Black Hills Run June 18-22, 2018

jpet wrote:

More tomorrow.

That looks really familiar! But I was alone, so I backed up at this point.

Bob

Flatfender wannabe
'71 Ford Bronco

I think Stan and Jeff may have ended up in the wrong state by mistake! Confused

Tom
1949 CJ3A

Very good point about the slides Wrongway. I noticed driving home from Ditch Creek many places where rocks were on the highway.

We're going over to "watch" the boys play today. Most all that came here felt like I do. Sure missed driving our back woods sports cars. Allan, Jeff, Stan, and Lee are hanging out and going over to the rocks today. No mud down there, but slick. Ward, Brian, Dillon, are coming up from Hill City to join in. It hurts that so many made reservations for a cancelled meet, but you can't beat mother nature. She controls the day. Lee mentioned seeing the FS closing trail gates, so they didn't want us on those ATV trails for sure. Glad we made the call we did or there would have been trouble. The sun will come back to us today. Now it will get hot and steamy.

I want to again thank all who came and sacrificed their time/vacation only to head home. This run isn't finished. "We shall Return" (too good not to). we'll call it "Return To Ditch Creek". i'm going to bet new FS signs will be posted and our camp will be resriticted. Time will tell.

Many have said they really missed spending time with all our friends, talking and joking in camp. That's half the fun. I agree. "Until We Jeep Again". John

Green Disease, Jeeps, Old Iron!

.... more Hal Johns:

Breakage shortened the trip for some of us:

Rojo lost a serpentine belt.
BAM BAM developed a hole in a power steering pump hose (pressure side)
Grandpa’s Jeep broke a tie rod
Willy broke a spring hanger.

The rest of the group went on to the waterfall. Lee has some pics of that.

CJ2A #29110 "General Willys"
MB #204827 "BAM BAM"

"We do what we can, and we try what we can't"

That looks like my kind of trail! I bet it was a blast😄

1947 CJ2a #119929 "Gus"
1951 CJ3a #451-GB1-24268 “Newt”

My Videos

A couple of detail photos on the trail damage and repair to Grampa’s Jeep.

Here’s the evidence of actual breakage. Don’t know how it could have happened. I barely touched those rocks, Wink

Here’s what it looks like right now sitting in my garage. This is welding done by Jpet with two twelve volt batteries and a welding rod. He also we,did a spring hanger on Ward’s jeep.

For this repair Jeff used a short piece of angle iron on the bottom side of the tube to splice the break. I drove back to the truck with this repair and feel confident that it would hold up at least as well as the original tube. This kind of trail side welding is magic to me. Thanks Jeff, fir saving me once again.

Stan
48 CJ2A (Grampa's Jeep)
59 Chevy 1/2 ton
Grampa's Jeep Build Thread

Rick G wrote:

smfulle wrote:

Looks like a permanent fix to me😉👍🏻

And He makes the repair one-handed, lying on the ground reaching up(hell on the neck) holding the shield in the other hand. Man you really are Willy's top Jedi Knight! Joe W

"It's unbelievable how much you don't know about the jeep you've been driving all your life" (Mickey Mantle paraphrase)

Yesterday the remnants of BHR 2018 took a more leisurely trip through the Black Hills. We left on a national forest road out of the back of our campground and found a sand pit to play in for a while with the V6 powered flatties. From there we continued on national forest roads until we made our way to blacktop. We ended up making a big loop that took us by Sylvan Lake where we did some rock climbing and hiking. From Sylvan Lake we took Needles highway down to the wildlife loop through Custer State Park where we herded (not really) some Buffalo with the Jeeps. After leaving the buffalo we made our way over to Keystone for afternoon ice cream cones and finally we raced the train back to Hill City from Keystone. After dinner Molly and Dylan wanted to go play in the sand pit so we took Rojo and Blueberry back out to play which ended up turning into a night run before we made it back to camp. The rain all stayed north so we had nice weather and had a great day! Going to go do a little more exploring today and see if we can find some old mines before loading up starting the journey home.

The money shot:

I pulled that from a video that Fuzz took.

Some footage:

I got home last night late. Already edited the video and fixed BAM BAM’s power steering hose. Ready to go again!

Yes, the rain and breakdowns did inhibit us a little, but it’s still WAYYY better than work

Thank to John and Carol being gr8 hosts!!

CJ2A #29110 "General Willys"
MB #204827 "BAM BAM"

"We do what we can, and we try what we can't"