Me and a few buddies decided to head out to the mud trails and do some 4-wheeling up here. That's Brush Mountain off of 460 for any of you Blacksburg residents. We got about 2 miles into the trail and were having fun going through the fairly deep puddles when we got to what we will refer to as The Jeep Killer, or just TJK. TJK has already claimed 2 Jeep Wranglers that we know of (since they are both people in my fraternity and we were the ones that had to winch them out). Well we came around a turn and TJK was sitting there right in front of us... a fairly long, rather wide standing pool of water. It was big enough that it could be considered a small pond. Well we know that TJK has been traversed before at least 4 times on the shallow side and 1 time on the deep side (deep being about 3.5 feet deep not counting how much the soft mud at the bottom would compress).
Well we pulled up to TJK and decided to test and see how deep the water was. The measurements we took set it at a solid 3 feet deep before mud compression, so the 4 of us began talking trash to each other about who was going to grow the cohones and brave the deep side of this particular puddle. Eventually we decided that my friend and I would put the Jeep Grand Cherokee (8 cylinders, the highest powered engine you can get in a Cherokee) into 4-Low and attempt the crossing. We were all still psyched from the trash talking that had just commenced and believed we could definitely cross. Boy were we wrong...
With the car in gear we approached TJK and gunned the engine. At about halfway across we seemed to be in good shape and thought we were going to make it all the way across. Once we hit the halfway mark we found a spot we hadn't checked the depth of. The car instantly dropped another foot and a half into the water and killed the engine instantly. Vulgarity rained down in the forest from us like... well, rain.
We figured that we had just lost an hour or two of our 4-wheeling to pulling the car out and getting it started again. We brought the Landcruiser that the other two guys were driving around to the shallow side of TJK and went across with no problem. They pulled out their winch and began to drag the Grand Cherokee out of the pit it was in. All went well with getting the Jeep out until we tried to start it...
...
Nothing. More vulgarity rained down.
Long story short (well still long I guess
) we ended up finding that about a gallon of water had been sucked up into the air intake and traveled all the way into the engine itself. It took some very interesting thinking to finally take a tube off of the Landcruisers engine and use it as a siphon tube to get all the water out of the the engine (I'm still proud of that little feat ) We let the engine dry out for another hour and then tried starting it again. This time we heard a clicking noise coming from the starter. That was better than nothing we said, but it was beginning to get late. Either we knew the car was going to get fixed and we'd drive out of there or we had to start towing the car right then. We opted for choice #2 since that at least guaranteed we woundn't spend too much time in the dark. The problem then was that there was about 5 miles left to go facing forward or 2 miles facing backwards. The decision wasn't too hard to make. We attatched a tow-rope to the rear of the Land Cruiser and the rear of the Cherokee, and began the slow tow all the way back to the main road. Unfortunately since the Cherokee was facing the wrong way the driver couldn't see if he was on the road the entire time or not, so I had to run in between the two vehicles most of the way and keep telling him to pull to the right or left. It took almost 3 hours, the last half of that was in the darkness, but we made it The vehicle was finally back to the main road and we were free to call a tow truck to come pick up the Cherokee.
We then went out and bought the owner many shots of liquor to dull the pain of needing a new starter at least, if not something more expensive. The final problem of the night was that the owner of the Landcruiser had much more ammo to use in his "Jeeps suck, buy a Landcruiser" arguments he always made. I must admit though, I was impressed that a 4800lb vehicle was able to tow a 6000lb vehicle all the way back uphill and downhill. Go 4-wheel drive!
The moral of the story is... if you go 4-wheeling, remember if you ever get to TJK take the shallow side. I'd describe it more but when you see it, you'll just know. The spirits of 3 swamped Jeeps (at least) hang around that particular mud puddle like a high school gym teacher hangs around the girls locker room.
Well we pulled up to TJK and decided to test and see how deep the water was. The measurements we took set it at a solid 3 feet deep before mud compression, so the 4 of us began talking trash to each other about who was going to grow the cohones and brave the deep side of this particular puddle. Eventually we decided that my friend and I would put the Jeep Grand Cherokee (8 cylinders, the highest powered engine you can get in a Cherokee) into 4-Low and attempt the crossing. We were all still psyched from the trash talking that had just commenced and believed we could definitely cross. Boy were we wrong...
With the car in gear we approached TJK and gunned the engine. At about halfway across we seemed to be in good shape and thought we were going to make it all the way across. Once we hit the halfway mark we found a spot we hadn't checked the depth of. The car instantly dropped another foot and a half into the water and killed the engine instantly. Vulgarity rained down in the forest from us like... well, rain.
We figured that we had just lost an hour or two of our 4-wheeling to pulling the car out and getting it started again. We brought the Landcruiser that the other two guys were driving around to the shallow side of TJK and went across with no problem. They pulled out their winch and began to drag the Grand Cherokee out of the pit it was in. All went well with getting the Jeep out until we tried to start it...
...
Nothing. More vulgarity rained down.
Long story short (well still long I guess
) we ended up finding that about a gallon of water had been sucked up into the air intake and traveled all the way into the engine itself. It took some very interesting thinking to finally take a tube off of the Landcruisers engine and use it as a siphon tube to get all the water out of the the engine (I'm still proud of that little feat ) We let the engine dry out for another hour and then tried starting it again. This time we heard a clicking noise coming from the starter. That was better than nothing we said, but it was beginning to get late. Either we knew the car was going to get fixed and we'd drive out of there or we had to start towing the car right then. We opted for choice #2 since that at least guaranteed we woundn't spend too much time in the dark. The problem then was that there was about 5 miles left to go facing forward or 2 miles facing backwards. The decision wasn't too hard to make. We attatched a tow-rope to the rear of the Land Cruiser and the rear of the Cherokee, and began the slow tow all the way back to the main road. Unfortunately since the Cherokee was facing the wrong way the driver couldn't see if he was on the road the entire time or not, so I had to run in between the two vehicles most of the way and keep telling him to pull to the right or left. It took almost 3 hours, the last half of that was in the darkness, but we made it The vehicle was finally back to the main road and we were free to call a tow truck to come pick up the Cherokee.We then went out and bought the owner many shots of liquor to dull the pain of needing a new starter at least, if not something more expensive. The final problem of the night was that the owner of the Landcruiser had much more ammo to use in his "Jeeps suck, buy a Landcruiser" arguments he always made. I must admit though, I was impressed that a 4800lb vehicle was able to tow a 6000lb vehicle all the way back uphill and downhill. Go 4-wheel drive!
The moral of the story is... if you go 4-wheeling, remember if you ever get to TJK take the shallow side. I'd describe it more but when you see it, you'll just know. The spirits of 3 swamped Jeeps (at least) hang around that particular mud puddle like a high school gym teacher hangs around the girls locker room.
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