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The November Hunter’s Moon trail ride found LIOR out at Pennsylvania’s Paragon Adventure Park. The ride on Saturday found us with a very capable group. We hit the trails and headed over to what I believe was a section of whompum that is becoming tougher and tougher. New drivers might be intimidated by the initial steep decent, but our expert drivers were able to hide their fear and pucker factor and keep all 4 tires on the ground by using 1st gear and light touch on the brakes and the skinny pedal. As we worked our way up the rock face we began to have some problems. I believe the first casualty was Scoutmaster who broke a front driveshaft yoke. The group was fortunate because the Scoutmaster just happens to have an entire shop and selection of spare parts in the back of his Scout.
As he was finishing up repairs on the Scout a new member found the weak link on his TJ on 35’s. While attempting one of the more difficult lines up a jagged rock face he bent his stock tie rod and lost all steering. Now what could have become a nightmare for a new wheeler turned out just to be another opportunity for our backyard mechanics to get dirty and to play with their tools and winches. In one of the most interesting feats of trail engineering that I have witnessed LIOR members led by Bob 2 Jeeps and Ted the Fed had the driver pull out his winch cable and use the stock jack to bend up the tie rod and pressure from the winch to keep the tie rod from bending back. Before I could even free my spare tie rod the problem was fixed and we were all ready to roll. After spotting VT Bob through in his near stock ZJ and getting the Rubicon unstuck we ready to move on. The rest of the day was relatively uneventful. We had one flat tire on a Toyota Pickup that justified a little winching to keep the vehicle stable on the Hilift. By the time this was completed the day was wrapping up and provided just enough time for some of our more adventurous or less sane members to play on the rocks on some of the short blue and black trails near the park entrance.
While most members headed back home, some members decided to spend the night to wheel with some other members on Sunday. The group was small the next day. We set out following fearless Bob Coco on his quad. We soon ran into problems when Donny broke the Ubolts on his front axle causing it to shift forward. This caused a quick stop and a pause in our wheeling while Bob Coco took off with Bryan Kelly to find an auto parts open on a Sunday in Pennsylvania. Now the conditions at Paragon were relatively muddy as the previously mentioned duo headed up the trail they found instead of the easy part of the trail a muddy incline that required plenty of finesse and pressure on the skinny petal. I liked the quote by BK that went something like this; “ it was like driving a wave runner in the wake of a large boat.” Once our rescuers returned we were able to get the problem fixed and get the YJ back on the trail. After some relatively easy trails only interrupted by the loss of one of Mark’s tires we headed out to the large open area. Here we were able to play a little bit in the mud and watch BK try his best to roll his Rubicon while trying to climb up a washout. After playing a little bit Bryan noticed his brake petal suddenly smash all the way to the floor about 10ft in front of a rather large decent. After figuring our the problem was a hole in the metal brake line we were astonished to learn that Mark F. had a flare tool an inverter and a Dremel tool buried in his XJ to help fix the problem on the spot. We wrapped up the day racing out of the park just a minute or two after we were supposed to be out.
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