Episode 704 – Top Five Rules of Trail Repairs

This Week In Jeep

Newsweek Awards Jeep With High Honors

The Jeep brand, renowned for its iconic and legendary 4×4 SUVs for more than 80 years, is the winner of Newsweek’s Best SUV Lineup for the second year in a row as part of the publication’s annual 2022 Autos Awards competition. The all-new 2022 Jeep Grand Cherokee, 2022 Wagoneer, and 2022 Grand Wagoneer receive top honors in their respective categories. In addition to the overall best SUV lineup award, the all-new 2022 Jeep Grand Cherokee, 2022 Wagoneer, and 2022 Grand Wagoneer receive top honors in their respective categories. During the evaluation process, vehicle features and specifications accounted for 75% of the judging score. The remaining 25% was based on vehicle drive impressions by Newsweek staff. Vehicle scores were averaged to produce a product line score, which determined the overall winners—so big congrats to Jeep for winning another iconic award. 

Mail Jeep Fire Burns Ballots

A small batch of votes was lost in Baker County, Georgia, on Monday due to some rather bizarre circumstances. On Tuesday, Gabriel Sterling with the Secretary of State’s Office mentioned 43 outstanding ballots in Baker County went up in flames after a vehicle transporting mail caught fire. The Baker County Sheriff’s Office posted about the incident on Monday, providing pictures of the Jeep enveloped by flames. Deputies said the driver wasn’t hurt and said the post office has a list of packages and mail on the route should anyone be expecting a delivery. Sterling said that they’re currently working with the U.S. Postal Service to see if there are any images of the ballots but, should the worst come to worst, all 43 will simply be reissued.

 

Jeep Dealer Employee Ordered To Pay Dealer $50k

An office manager must repay nearly $50,000 to an Ohio Jeep dealership after she was convicted of falsifying dealership records. 44-year-old Nicole Bradley was sentenced on October 13th following an investigation into her role as an office manager at Erwin Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep in Troy, Ohio, about 19 miles north of Dayton. According to court documents, Bradley received $47,475 in unauthorized funds from the dealership between 2019 and 2021. She was sentenced to five years of probation and 40 hours of community service and ordered to pay a total of $47,475 divided into monthly payments as restitution to Erwin Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep. According to the investigation into this thief, it was discovered that she had access to the dealer’s credit cards that she used to send Amazon packages to her home address and buy items such as furniture, clothing, and birthday decorations. The sheriff’s office also found evidence that she altered her wages to make payments on a car she purchased through the dealership. Erwin Chrysler-Dodge-Jeep has been fully cooperative throughout the investigation which led to the conviction. Nicole Bradley was originally charged with one count of theft and one count of falsifying records, both fourth-degree felonies, and was indicted on March 9. Court records show Bradley agreed to plead guilty to the forgery charge on Sept. 2. If her sentence is overturned, Bradley could serve up to a year and a half in prison for screwing over a Jeep dealer out of nearly 50 grand. 

Tech Talk with Jeep Talk

TOPIC/QUESTION: Top Five Rules of Trail Repair

 

