds in town I decided to just zip back to Rexurg and then slept in the back of my XJ in the Walmart parking lot (not as bad as it sounds.. I enjoyed it).
Friday - Well I was pretty concerned about my Jeep since it was still having problems so I took it to a local mechanic in Rexburg. They said it was probably the crank sensor, and that would completely make sense because that sensor was damaged when I exploded the clutch last month, but it wasn't completely broken so I didn't replace it before. After getting that replaced it was only 1:00 so I took a short trip to the dunes at Crapo point and messed around for a bit in the sand there. After about 20 minutes of being in the dunes I started to have the same issues again, and at one point after it shut off while idling it took me a good 5 minutes to get it started again. So in light of that I went back to town and to the same mechanic. They took it for a drive and couldn't find any of the symptoms I described (of course) and said it was probably moisture in my distributor cap, causing it to arc and miss-fire. Well it was still only me down there and my friends weren't arriving till that night so I decided to stay out of the dunes for the rest of the day and I spent most of my time just getting a flag attached to my bumper (required in the dunes) and then found the campsite and set up camp.
Saturday - My buddies drove in around 4 am and were eager to get riding so we got everything ready in the dark and got out on the sand at about 9:30 am. Yes, it was snowing the whole time as you can see in the pic. About 3 inches in just the early hours, but it actually helped the sand tremendously by making it more moist i.e. better traction. Everything went great all day, we rode the dunes all the way to Devil's Dune (the biggest dune) and messed around there until about 2pm when my Jeep began acting up again. I decided to head back to the Crapo parking lot (about 1/3 the way back to our campsite) and along the way my XJ became increasingly worse. It finally began kicking off almost every time i went into neutral and then sometimes even with just the clutch in. Each time it was harder and harder to start, and at one point I even had to get jump-start from my friend's bike. After that I pretty much boosted it the whole way back, not stopping for anything and shifting as minimally as possible. Well as soon as I got out of the big dunes and into the smaller rolling ones I started going faster, so naturally I shifted from 2nd to 3rd. And that was the final shift. As soon as I put the clutch in the engine died completely and we couldn't get it started at all. After spending an hour attempting to get it running the battery was completely dead and we decided to go get a new one, since that one was real old as it is. So I hopped on the back of my friends bike and we took off and rode back to the campsite. I don't know how many of you have ridden on the back of a dirt bike in the sand, but it is not an easy feat. It's even more difficult when the bike happens to be 950cc's with paddle tires on it. That was probably the scariest and most awesome 30 minutes of my life, cause he definitely didn't hold back and I just remember looking over his shoulder and seeing 105mph on the speedometer. 105 might not be that fast on a road, but flying (literally) over dunes and getting bucked around by the paddles makes it seem pretty damn fast, especially when you're not the one controlling the bike! But anyways we got back to camp, charged the battery with the truck, brought one of the bikes to Crapo, and got ready to go save my Jeep. Well at that point our dilemma of "how to carry 2 people and a 50lb car battery on a bike" was solved without thinking at all and consisted of "Hold on to me (my friend driving) with one arm and hold on to the battery with the other. We tried to take it slow but with sand driving especially on a dirt bike, speed is one of the most vital things. Keeping it at about 35-50mph the way there worked pretty good, until we flew over the vertical face of a dune and dropped about 8 feet. The force of landing knocked the battery out of my arms, causing it to fall off the back, onto the paddle tire. The force of the paddle hitting it flung the battery under the fender of the bike and smashing right through the coolant tank. When I stood up from this all this is how it looked: bike on its side leaking something yellow, battery laying 15 feet away very deformed and leaking battery acid all over, battery acid all over part of my jeans, and a very confused driver climbing out of a big sagebrush. Well that was the end of that attempt, and luckily we were able to get the bike started again and get back to Crapo without losing too much coolant. After a few hours of repairs to the bike, a trip to town for a new battery, and a new way to hold the battery, we were back on the sand speeding towards my Jeep yet again, with only about 45 minutes of daylight left. We made the journey safely this time, but to no avail as my XJ still refused to start, and then endured another interesting ride back, this time in the dark. After we made it back we called it a night and headed back to camp, leaving my poor Jeep out in the dunes.
