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Sunday’s run into the hills

• CATEGORIES: Biscuit This site contains affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

FEATURED MAY 2010

Despite some sketchy weather this Memorial Day weekend, I still managed to get into the hills.  Sunday proved to be the best day, so I chose to head out of Boise on 8th street again — otherwise known by me as trouble road.  You see, every time I’ve headed out that road, something has happened (one time, the fan stopped working .. last time, I broke the fender and almost got stuck near the hill top).  This trip was no exception.

Fixing my Carb

First, let’s talk carbs.  I thought I had gotten the carb running well, but hesitation problems continued over the past week.  By Friday of this week, I was getting ticked off at not being able to floor it and go — instead, I had to accelerate slowly.

My solution:  find a Carter/Edelbrock manual and get instructions.  Sure enough, I found one online that described my problem.  What I thought was the result of too much fuel was actually a problem of too little fuel.  So, I increased my primary jets to .86.  I also re-routed my PVC valve into the base of the carb.  Those two changes made ol’ Lost Biscuit much much happier.  Nothing like reading the manual ….

Now, onward and upward until …

So, with the carb functioning correctly, climbing out eighth avenue into the foothills went smoothly.  As usual, I checked my gauges frequently, especially my temperature gauge.  So, it was quite a surprise when I looked down and saw that the temp gauge had lept to 260 degrees!  SHIT!  I pulled over immediately and shut down the engine.  I jumped out to lift the hood to let the engine cool more; however, much to my surprise it turned out the engine was holding down a ready-to-explode radiator hose.  As soon as I lifted hood, the hose separated from a connection tube and a geyser that could be seen from Yellowstone NP let loose.  If I wasn’t so pissed off, it would have looked pretty cool.

So, there on the trail I sit scratching my head.  After letting things cool just a bit, I quickly found the cause of the problem — a wire had come loose at the base of the fan relay that was part of the original connection. So, I spliced around that loose connection and the fan started working again.

Now, how to get some water into the radiator?  I had a total of one bottle of water on me, so  I poured that in; unfortunately, I needed another 20 bottles or so.  That’s when lady-luck arrived in the form of a puddle around 20 feet behind me — I think it was the only puddle along that entire road.

So, I took my bottle, gathered water from the puddle and filtered the muddy water through a shirt.  After many trips back and forth, I got the radiator filled, cringing the entire time.  But, I figured it would work until I got it home to drain and clean it.

Now, onward and upward for real …

But I was sure about one thing in particular … I was getting to the top of that road this time!  And I did get there, all the way to the ridge road — finally!   Once I got to the top, I was having too much fun, so I just kept going and exploring.  And so, here are some pics from the trip.

First is a composition of images taken from the ‘road’ that ran along the mountain ridge.

On the north side of the ridge there is plenty of green, while the south side is pretty brown.

Here’s a bunch of sheep munching along the hillside.

I wanted to make sure I can get through the snow.  Without a winch, I don’t want to get stuck.

Finally, near the top of the highest mountain, too much snow filled the road to allow passage.  So, I have to save the very highest roads for some warmer weather 🙂

And here is the view looking west of this road.  You can just make out Bogus Basin road which carves upwards to Boise’s ski area, Bogus Basin.

And yes, once I arrive back home, I immediate drained the engine of water and flushed it with additional water.  I also changed the way the fan relay was mounted and simplified the wiring so that the damn fans won’t ever shut down again!

 

4 Comments on “Sunday’s run into the hills

  1. Michael Myers

    Snow !!!!! it is June…LOL nice shots of some beautiful scenery 🙂 would love to have access to open terrain like that 🙂 thx for posting

  2. mike boyd

    i saw your photos, you are in my back yard i live in robie creek about 7 mil from the boat ramp. i looked through your build outstanding jeep. my Sargent from the pd i retired from has bin into jeep for along time. so i finely started to look for my flat fender build. i would like to get you and mike my Sargent together and talk jeeps, hes a pro at moab. talk to you soon mb in robie creek.

  3. deilers

    HI Mike,

    Great to hear from you. Yes, I’d be happy to meet with you and Mike sometime.

    Though I’ve never jeeped in Moab, I’ve bike, hiked, and slept out on the slickrock (before the BLM made that more difficult). I lived in Salt Lake for about 10 years and loved exploring Southern Utah. The area south of the Burr Trail road, the central mountain areas east of the Mt. Pleasant, and the area in and north of the Capital Reef area are all regions I hope to explore. Feel free to email me a d@ewillys.com

    – Dave

  4. gordon west

    That brings back memories. I grew up in Boise and my first vehicle was a ’47 CJ2A. One Spring, probably 1972, I was tooling around up on the Boise Front and came to a stretch of road filled partially in with snow, like the spot you were checking out. I drove up about 200′ with one tire in the snow and one on the bare dirt at the edge of the road before I spun out. Backing up, the soft shoulder gave out and I started to tip over the side (it was very steep there). I got stopped and my buddy and I carefully climbed out on the uphill passenger side and held back on the side of the Jeep. Gas was pissing out of the filler cap vent hole on the other side in a thin stream and landing maybe 10′ down the hill. We got out the little folding GI shovel and dug the road down under the Jeep and made a more level track to back down and onto the road again, along with moving snow for about 50′. That was the closest I ever came to rolling.

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