Cam's Folly |
Thursday, December 30, 1999
Participants |
A last-minute email from Wes last night stated the stockers were going to do a nice, easy run to the west side of Stave Lake. I figured a relaxing day at Stave would be a nice way to wrap up the year (or the century, or the millenium if you are so inclined), so in the morning I found myself zooming out to the gravel lot at Dewdney Trunk Road and Burma Street to meet up with everyone.
I was leading the pack; while proceeding up Burma St, I came across a BC Hydro worker, struggling to change a flat tire on his Ford 4x4 with a stock bottle jack. I stopped to ask if he needed assistance, and we ended up using my Hi-Lift jack and my speed wrench. We chatted for a bit about where we were headed to, and about the access gate (which Hydro does not control). He shook everyone's hands when we were done, and we continued on towards the trailhead. One more person who can tell others how friendly and helpful we 4-wheelers are.
We could see the fog starting to roll in over the lake, and a light sprinkling of rain made me glad I had intermittent windshield wipers. We took the road towards Sayres Lake, and turned at the usual turn-off just before the bridge. We crossed over the berm which by now was almost pounded flat (although Camilo got a tire off the ground), and slowly bumped along up the trail. We kept taking the left forks, and soon found ourselves at the "difficult" section (for stockers, anyways). I engaged the rear locker, picked the toughest line, and just crawled on up. Dean took a couple of attempts but the Pathfinder was getting both drive wheels drooped in holes; I suggested an alternative line, and he was able to drive up along the far right side. Sean aimed his TJ for the right-hand side as well, but his rear diff got hung up on one particular rock a couple of times. Some spotting got him around the rock, and he was fine. Wes, a veritable veteran of this trail, gave his YJ a judicious application of throttle and had no problems along the right-hand side. In fact, after reviewing the day's pictures, I realized that I didn't have any pics of Wes' YJ because he didn't get stuck and didn't find any "interesting" lines. Camilo, who had unsuccessfully attempted this hill in the past, elected to park his truck and climbed into Wes' YJ.
We continued on up the trail, which was starting to look more and more like the terrain on Blue Mountain; water trickling through lots of rocks, and no soil. Should be real nice in a couple of years! :) A small tree had fallen across the road and was resting about 2 feet above the road surface; I had enough clearance to drive over it, but it gave Dean's Pathfinder a bit of a problem, so Wes hauled out his axe and he and Dean surgically removed the tree from their path. As we climbed higher, the light sprinkling rain turned to a fine snow, which melted as soon as it hit the windshield. We soon found ourselves driving through a pleasant winter wonderland, with white, snow-covered trees disappearing into the mist around us. The road consisted of frozen snow over a mud base (sounds like a cake!), with a few rocks thrown in for good measure. Just before the end of the trail, the snow was about 6-8" deep, but was frozen enough so that you could walk on top of it without sinking. We all turned around, and since Camilo had to take off early, we decided to head straight back to the main road. Somewhere on the descent I heard Camilo mumble something about getting his "brake system recall notice" from GM in the mail today, and that his brakes weren't working too well.
We regrouped back at the main road, and Camilo said he wanted to go for a quick jaunt in some mud before he took off (heh-heh, mud!). We drove down to the first major fork, and I turned off at what I thought was the shortcut that allows you to not have to make the really sharp turn. As I was halfway down the embankment, I realized too late that the shortcut was another 10 or 15 feet further on, and this embankment ended in a deep ditch. Oh, crap! I hit the brakes, and slid to the bottom with a loud *clank!* as my ARB front bumper firmly planted itself into the ditch. DOH!! I engaged both lockers, and tried to back out. No luck. I got out to survey the situation, as everyone else hauled out their cameras. In fact, I've never seen any of them move so fast before; you'd think they wanted the photographic evidence in case I got free and tried to deny it later! :) The angle was pretty steep; Dean even got a pic of me sliding under my driver's door and hanging onto the window sill for dear life as I attempted to get back into the truck without dropping the camera; the ground was quite loose and slippery. I couldn't use my winch as the fairlead was buried into the dirt (although if I was alone, I could have performed surgery on the ditch/road with a shovel and then repaired it when I was clear). Wes gleefully offered to tug me out with his YJ, and after a couple of yanks, one of which put him into a small ditch across the upper road, I was able to back out. I was actually surprised at how easily it came out, but I guess front and rear lockers + a second vehicle = lots of traction. Unfortunately, Wes quickly backed out of the ditch before I could take a picture, so I couldn't claim the pictures were of my truck pulling his Jeep out of the little ditch! :) Oh well! A quick inspection showed that the only damage the front end suffered was a couple of small scratches in the ARB bumper. Good thing I had it, or I would have caved in the stock bumper, grill, rad support, and fenders. Whew! Yeah, I hit the ditch pretty hard.
Okay, with that little faux-pas out of the way, we continued on to find some mud for Camilo. I was no longer leading because of my ditch incident, so I commented "The access to the mud flats is on the right, but there's a mud hole on the left you can try if you want!" Camilo pulled up to the mud hole on the left, and we all hauled out our cameras! It looked innocent enough; it was around 30 feet across, and there were tire tracks on both sides... Camilo idled up to the mud hole, then punched the accellerator as he attempted to power through it. He hit the mud hole at speed, got half-way across, then sunk right down, and a big wave of muddy water sloshed over his hood as his engine quit. The muddy water was up past his door sills, and as we took our pictures we heard Camilo's worried voice calling out "I've got lots of water coming in here!!" Oh yeah, S-10's have that leaky door-sill problem (hey Chad, remember Mamquam? LOL!).
