chazmataz

WOW, Bluesteel. those are some awesome pictures. i love the terrain you have down south, awesome.

lifted or not they work pretty well but if you haven't already i'd put in an LSD rearend it does help alot. traction tires do help though. BTW, NICE PICTURES!!!!!!! Keep on wheelin.

Damn wish i had newer picture with my new bumpers, but heres a couple from last winter. Whoops sorry got a little carried away with pictures.

i just heard about this today and was going to post something but you have way more info then i do. awesome! but the only thing that i wasn't told that there was a truck limit, a bunch of us schwabbies are going out after work and i was told that it would be going on until probably 10 at night until noice restrictions start. so we'll see, i would hate to drive all the way out there for nothing.

not to bad, can't see any from portland or surrounding areas at all. mt hood ones we're only about 3 maybe 4 inches tall but you could really see them from there. it was awesome.

ya, i thought it looked familar. last new years after doing some wheelin and going to the top to watch fireworks we went down to that exact spot and built a bonfire and did a little partying. lots of wheelin, lots of snow and lots of fun. good side of it to was that it was a clear night though cold.

is that the climb out of the gravel pit near the gate, it intersects the main road to the top of goat?

WHOOPS!!!!!! nice temp fix though, i like it. so did you get the pictures you went up there to get?

A bad cv joint doesn't always make noise if they are bad they can just cause a vibration under acceration and cruising at higher speeds like the range you are describing. alot of times this is the inner cv joint. swapping the tires around from front to rear will move the vibration and you will feel it differently, you can still feel it in the steering wheel but in a different way plus you can feel it in the whole car too. go have them rebalanced, let them know whats going on and that you want to make sure its not the tires. as the tire/wheel is spinning on the balance machine they can see if its bent or not. if they can have them do a road force balance this will balance it as if it was on the car and the road, this will also show a bad tire if that is the possible problem. YES, you can have a bad new tire. see it all the time, you never know if one of your tires got accidently squished (for example by a forklift while being loaded in a truck) this will cause a ply separation which inturn will cause a vibration.

SWEET PICTURES!!!! Man i wish i could have gone with you guys, looks like a blast, love all the snow. Well atleast its just the beginning of the snow season.

alignments won't cause a vibration. did it start after getting the new tires? if so then it has to be the balance or you may have a bad tire.

ok, im sorry, maybe i'm wrong here but if you look over to the right of the listing for the r180 on that website link you listed under the column for the ARB part # it shows N/A. so to me that means not available, right?

when i put a new motor in my 86 a year ago i opted to leave all 3 of my front covers off and i've done extensive wheeling last winter into spring and a couple of trips during the summer and since its started raining hard this fall. during that year the motor has been submerged in water about 8 times and pushed through a deep waterhole with 1 inch thick broken ice blocks once (which i do have pictures of including some of the deep waterholes). anyway my point is i haven't thrown one of my timing belts yet and i looked at them saturday morning at work checking things out before going wheelin sunday and they still look very good just alittle mud coloring. and they had alot of thick mud thrown at the on sunday too. so its up to you but my covers will never go back on. just my 1 1/2 cents worth.

i'm going up to goat mtn. on saturday night to probably sunday morning with some wheelin friends, none of them have soobies though they have more conventional wheelers.we will be going up the colton side, some good wheelin trails on that side. depending on what time i get home sunday morning, i would be interested in going up to lolo or still creek on sunday too.

nice pictures, looks like fun. to bad i had to work but i was up that way sunday visiting friends but didn't go and do any wheeling. we'll have to get together soon and go to those places that you don't want to do alone. i will be going up to goat this saturday night after work with some wheelin friends we'll be going up the colton side.

if you split a ball bearing or several of them and crack the race where the balls run it can make a grinding/crunching sound and turning doesn't have anything to do with it. it will not do the normal characteristcs that bad wheel bearings do and the wheels won't feel loose at all either. just my 2 cents worth from my own experience on my 86 wagon. if you can't find it try taking the bearings apart and seeing, i could find the source until i took the bearings apart and found the broken ball bearings and crack races and it fixed the problem.

sounds like it could be wheel bearings. any vibration associatated with it under acceleration?

