Interceptor
My toy of joy
- City
- Galivants Ferry
- State
- SC
Home sweet home
Starting on a journey
- Thread starter ducktapeguy
- Start date
- City
- Redding
- State
- Ca
Glad your back home safely. Bummer we couldn't connect but In-N-Out is always good. The Grapevine can be a tough climb - especially with the vapor lock issue - you never know when it will stall.
The bridge scene in "Stand By Me" was filmed here in Shasta County at Lake Britton. The serious movie buffs still come visit it to this day.
Get some rest and enjoy the memories of your grand adventure and thanks for sharing it with us!
The bridge scene in "Stand By Me" was filmed here in Shasta County at Lake Britton. The serious movie buffs still come visit it to this day.
Get some rest and enjoy the memories of your grand adventure and thanks for sharing it with us!
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Awesome trip. amazing memories and something y'all won't forget for sure. This is definitely the definition of get them out and drive them. thanks for the thread. I'd imagine most normal people would read this and ask why it only makes me want to do a trip just like it.
- City
- SoCal
- State
- CA
A final recap of my trip. Feels nice to be able to type while sitting at a desk, vs. trying to post stuff while crammed in the back of the jeep balancing the laptop on my lap.
Total mileage ~ around 8600 miles after correction factor applied. I have larger tires so I estimate my odometer is about 10% off
Total fuel - 616 gallons
Average mpg - between 14-15 mpg
Biggest fillup - 27.5 gallons
I'm also going through the pictures my son took on the trip and it's interesting to see the different perspectives of the same trip. On some of the most challenging (and most memorable) moments, I was either too busy, too stressed, or too tired to take any pictures. Since he was a passenger, he was able to capture a lot of things that I didn't.
One of those pictures was while I was trying to repair the tie rod somewhere between Inuvik and Tuk. Notice the Arctic certified footwear (crocs). Aside from the hikes, I was in crocs 99% of the time. Mostly because the weather wasn't that cold and it's easier to slip them on when getting out of the car. Also my windshield leaked pretty bad, so during the rainy periods or when I needed to use the washer fluid, my feel would always be soaking wet. So basically my feet were always wet. Luckily the heater worked exceptionally well and they would dry off pretty fast.
Total mileage ~ around 8600 miles after correction factor applied. I have larger tires so I estimate my odometer is about 10% off
Total fuel - 616 gallons
Average mpg - between 14-15 mpg
Biggest fillup - 27.5 gallons
I'm also going through the pictures my son took on the trip and it's interesting to see the different perspectives of the same trip. On some of the most challenging (and most memorable) moments, I was either too busy, too stressed, or too tired to take any pictures. Since he was a passenger, he was able to capture a lot of things that I didn't.
One of those pictures was while I was trying to repair the tie rod somewhere between Inuvik and Tuk. Notice the Arctic certified footwear (crocs). Aside from the hikes, I was in crocs 99% of the time. Mostly because the weather wasn't that cold and it's easier to slip them on when getting out of the car. Also my windshield leaked pretty bad, so during the rainy periods or when I needed to use the washer fluid, my feel would always be soaking wet. So basically my feet were always wet. Luckily the heater worked exceptionally well and they would dry off pretty fast.
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- City
- SoCal
- State
- CA
I wanted to visit the bridge, maybe on the next trip up there. There were so many places I wanted to visit but had to pass up due to the lack of time. On this entire trip I only spent 2 days actually in Alaska, most of trip was in Canada. I could have easily spent another month or two just in the Anchorage area exploring the seaside towns.
The good thing about spending so much time in the Jeep is that I got to know it very, very well and you become sensitive to small changes. You start to recognize minor noises, or when it downshifts differently, or how it just feels slightly different when driving. By the end of the trip I actually could tell when it was about to stall and knew how much longer I could keep driving until I needed to pull over, and how long it takes until I'm able to drive again. I also installed a transmission temperature gauge, while it wasn't a direct measure of anything related to the vapor lock, gave me a pretty good indication of how hard I was working the jeep and when I needed to worry about stalling and when I could push it harder.
