 Another
Offroad Adventure
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On the trail back to camp Paul felt that his steering just wasn't
responding as it should. Then things
really started getting bad. The Jeep just
didn't want to go where Paul pointed the
wheel. So he did the best thing he could
think of. He swapped his Jeep for his
father's comfy YJ. Ahhh... now that's better
he though as he rode behind his father in the
cranky CJ5. Meanwhile his father, Steve,
is behind the wheel of this vintage CJ thinking, rather saying out
loud in hysterics, "Oh My God! How
can this thing steer so bad??" He's steering
in one direction, the CJ goes straight for a
short distance and then darts suddenly into another direction
as Steve desperately tries to counter-steer it back
onto the trail before hitting any trees.
Finally at a sharp bend in the trail, it just
won't go any further. |
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So we all get out, illuminate the area around
the Jeep, only to discover that the driver side
ball joint is hanging out with no ball joint nut
to be found. Either the cotter pin that holds the
nut onto the ball
joint must have worked itself out or was just
missing to begin with. In fact the cotter
pins are missing on the passenger side ball joint
as well AND so is the the lower part of the
drag link.
The irony is that Paul just had a Dana 30
front axle swapped in to his CJ the week before
by a "professional" company that does
this kind of thing every day. It appeared that
they simply did
not put cotter pins in the ball joints. Later on the phone
they justified this lack of cotter pins with
" Oh we don't use cotter pins any more
because we use Teflon lock nuts".
Well unfortunately there were no Teflon lock
nuts on this CJ.
We couldn't find the ball joint nut, probably long
gone way back on the trail. We
discovered that the Jeep's lug nuts have the same
thread count and size. Working against
damaged threads we got it on tight enough to get
it back to camp. In the morning we'll head
down to town for some of those optional cotter
pins and a new nut. |
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Two full turns of the wheel and it
kept going towards the Tree!! I kept thinking WTF??
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Saturday Morning
Ah yes, Breakfast buffet. Ham,
eggs, bacon, home fries, the works! Large coffee
please. After breakfast,
we hit NAPA for some parts. We discovered you
can't buy a ball joint nut without buying a ball
joint. Ok, well since Paul had a narrow track
CJ5 Dana 30, we asked for a ball joint for a 78 CJ5
which should fit the tie rod he has. Funny thing is they didn't
ask which side. Well of course we
didn't think to ask for the driver side and
of course they gave us the wrong side. The 10
miles back to town wasn't what we wanted to do without
knowing there would be a ball joint waiting for us.
We called NAPA on the cell phone first to find out if
they even had it in stock before driving
anywhere. Now... not that we want to bash NAPA, but
they didn't know what we were talking about. All
they knew was there wasn't a left/right side or
a driver/passenger part number for that year Jeep's ball joints
in their system. Their system only had one ball joint for that
year Jeep. In fact they said the whole range
from 76 thru 86 CJ-5's and CJ-7's only had one ball
joint part number. Well that's just wrong, plain
and simple. The thing is, if you know
anything about tie rods, the left and right sides are
opposite thread directions so the toe-in can be
adjusted without popping off the ball joint. I don't
believe the guy on the phone
even understood the concept of why there's a
difference between left side and right as Paul tried
to explain it to him for ten minutes. So we ended up
using the teeth of a hacksaw blade to fix the threads on the
old ball joint and used the 25 dollar nut and the 20
cent cotter pins to re-attach the tie rod. We
also put new cotter pins in where they were
mysteriously missing. In the rain.
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 Up and Over Innovations in Lenni
PA did the work on the front axle of Paul's
Jeep. We could have done this work ourselves but
time was a factor and the assumption was they would do
it right. Up and Over apparently does good work with
Toyotas, which is their specialty. However I
guess they have a thing against Jeeps or just old
rusty Jeeps. I'm not sure.
I'd suggest
double checking their work if you use them.
Especially the cotter pins. It's a good thing Paul
(or his father) wasn't going down a trail along a cliff's
edge when that
cotter pin-less nut popped off the ball joint.
That's just something you don't want to overlook.
It's a stupid mistake to not put a 20 cent cotter pin
back onto a ball joint.
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One
note about the axle swap. The reason for the
swap was to take advantage of disc brakes rather than
the drum brakes of the original Dana 27. The
Dana 30 must have a different castor angle of the
spring pad than the original axle had because
the swapped axle's castor was either zero degrees or
leaning a little forward after the swap. This
basically made it impossible to flat tow the
Jeep. The day before the trip Paul attempted to
flat tow the Jeep from Up and Over. He went
about about a 1/4 mile and
the tires went full lock to one side and stayed
there. He unhitched and drove the Jeep back to Up and Over to
figure out what was the problem. They suggested
and tried a full toe-in of the tires. As though
that would work for flat towing 250 miles the next day. No
mention of castor. Now come on guys you know
what was wrong. No castor. Shims would
have been the fix. Good thing Paul had access to
a rollback tow truck. One other thing. A rubber
gromlet would have been nice when you ran the LED tow
lights electric cable through the firewall. Then it
wouldn't have shorted out. I know these guys
were in a hurry to get their rock buggy ready for an
event but they had the CJ for 5 months knowing when
Paul wanted it back and did the job in the 4 days
before our trip. On top of that, they're
not cheap. If you want something done right, do
it yourself. Alright, enough about
that. Back to the trails.
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