What's Your Scariest FSJ Experience?

[Red20]

I'd love to hear some of your "good scare" stories as related to our FSJs. I'll open it up with mine.

About the time I got my J20 right about where I wanted it for mild trail riding and rock crawling, I discovered an issue that about ended my hobby. I had a nicely warmed over 360, fresh 4" lift, 33"s, and lockers front and rear and I was ready to take on any obstacle (within reason).

So, one day at Hollister Hills I was crawling through a pretty nice rock garden, taking my time and picking my line when I got hung up on an axle. So, I put it in reverse and tapped on the gas to climb back up onto the rocks I had just slid down off of into my predicament. When I did that, the throttle stuck and I immediately tapped it again to "unstick" it. That just made it stick at an even higher RPM. My worn out brakes didn't help me any as the truck took a beeline in reverse bouncing back out of the rocks I had just so skillfully crawled over. I undid 5 good minutes of crawling in about 10 seconds with me standing on the brakes and freaking out as BigRed bounced and slammed and hauled butt back over the rocks and out of the rock garden in reverse at 3,500 RPM. Just before I went backwards over a nice cliff, I managed to pull the transmission forcefully out of gear with a loud clunk and stop the beast. It immediately idled down. I did some testing on flat ground and found that if I eased it around in reverse this wouldn't happen, but if I blipped the throttle pretty good, it would do the same thing. I was stumped initally, but it turns out the motor and transmission mounts were so shot that the torque in reverse would tweak the motor over in such a way as to pull on the throttle cable and hold it there until I got it out of gear. When I pulled the motor mounts, they just fell apart into two pieces in my hands. Replaced those and no more Christine truck.

Now let's hear your scary FSJ stories!

[UKJeeper]

Breaking up one of my previous SJ's (see sig), i was working underneath it getting the drive train out, for the best part of an hour.

The axles were already off, as were the springs. So the body,frame were on axle stands along the rails.

Crawled out from under, and leaned on the carcass, when it promptly fell off the axle stands and landed where i had just been! WithAboutThisMuchSpaceUnderIt.

Turned out one of the axle stands had failed, bent, and allowed the SJ to move.

[fulsizjeep]

This was probably the biggest adrenaline rush I have had at 65 mph...

Some how I did not roll it.
http://www.jubileejeeps.org/wipeout

In "the hind sight" department, this would be the scariest...

The full deal:
http://www.ifsja.org/forums/vb/showthread.php?t=131186

[hookedup50]

Driving at speed and plastic spare tire nut let go. Tired was bouncing in 30ish foot hops about 15 feet high. No one got hurt, but I guarantee there were some stained pants. Took hour to find tire. I wish I had pics or video of event or pic of my face watching tire in rearview mirror.

[srobertsfsj]

For me it was being t-bone by a city bus while driving through an intersection less than a mile from my house on my way home from work Christmas Eve. Got knocked sideways and slide through the intersection. I am lucky I didnt flip the super chief

[babywag]

'78 Cherokee WT 360/4spd

Engine stall on VERY steep hill then losing the ability to hold it w/ brakes or get it restarted.
Rolled down the hill backwards until we hit a tree to stop.

Luckily nobody got hurt!

[Ristow]

one time i got in the wagoneer to go home from work and the XM radio didn't work.

[babywag]

Oooh I forgot about one...

'77 Cherokee NT 401 (1st SJ), almost got into a head on collision w/ a police officer.
Me and a buddy were just driving down the road, and he swerved over 2 lines and was heading straight for us.
I had to hit the ditch, tore the exhaust off the truck, and bent a rim.
He was leaned over towards the passenger side of the car not watching where he was going.
Didn't even bother to stop

[FSJunkie]

I almost slid 3 generations of family memories backwards off the side of a mountain.


Doesn't look that scary, but trust me, but if you look after the turn, you can see that it's actually pretty steep. The road is fresh here, but within a month it was full of ruts and washboards from idiots hitting their brakes on the way down. Straight behind me in this photo is another switchback in the opposite direction around the corner of the mountain.

Now imagine this road covered in week old snowpack around sunset. As I reached the section next to the tree in the photo, I lost all traction and slid sideways into the ditch on the left, my rear bumper jammed into the snowbank. I freed myself and tried again, with a perfect repeat result. Time to go home, but without a place to turn around, I had to back down with the brakes. I was already in low range, but it wasn't slow enough.

But by now the sun was setting and the road was freezing over. When I backed to the point I am at in the photo, I lost all control. I locked all four wheels with the brakes and slid ever so slowly straight backwards toward the switchback behind me. If I didn't make that switchback, it was a fatal 800 foot drop off the side. I was franticly trying every combination of brakes, gears, and steering to try and control my excruciatingly slow slide to doom, with no luck. In my last attempt, I let off the brakes and my speed picked up, but I regained steering and steered the back bumper into the ditch and snow back to stop me. I stopped at the last section of straight road. Good thing, because I had my door open and my seatbelt undone ready to jump out of the car and save my life by letting it go over.

