Had a pretty good time at SAE this weekend. After getting off to a bit of a late start, I got stuck in Atlanta rush-hour traffic and subsequently missed the Friday night ride. I just got set up friday night and hung out at camp. On Saturday I ran Beasley Knob with a group of about 8 trucks. The Defender performed great on the trails. It's obviously very different on the trails than my D2 which was locked front/rear. For the moderate trails at Beasley it was more fun and challenging with open diffs and a stick shift. That being said, lockers will likely be in my future down the road. I won some shirts/hats and free registration to next year's event during the raffle that evening. I also picked up some RTE Engineering gift cards at a great price during the auction. I plan to put them towards some 2" lift springs later this year. I managed to get packed up and back on the road pretty early Sunday morning.
After performing flawlessly all weekend, I ran into a troublesome issue on the way home. After coming out of the mountains, I noticed my clutch pedal needed to be depressed a little further and thought nothing of it, figuring that it probably got a little warm shifting frequently up and down the hills. After a stop for a few hours, I continued and the clutch still felt the same. After several miles on the highway, I noticed that I had almost no clutch pedal at all and was low on diesel. I managed to exit and fuel up, however the clutch would now only engage about 1" from the floor. I topped off the clutch (which was nearly full) and managed to get it back on the highway and home. I've read several threads on clutch issues (on other forums) but my symptoms don't really seem to fit most of those as there were no leaks (master cyl. was nearly full of fluid) and there is no slippage after the clutch is engaged. Any input from those with LT77 clutch experience would be great.
As usual, I failed to take many pictures this weekend. The pictures I do have (mainly of other people's trucks) I'll post up later on.
