Rubicon 2015 in the BroncoII

#1
So we made it back to Redding, CA from the Rubicon Trail yesterday afternoon. We started the trail at Loon Lake at 4:30 pm on Friday and made it back to paved road at 1:00 pm on Sunday near Lake Tahoe. It was definitely more challenging terrain than I thought. The first 8.5 miles are pure slow speed obstacles, almost every part of the trail is covered in 2-3ft boulders. It's the perfect amount of challenge for a truck on 35's with lockers. After about 8.5 miles the trail has been improved and you can finish miles 8.5 to 22 in a few hours.

We did all the major obstacles, we made it up soup bowl, up Little Sluice, down Big Sluice, and up Cadillac hill. I have video of soup bowl and some of Little Sluice and Cadillac hill that I'll be posting later. I really didn't have much of a problem with the named obstacles though, the trails between the obstacles seemed like more of a challenge than the named ones. Friday it was raining so it made getting up the slab almost impossible, the ledges are almost the exact distance apart to make it where you have to climb them both at the same time with my wheelbase.

The Bronco has a few new dents and both my ox u-joints decided it was time to let go. The brand new driver side inner chromo shaft spread the ears on the yoke about a 1/2 mile in and the cap on the u-joint on the passenger side came out about a 1/4 mile after Little Sluice and started banging around the ball joints. I wasn't really hammering on it though either time, I think it was just time for them to come apart. We also knocked the air fitting off the front axle for the ARB but was lucky enough to have a few threads still sticking out to get it back working. Overall the Bronco did good and I had enough spare parts to keep it going. The dana 44 has had so many problems though, I'm definitely thinking about an upgrade.

Other than Friday afternoon the weather was just about perfect. During the day it got to about 60 and down to the upper 30's at night. It was a little cool. There wasn't too much traffic but a couple rigs came by and asked if we needed anything every time we were stopped fixing something.

One of the hardest parts is that there is very little signage showing where the trail is, the slabs have reflectors showing the center of the trail about every 50 ft but it was still really hard to tell where the actual trail was and where people were just playing around. It was also hard to tell what was the bypass and what was the real trail, we did our best to stay on the actual trail using maps and GPS.

Here's some pics, my brother took them with a film camera but Rite-aid ended up messing up one roll developing it so some are a little off:

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Coming up Soup Bowl
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Little Sluice
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#9
Definitely on my bucket list. Not sure thats a "buggy trip" but definitely a trip I will make.
Yeah I would definitely recommend it. There were buggies there but they were cruising through pretty quick. You could find harder lines to take but it's a lot of ground to cover.
 
#11
so who all rode with you and what was the trip from the east coast like?
It was just my mom, my brother and my dog that went. We took the northern way across country on I-80. We left South Carolina last Sunday, May 3 at 3:30 pm and made it to Redding, CA last Thursday around lunch time. If you were going straight to the Rubicon we could of made it there a day earlier, since we passed right through Reno Wednesday night. I towed with my F-250, it did pretty good. I had a return fuel line that started leaking in Nebraska but I took some hose from the Bronco and got it fixed in a few minutes and we kept going. I think we're gonna try a different route going back, through texas and I'll be able to compare them. The northern way puts you at about 6000-8000 ft elevation from Nebraska all the way to the edge of California, so it was a little harder to tow up the hills without the egt's climbing too high.
 
#12
It was just my mom, my brother and my dog that went. We took the northern way across country on I-80. We left South Carolina last Sunday, May 3 at 3:30 pm and made it to Redding, CA last Thursday around lunch time. If you were going straight to the Rubicon we could of made it there a day earlier, since we passed right through Reno Wednesday night. I towed with my F-250, it did pretty good. I had a return fuel line that started leaking in Nebraska but I took some hose from the Bronco and got it fixed in a few minutes and we kept going. I think we're gonna try a different route going back, through texas and I'll be able to compare them. The northern way puts you at about 6000-8000 ft elevation from Nebraska all the way to the edge of California, so it was a little harder to tow up the hills without the egt's climbing too high.
Awesome!
 
#13
Dang man some awesome pictures and looks like one hell of a time! Glad you had fun and the bronco did well.

That bronco is something else though man. Hats off to building a different rig on the trail that looks good!
 
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