Wheeling trip report from the LSJC Election Run at BMRA 3/9/07-3/11/07
Jeep
This past weekend was the election run for Lone Star Jeep Club at Barnwell Mountain Recreation Area in Gilmer, TX. There were somewhere around 80 Jeeps at the event. In addition to our club, the Hummer club was out there, plus a large number of ATVs, so it was a pretty busy weekend in the park. The weather was perfect with highs in the 70s during the day an lows in the 50s at night, so it couldn't have been more ideal for tent camping. The boys and I camped on Friday and Saturday night (more on this later) and we had 3 pretty full days of wheeling.
Friday -
We got checked into the park about 3:00 and made our way down to Old Camp. I have a number of good memories of camping down there and it was the first place I ever camped with Hudson. Even though the majority of the club was camping up in New Camp and in Camp LSJC, we thought it was a good choice. As we rolled in there were only about 6 or 7 people on the far end of the site. We set up our camp and headed out to wheel. We did a warm-up on a short 4-diamond trail named Jeep Eater that takes off up and out of Old Camp. I was prepared to be disappointed by my open diff, but to my surprise and pleasure the the XJ just clawed its way to the top without any issue. From here we headed back on the main road towards the top of Clyde's Ravine.
Heading down Clyde's we met up with a group of Jeeps heading down ahead of us. We fell in with them and made our way down toward the base of the infamous Dewoody, which is generally considered the hardest trail in the park. About the time we came around to the top of Dewoody to gaze down it, we began hearing some of my friends from Van Alstyne who were headed toward us. We negotiated a meeting point and intersected on Spider Ravine. Before long I saw James Clark make his way over the hill in my old CJ which he is buying from me. It was the first time I had seen I had torn it down and turned it into a 1-ton rig. It was really hard seeing someone else in it, but at least it was one of my buddies! Our now larger group headed up and around Venom Loop. As we made it around we began taking the fairly challenging climb out of Spiders. If you happened to read my trip report from December, this is the climb that I simply couldn't make it up. On that trip, I ended up taking my only body damage at this spot, taking out a front amber light and bezel, pushing the front fender back a bit and putting a small knock into the rear quarter panel and taking out the brake light. This time being open I figured I was going to have to take a strap and get helped up. This time around, when it became my turn, I went hard and kept the throttle pretty heavy. The Swampers dug in like crazy and we bounced and rocked our way up and out. Hudson had backseat bets going on with his brother that we weren't going to make it and I was glad to prove otherwise.
James was a few Jeeps behind me and I got out to watch the CJ hit it. James got to the exact same spot that owned me in Decemember and begain having problems. When it comes to problems, James' answer usually comes in the form of an accellerator and this was no exception. You could hear that Vortec spinning up and James began hopping up and down in the CJ. On one of the drops there was the all-too-familiar sound of metal shattering. In that one moment James ended up with breakage that took the CJ down for the weekend, including a broken driveshaft u-joint, a destroyed carrier bearing on the skid plate, and a busted front output shaft on the transfer case. Big... big.... bummer.
We headed on back to camp after this and began dinner. I noticed that the small group of campers across from us had grown to about 20 college aged kids and the beer was already flowing pretty hard. They were just barely getting warmed up. I made Ramen and sandwiches for the boys and myself. As we were eating, loud partying was completely filling the air. I cringed as I heared such colorful phrases as "I t*tty f*ck*d your mom, you b*tch *ss mother f*ck*r!!!". Not exactly the best spot for me to have my 4 and 6 year olds. By this point the bass was occassionaly rattling the gear in my tent. About 10:00 or so (which is the cutoff time for wheeling in the park), they all decided that it would be a good idea to go wheeling in both 4x4s and ATVs. As they pulled out Hudson said "I wish they wouldn't go wheel after all that beer. Don't they know they could get killed?" Yes, my 6 year old said this, which told me he has really been listening to me all along.
Thankfully during this next couple of hours the boys went to sleep... and slept hard. As I went to bed sometime later, the group returned just as I was zipping into my sleeping bag. Things went back to full party mode. It was ridiculous. At one point about 3:30, one of the guys got on an ATV and started doing donuts in the middle of Old Camp about 40 feet from my tent. After he shut it down, he convinced his buddies that it would be a great idea to go on another wheeling run. They departed at 4:00am blaring "Sweet Home Alabama" in one of the rigs, which was followed the only hour of sleep I got. I went to sleep thinking... "Man, I hope they go try Dewoody. I really really do." Unfortunately this wasn't the case and they made it back alive at 5:00am. The party was BACK! This went on until I finally got up at 7:00, completely enraged. I got the boys up and made ziploc omelettes us all. We then headed up to the front of the park 8:30. As we started out of Old Camp the party crew was just getting their second wind, and heard a loud "WHOOOOOOOOO!" and when I looked over the guy next to him was doing a beer bong.
