JonFund Coolride '03: Paragon Park Damage Report 8/2003

OK, here's the damage report from our 4 day Paragon trip... thanks to the CO2 tank and my air tools, and the assistance of Crispy my trusty co-pilot, we zipped through most of the repairs in minutes, and lost very little wheeling time.

Nothing big broke on our Paragon trip, but little stuff kept us wrenching every day...

On the way down, a bolt in the caliper adapter on the diff backed out - only way to tighten it back in on my truck is to remove the wheel, halfshaft, rotor, brake caliper and pads, and output flange; did all that in a Cumberland Farms parking lot...

I was reassembling things when the brake line broke off the caliper - DOH! Had to plug the opening in the geared hub with a soda bottle and pinch off the brake line with vice grips to get down the road to an autoparts store. The guys there were a lifesaver, and set us up with everything we needed to flange the line into the new fitting and get back on the road. We lost about 4 hours overall, but still got there without missing any wheeling time.

Broke a wheel the first day out - didn't even notice it until we were playing on the RTI ramp (scored a spectacular 315, BTW... Like I always say: No Flex on the big turtle :blink: )

Blew up a CV joint on the front driver halfshaft while trying to climb up a vertical rock face on the side of the trail... it was already making some rice crispy noises previous to that, so I knew it would go sometime soon. Swapped in a spare in about 15 minutes with the air tools and was rolling again in no time.

Other than that, just had some bolts loosen up in the steering box, and tore apart a bushing on the sway bar

A leaky bead had us swap on another spare, but other than that there was no damage we couldn't take care of on the fly, thankfully!