Now that I'm safely back home, I can say go for it you won't regret it doing it. But to be perfectly honest, I was ready to quit so many times on this trip. During the first day driving up to Nevada in 95F heat and having stalling issues, I thought I'm only a few hours away from home, I could easily turn around and postpone the trip or do it in a much more comfortable and reliable vehicle. I think for the first 2 weeks of the trip, between the heat, the car issues, the rain and wiper problems, there wasn't a single day where I didn't think this was a dumb idea and was going to give up and go home. It wasn't until I was in the Yukon that I started to relax and feel more comfortable with the Jeep.
I was feeling pretty confident in the Jeep, right up until the moment the tie rod stripped. What you can't tell in the picture above was me laying under the jeep for about 10-15 minutes literally just starting at it. No tools in my hand, no plan, just me staring and it thinking WTF am I gonna do? I was 800 miles (3-4 day tow) from anything that could remotely be called city, and more than 1000 miles from Anchorage which is the only major city in that area. I could have even turned around and gone back to Inuvik which was a couple hours away, but at that point I was <100 miles from the Arctic Ocean and after traveling 1000's of miles for a few weeks, there was no way I was willing to turn around. I think sometimes life just throws a bunch of obstacles in your was just to test you motivation to see how bad you really want it.
Looking back, what seemed like major hurdles at the time were really just minor inconveniences. All of the problems might have added an extra 15-20 hours onto my trip, a couple of extra days. I had already planned for some delays because of weather, detours, or construction, so over the course of 5 weeks that additional time really isn't that noticeable.
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- SoCal
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- CA
I appreciate everyone's comments and likes. I did try and read everyone's comments during the trip, but didn't always have time to respond to them while on the road. If anyone has any questions about the trip or the jeep, I'd be happy to answer them
I also wanted the add the jeep was definitely an eye catcher. I met a ton of people on this trip, and most of them were because they saw the jeep and initiated a conversation. Multiple times a day, either at a campsite, restaurant, or even when I was just sitting on the side of the road, people would come up to me to ask about it. In one case along the Stewart Cassiar, a couple of adventure riders slammed on their brakes, made a U-turn and came back just to take a picture of it. I am positive if I had been driving a "normal" vehicle I wouldn't have met nearly as many people.
I also wanted the add the jeep was definitely an eye catcher. I met a ton of people on this trip, and most of them were because they saw the jeep and initiated a conversation. Multiple times a day, either at a campsite, restaurant, or even when I was just sitting on the side of the road, people would come up to me to ask about it. In one case along the Stewart Cassiar, a couple of adventure riders slammed on their brakes, made a U-turn and came back just to take a picture of it. I am positive if I had been driving a "normal" vehicle I wouldn't have met nearly as many people.
- City
- Surf City
- State
- NC
We just watched Stand By Me with my 11 yr old daughter last week. First time for her - at least 10th for me. What a great movie.
Congrats on accomplishing something that few would ever even attempt let alone persevere like you did.
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- City
- SoCal
- State
- CA
You'll only need a strong backbone if you're dumb enough to try and drive an old jeep thousands of miles on rough roads. I'm still feeling the pain in my back when I wake up in the morning
If there's one piece of advice that I could give to someone thinking about doing something similar, it's don't try and solve hypothetical problems that don't exist. "He who suffers before it is necessary, suffers longer than necessary".
I'd been planning this trip for decades, so I've read all the horror stories and advice from other people, but the only thing you need to do a trip like this is free time and gas money. Everything else is just comfort or convenience. Now that I've done it, I could literally leave today with nothing but a credit card and make the trip in any vehicle and I would not be worried at all. I saw the entire gamut of travellers on the road, from retired couples in RV's to families with little infants, to full on expedition vehicles and adventure bikes and sedans. 99% of those people make the trip with no issues.
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- SoCal
- State
- CA
A post trip update.
Had some time today to fix the wiper situation. The large washer and spring worked as a temporary fix to get me home, but I think eventually the problem would have reappeared somewhere down the road at the worst possible time.
