Took the Chevy off road a little this weekend
 

Well I finally took my truck off road this last weekend for the first time. I was at the deer lease and needed some firewood. The campsite is about 1 mile from the back of the property and most of the trees are atleast that far. We jumped in the truck and off we went, while out there we decided to do some playing, we went threw some creeks and some areas that we probably should not have but we did it anyway. It was pretty muddy because it had been raining quite a bit.

After about 30 minutes of playing my ABS light showed up on my dash, I turned off the truck to reset the light. We played for about 2 more minutes and the truck stopped moving and the ABS light came on again. We got out and took a look at the truck and found that my front end was messed up.

Again, we are about a mile from the campsite and we were in about 12" of water and mud so we had to get back to campsite.

Photo taken at about 3:00 in the morning with my phone.

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Photo taken at about 8:00 with my phone.

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After getting a good look at things we "thought" that I had blown a ball joint, which we did so we went to town, bought a jack and a new ball joint. About 3:00 in the afternoon and 3" of rain later here is the result.

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It took, 3 hours with the powerwasher to get the mud off of the truck. I filled a 55 gallon trash can up with mud off of the driveway, and it took the detail shop 5 hours to get the truck clean inside and out.

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I took the truck to the suspension shop on Tuesday to have the damage checked out.

Upper control arm ruined from the wheel rubbing it, had to be replaced.
The shock is bent from whatever, had to be replaced.
The axle is broke, had to be replaced.
The sway bar is bent, had to be replaced.
The wheel had to be balanced.
The tie rod is bent, had to be replaced.
ABS cable ripped off truck, had to be replaced.
Transmission wire, ripped off. Had to be replaced.
Truck had to be re alligned as a result of all the damage.

Three days in the shop, one day in the detail shop, one day working in the rain to get the truck home all for about 30 minutes of playing and never got any fire wood. If we had not replaced the ball joint it would have taken about 3 weeks before a trailer could have got to the campsite to pick up the truck (about 2 miles from the road) due to all the rain that we got this weekend and the past weekend.

All things considered, she did not leave us in the mud and she was able to pull my cousins truck out of the mud before we left on Sunday. It is as good as new and ready for another trip to the lease.

Crap. What was the final bill??

I am in for about a $2,000.00 weekend. When I woke up Saturday morning I asked my uncle "please tell me that I had a bad dream", he replied 'as long as you don't call me a liar".

My next sentence was "I guess you have to pay to play".

It was fun though.

Dang Aaron........fun but spendy huh!!!

firewood is always the most expensive heat

Did you jump it or something?

thats what im wondering how can a brand new truck go off road for 1 night and get $2,000 of damage thats insane !

Need to see photos of it back cleaned up Aaron !

was it because of your lift that created a week spot or something ?

We did not jump it big, we were going threw some ravines and a creek that we came out of pretty quick so it may have raised the front end off the ground as we were coming out. But as far as really jumping it, I don't think so. I think the damage was from my own ruts or some of the terrain. The grass was tall and we were in in pretty deep so it is hard to tell what we went threw.

Skipp, thought that the lift may have caused too much pressure on the stock parts but I am not positive. The after market stuff minus the shock did perfect. It was the factory stuff that broke (I should have replaced it to begin with). Lesson learned.

I will post clean pictures today, I was looking at it this morning on the way to the office and dropped it back off because it was not good enough for the money I spent.

Holy crap....$6000 for a solid axle swap isn't sounding so bad anymore after seeing what can happen so easily... I didn't realise that the IFS really is that fragile.

Where do you get 6k from? I would think it could be done for much cheaper than that.

was there any alcoholic beverages involved that might cause some memory loss of actual jumping and height like opening one on takeoff and throwing empty container in back before landing :w2::s: