The Disco, Renegade (Toaster), and “Eleanor” the Sidekick went to the local ORV park on Sunday for an afternoon of sand, mud, and overheating. We each learned a lot about our cars and the holes in our recovery kits...
Hot Sand
We set the tone early by saying that we wanted to try some sandy hill ascents to see if we could find the limits of what we could do. Turns out sandy hills are really hard to get up. Best practice seems to be “find another way up.” Second best practice seems to be come at it from an angle? Which seems ill advised, but it did get results.
About ten or so minutes into this, Brady (of the Sidekick) remarks that he is need to find a place to stop. Apparently his temperature gauge had moved an alarming amount and he thought he saw smoke come from the engine. George (of the Toaster) then mentions his transmission temperature is also really high. Laughing, because the cooling system on the Landy was working gre- oh crap I’m about 25 degrees north of my normal operating temperature too!
Apparently working your engines hard but not really moving combined with 100 degree weather makes for an unhappy fleet.
Luckily, we didn’t do the instinctual thing and shut the cars off. Instead we found a shady place to park, put on the heaters, and let the cooling system do it’s thing.
Shortly thereafter the Landy went from its high of 227F to a much more normal 199F. The others reported similar drops.
We also figured out that the puff of smoke that Brady saw was, in fact, power steering fluid being belched onto the exhaust. He has a leak and likely overfilled the reservoir which, when combined with hard, hot driving, caused the excess to be expelled.
Or that is the theory anyway.
All three of us struggled to keep temps down for the rest of the day. One thing I did learn is whenever sitting/ waiting, I should put the car in park or neutral, rather than keep it in drive as I normally do. Engine load goes down, RPM (and therefore fan speed and water flow) go up, and the torque converter isn’t creating heat anymore. No-brainer now that I’ve said it, but at the time it was a big revelation.
Slippery Mud
Having learned that sand is hard to drive in we decided to go to the other side of the park, which is mostly dirt and mud. We then took turns trying out various obstacles and getting hilariously stuck. The mud almost immediately clogged the tires and had almost no structure. It was like driving in a thick soup.
We tried out George’s knock-off MaxTrax but couldn’t get any purchase in the mud.
It was here we learned that our cheap tow ropes weren’t really up to the task. The clips on the ends were cheap, easily damaged, and not compatible with the Jeep’s recovery hooks.
We also learned what burning clutch smells like when the Sidekick tried to pull out the Disco.
So yeah, I think all of us will be on Amazon today improving our recovery kits.
Steep Hills
After getting tired of being stuck, we opted for the “scary hill” section of the park, which is just that: a big scary hill. I’ve documented this thing several times but never managed to capture how fucking steep it is. Very.
Also, as it turns out, very difficult to ascend with mud covered tires.
The hill has two was up, which I will refer to as the “easy” side and the “hard” side. The easy side takes a curve up the hill and while rocky, is free of large rocks. The hard side goes directly up the hill and is littered with deep ruts and huge rocks. It is very hard.
Having done it many times before we all pretty much know the lines that work and how to get through them, but as with any well used ORV park, the terrain changes from visit to visit and there are always new surprises.
We had two major incidents here.
That time Brady almost died
The first incident was the Sidekick’s first decent of the scary hill. At the beginning of the descent I hear the engine die and not restart.
It was at this point we were all pretty sure Brady was about to die as well.
Without power assistance on the brakes or steering, his decent began to get faster and towards the bottom you could tell that he was losing the battle to keep control of the vehicle.
Luckily, he made it to the bottom and we quickly regrouped to figure out what the hell just happened.
Turns out it was, a mix of errors and misunderstandings. For whatever reason Brady put it in 4th gear and began down the hill. We’re not sure why he did this, but the result was the engine died. Apparently he did not realize this as the blower and instrumentation was still working. With the car still in 4th, it was unable to restart itself via compression, apparently, so the vehicle ended tearing down the hill essentially off.
Lessons learned and underwear changed, we continued on.
The Little Toaster that couldn’t
On the last run of the day we made an additional discovery: the Renegade doesn’t like being hot.
George was attempting an ascent of the hard side, which under the best conditions is challenging for the little Renegade, but usually possible. He had it in his version of 4LOW and had the traction control set to rock mode. Usually a winning combination.
He only made it about a quarter of the way up before the Renegade decided he wasn’t going any further.
Undeterred he tried again.
And again.
And again.
Finally with transmission temperatures getting in the mid 220s, he stopped to rest.
Ten minutes later he tried again and made it up, no problem.
The difference? Temps were way lower.
From this we learned that the already under-powered Renegade really, really doesn’t like being heat soaked.
All in all
It was an excellent day offroad. No one actually died, we learned a lot, and the cars aren’t any worse for the wear (as far as we can tell).
I got some good practice with the Landy’s CDL too and am not much more confident in its operation, which, as it turns out, isn’t as straightforward as I thought.
We’re all going to improve our recovery gear now that we know what we’re up against. The Harbor Freight tow ropes gets relegated to emergency use only and replace with longer, stronger, less janky versions. I’ll look into options to couple the ropes better and likely invest in a better rear shackle.
As for the cooling problems, I’m toying with looking looking into up-rating the Landy’s electric cooling fan. The fan is for the AC, but also activates if the engine temps get over 210F. Right now it is a fairly standard straight bladed fan, so I assume a fancier s-blade fan would improve auxiliary cooling dramatically. (The cooling system is 100% new, so this is as good as it is going to get.)
Time for pizza and alcohol.