Saturday 8:30am -
As ragged as I was, it was great to go meet up with a bunch of Jeepers I hadn't seen in years. Everyone was shocked at how much Hudson had grown, and most had never even met Parker. I relayed the story of the previous evening to a few people and they just nodded like "Duh... Old Camp is just a drunken party camp now days." One guy who knew them mentioned that not only were they staying, but more were coming on Saturday. Well sweet..... noted.
I ended up in a medium group lead by club president Mark Gregory (Parker said "Is he a *real* president?!?"). An old buddy of mine nicknamed Lugnut was tail gunning. We hit a lot of 3-rated trails early on before lunch. The only breakage that day was pretty insignificant with one of the TJs ripping an air line that controlled his rear locker. It was the first time I had wheeled in an organized group of more than 10 Jeeps in a *long* time. I had forgotten how much less ground gets convered in a large group, but it was still very cool nonetheless. We hit Sierra's Skyview, Spider Ravine, Venom Loop and Green Lane (maybe a couple others) before breaking for lunch about 11:45am. The club was hosting a cookout at the front gate from 12-2 followed by a big raffle. After finding out earlier that the party crew was going to grow in Old Camp, we decided to risk missing lunch to go tear down our camp and find a new spot. We made it back to Old Camp about 12:00, and I had the entire camp in the Jeep by 12:10. We hurridly took off up to Camp LSJC but the last spot had just been filled. I then started towards a small, very remote, and very private camp at the end of the park that Harold and I had discovered on our previous visit. When we got there we discovered just a couple of day-tripping ATVs that were getting ready to pack up and head out. We quickly picked a spot, set up the tent, threw the gear into it and took off back to the front for lunch at the front gate. We arrived just before 1:00 with plenty of time to eat the huge spread.
After lunch LSJC put on their raffle with a HUGE amount of prizes supplied by a number of vendors. During the raffle a guy named Dave that I had met and wheeled with the day before won a Tuffy center console for an XJ. He drives a really nicely built LJ and had no use for it. Rather than stick it on eBay as I would likely have selfishly done in his position, he offered it to me knowing that I have and XJ. I wasted no time and installed it the day I after we got home. Very cool free upgrade!
That afternoon our group reconvened, but this session we hit some notably tougher trails, including two I had never done before. We started out by doing Binder Boulevard entering the opposite direction that most people take, climbing out the rockier end with the ledges. Just before we dropped in at the trail head, a brand new Jeep owner with a fairly new stock Rubicon LJ came up and wanted to find an easy group to run with. Several people convinced him to go with our group to see how capable his Jeep really was. He was pretty jazzed after the climb out of Binders and stuck with us the rest of the day as the trails got harder.
The next trail we hit was Chaos Canyon. We entered the trail at the end with the big drop-off ledges leaving the rock section at the exit. This was a nice long trail that winds through the treas and crosses a little wooden bridge before reaching a very different terrain at the exit. The last couple hundred yards consist of a sweet set of big rocks under the trees giving a break from the loose and dusty trails that are more prevalent at BMRA. I got a little hung up on a ledge, but the driver in front of me came back down and spotted me. With his help I found a better line and came on up. This is definitely a trail I want to revisit.
Next we hit what would be my last trail of the day, and another that I had never done. Near the entrance of the park we entered a trail labled Wile E. Coyote, which almost immediately turns into Sidewinder. It begins with about a 45% drop that ends with a drop-off ledge at the bottom making some of the short wheel base vehicles feel pretty light in the back end. When you reach the bottom, the transition is so quick that it looks like you are about to drive into a wall. As the vehicle pitches back skyward, the longer wheel base vehicles with a protruding back end like mine dug in in the rear. You are then immediately faced with a tough loose climb with a little stump in the middle. I noticed most Jeeps were taking the line to the left of the stump, but for some reason the right looked like the answer to me. I ended up having a tree temporarily remove my passenger mirror, but I made it up without too much trouble. The trail winds back and forth crossing that ravine and finally climbs back up and out of trees.
The boys (especially Hudson) was so set on having a fire at our camp that night and with daylight slipping away quickly we set off for a hunt for firewood after that trail. We remembered that we had pulled aside a faily decent log down in Old Camp, so I figured we would go grab it if it was still around. We dropped in through Jeep Eater and passed the party people, pulling into our previous camping spot. The log was still there so I strapped it on top of the Jeep and we took off again. Hudson remembered us collecting wood on Spider Ravine from a previous trip and really thought I should check there. Sure enough, there were two somewhat recently felled trees toward the top. I was able to get one decent sized one onto the roof, but the bigger was more of a challenge. Considering I was stopped in the middle of a climb, I strapped the log behind the Jeep and pulled it up to the main road. In the open I was able to place it up onto the rack more easily and we headed off for our camp.
As we pulled in, we found that no one else had come into this site to set up camp. After the pervious night of insanity, the boys and I had about a square mile around us all to ourselves, other than the packs of coyotes that began yapping that night. After getting the fire going, I began dinner by cooking some ground beef browned with red onions, then mixed in potatoes and carrotts. The boys and I really enjoyed dinner which they eagerly chased with a bag of marshmallows. Hudson decided that he was going to try to stay awake the whole night. Parker crashed about 10pm. At 11:16pm, Hudson was out and I was only about 15 minutes behind him. We all slept like rocks and woke about 8 .... well, 9 with the daylight savings change.
Sunday -
Sunday morning we woke and talked quite a bit about what a better night we had than the night before. I made omelettes and oatmeal and we just took our time getting ourselves going. After cleaning up breakfast I decided we would have some nice and easy solo wheeling, then come back and break camp and get on the road. I heard some friends of mine from ExpertOffroad.com were camping in the X-Terra camp at the end of Angry Jeep. We headed down there and caught them packing up. Justin told us that Kevin and (forgetting the drivers name) were headed to Dewoody to give it a shot. We decided to go try to catch the action, but got there just a few minutes after they had successfully made it to the top. We then went to hit our last trail, Twister. There is only one really challenging spot on Twister, which is a ledge to climb within 100 yards of the entrance. I started up it, but took a bad line and my Jeep felt really tippy for a minute. I hopped out to see if I could get a better line and cracked up when I looked in the backseat. Parker had his hand across the seat and Hudson said "What about us!!!!" thinking that I was just bailing out. After evaluating I saw that I had placed myself in a spot that would crunch my back end if I backed up, so I knew I had to continue forward up the ledge. I took a line a little more to the left and with some burning rubber and some bashing and bumping, I made it to the top. That was the biggest adrenaline charge of the weekend. After the obstacle I put it in park, shut it down and we got out to look back at our line. Hudson thought it was cool he could still smell rubber on the wall. I went back to go start it and.... nada. It was acting like the starter was out. After a few more turns of the key it started and I decided I would just pretend that didn't happen.
It was starting to look like rain, so I decided we would break camp and get on the road. We broke camp and then grudgingly left it behind us and our full Jeep. One the way out, we went down Clyde's Ravine again, and then headed to Scorpion Overlook at the request of Hudson. Parker fell asleep about this time. On the top of Scorpion, Hudson and I got out and took in the view as you can see for miles both north and south. We left and made a last pass though Old Camp. The partiers were gone but had certianly left their presence (presents) behind. Hudson hopped out and picked up bunch of beer cans, styrofoam cups and more. We headed up Jeep Eater for the last time of the weekend, then I put it in 2WD and started down the main road toward the office. I took a shower, cleaned up the boys and checked us out of the park. We loaded ourselves back into the Jeep to get on the road and.......nada. The Jeep wouldn't start again. I tried a bunch of times but just couldn't get it to turn over. Hudson was going to help me diagnose by turning the key, but his hand isn't strong enough. I was just showing him how to start it using the leverage of an udjustable wrench when it started! We never turned it off again (even through a fuel stop) until we got it in the driveway. I was never able to start it again that night.
Monday -
After some quick troubleshooting determined that my starter was never getting 12 volts, and my starter relay was never engaging I enlisted the help of my Dad who spent the majority of his life working as an electrical engineer designing radar systems. When it comes to problems like that I could have no better crutch than him to fall back on! Within about 20 minutes he determined that the ignition switch was sending power to the relay but it was never grounding. Do to some earlier work I had done, I knew that the ground was supposed to be provided by the neutral safety swtich on the side of the transmission. When your vehicle is in N or P, it allows you to start the engine. At the time of this posting, it appears that I jarred the NSS out of alignment and that the switch was not matching up with my park and neutral positions. We bypassed this safety mechanism by just grounding it 100% of the time to the chassis and "fixed" the problem. Monday night I installed my new center console and it is sweet! Thanks Dave H.!