No problem, I have a winch! I quickly went around the mudhole to the other side, and tried to free-spool out the winch cable. Hm, a little tight; I guess I didn't respool it properly after the last winch-fest. I switched the clutch lever to "engage" and attempted to power out the cable. The engine revs dropped, and the engine nearly quit. Uh oh! Let's see now, excess current draw is killing the engine by lowering the voltage going to the computer and electronics (Ohm's Law!), so either my alternator isn't charging the battery, or there's a large resistance somewhere. The winch power-cable connectors were fine, since the winch was drawing, so I shut the truck off and quickly removed and cleaned the main battery connectors. I fired the truck up, and presto, working winch again. During this time, someone had tossed a tug-strap to Camilo, so Dean attached my winch cable to the "shore" end of it so Camilo could pull it to his truck and attach it to his tow hook (which was under water). I had Dean place my beach line over the winch cable as a safety, and I winched Camilo out of the slop, much to his relief. He opened up his driver's door, and a couple cubic feet of muddy brown water rushed out through the opening.
We left Camilo's truck parked slightly off-camber to help drain the interior *yuck*, and the muddy water poured out from his interior, frame, and exhaust. His CD changer, radar detector, and Haynes (pronounced "Heinous") manual were all sitting on the rear floor, and were completely soaked (when muddy water pours out of your CD changer, it's not a good thing). We decided we'd better check to see if water got ingested into the motor, so we pulled his air filter out for inspection. Wet. And the housing had water all over the inside, on BOTH sides of the filter. Hm. I checked the air-mass sensor; it was wet. I pulled out the air tube that went from the air-mass sensor to the plenum. Wet. Pretty safe to say that water got inside the cylinders and hydro-locked the engine; that's why it stopped (fortunately, Camilo had the good sense to NOT try to restart it when he got stuck).
We looked around for the spark plugs; holy crap, they're just a LITTLE HARD TO GET TO!!! What bright engineer at Generous Motors designed this puppy, anyways?? Seeing how difficult it was to get to the plugs, Camilo asked me what would happen if there was water in the cylinders and he tried to start the truck. I explained to him that unlike air, water does not compress, so when the piston tries to compress the water, something will break or bend, like a rod. I think my exact words were "you'll break your motor." :) We attached a tug strap to to my truck, and I tugged the Sonoma up onto a flat surface to make it easier to change the plugs. I was pulling on an angle, and when the tug strap reached it's maximum kinetic potential, my truck's tires lost traction, the back of the truck whipped around and snapped into a straight line with the Sonoma, and I slid backwards into a ditch. Whoo-hoo! No problem though; I just drove out. Dean and I pulled the spark plugs out (after much cursing under breath, and liberal usage of socket extensions and U-joints); some of them looked a bit wet. I attached the air hose to my ARB compressor and blew the water out of Camilo's air-mass sensor "honeycomb". We had Camilo crank the engine over; sure enough, lots of water getting sprayed out of the cylinders. Once the water stopped coming out, I cleaned and de-moisturized the plugs with WD-40, and we put everything back together ("Installation is the reverse of removal" (that's a famous Heinous quote for those that don't know). Not enough clearance for gloves, of course. Thin metal heat shields + sharp plastic fittings and connectors = little cuts on hands. *&%#!
Okay, time to fire it up. Camilo turned the key, and it turned over nicely. But didn't start. He tried it a few times, got it to catch a bit, but it still wouldn't start. I think he was getting worried! :) Things were probably still a bit damp. Wes noticed that water was squirting out of a hole in his muffler when he was turning it over, so we pushed the truck back a few feet so the back end was lower than the front end to help drain and clear the exhaust. We suggested a goodly application of throttle when he turned it over; it almost went, but his battery started sounding a bit weak. I hooked Wes' booster cables to my truck and the Sonoma, Camilo cranked it over a few times, then *puh-puh-puh-puwaroom!* (don't laugh, how would YOU spell it??) It finally started, although it sounded a bit rough. Once the exhaust was cleared, and it had been running for a bit, it smoothed out and started sounding normal again. Ahhh! Back to the main road, where Camilo then informed us he absolutely no brakes, and had to use the parking brake to stop. Dean gave him a quick lesson in drying his brakes out, and we were off. Camilo's brakes started working again a couple km's later.
On the way back to town, Camilo complained of a "metal on metal" noise when under load; we pulled over to check it out. It sounded like engine ping, which we were thinking was due to something like the oxygen sensor being wet or dirty and the computer wasn't properly compensating for it. We stopped in at Lordco in Maple Ridge for a new (dry) air filter; installing it didn't seem to make much of a difference. I went to the Mohawk to air up, and Camilo caught up with the Jeeps who had aired up while we were in Lordco and they all left for home.
I enjoyed myself as usual; I know that Camilo was stressing a bit, but hopefully he'll be able to look back on this experience and laugh. Now he knows what to do when he thinks his engine has ingested water. We did our PR thing with the BC Hydro guy. And we all participated in a team effort to ensure that EVERYBODY gets out, an important part of 4-wheeling etiquette.
Happy New Year, y'all. :)
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