Badlands Off-Road Park
Saturday, July 20, 2002 - This was a great, yet tiring trip. I met up with Jeremy (Green TJ), Bob (Red CJ), and John (my spotter) in Brownsburg, IN at the usual 7:30am. We had breakfast and hit the trails in Attica around 10am due to a bunch of people there on this hot July summer day. I received my first trail damage on my Jeep this day. On green when driving down the creek, I wasn't paying attention and a hidden tree stump reached up and tried to rip off my license plate holder. In the process it peeled back and cracked my rear driver fender flare, and dented my rear left quarter panel too. In all not real noticable once all cleaned up (pics are below).
We immediately headed to the stone quarry/rock pit. We had fun for a little while, and then Bob twisted his rear driveshaft clean in two. We were able to remove the old shaft and Bob could drive around in front wheel drive since his Dana 300 t-case works with a missing drive shaft. No big deal. We then ate lunch, and Bob rode with Jeremy after we dropped the CJ up at the main office.
The rest of the day was spent touring many of the trails; Orange, Pink, White, Blue, Green. Back on the creek in late afternoon, Jeremy's fan clutch gave up, so that began the end of festivities; with ambient air temps approaching 100�F we had no business being over 75 miles from home in the middle of the trail and having no engine cooling. When Jeremy's Jeep got over 230�F we would stop, kill the engine, and raise the hood until the temps dropped; then move on (repeating as temps required). This took a couple hours, and on the way out we got lost in the dunes. In the woods on Orange, Jeremy also ended up ripping his softtop on a tree. Then to make matters worse, after one of the cooling off breaks his Jeep wouldn't start back up. We were beginning to feel seriously screwed. Due to all of the heat and muck, Jeremy's starter gave up on us too. So now we're on the trail with a Jeep that has no engine cooling and has to be push started (thank God for his manual tranny). We finally made it out alive just at closing time, man were we happy!
Well, surprisingly we all had a great day despite the fact that we ALL incurred some sort of trail damage. After leaving Badlands, we made it home without incident.
Page created on 12/1/2002
Last updated on 2/22/2004