I had to pull forward to free myself, but whenever I tried, the tires would just spin and the front end would try to side-slip out and I could feel the slope of the road trying to make the car swap ends. I knew if it did that, it would not be recoverable.

I pulled out my brand new floormats and put them under the front tires. By now the ice was so bad I could barely stand on it myself.

It worked, and I was again on the road. I knew fully that even a gentle shove would send the car sliding like a hockey puck again.

I made it around the switchback sliding between dry patches of road in N with the brakes. I found engine power in R made it slide worse. The rest of the way back down the 1 mile road was the same thing: slide backwards for 5 feet or so...hit dry patch....slide for several feet, dry patch.

It took 3 hours for me to back down 1 mile of road.

[goldhammer]

Night dune run years back. Following a cruiser and went up a dune, had to hit the power when I realized how tall it was, then back out of it near the top. All of a sudden realized I was not going to get over it and hit the gas again. The cruiser had a lighted long whip and the light on it went out of sight just about the time his tails disappeared. KNIFE EDGE!!!! Launched off of that thing and was airborne.....The nose fell through and just then I hit hard on all 4's, bounced once and kept going.

Went back the next morning and saw the 4 impressions where I landed...about 60 feet out from the top and 80 feet down.

Last time I ever went out at night and it was 3-4 years before the wife found out why I don't do night runs out there anymore.

This was at Christmas Valley dunes in central Oregon out on the southeast corner, on a Memorial Day w/e.

[grand_wag_85]

I hit a black bear...and a tree...

[the original Honcho]

1978 Chief

When I was about 11 or 12, hunting with my dad and some family friends, we were attempting a gnarly gravel and rock hill, and near the top my dad realized it wasn't going to make it. So he stopped, threw it into reverse, and proceeded to back down. Then the throttle got stuck, so we were flying down this hill, hitting all the big rocks and it started to go sideways (in reverse, probably going 30mph) The big custom rear bumper caught a boulder twice the size of the Jeep and that stopped it. That whole afternoon my dad talked about getting rid of it for any price, lol. Went back the next day, fixed the throttle and was back in business!

[78J-10]

Brake booster went out on my 79 J-20 pulling my popup camper the other year. Was only at 55mph when it happened but still scary when you have a set of hair pin turns coming up and the truck is on 36's lol

[Red20]

grand_wag_85, that looks BAD, man. I cringed seeing those pictures.

78J-10, I had that happen crawling down a steep hill offroading, but never on the highway with a trailer.

Ristow, seriously? LOL!

[77JEEPJ20]

A couple of weeks ago I was heading to the store in the J20 on my lunch break. Parked went in got what I needed came back out and fired it up. Went to put in reverse and thought man that brake pedal feels weird. Well I went ahead and put it in reverse anyway. Thats when I discovered the funny feeling brake pedal was a blown front rubber line to the passenger caliper. Had it happened on the way to the store there would have been a very large wreck.

[grand_wag_85]

Originally Posted by Red20

grand_wag_85, that looks BAD, man. I cringed seeing those pictures.

It was. Jeep spun 270* and nearly flipped. Walked away without a scratch.

[Carnuck]

Wasn't scared at the time (other than almost hitting the horse and gas leaking inside with the motor still running)



Not too long before that a brake line failed (steel line, no rust but it was rubbed through by the cab moving around) as I was going down James Street in Seattle towards first ave (picture a hill in San Francisco with people at the bottom) I laid on the horn and people stopped moving so I swerved around them, ran the red light and spun the truck into a parking space (360 plus 90) on a one way street and slapped it in park. Nothing hit but nerves were frayed!

[gsmikie]

i got you all beat ...... the day i brought my 3rd wife home in my SJ

[HOOT]

Colliding with a motorcycle head on at 50 MPH 1300 miles from home in NM. Got the truck airborne jumping it over him. Truck was totalled and no where near drivable. Motorcycle broken in a thousand pieces. The guy walked away from it once he came to and continued their trip home on the back of his wife's bike. I had the j20 towed and rebuilt over the following 3 weeks then returned home. That was my first trip to Ouray,CO 2006, the J20 has still never made it there.
Trying to take it to Ouray in 2007 resulted in a blown brake line as I was heading over a hill going down to the Ohio River bank. The line failed as a result of landing on the motorcycle the year before.. His handle bar went up inside my frame rail right next to the gas tank and nicked the line.

[brushawg]

Had just gotten off work,going home in the j20. Picked up speed to get on the curving frontage road for interstate 35, as I got into the curve the steering wheel just started turning while the truck was going straight! Across 2 medians and 4 lanes of highway. Got it stop before the creek by popping the clutch. Steering linkage had come loose