Last edited on Mon Nov 6th, 2017 10:34 pm by loomdog32

Made it out on my last trip of the year last weekend. We made the 2.5 drive from the glass city to Southington Offroad Park in northeast ohio. This might be the farthest I've driven for a wheeling trip. And I'm not sure I'd want to go any farther for a day trip.   Haha  Anyway, 6 jeeps and I left out of Toledo at the ass crack of dawn Sunday. Three guys trailer their rigs and 4 of drove. When we got to the park, we met up with a few people from the Bantam Jeep Club from PA. This brought our group up to 9 (5 Jks, 1 YJ, 1 ZJ, 1 LJ and a ranger) After checking in and getting our safety talk, we headed out on the trails.

 

We started off on "backwoods". It wasn't overly technical, but was rutted all to hell. This made it a little more challenging for the ranger.




 




 




Stopped and played on some rocks. With IFS, open differentials and not a ton of ground clearance, I usually shy away from rocks. But I was feeling adventurous haha Later on in the day, the rocks weren't optional. 

 




 




Rock Crawling..ish   The ranger did not attempt  haha

 




 




Stopped for a group photo. (We chose this spot because the JK in the above photo broke a half shaft on this obstacle. This is where he parked when he came down)

 

 


 

After this the group from PA headed home. The guy with the broken half shaft and one of the other JKs also called it a day. After seeing them on their way, the remaining rigs headed over to the other side of the property to play some more.

 




 




 

Took another group photo

 




 




 




 

Perched the truck up here for a photo op

 




 




 

At this point we had an hr and half or so left befor the park closed, so we headed ack to the main part of the property to run a trail called "wall crawl".

 




Looking down the trail from the start of wall crawl

 




 




 




 




 










An here is where things went south  lol  I knew this obstacle was gonna be stretch for the long wheel based ranger. I didn't have enough break over clearance, and high-centered on a boulder. After attempting to stack rocks under the tires a few times, we hooked up a strap and drug her off.

 




 

That rock behind my rear tire is the one that did me in.

 




 




 

After finishing the rest of wall crawl, we headed back to the parking lot, got the trailered guys loaded up and set out on our trek home. It was a great day of wheeling with a great group of people on some awesome trails. I'll definitely be making the drive back over to Southington when I get the chance.

 

 

Cool bridge on I80 just east of Cleveland

 




 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Last edited on Tue Dec 12th, 2017 04:14 pm by Jimmyspy

Last edited on Tue Dec 12th, 2017 04:52 pm by Undrstm8ed

Got out and did a little snow wheeling this past weekend. I told myself last fall that I wasn't gonna drive the truck once the snow started flying in an effort to keep the salt off of it. Well, the little kid in me couldn't pass up a chance to go out and play in the snow, so now I have a truck covered in a nice layer of salt, ice, and frozen mud...    haha     But, it was a fun trip and well worth the current condition of the truck. 

We had a pretty good sized group of people given the weather conditions. (It's been pretty cold here in the Midwest. The high that day was like 9 degrees) There were 13 rigs and about 20 people. As usual, I was the only non-jeeper. We split up into 2 trail groups once we got there, since getting a group of 13 rigs through the woods in the snow would've been a slow process. 


I didn't take a ton of pictures (it was cold and I'm a wuss  lol) but here are the few I did take. 

Flexing on stuff    This was while we were waiting for one of the guys to remove what was left of a very expensive JRI shock (he had a bit of bad luck and broke a shock shaft 5 mins into the trail)

 


Waiting in my nice warm truck while the tan JK gets winched out of a tree. He slid slide off the trail and this tree on the side of the hill caught him. 





The frozen tundra




Heading into the woods 



  mirror picture of the rigs lined up behind me




Waiting on some traffic





Creepin through the woods 





King of the hill




King of the hill (from a different angle)




Waiting for the guys in the back to catch up





Guy with the broken shock working his way through a tight spot in the trail.




Waiting on a few people to make their way through an obstacle 





JKU got a little tipsy 




JKU stuck.  I made it through this same spot over the summer... when it was dry    haha




Some of the other rigs












After leaving Bundy. 




I broke through some ice a couple of times and ended up playing in the mud underneath. Here are a few shots of the mud and ice caked up on the front end.












All of this extra crap on the front end caused one hell of a vibration. I couldn't do more than about 45mph before things got out of hand. I actually stopped at a car wash on the way home and got the wheels cleaned up a little so I could do the speed limit. 






All-in-all, it was a great trip. The truck did pretty well in the 6-8" of snow that was on the ground. I was less than impressed with the duratracs in the icy conditions. As usual, I didn't air them down, which may have been part of the problem. But myself and another guy that was running them noticed a distinct lack of traction compared to the other rigs in our group. Next time I'm out in the snow, I'm going to try airing them down and see if that helps things. 

Last edited on Tue Jan 2nd, 2018 03:51 pm by Jimmyspy