Report written by Morgan Franklin - Feb 21

Somehow despite all the tragedy suffered by jeeps I really had a great time this past weekend. That might be because my jeep is in front of my house vs a parking lot in Gettysburg, PA.

Long story short during this one trip we had boltss loosening and falling out of a driveshaft mount on Mike Andersons TJ, a radiator explosion, then the dredged hydro lock Dan was speaking of [in another email]. On top of all that once we got my radiator replaced and did all we could to try getting Dan's to come back to life we were heading home and I noticed a bad vibration coming from the front end of my jeep. I figured it was the driveshaft since I'm fitting running a toothpick sized 4cyl front I picked up as a replacement while I got the Tom Woods shaft I never ordered. As this terrible vibration is happening I stated slowing to a stop I suddenly lost all steering. I drifted to the roadside and found nuts on my drag link had vibrated loose and the whole thing was disconnected. (I had adjusted it before the trip so it was my fault.) With a little help I got that reconnected and tightened up, pulled off at the next exit and disconnected my front driveshaft. That fixed the vibration and all was good. 

Until I started hearing/feeling a random thumping noise we pulled over at a Sheetz and took a look. I thought/hoped it was the driveshaft was lose so I tightened that and thought I was good. 

The thump continued then became more frequent. We (Richard and I) pulled off the road again and when putting it in reverse at a random gas station it would buzz but not engage. Every other try or so it would engage and all seemed fine. I new things were bad at this point but I still tried to limp it on a little further then maybe one more exit got to where there was no going forward. We pulls off with the plan to leave the jeep somewhere but unfortunately we were in the middle of nowhere! So we went back an exit to where the gas stations and outlet mall was. I didn't make it the mile to the exit before I lost all power. Even in neutral I got the buzzing sound of a gear spinning but not catching on anything. We strapped mine up to Richard's and he towed me into the parking lot of a TGI Friday's and unloaded all valuable items locked it up and headed 
for home. 

Ideas of what to do now started going through my head who to call that could help me tow it should I rent a truck and trailer myself etc. 

I can't remember if I called Dan Or he called me but I filled him in and somehow the topic of getting a tow dolly came up. I had already though thought my suv didn't have the capacity to tow my jeep but when taking it over with Dan it sounded fat more feasible. So I decided it was worth a try.

I called in to work today and rented a tow dolly for under $50 from uhaul and embarked on operation YJ Rescue. All in all it worked out well. I used the winch to pull the jeep up on the trailer,and drive very carefully home using the select shifting to keep the transmission on my Mazda CX9 below 6th gear (overdrive) and all was well.

This proved to be one of the most adventurous Epps I've been on yet and despite the loss somehow it was still fun in us own unique way. 

Morgan Franklin
94 YJ (in need of some TLC)

People/Vehicles:

Morgan Frankin  -  TJ gutepotenz.de

Dan Peck   -   JKU

Mike Anderson   - TJ

Wali Raffiqi   - JK