4Runner in Moab: the roadtrip, trails and breakdown

When you tell people your idea of vacation is driving 2,000 miles across the country to spend time camping in the desert in July, you get some weird looks and reactions.  That’s fine by me — not everyone understands, and that leaves the places I love to explore a little less crowded!

Much like the Summer of 2012, I chose this summer to head out West for ~2 weeks to disconnect from work and re-connect with some good friends and with the open landscape of Utah and Colorado that I find hard to resist.  I was also dying to push my new suspension setup in an environment with *slightly* fewer trees around to hit vs. our trails in the Mid-Atlantic.

This year I reversed the itinerary, heading straight for Moab first and then heading to Colorado from Moab for the FJ Summit.

The drive out was thankfully uneventful!  In my typical style I covered a TON of ground in 2 days, making it all the way to Parachute, Colorado, which only left a couple of hours to get to Moab.

That is where things got interesting.

I linked up with my buddy Dave from Arizona, and both of us being super excited to be in Moab, we headed out immediately to do a trail run, both of us in 5th gen 4runners, his pulling his new Ruger Offroad trailer.

We took off on the Dome Plateau Trail (medium difficulty) as a way to “ease” into the trails and shake out the cobwebs of our 4×4 skills after thousands of miles of pavement.  Not 30 minutes in, and we have problems.

We quickly identified that the load bars on my friend’s trailer were not tightened down and his tent mounted on them was sliding all over the place!  Not a big deal, just tighten the Yakima Bars down right?  Well, you would if you had the specific Allen Key.  At that point we decided it best to turn around and head back into town in search of the key.

Which is when I noticed something dripping underneath my truck.  My initial hope was that it was condensation from the AC dripping from a weird spot.  If only it were that innocuous.  The liquid was slippery and dripping from under the front passenger side of the engine bay.  Opening the hood, the source was obvious – I was losing power steering fluid.  Crap! (and other choice words!).

We couldn’t figure out right away where it was leaking, but thankfully the leak was not super fast, and I had extra PS fluid in the truck (for us Toyota guys, our trucks use ATF fluid for power steering).  Both of us limped back to town.  We found the elusive allen wrench at Gearheads downtown (very cool store, by the way).  We also crawled all over my truck and found the source of the leak, which crushed our hope for a simple fix (line/clamp failure).

Turning the wheels from lock-to-lock in the Gearheads parking lot, and shining a flashlight, we could see, clear as day, ps fluid shooting right out of the pump!  Right away we knew that a new pump was probably in order, but had NO IDEA why the heck it had failed.

At that point, at about 6PM on Sunday in Moab, there was zero hope of getting a part or getting an appointment lined up at a shop to get it looked at/fixed.  I left a message with Moab 4×4 Outpost and we headed out toward Fins n Things to camp for the night.  Sitting around, enjoying a beer after setting up camp, I kept thinking about that pump failure, and went to look at it again.  I then finally figured out what had happened (and had a facepalm moment).

I had recently added a dual-shock system up front, and as a part of that added gussets to key areas of the front suspension that benefit from being beefed up.  One of the gussets went from the shock towers to the frame.  Unfortunately, I only left ~1/2” of clearance from the gusset to the PS union bolt (which is the fitting by which fluid enters the pump).  Apparently, when I am boogying down the trail working those pricey bypass shocks, things like the shock towers, even with gussets, still flex and move around.  A LOT.  Enough to deflect 1/2” into that union bolt and turn a power steering pump into a power steering fluid sprinkler.  Not only was I going to be in for a new pump, but that gusset was going to need to be trimmed to add clearance to prevent a repeat performance.

Thankfully, Moab 4×4 Outpost called me back first thing in the AM and had me bring in the truck right away.  Within an hour or so, they confirmed the pump was junked and that they could do the replacement, as well as clearance the gusset.  I just needed to find a new pump.  I caught a lucky break that Toyota of Salt Lake had one in stock and was able to overnight it to Moab.

In the meantime, we had stuff to see, trails to run, and new friends to make.  After leaving my truck in the capable hands of M4O, Dave and I took off for Fins N Things in his 4runner, and linked up with some other guys from the Toyota 4runner Forum that also happened to be in town.  Following that, Dave and I drove (in his truck) to “Top of the World”, which is a punishing trail that rewards with an incredible overlook view.

The next day, Dave took off for Colorado while I waited for the pump to arrive and to have it bolted up (all the pre-work was done the prior day).  I spent the day leeching free internet at the Peace Tree Cafe (and eating some delicious grub).  M4O wrapped up the pump replacement in the afternoon and sent me on my way to Ouray, Colorado for some more adventure (and hopefully less breaking stuff).