Sunday - We spent most of the morning Sunday attempting to fix my Jeep out there, but after 4 hours with no results we just went back to the campsite and messed around on the bikes. Pretty much the rest of the day was spent drinking smoking and riding around camp since there was nothing open in town and we were at a loss for what to do about my XJ. Aside from that I really don't remember Sunday.
Monday - First thing Monday we made a trip to town and I went to talk to the mechanics about what my options were. They referenced me to a towing company and I gave them a call. The man at the towing company said he could rent a front end loader and meet us at Crapo in an hour, and with no other choice I agreed. By the way April is the very beginning of the dune season so there weren't any trucks out on the sand and only a handful of ATV's. The front end loader made it within 3 dunes of my Jeep, but it was only 2wd and couldn't make the hills, so the driver called his buddy with a big toyota to come pull it out. When we met the yota driver at Crapo, I thought there was no he wouldn't be able to pull my rig out! His truck had a full external cage (converted to a tuggy), full hydraulic steering, turbocharged engine, and 40" tires with somewhere around 8 inches of lift or so. Well his beast screamed out to my rig with no problem, and we had it hooked up and ready to pull out at about 5pm. Then came the downfall: him actually trying to pull me out. This is one of those instances where you have an amazingly capable rig, and an amazingly incapable driver. This guy just didn't know the first thing about off roading, and had no clue on any techniques used. Basically the only thing his truck would do with a dead weight hooked to it was spin the big tires making massive trenches. After suggesting he air down from 40 psi he responded "you can do that?" and then let 1 psi out of each tire. It had been a long day, was getting dark, and I really didn't want to argue or try to explain some of the dynamics of wheeling to this guy, so we headed back to Crapo. Paying a bill of $250 with no results didn't feel too good, but nonetheless they had came all the way out to try and help. We spent the rest of Monday building a massive bonfire and depleting most of our supply of 'substances'.
Tuesday - Waking up Tuesday we had the general conclusion of: Let's get the hell back to Montana by tonight. The KTM950 had a messed up clutch and we didn't feel like riding the 450 without another functional sand vehicle so we were pretty much all out of luck and devoted the day to getting my Jeep. With no other options we determined the best course of action would be to just go door to door asking farmers. At the third house we asked sure enough the guy went out back and came back in a tractor about double the size of the loader we tried before. From there it was smooth sailing: drove the tractor to my rig no problem, hooked up my Jeep, and pulled it back to the parking lot all in less than 2 hrs. After that we went to town, rented a tow dolly, and got on the road back to Missoula.
Farmer getting ready to pull me out:
2 days after all that I have my Jeep back and it's 100% running. Apparently the problem was a frayed coil wire that was probably just dumb luck it went out in the middle of the dunes.
TLDR; Went to dunes, Jeep broke down, spent 4 days getting it out, finally pulled out by a farmer.
Here's the recap:
Thursday - Driving to St. Anthony's, when I got within 50 miles my Jeep began losing power for just a second every so often (but not turning off). Got to town and was filling up on gas when my Jeep shut off completely while idling, but it started right away so it was all still good. Now i'm driving around St. Anthony's at about 1 am and Idaho campgrounds are impossible to find, so when my Jeep started dying/losing power even at low speeds in town I decided to just zip back to Rexurg and then slept in the back of my XJ in the Walmart parking lot (not as bad as it sounds.. I enjoyed it).
Friday - Well I was pretty concerned about my Jeep since it was still having problems so I took it to a local mechanic in Rexburg. They said it was probably the crank sensor, and that would completely make sense because that sensor was damaged when I exploded the clutch last month, but it wasn't completely broken so I didn't replace it before. After getting that replaced it was only 1:00 so I took a short trip to the dunes at Crapo point and messed around for a bit in the sand there. After about 20 minutes of being in the dunes I started to have the same issues again, and at one point after it shut off while idling it took me a good 5 minutes to get it started again. So in light of that I went back to town and to the same mechanic. They took it for a drive and couldn't find any of the symptoms I described (of course) and said it was probably moisture in my distributor cap, causing it to arc and miss-fire. Well it was still only me down there and my friends weren't arriving till that night so I decided to stay out of the dunes for the rest of the day and I spent most of my time just getting a flag attached to my bumper (required in the dunes) and then found the campsite and set up camp.