We Zip ties, duct tape, ratchet straps, and baling wire OH MY!…off-roaders live in a strange Catch-22 of vehicle ownership. None of us have 4x4s that were ever designed to do the extreme gravity-defying mountain climbing, mud dancing, sandblasting and rock crawling that we put our Jeeps through. Sure you can say you’ve “re-engineered” your Jeep to take the level of punishment that you administer to the poor rig every other weekend. But the truth is that after you have upgraded your Jeep… you’re much more likely to find harder and more treacherous obstacles to go wheel on now that the vehicle is more capable than before. I’m guilty of this myself, so don’t feel too bad. No matter how low a set of gears you install, or how strong the axle shafts you upgrade to, or how over-built your Jeep is, you are bound to raise the difficulty of trails you run on, to match (or exceed) what your rig is capable of. It’s just human nature…. Or Jeeper nature at the very least. Knowing that we cannot build suspensions, drivetrains, or any parts for that matter that are completely “indestructible,” we must prepare ourselves for the inevitable vehicle component failure out on the trail. But that also doesn’t mean we then carry a veritable parts store of extra parts with us every time we hit the trails. But you know the kind of failures I’m talking about. It’s the kind of breakage that tries to strand you and your family out in the wild in an attempt to make you late for work on Monday morning. It could be a broken steering knuckle, a twisted driveshaft, a busted bracket, or even a flat tire that pops out of nowhere to ruin your good time. The thing you need to remember is that saving your own butt is the name of the game when it comes to trail repairs, and there are no rules to this fight. Notice I didn’t say trail “fix.” There can be a world of difference between a repair you make out on the trail with your Crescent wrench and limited resources, versus the type of repair you make in your garage with all your tools and the auto parts store around the corner. So In this segment, I’m going to talk about the strategies and tips that create the top five rules of trail repairs, that could get you off the trail and back to civilization. Nothing fancy. Just plain old-fashioned solutions and a bit of ingenuity to get you back home so you can fix the vehicle correctly. 

OK… Rule Number One: Believe that you can repair anything.  It doesn’t matter if it’s the middle of the night, raining sideways, and the only tools you have are a Buck knife and your 7-year-old daughter. There are always possibilities. The key to finding these obscure and creative solutions is to have a calm and open mind. Panicking, or letting the situation get the better of you will cloud your judgment, and make it harder to use the rational and logical part of your brain vs. the emotional side. Rash, knee-jerk reactions to breakage out in the wilderness could lead to regrettable decisions being made which may cost you more than your patience in the long run. Take a few minutes to metabolize the adrenaline and dopamine dump you’re experiencing, and then start working out your solutions. Often the problem will seem to solve itself if you give it a little mental time with a clear head.  

Rule Number Two:  You have to remember to put your personal safety above all else. Fixing the Jeep is one thing, but killing yourself in the process isn’t going to do anyone any good. That being said, don’t be afraid to get creative with your solutions. How do you think it was discovered that starting fluid can reseat the bead of a tire with a wonderful little explosion? It’s up to you to determine what level of personal injury is acceptable in any given situation, but doubly so when talking about a trail repair in the wilderness. 

Rule Number Three: Sometimes more is not better.
There are no trail repairs that require a torque wrench or a ratcheting screwdriver so don’t waste the space in the tool bag for tools that you don’t really need. And some tools can do double duty as other things as well. For instance don’t bother packing even a single pair of pliers, as a single set of vice-grips can do the job of those and hose pliers, they can also crimp off a leaky or split line. The longer you wheel your rig, the more familiar you will become with its particular tool requirements. If you really sit down and think about it, you’ll figure out what you really need and what you really need to leave behind. The more efficiently you pack your tool bag for the Jeep, the more room you’ll have for spare parts or the tools that make the biggest difference.  

Rule Number Four: NOTHING is off limits. Even if this means that your friend needs to sacrifice his spare parts or even something like the front driveline off his Jeep. If it means one Jeeper loses four wheel drive so that another Jeeper can get home, so be it. This goes double for branches and vines. If you can Tarzan that Jeep back together enough to get you off the trail with nothing but stuff from the woods, then do it. It could mean the difference between life and death.

Rule Number Five: And this could arguably be the most important one, don’t forgo maintenance for the sake of getting out there. There will always be another wheeling trip, so if the Jeep isn’t ready, it’s not ready. Look, some people may say run what you brung, and damned the condition, just wheel the rig and figure the rest out later. But regular maintenance and visual inspections done before and after each trip out may save you from ever having to do a repair on the trail in the first place. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Remember that, and you may just develop a habit of wheeling more than you wrench. On the next Tech Talk, we’ll take this topic and extend it out to the more creative side of trail repairs, so stay tuned.

Links Mentioned in this Episode

NEXEN Tires USA https://www.nexentireusa.com/

Trails 411- POWERING Your Adventure https://www.youtube.com/user/backcountrydriver

The 4×4 Radio Network http://4x4radionetwork.com/

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