May 28th
My eyes opened slowly at first. I was awakened by what I thought was the sound of gentle rain, oh boy another wet morning I thought to myself as I lifted my head to look out the window. To my suprise it was snowing....hard! There was already 6 inches on the ground and it was piling up fast. Luckily I head the forsight to cover our gear with a tarp before bed last night. We got ourselves up and dressed without ever opening the doors. It was cooooooold outside and we werent looking forward to packing up and driving out of here. As quickly as we could we gathered our stuff, brushed off as much snow as we could and tossed it in the back of the jeep. By the time we were done my hands were frozen and getting the heater going only made them hurt more. No big deal I'm a tough guy
We got ourselves situated in the cab and ready for a long drive through the snow. Before we started rolling I spotted 3 horses walking slowly through the snow, I took a picture of them, its a lonely place and to see horses so far out here was cool. We began driving down the trail towards Blackrock dry lake looking forward to a fun day of cruising the lakebed. It was just 80 miles away, we'd be there by lunch. The snow on the trail was deep but we had good traction and were making good time trudging along at about 30 miles an hour. Thats when it happened.......
I felt a small bump and the jeep went to the right while the steering wheel went to the left and got very wobbly, followed by a horrible grinding sound. We stopped and I got out to see what happened. I thought to myself, we just broke a tie rod end, no big deal, I'll have it replaced in a few minutes and we'll be on our way. I bent down under the front of the jeep to take a look at the damage, hmm no broken tie rods, no loose bolts, nothing hanging down.... thats when I saw it.
The axle housing had completely snapped just inside the right lower control arm, the only thing holding the right front wheel on were the shock and the axle shaft.:Wow1::Wow1: I stood up and looked at Nola sitting inside the jeep patiently waiting for the news. She saw the color run out of my face, she could see we were in big trouble. We were 60 miles from the nearest "town" and it was snowing heavilly. I took stock of what we had with us and tried to come up with a way we could limp along the road, it was going to be a long day. So much for playing on the Blackrock playa today. This must be what the crew of Apollo 13 must have fealt like when they realized they weren't landing on the moon and would be lucky to survive at all. After poking around in the back of the jeep I came up with a limp along solution, I took a ratchet strap and ran it between the 2 lower control arms and began pulling them together. I got the axle as tight as I could and tried driving on it, it was a little wobbly and making some noise but we were moving. At 1 mile an hour. We drove like that for 4 hours, stopping every few minutes to get out and tighten the strap, and check everything. We had 60 or so miles of this to go, the math didnt look good, would we have enough gas? probably not at this speed, enough time? nope, would the axle even hold up to 60 miles of essentialy being ground down on a Chrysler powered lathe? unlikely.
Luckily on the horizon we saw what looked like a ranch that wasnt on our map or GPS, as we got closer we could see people, cars, farm equipment! Farm equipment might mean a welder! We had hope now, we limped up the long drive to the ranch house in the worlds only independant front suspension Wrangler, where we were met by Roger. We asked if they might have a welder we could use, he answered simply "pull it in the barn" As I pulled into the barn the strap finaly gave and the wheel went out the side of the jeep. Luckily his "barn" was a well equipt auto repair/ machine shop. As I talked to Roger we discovered that he too was an aircraft mechanic and pilot, so naturaly we had something to talk about. We began to weld around the crack, we filled the broken tube with as much wire as we could and just for good measure welded a 5 inch peice of angle iron on the bottom of the axle tube. What we were left with was the ugliest weld ever, but it was also strong, "a big blob does the job" Roger said...Thanks Roger for the help:smiley_drive:
As it turned out the ranch we found was a resort for people camping up at the Blackrock. They had hot springs nearby....tempting... but we had to get moving, sadly towards pavement.
Our trip had turned into a nervous drive towards Las Vegas and on to Tucson, from here on our goal was to make it home without breaking. We passed the Blackrock Playa, I stole a few longing glances, We'll be back here for sure " I said to myself as we drove by. After a few more hours we hit pavement. We followed 95 south toward Las Vegas for the rest of the day untill we hit Mt Charleston at around 8:30 at night, I was struggling to stay awake, it was time to find a place to camp. We went up Mt Charleston road and pulled off into the first desert trail we saw, set up the air matress and hit the sack....oh, and we slept like babies..........