Saturday - My buddies drove in around 4 am and were eager to get riding so we got everything ready in the dark and got out on the sand at about 9:30 am. Yes, it was snowing the whole time as you can see in the pic. About 3 inches in just the early hours, but it actually helped the sand tremendously by making it more moist i.e. better traction. Everything went great all day, we rode the dunes all the way to Devil's Dune (the biggest dune) and messed around there until about 2pm when my Jeep began acting up again. I decided to head back to the Crapo parking lot (about 1/3 the way back to our campsite) and along the way my XJ became increasingly worse. It finally began kicking off almost every time i went into neutral and then sometimes even with just the clutch in. Each time it was harder and harder to start, and at one point I even had to get jump-start from my friend's bike. After that I pretty much boosted it the whole way back, not stopping for anything and shifting as minimally as possible. Well as soon as I got out of the big dunes and into the smaller rolling ones I started going faster, so naturally I shifted from 2nd to 3rd. And that was the final shift. As soon as I put the clutch in the engine died completely and we couldn't get it started at all. After spending an hour attempting to get it running the battery was completely dead and we decided to go get a new one, since that one was real old as it is. So I hopped on the back of my friends bike and we took off and rode back to the campsite. I don't know how many of you have ridden on the back of a dirt bike in the sand, but it is not an easy feat. It's even more difficult when the bike happens to be 950cc's with paddle tires on it. That was probably the scariest and most awesome 30 minutes of my life, cause he definitely didn't hold back and I just remember looking over his shoulder and seeing 105mph on the speedometer. 105 might not be that fast on a road, but flying (literally) over dunes and getting bucked around by the paddles makes it seem pretty damn fast, especially when you're not the one controlling the bike! But anyways we got back to camp, charged the battery with the truck, brought one of the bikes to Crapo, and got ready to go save my Jeep. Well at that point our dilemma of "how to carry 2 people and a 50lb car battery on a bike" was solved without thinking at all and consisted of "Hold on to me (my friend driving) with one arm and hold on to the battery with the other. We tried to take it slow but with sand driving especially on a dirt bike, speed is one of the most vital things. Keeping it at about 35-50mph the way there worked pretty good, until we flew over the vertical face of a dune and dropped about 8 feet. The force of landing knocked the battery out of my arms, causing it to fall off the back, onto the paddle tire. The force of the paddle hitting it flung the battery under the fender of the bike and smashing right through the coolant tank. When I stood up from this all this is how it looked: bike on its side leaking something yellow, battery laying 15 feet away very deformed and leaking battery acid all over, battery acid all over part of my jeans, and a very confused driver climbing out of a big sagebrush. Well that was the end of that attempt, and luckily we were able to get the bike started again and get back to Crapo without losing too much coolant. After a few hours of repairs to the bike, a trip to town for a new battery, and a new way to hold the battery, we were back on the sand speeding towards my Jeep yet again, with only about 45 minutes of daylight left. We made the journey safely this time, but to no avail as my XJ still refused to start, and then endured another interesting ride back, this time in the dark. After we made it back we called it a night and headed back to camp, leaving my poor Jeep out in the dunes.
Sunday - We spent most of the morning Sunday attempting to fix my Jeep out there, but after 4 hours with no results we just went back to the campsite and messed around on the bikes. Pretty much the rest of the day was spent drinking smoking and riding around camp since there was nothing open in town and we were at a loss for what to do about my XJ. Aside from that I really don't remember Sunday.
