So I heard a pop...

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Gunnermoose

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@1Louder and I went on an exploration of the north rim of the Sycamore Canyon Wilderness two weeks ago. As he was pulling his trailer I followed to ensure nothing fell off or anything else happened that he couldn't see.

As we were trying to find a suitable site that overlooked the canyon I heard a "pop". Nothing seemed out of the ordinary so I continued on. Then I started to hear a weird thumping noise from the right front side of my truck. I stopped to see if anything was a miss and sure enough...
The top portion of the shock shaft had somehow sheared off. Notice the lack of threads on top of the shock shaft. Thankfully a friend in Flagstaff had a complete replacement in his garage which he brought out in the morning.
Phone download 6-8-16 994.JPG After stabilizing the truck, we had to come up with a way to compress the coil to remove the entire assembly. Enter ratchet straps.
Phone download 6-8-16 996.JPG Phone download 6-8-16 998.JPG Phone download 6-8-16 1000.JPG Phone download 6-8-16 1002.JPG
To compress the coil enough to get room we had to jack up the lower control arm with weight on the truck. Then using the ratchet function, compress some more. It took three evolutions of this and three straps to get the coil compressed enough to remove from the spring bucket. When we lowered the jack that was lifting the lower control arm we placed a blanket over the assembly in case the ratchet straps released unexpectedly. Once removed we wrapped the compressed assembly in the same blanket and had to cut the straps to relieve the tension. All in all it was a great learning experience. It further solidified that being prepared with the right maintenance tool kit, a little ingenuity, and having a good understanding of your vehicle that an incident like this will not derail your trip. We still completed what we had set out to see, just on a different timeline.

Lessons Learned:
1. Need to add a battery powered impact wrench to the kit.
2. Not a bad idea to keep a spare assembly in the trailer. I have previously planned for this, but did not have on this trip.
3. Add a Harbor Freight Packing blanket to the kit as well. Great ballistic shield and crawl mat.
4. By thinking through the problem anything can be solved on the trail.

Follow up: ARB replaced the shock as their technician had never seen a shock failure like that before.
 

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Laughing Otter

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13973 State Hwy 112, Sekiu, WA, USA
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So now the upgrade begins...

View attachment 4837 View attachment 4838
I will give these a try. I have been looking and researching these for the past 6-7 months and was planning on doing them at the end of summer; but with what already happened, I went ahead and pulled the trigger. I just have to wait for the new upper control arms to get here and it will all be fixed.
OME...awesome! I run OME, never been disappointed. Great field repair, I think we need a forum for field repairs. I saw once where a Jeep guy had a bad spark plug wire in the middle of nowhere, it was badly split and not making a connection. He cut a small limb from a green bush, submerged it in water for a few minutes, then cut out the bad section of spark plug wire, stuck the limb in and taped it up and he was back on the road again. I may have missed a step, it was a few years ago when I saw it...but the general idea is to show ingenuity in the bush, backwoods, wherever.
 
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Gunnermoose

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Mesa, Arizona
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OME...awesome! I run OME, never been disappointed. Great field repair, I think we need a forum for field repairs. I saw once where a Jeep guy had a bad spark plug wire in the middle of nowhere, it was badly split and not making a connection. He cut a small limb from a green bush, submerged it in water for a few minutes, then cut out the bad section of spark plug wire, stuck the limb in and taped it up and he was back on the road again. I may have missed a step, it was a few years ago when I saw it...but the general idea is to show ingenuity in the bush, backwoods, wherever.
That is inguenious! Yes, maybe we can get a field repair thread going.
 
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Laughing Otter

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13973 State Hwy 112, Sekiu, WA, USA
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I agree, I think it would be extremely helpful....for example, say you broke or badly bent a wheel...I saw a a guy who took his wheel off, duct taped and ratchet strapped a 4 foot long 2x4 to his brake rotor and was able to drive down the mountain (slowly) to the trail head to call a tow...using the 2x4 as a ski....things like this would be beneficial to our members...already from @Gunnermoose I've learned a new way to use ratchet straps as a tool, nice!
 
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mmnorthdirections

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Well done! Hey those BP-51 look awesome. Will be waiting for the review!!!!!!!
 
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1Louder

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1. What the heck would fall off of my trailer???? It's built like a tank.

2. I'm the village idiot with a minimum of 2-3 moving blankets who just mumbles all day and night about how great they are.

My contributions to this repair was said blanket and sitting topless, oh yeah baby, on top of the truck to add some manly weight. So yes go buy yourself a couple of the small blankets. I use one as a campfire blanket, overall cover for my cooler and fridge, and as a mud room blanket in the entrance of my RTT at the front of the mattress to keep things clean.

We have now had 2 incidents where someone broke a front coil over. Maybe just bad luck but like Eric said one will be added to someone's rig for our future group trips. Having plenty of ratchet straps, a small hacksaw, a crowbar and a few others things are very useful field repair tools.
 
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hardtrailz

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Indiana
I know they are not the best, but I have a set of Harbor Freight spring compressors in the tools. Cheap and not much room taken. If you start carrying a spare coil, you cold just leave them attached to it.

Well done on the field repair! Safety with springs is always a concern. Shot one into a trash can once when some rented spring compressors failed on me.