So, here we are... back to reality... back to work... and looking forward to the next trip. :)
Friday -
We got checked into the park about 3:00 and made our way down to Old Camp. I have a number of good memories of camping down there and it was the first place I ever camped with Hudson. Even though the majority of the club was camping up in New Camp and in Camp LSJC, we thought it was a good choice. As we rolled in there were only about 6 or 7 people on the far end of the site. We set up our camp and headed out to wheel. We did a warm-up on a short 4-diamond trail named Jeep Eater that takes off up and out of Old Camp. I was prepared to be disappointed by my open diff, but to my surprise and pleasure the the XJ just clawed its way to the top without any issue. From here we headed back on the main road towards the top of Clyde's Ravine.
Heading down Clyde's we met up with a group of Jeeps heading down ahead of us. We fell in with them and made our way down toward the base of the infamous Dewoody, which is generally considered the hardest trail in the park. About the time we came around to the top of Dewoody to gaze down it, we began hearing some of my friends from Van Alstyne who were headed toward us. We negotiated a meeting point and intersected on Spider Ravine. Before long I saw James Clark make his way over the hill in my old CJ which he is buying from me. It was the first time I had seen I had torn it down and turned it into a 1-ton rig. It was really hard seeing someone else in it, but at least it was one of my buddies! Our now larger group headed up and around Venom Loop. As we made it around we began taking the fairly challenging climb out of Spiders. If you happened to read my trip report from December, this is the climb that I simply couldn't make it up. On that trip, I ended up taking my only body damage at this spot, taking out a front amber light and bezel, pushing the front fender back a bit and putting a small knock into the rear quarter panel and taking out the brake light. This time being open I figured I was going to have to take a strap and get helped up. This time around, when it became my turn, I went hard and kept the throttle pretty heavy. The Swampers dug in like crazy and we bounced and rocked our way up and out. Hudson had backseat bets going on with his brother that we weren't going to make it and I was glad to prove otherwise. James was a few Jeeps behind me and I got out to watch the CJ hit it. James got to the exact same spot that owned me in Decemember and begain having problems. When it comes to problems, James' answer usually comes in the form of an accellerator and this was no exception. You could hear that Vortec spinning up and James began hopping up and down in the CJ. On one of the drops there was the all-too-familiar sound of metal shattering. In that one moment James ended up with breakage that took the CJ down for the weekend, including a broken driveshaft u-joint, a destroyed carrier bearing on the skid plate, and a busted front output shaft on the transfer case. Big... big.... bummer. We headed on back to camp after this and began dinner. I noticed that the small group of campers across from us had grown to about 20 college aged kids and the beer was already flowing pretty hard. They were just barely getting warmed up. I made Ramen and sandwiches for the boys and myself. As we were eating, loud partying was completely filling the air. I cringed as I heared such colorful phrases as "I t*tty f*ck*d your mom, you b*tch *ss mother f*ck*r!!!". Not exactly the best spot for me to have my 4 and 6 year olds. By this point the bass was occassionaly rattling the gear in my tent. About 10:00 or so (which is the cutoff time for wheeling in the park), they all decided that it would be a good idea to go wheeling in both 4x4s and ATVs. As they pulled out Hudson said "I wish they wouldn't go wheel after all that beer. Don't they know they could get killed?" Yes, my 6 year old said this, which told me he has really been listening to me all along.
Thankfully during this next couple of hours the boys went to sleep... and slept hard. As I went to bed sometime later, the group returned just as I was zipping into my sleeping bag. Things went back to full party mode. It was ridiculous. At one point about 3:30, one of the guys got on an ATV and started doing donuts in the middle of Old Camp about 40 feet from my tent. After he shut it down, he convinced his buddies that it would be a great idea to go on another wheeling run. They departed at 4:00am blaring "Sweet Home Alabama" in one of the rigs, which was followed the only hour of sleep I got. I went to sleep thinking... "Man, I hope they go try Dewoody. I really really do." Unfortunately this wasn't the case and they made it back alive at 5:00am. The party was BACK! This went on until I finally got up at 7:00, completely enraged. I got the boys up and made ziploc omelettes us all. We then headed up to the front of the park 8:30. As we started out of Old Camp the party crew was just getting their second wind, and heard a loud "WHOOOOOOOOO!" and when I looked over the guy next to him was doing a beer bong.
Saturday 8:30am -
As ragged as I was, it was great to go meet up with a bunch of Jeepers I hadn't seen in years. Everyone was shocked at how much Hudson had grown, and most had never even met Parker. I relayed the story of the previous evening to a few people and they just nodded like "Duh... Old Camp is just a drunken party camp now days." One guy who knew them mentioned that not only were they staying, but more were coming on Saturday. Well sweet..... noted. I ended up in a medium group lead by club president Mark Gregory (Parker said "Is he a *real* president?!?"). An old buddy of mine nicknamed Lugnut was tail gunning. We hit a lot of 3-rated trails early on before lunch. The only breakage that day was pretty insignificant with one of the TJs ripping an air line that controlled his rear locker. It was the first time I had wheeled in an organized group of more than 10 Jeeps in a *long* time. I had forgotten how much less ground gets convered in a large group, but it was still very cool nonetheless. We hit Sierra's Skyview, Spider Ravine, Venom Loop and Green Lane (maybe a couple others) before breaking for lunch about 11:45am. The club was hosting a cookout at the front gate from 12-2 followed by a big raffle. After finding out earlier that the party crew was going to grow in Old Camp, we decided to risk missing lunch to go tear down our camp and find a new spot. We made it back to Old Camp about 12:00, and I had the entire camp in the Jeep by 12:10. We hurridly took off up to Camp LSJC but the last spot had just been filled. I then started towards a small, very remote, and very private camp at the end of the park that Harold and I had discovered on our previous visit. When we got there we discovered just a couple of day-tripping ATVs that were getting ready to pack up and head out. We quickly picked a spot, set up the tent, threw the gear into it and took off back to the front for lunch at the front gate. We arrived just before 1:00 with plenty of time to eat the huge spread.
After lunch LSJC put on their raffle with a HUGE amount of prizes supplied by a number of vendors. During the raffle a guy named Dave that I had met and wheeled with the day before won a Tuffy center console for an XJ. He drives a really nicely built LJ and had no use for it. Rather than stick it on eBay as I would likely have selfishly done in his position, he offered it to me knowing that I have and XJ. I wasted no time and installed it the day I after we got home. Very cool free upgrade!
That afternoon our group reconvened, but this session we hit some notably tougher trails, including two I had never done before. We started out by doing Binder Boulevard entering the opposite direction that most people take, climbing out the rockier end with the ledges. Just before we dropped in at the trail head, a brand new Jeep owner with a fairly new stock Rubicon LJ came up and wanted to find an easy group to run with. Several people convinced him to go with our group to see how capable his Jeep really was. He was pretty jazzed after the climb out of Binders and stuck with us the rest of the day as the trails got harder. The next trail we hit was Chaos Canyon. We entered the trail at the end with the big drop-off ledges leaving the rock section at the exit. This was a nice long trail that winds through the treas and crosses a little wooden bridge before reaching a very different terrain at the exit. The last couple hundred yards consist of a sweet set of big rocks under the trees giving a break from the loose and dusty trails that are more prevalent at BMRA. I got a little hung up on a ledge, but the driver in front of me came back down and spotted me. With his help I found a better line and came on up. This is definitely a trail I want to revisit.
Next we hit what would be my last trail of the day, and another that I had never done. Near the entrance of the park we entered a trail labled Wile E. Coyote, which almost immediately turns into Sidewinder. It begins with about a 45% drop that ends with a drop-off ledge at the bottom making some of the short wheel base vehicles feel pretty light in the back end. When you reach the bottom, the transition is so quick that it looks like you are about to drive into a wall. As the vehicle pitches back skyward, the longer wheel base vehicles with a protruding back end like mine dug in in the rear. You are then immediately faced with a tough loose climb with a little stump in the middle. I noticed most Jeeps were taking the line to the left of the stump, but for some reason the right looked like the answer to me. I ended up having a tree temporarily remove my passenger mirror, but I made it up without too much trouble. The trail winds back and forth crossing that ravine and finally climbs back up and out of trees.The boys (especially Hudson) was so set on having a fire at our camp that night and with daylight slipping away quickly we set off for a hunt for firewood after that trail. We remembered that we had pulled aside a faily decent log down in Old Camp, so I figured we would go grab it if it was still around. We dropped in through Jeep Eater and passed the party people, pulling into our previous camping spot. The log was still there so I strapped it on top of the Jeep and we took off again. Hudson remembered us collecting wood on Spider Ravine from a previous trip and really thought I should check there. Sure enough, there were two somewhat recently felled trees toward the top. I was able to get one decent sized one onto the roof, but the bigger was more of a challenge. Considering I was stopped in the middle of a climb, I strapped the log behind the Jeep and pulled it up to the main road. In the open I was able to place it up onto the rack more easily and we headed off for our camp.