Monday - First thing Monday we made a trip to town and I went to talk to the mechanics about what my options were. They referenced me to a towing company and I gave them a call. The man at the towing company said he could rent a front end loader and meet us at Crapo in an hour, and with no other choice I agreed. By the way April is the very beginning of the dune season so there weren't any trucks out on the sand and only a handful of ATV's. The front end loader made it within 3 dunes of my Jeep, but it was only 2wd and couldn't make the hills, so the driver called his buddy with a big toyota to come pull it out. When we met the yota driver at Crapo, I thought there was no he wouldn't be able to pull my rig out! His truck had a full external cage (converted to a tuggy), full hydraulic steering, turbocharged engine, and 40" tires with somewhere around 8 inches of lift or so. Well his beast screamed out to my rig with no problem, and we had it hooked up and ready to pull out at about 5pm. Then came the downfall: him actually trying to pull me out. This is one of those instances where you have an amazingly capable rig, and an amazingly incapable driver. This guy just didn't know the first thing about off roading, and had no clue on any techniques used. Basically the only thing his truck would do with a dead weight hooked to it was spin the big tires making massive trenches. After suggesting he air down from 40 psi he responded "you can do that?" and then let 1 psi out of each tire. It had been a long day, was getting dark, and I really didn't want to argue or try to explain some of the dynamics of wheeling to this guy, so we headed back to Crapo. Paying a bill of $250 with no results didn't feel too good, but nonetheless they had came all the way out to try and help. We spent the rest of Monday building a massive bonfire and depleting most of our supply of 'substances'.
Tuesday - Waking up Tuesday we had the general conclusion of: Let's get the hell back to Montana by tonight. The KTM950 had a messed up clutch and we didn't feel like riding the 450 without another functional sand vehicle so we were pretty much all out of luck and devoted the day to getting my Jeep. With no other options we determined the best course of action would be to just go door to door asking farmers. At the third house we asked sure enough the guy went out back and came back in a tractor about double the size of the loader we tried before. From there it was smooth sailing: drove the tractor to my rig no problem, hooked up my Jeep, and pulled it back to the parking lot all in less than 2 hrs. After that we went to town, rented a tow dolly, and got on the road back to Missoula.
Farmer getting ready to pull me out:
2 days after all that I have my Jeep back and it's 100% running. Apparently the problem was a frayed coil wire that was probably just dumb luck it went out in the middle of the dunes.
TLDR; Went to dunes, Jeep broke down, spent 4 days getting it out, finally pulled out by a farmer.
Last edited by kashwak; 04-20-2011 at 01:33 PM.
05-09-2011, 09:24 PM
#22
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^Thanks.
As of now the Jeep hasn't been off road for a couple weeks due to a completely shot velocity joint. It'll be fixed by tomorrow though and I'll be out this weekend.
As of now the Jeep hasn't been off road for a couple weeks due to a completely shot velocity joint. It'll be fixed by tomorrow though and I'll be out this weekend.
05-25-2011, 08:58 AM
#23
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Year: 1997
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I had to have my entire t-case rebuilt and all the angles modified which ended up being about a grand :/ but I found out that my 4wd has never fully worked, as in it's been slipping out when ever the tires slide D: but now it fully works and I can't wait to see how well it does..cause it did awesome in like half 4wd lol.
I'm going down to painted rocks this weekend with some friends for some off roading and camping.
I'm going down to painted rocks this weekend with some friends for some off roading and camping.
05-27-2011, 10:48 PM
#24
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Year: 1999
Model: Cherokee
Engine: 4.0
I still have severe back pain from it, Just quit my job earlier today due to it actually. The worst part is the doctors don't know what's causing all the pain 
But seriously, I hope everything turns out ok.
07-08-2011, 08:19 PM
#27
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Hey guys, I'm moving up to Missoula in a few weeks. I just did a search for the local xj guys in Missoula and found this thread. I don't know anybody up there yet and thought I might introduce myself and see about meeting up for some wheeling or something.
I'm running a 2001 XJ
Lockers, 33" MTRs.
Anyways, it would be good to know some jeepers up there.
I'm running a 2001 XJ
Lockers, 33" MTRs.
Anyways, it would be good to know some jeepers up there.
07-31-2011, 02:35 PM
#29
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07-31-2011, 02:39 PM
#30
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Hey guys, I'm moving up to Missoula in a few weeks. I just did a search for the local xj guys in Missoula and found this thread. I don't know anybody up there yet and thought I might introduce myself and see about meeting up for some wheeling or something.
I'm running a 2001 XJ
Lockers, 33" MTRs.
Anyways, it would be good to know some jeepers up there.
I'm running a 2001 XJ
Lockers, 33" MTRs.
Anyways, it would be good to know some jeepers up there.