jfrabat
New member
Well, we took a little wheeling trip on Saturday to some "trails" (or roads, as they are called here) that take you RIGHT next to the San Juan river (the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica; the river is actually NICARAGUAN territory, so we were RIGHT at the border!). It was supposed to be a one day tour, but things were a bit tougher than expected...
Anyway, here are some of the required group photos (the 8X8 ride had technical problems and was left at base camp).
We started the hard part by chaining up (we kind of expected rough terrain). We also aired back up (for the chains to work properly), as we had driven a couple of hours on dirt and stone roads, and the ride is much too harsh if you drive fully aired up.
After we chained up, I drenched the camera man on the first mud hole (did not do it on purpuse! I did not know he was standing there!):
http://www.youtube.com/v/EnqVFVy4OkE?hl=en&fs=1
As you can see, the trails were tight, twisty, muddy, and, sometimes, none-existing (we had to make our own way more than a couple of times!).
As you can see, sometimes the trail was blocked, and either an alternate path had to be found, or the obstacles had to be removed...
Here's the Nissan Patrol doing its thing (I thought a thing that big would be a land anchor, but it did amazingly well, more so considering it's stock except for the armor and the MT tires and chains):
And me again on the same obstacle as above:
We drove and did try to get out on Saturday, but at around 12:30AM we were getting the Nissan Patrol out of a pretty deep mud hole, and it's which died. After trying different things, we were all just TOO tired to do anything else, and we decided to call it a night. Luckily, I had a small tent and a sleeping bag in the Jeep, so I slept better than most, as everyone else slept (or at least spent the rest of the night!) in their cars.
by this time, my ARB compressor was dead, so I had no lockers (which explains why I had such a hard time getting out of that mud hole the Patrol got stuck in), but my trusty Superwinch did its thing, and I was out of the hole by the time we decided to camp.
Unfortunately, my eFan also took a hit. At first, the low speed stopped working. I tried to get around that by connecting it directly to the battery, but it was a no go; apparently the ground was done for. We did discover that if we used the low speed as a ground, the fan did turn (at high speed), so we wired it as best we could, and used an alligator clamp as a switch. We used the fan when the temp was getting hot, then disconnected it for a while (the cables would get hot because we were shorting the fan out), and repeated the process. This got me out of the trail, but we still had about 10 miles worth of cattle farm to cross to get back to civilization, and the fan JUST got me out of the trail... and left me stuck in the middle of the farm. So my friends went ahead of me, and got some other friend to send me another eFan, which we zip-tied to the radiator.
In this vid, you can see me shutting the Jeep to keep it from overheating, and you can see the steam coming from the radiator:
Of course, this helped, but with all the mud in the radiator, you can imagine I was still overheating. But at least I could drive for 10 to 15 minutes before each stop. Anyway, we drove like this until we reached the first gas station, where we cleaned up the radiator and engine as best we could, and made it home at around 9:00PM on Sunday.
I did not get pictures of the toughest obstacles because, honestly, I was either too busy driving or too tired to care, but some of the mud pits came up pretty high! I do have some videos, which I am uploading to youtube and will post here when they are done.
Anyway, here are some of the required group photos (the 8X8 ride had technical problems and was left at base camp).
We started the hard part by chaining up (we kind of expected rough terrain). We also aired back up (for the chains to work properly), as we had driven a couple of hours on dirt and stone roads, and the ride is much too harsh if you drive fully aired up.
After we chained up, I drenched the camera man on the first mud hole (did not do it on purpuse! I did not know he was standing there!):
http://www.youtube.com/v/EnqVFVy4OkE?hl=en&fs=1
As you can see, the trails were tight, twisty, muddy, and, sometimes, none-existing (we had to make our own way more than a couple of times!).
As you can see, sometimes the trail was blocked, and either an alternate path had to be found, or the obstacles had to be removed...
Here's the Nissan Patrol doing its thing (I thought a thing that big would be a land anchor, but it did amazingly well, more so considering it's stock except for the armor and the MT tires and chains):
And me again on the same obstacle as above:
We drove and did try to get out on Saturday, but at around 12:30AM we were getting the Nissan Patrol out of a pretty deep mud hole, and it's which died. After trying different things, we were all just TOO tired to do anything else, and we decided to call it a night. Luckily, I had a small tent and a sleeping bag in the Jeep, so I slept better than most, as everyone else slept (or at least spent the rest of the night!) in their cars.
by this time, my ARB compressor was dead, so I had no lockers (which explains why I had such a hard time getting out of that mud hole the Patrol got stuck in), but my trusty Superwinch did its thing, and I was out of the hole by the time we decided to camp.
Unfortunately, my eFan also took a hit. At first, the low speed stopped working. I tried to get around that by connecting it directly to the battery, but it was a no go; apparently the ground was done for. We did discover that if we used the low speed as a ground, the fan did turn (at high speed), so we wired it as best we could, and used an alligator clamp as a switch. We used the fan when the temp was getting hot, then disconnected it for a while (the cables would get hot because we were shorting the fan out), and repeated the process. This got me out of the trail, but we still had about 10 miles worth of cattle farm to cross to get back to civilization, and the fan JUST got me out of the trail... and left me stuck in the middle of the farm. So my friends went ahead of me, and got some other friend to send me another eFan, which we zip-tied to the radiator.
In this vid, you can see me shutting the Jeep to keep it from overheating, and you can see the steam coming from the radiator:
Of course, this helped, but with all the mud in the radiator, you can imagine I was still overheating. But at least I could drive for 10 to 15 minutes before each stop. Anyway, we drove like this until we reached the first gas station, where we cleaned up the radiator and engine as best we could, and made it home at around 9:00PM on Sunday.
I did not get pictures of the toughest obstacles because, honestly, I was either too busy driving or too tired to care, but some of the mud pits came up pretty high! I do have some videos, which I am uploading to youtube and will post here when they are done.
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