I'll give that a score of 7. Only because of the deduction of points on the landing, he had a good spin and form going at first but didn't follow through on his landing. I wonder if he had to clean his shorts after that? But, seriously......OUCH!

ok if you don't have a factory repair shop manual then on the front just look at your struts (if they are still the factory or original struts) under the spring perch (lower) you should see a couple of nuts on each side looking in the fender well from the tire. if i remember they should be 19mm, crank these up they will givve you about an 1" to 1 1/2" of lift for the front. for the rear, lift up the lower cushion on the rear seat, in the middle should be a rubber body plug, pull that out and under it should be a bolt (can't remember what size it was) just crank/screw it down and it will push down on the torsion bar and lift the rear of your sooby. thats how you can lift it alittle with stock adjustments. i would also go and get your alignment check afterwards because it will change your front toe settings and can cause premature tire wear and it will change your camber angles some which i would recommend tire rotations regularly to help tire wear. i'll see if i can get some pictures up of what you need to look for and where, unless someone else beats me to it. after looking at my pictures in my gallery you may have already have them cranked, since you are running the same wheels as my 84 is. i'm running 215/70-14 blizzacks which are just about 25.5" tall if i remember right, the clearance on the fender opening to tires look about the same but in some of my pictures iam loaded with alot of camping gear and to teeagers. i did need to trim alittle on the edges of my front fenders to get them to clear when turning.

i still heat my clutch up once in awhile when i'm stuck trying to get over a rock or something majorly challenging but i think alot of it is because i cooked it pretty good at browns camp once. i was trying to get up this rock step that i ended up cooking it bad enough that i had to work at just backing back down, it was at a place called the waterfall. i think you have posted something about browns camp last summer, so i think your familar with that place. anyway im in portland and i have wanted to wheel with you guys up north but that would mean driving it all the way up there, i don't have a trailer and tow rig. usually you guys go on saturdays, which i work, i could only wheel on sundays. if you are up for it maybe someday we could meet somewhere halfway but i probably won't be able to do anything until about november unless its local, i'm moving in october and won't have much time. anyway let me know what you think and maybe we could get something planned. chaz

i got rid of mine on the 86 along time ago but i still have clunks come to think of it i have some bang and pops too. but then if you look under my 86 you will know why. its belly flop on alot of rocks and logs and things like that.

thats a good point the driver facture has alot to do with it, i know that i have inproved alot since i started and me and my EA82 has gone along way and done alot.

nice pictures, good time of year for picture taking too. sweet looking ride you have there. i also have a set of those rims on my 84, they are nice rims and look good too. do you have the struts and torsion bars crank it looks like its alittle low. also mine clunks too and i know its not the struts they are new kybs.

nice videos. yeah, i would go with an lsd, it would work really well for you. i never could find one in the wrecking yards it seem like the cars that would have them we're stripped right away, but ya they would be cheaper. i got mine off of the for sale forum on here from monstaru

sounds good not sure if i can this sunday though have something i need to get done. i do understand about not doing some offroading alone somethings are ok but others you just wait for, you never know when something might happen. well if we can't hook up to wheel this weekend i might be able to in a couple of weekends but i would only be able to on sundays. i work on saturdays and its hard to get them off especially this time of the year. as far as welding up the rearend, it helps alot but you have to take out one of the axles to drive it on the sreet the extra traction due to the pavement wrecks havoc on drivetrains but for offroading they are awesome. i run a welded rearend in my 86 and an lsd in my 84, have done most of my heavy offroading in my 86 but haven't done much in the 84 other then some unimproved roads in the sotheastern side of oregon during a vacation a summer ago. once i get a clutch in it and the carb fixed i'll be running it this winter instead of my 86 just to see how it does. oh yeah i did have the 84 at WSCC8 in 2006 and it did really well in the mudpit and climbing up surveyor ridge during the offroading tour. i have some videos of that on my myspace page, plus some videos with my 86 up on goat mtn. http://www.myspace.com/chzsmith