As we pulled in, we found that no one else had come into this site to set up camp. After the pervious night of insanity, the boys and I had about a square mile around us all to ourselves, other than the packs of coyotes that began yapping that night. After getting the fire going, I began dinner by cooking some ground beef browned with red onions, then mixed in potatoes and carrotts. The boys and I really enjoyed dinner which they eagerly chased with a bag of marshmallows. Hudson decided that he was going to try to stay awake the whole night. Parker crashed about 10pm. At 11:16pm, Hudson was out and I was only about 15 minutes behind him. We all slept like rocks and woke about 8 .... well, 9 with the daylight savings change.
Sunday -
Sunday morning we woke and talked quite a bit about what a better night we had than the night before. I made omelettes and oatmeal and we just took our time getting ourselves going. After cleaning up breakfast I decided we would have some nice and easy solo wheeling, then come back and break camp and get on the road. I heard some friends of mine from ExpertOffroad.com were camping in the X-Terra camp at the end of Angry Jeep. We headed down there and caught them packing up. Justin told us that Kevin and (forgetting the drivers name) were headed to Dewoody to give it a shot. We decided to go try to catch the action, but got there just a few minutes after they had successfully made it to the top. We then went to hit our last trail, Twister. There is only one really challenging spot on Twister, which is a ledge to climb within 100 yards of the entrance. I started up it, but took a bad line and my Jeep felt really tippy for a minute. I hopped out to see if I could get a better line and cracked up when I looked in the backseat. Parker had his hand across the seat and Hudson said "What about us!!!!" thinking that I was just bailing out. After evaluating I saw that I had placed myself in a spot that would crunch my back end if I backed up, so I knew I had to continue forward up the ledge. I took a line a little more to the left and with some burning rubber and some bashing and bumping, I made it to the top. That was the biggest adrenaline charge of the weekend. After the obstacle I put it in park, shut it down and we got out to look back at our line. Hudson thought it was cool he could still smell rubber on the wall. I went back to go start it and.... nada. It was acting like the starter was out. After a few more turns of the key it started and I decided I would just pretend that didn't happen.
It was starting to look like rain, so I decided we would break camp and get on the road. We broke camp and then grudgingly left it behind us and our full Jeep. One the way out, we went down Clyde's Ravine again, and then headed to Scorpion Overlook at the request of Hudson. Parker fell asleep about this time. On the top of Scorpion, Hudson and I got out and took in the view as you can see for miles both north and south. We left and made a last pass though Old Camp. The partiers were gone but had certianly left their presence (presents) behind. Hudson hopped out and picked up bunch of beer cans, styrofoam cups and more. We headed up Jeep Eater for the last time of the weekend, then I put it in 2WD and started down the main road toward the office. I took a shower, cleaned up the boys and checked us out of the park. We loaded ourselves back into the Jeep to get on the road and.......nada. The Jeep wouldn't start again. I tried a bunch of times but just couldn't get it to turn over. Hudson was going to help me diagnose by turning the key, but his hand isn't strong enough. I was just showing him how to start it using the leverage of an udjustable wrench when it started! We never turned it off again (even through a fuel stop) until we got it in the driveway. I was never able to start it again that night.
Monday -
After some quick troubleshooting determined that my starter was never getting 12 volts, and my starter relay was never engaging I enlisted the help of my Dad who spent the majority of his life working as an electrical engineer designing radar systems. When it comes to problems like that I could have no better crutch than him to fall back on! Within about 20 minutes he determined that the ignition switch was sending power to the relay but it was never grounding. Do to some earlier work I had done, I knew that the ground was supposed to be provided by the neutral safety swtich on the side of the transmission. When your vehicle is in N or P, it allows you to start the engine. At the time of this posting, it appears that I jarred the NSS out of alignment and that the switch was not matching up with my park and neutral positions. We bypassed this safety mechanism by just grounding it 100% of the time to the chassis and "fixed" the problem. Monday night I installed my new center console and it is sweet! Thanks Dave H.!
So, here we are... back to reality... back to work... and looking forward to the next trip. :)
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