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The trip started out Friday evening, I had a few last minute things to get together and then called my father, he wasn’t ready yet.  We planned to meet in Glendale where we could stash his truck, he finally got all his stuff together and arrived in Glendale at 4.00am and met me, we parked his truck and got in the Jeep to head on out there.  A short time later I was too tired to drive so my father took over, the trip suddenly got interesting at about 8.45am, Saturday morning.  While going up the Cajon Pass on Interstate 15 the Jeep quit!

 
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My father pulled over and I started trying to find the problem, after about forty-five minutes of diagnosing and not being able to solve it I swallowed my pride and called a tow truck to haul us off the freeway.

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He pulled us to the Pep Boys parking lot in Hesperia, CA.  We ended up staying there until Tuesday evening while I tried to chase the problem down, to the extent that I took it to a “Five Star” dealership in Victorville (They said the ECU was fried), bought an ECU from a bone yard (no fix, same problem) and ultimately pulled my head out of my ass and found the problem myself in the dealership parking lot with a trusty FSM and multi-meter.  Fifteen minutes and $0.25 of wire later and I was fixed, I had blown a fusable link.

Once I got it repaired I started packing up and getting ready to go, we got out of there at about 8:00 PM Tuesday night and being the stubborn guy I am I continued on our way to Moab.

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After the days trail we headed on over to the Moab Senior Center for the dinner and raffle where I, being the jerk I am, won only one item, the MobiArc.

There are two additional things to note here.  The first is that my little travel trailer, a 1983 Burro, got it’s name at this event, I believe it was Matt “Scrappy” Strmiska who came up with the new name “The Egg,” from that point forward that is the trailer’s name.

The second is that ever since I left Victorville the Jeep was getting horrible gas mileage and belching black smoke (running very rich).  I did not notice the smoke until we were in Moab (A lot of night driving and the trailer blocking views) and attributed the poor economy to the trailer.  Well it turns out that the lower engine wiring harness, the one I’ve always been very careful to route safely, somehow got unsafely routed right against the exhaust manifold during it’s stay at the dealership.  I really hate it when “professionals” don’t pay attention to detail.  So on Saturday evening I repaired the harness.

 After the repair was complete we hooked up the Egg and left Moab, I drove from Moab to the rest stop South of Beaver and then stopped for rest, the next morning my father took a shift of driving, then I took another.  All said even with the Jeep drama it was a fun trip and I’d do it again.

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To see more photos click here.

Sequoia

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