For those who haven't had this problem (yet), the issue with CJ wipers is the frame flexes too much at the pivots because the sheet metal is too thin to carry the forces on the wipers. You can see it happening if you run the wipers and go outside and watch the base of the wipers, the pivots will rock back and forth on every revolution. This causes overtravel and binding of the linkage, which in turn causes more flexing and eventually the frame gets distorted and the wipers will bind on every revolution and the metal around the pivots will begin to crack.
You can see the outline of the washer where it starts to crease. This is after I straightened out the frame with a hammer and dolly, it was noticeably deformed in that area. The flexing has chipped away the paint in that area.
The large washer I added worked as a temporary fix, but what happens is it just moves the flexing to a different spot on the frame. Instead of flexing right around the washer, the entire area around the embossed part flexes. You can kinda see where the frame has deformed to the upper left of the pivot. In reality, if you watch this area while the wipers are moving, you'll see a lot of side to side movement of the wiper pivot especially at the higher speed.
To fix this permanently I added a brace that goes inside the windshield frame and connects the pivot points together with a stiff piece of channel. Washers welded to either end of the brace keep the pivots aligned and carries the load instead of relying on the thin sheet metal of the windshield frame. The washers have to sit above the brace because of the offset shown in the above pictures.
A shot of the overall setup. The horizontal brace is made of a piece of unistrut. It's probably 10ga material which is way overkill for this, but I had it laying around and didn't feel like making one out of sheet. A piece of 16ga bent into a shallow C-channel would probably work just as well. Also, in this picture the linkages are assembled in the wrong order, the longer one should go underneath the short one. It does make a difference.
Installed in the windshield frame. I had to make a small relief cut in the middle of the brace to allow it to flex a bit. Otherwise it would be impossible to squeeze through the openings in the windshield. Once everything is bolted together the brace flattens out and it doesn't affect anything.
Final result is absolutely no flexing even when the wipers are running on high speed.
Had some time today to fix the wiper situation. The large washer and spring worked as a temporary fix to get me home, but I think eventually the problem would have reappeared somewhere down the road at the worst possible time.
For those who haven't had this problem (yet), the issue with CJ wipers is the frame flexes too much at the pivots because the sheet metal is too thin to carry the forces on the wipers. You can see it happening if you run the wipers and go outside and watch the base of the wipers, the pivots will rock back and forth on every revolution. This causes overtravel and binding of the linkage, which in turn causes more flexing and eventually the frame gets distorted and the wipers will bind on every revolution and the metal around the pivots will begin to crack.
You can see the outline of the washer where it starts to crease. This is after I straightened out the frame with a hammer and dolly, it was noticeably deformed in that area. The flexing has chipped away the paint in that area.
The large washer I added worked as a temporary fix, but what happens is it just moves the flexing to a different spot on the frame. Instead of flexing right around the washer, the entire area around the embossed part flexes. You can kinda see where the frame has deformed to the upper left of the pivot. In reality, if you watch this area while the wipers are moving, you'll see a lot of side to side movement of the wiper pivot especially at the higher speed.
To fix this permanently I added a brace that goes inside the windshield frame and connects the pivot points together with a stiff piece of channel. Washers welded to either end of the brace keep the pivots aligned and carries the load instead of relying on the thin sheet metal of the windshield frame. The washers have to sit above the brace because of the offset shown in the above pictures.
A shot of the overall setup. The horizontal brace is made of a piece of unistrut. It's probably 10ga material which is way overkill for this, but I had it laying around and didn't feel like making one out of sheet. A piece of 16ga bent into a shallow C-channel would probably work just as well. Also, in this picture the linkages are assembled in the wrong order, the longer one should go underneath the short one. It does make a difference.
Installed in the windshield frame. I had to make a small relief cut in the middle of the brace to allow it to flex a bit. Otherwise it would be impossible to squeeze through the openings in the windshield. Once everything is bolted together the brace flattens out and it doesn't affect anything.
Final result is absolutely no flexing even when the wipers are running on high speed.
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- City
- Redding
- State
- Ca
Wow. Now that's a creative solution!
- City
- SoCal
- State
- CA
Yeah you're probably right I wasn't really thinking about it when I posted, in my mind I was still thinking this is a trip related repair. I'll copy it over to it's own thread with some added details.