The Adventures of Mr.Ed: Ride The Beacon

On Saturday the five trucks from Long Island Off-Road: Roger in a FJ-40, ARB's front/rear, winch, granny low, and 3 speed transfer case. Mark in a CJ-7 locked in the rear, limited slip in front, winch, fuel injection, auto tranny. Marc in Toyota pickup with Marlin Crawler, NV4500, 302 fuel injected motor, limited slips front/rear, winch. Chuck in a 76 Bronco with NP435 tranny, fuel injection in his 302, Detroit locker rear/ARB in front, winch. Me in Mr.Ed. We met up with New England Four Wheelers in N.H. and split into 2 groups so that we wouldn't be clogged up on the trail.

Our group had about 20 rigs. The first section of trail is a long hill climb with loose rocks on it. We all made it up without any problems. The next part of the trail is more of the same loose rock trail with a few rock ledges to climb. This is where you see the red CJ get hung up for a minute. Coming down some of these I scraped my rear gas tank skid plate but it held up fine all weekend. The transfer case plate on the other hand has a big rock dent in it that I have to fix and stiffen the plate with more steel plate. There was on muddy section of trail that no one who tried made it through.

The 76 bronco and the FJ-40 both got stuck. It was a thick mud and it held on to whomever entered. There was alot of minor breakdowns, vapor lock etc. and it slowed the pace down alot.

After lunch we came to the toughest part of the trail. It's a hill with 3 separate climbs called 6-8-10. I did 6 after seeing what happened to vehicles on 10. Only 1 truck made it up 10, Roger in the FJ-40. On hill 8 which is a loose gravel climb with a turn in it to put you off-camber, one jeep from the other club did a complete roll over but luckily no one was hurt. [PLEASE we recommend against getting sideways on a hill - and DO NOT stick your arms or legs out of the roll cage at any time.]

Hill 10 claimed Chucks transfer case skid plate and he tore up the metal grease retaining ring on his rear drive shaft. He also put a nice bend in his front bumper. All these things were fixed that day except for the skid plate which I tack welded back on the next day. The welder works really nice...

Sunday: We went to another trail in Mass. with just the 5 of us. It was more fun with more rock climbs and more twisting trail and rock mixed into the trail. There was also one big mud hole to go through or around if you didn't want to get dirty. This is where I put the big ding in my transfer case on this trail. Overall it is probably a 6-8 rated trail. It took us about 5-1/2 hours to go up and come back down the trail as you have to turn around at the top. As for Mr. Ed I'm pleased with his performance. I think I'm gonna take off the front sway bar and I have to make a new bottom locking mechanism for the swing away tire carrier because it broke, not at the weld mind you but part of the latching mechanism arm. Other than that it ran fine and fairly cool for such a hot day.

This is one of the 'lost' trail stories, lost in the demise of 4x44u.com and rescued thanks to the Way Back Machine at http://web.archive.org