We had another great Unimog event today. Five (5) mogs, Larry’s ‘04 TJ Rubicon (dead stock down to the tires, except for the winch), an extended cab Ford Ranger V6 with lift and extended shock mounts (not especially large tires… impressed with its ability to keep up), and Brady’s six wheel Pinzgauer that I rode in last year.
Brady had an ignition issue on the way to the staging area with intermittent backfires running on the highway that got worse on the surface roads, until they arrived and it wouldn’t restart. Very interesting ignition system with threaded adapters for the coil and ignition wires, all designed to be water tight. 24 volt system. He found the points were out of adjustment and weren’t separating, but resetting them did not make it run. He was troubleshooting right up to the start of the event and finally decided to go find another coil all the way in Worcester. Fortunately our host had a spare vehicle to loan. He eventually found that the points had become fouled and caught up to us later for the last leg of the event.
In the meantime we had 2 mogs get slashed sidewalls and had to change tires on the trail. These are big tires up to 395/80-20 size that weigh about 200 lbs each. The lead mog, Geoff’s green machine driven by (his step daughter?) Jessica, flopped on its side creeping down a steep decline when a large boulder shifted under the right front tire. She flopped over on the passenger side door which was stuffed in by a tree root, breaking the side glass. Fortunately there were no real injuries (Jessica had a few bumps from sliding out of her seat) and the damage was mostly limited to the door. After hand winching the boulder out from under the front end using a strap and come-along, we used the winch on the front of Larry’s Jeep and a snatch block to right the truck. A bunch of applied leverage and grunt work to roll the dislodged boulder… weighing easily 1000lbs… out of the path of the trail, respooled the winch and we were on our way.
Not far from there we stopped again when we got word that our “tail gunner”, Geoff (driving his newly acquired red mog) had slid off the trail on a deceivingly simple looking section. This spot had previously proven to be quite a treacherous side hill hazard. By the time we had walked back approx. 1/3 mile over hill and dale, Brady had gotten the Pinzgauer turned around, they were using his winch with a snatch block anchored with a strap around a large boulder and the hook connected to another strap wrapped around the ‘headache’ roll bar above the cab of Geoff’s truck. This gave Geoff the stability he needed to drive himself back up onto the trail w/o the risk of rolling on down the hill.
The only other carnage that I know of was Larry’s rear view mirror popping off of the windshield on an especially bouncy section of rock garden, and me chipping the edge off of a front tooth (not sure how or when, but I surely did).
I can tell you that it is utterly amazing what you can drive a bone stock Rubicon over/up. Things that I’m not sure I could walk or climb on foot, it will go over. Simply amazing.
GPW, I have talked many times about possibly building a much simpler standy (or slouchy) slide in for the Charcoal Briquette (my resurrected 5x8 UT), but I also have dreams of a V8 or flat 6 Subby conversion on a Porsche 914. I would love to scratch build a ‘32 roadster inspired sportster/fun driver car, or maybe even a Factory Five Cobra. I have my chopped ‘72 Chevy short fleetside P/U that needs a lot of love, and I want to build wooden geared clocks. I guess I need to keep moving! Too many (potential) projects, too little time.
Yesterday I used some donated scrap lumber from Karl, a couple of 2x4’s and what was once a very nice piece of birch cabinet grade 3/4 ply, to make this scaffold plank. It’s 24 wide x 60 long. Here’s the underside framework.
And the top side with it toed to the sawhorses using a couple of drywall screws.
The horses put it a little higher than the 32-34 inches I was shooting for, so I might trim down the frame, leaving the ply cantilevered at the ends and just screw that to the horses; or I might add dedicated legs and bracing to get it to the correct working height.
All for now.
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