mud track

Daktoberfest 2003

Saturday October 25, 2003
Forestville, NY

Hosted by Jon Steiger.
Photos by Anne Baker (forthcoming), Jason Bleazard, Mike Maskalans and Jon Steiger.
Video by Andy Levy (Jon's camera) and Anne Baker (Mike's camera).
Report by Mike Maskalans.

mud track

Introduction:

I haven't yet dealt with video, and I'm still waiting on getting Anne's photos scanned, but aside from that, I think I'm done. Holler back if you think I'm missing something!

As is apparently the norm, Daktoberfest 2003 was a pretty quiet meet. There wasn't nearly as much trail activity as I'd hoped for, but I think overall there ended up being enough excitement to go around. No records were set, and little carnage was done, but nevertheless an enjoyable time was had by all.

DML Attendees:

The Friday Before

Mike showed up on Friday planning to get all sorts of work done on his Dakota. He had some wiring to do, a CB antenna mount to swap out, a dual oil filter relocation kit to mount and an oil change to do, a leaking transmission cooler line to take care of, a skid plate to put on, a splash guard for his K&N, a TPS to swap out and a pair of power quarter window motors just in case he ran out of things to do. ha.

First up was draining the oil, when a leak was discovered in Jon's oil pan. The oil weeps right through the metal in one section where the enamal his chipped off. While the oil was draining, he ripped a lot of things out of his engine complartment: the K&N kit, it's heat sheild and the right header, in order to get access to the top of the frame rail where the remote filter mount was to go. The bracket was easilly fabbed from a 1.5" x 2" piece of angle iron, painted and ready to go in. The filter was pulled off the block, and the filter landing adaptor was ready to go on. Now come the problems....

A lack of clearance considerations meant that the AN adaptors wouldn't be able to go on without some extra pipe sections, but when that was investigated a massive screwup was found: 3/4" NPT threads are a hair over an inch in diameter. 1/2"NPT threads are roughly 3/4", and are what was desired. Big oops - $130 oops. oops. So stainless braid and AN fittings and adaptors will go on at the next oil change.... In the mean time, the supplied nipples and rubber hoses were used with the addition of brass nipples and elbows to gain the needed clearance and make needed bends.

while trying to figure out what to do about the oil filter, and before getting the needed parts, the new CB antenna mount was put on, along with the addition of a spring and a nicer quick removal piece. Now the treeks on the trails aren't such a problem as they used to be, and there will be no more fender damage, though a plug is needed for the hole.

Failure was realized between Friday night and Saturday morning when it was attempted to mate Adam's skid plate to Mike's truck - there were drastic changes under the front ends of the newer Gen IIIs (00+ versus 97-99), and the entire plate would need to be reworked. It was left at Jon's to deal with at some later point, or for someone else to use.

Another headache was the transmission line. The lower side of this line had a flare fitting, which made removal blissfully simple, but the next place to remove the section was all the way at the radiator, which was in very tight quarters and was tightened very firmly. There was not enough room to cut off or re-flare without removing the part. After removal, and cutting off the damaged section, it was found that there was not enough room to flare the existing hose, so a trip to AutoZone yielded a pre-flared piece that I bent to fit. However, the need for another gender bender due to the pre-flared replacement part was neglected while parts running. Much to Mike's appreciation, Jon made a quick hardware trip before he awoke the next morning with the proper adaptors to finish the assembly. No more leak, but what a kludge of adaptors!

To hopefully correct cruise control surging issues, the TPS was replaced - that was a nice simple quick job.

Another stall/ procrastination project was wiring hard power and running a temperature sensor for Mike's compass. No more headaches when trying to start out using only the GPS for navigation, since it only knows direction of motion, not stationary orientation.

During reassembly of the K&N, a splash guard was added to limit water ingestion of the engine, and it seems to have worked well.

The Real Meet - Saturday

Saturday's arrivals were not the quickest to get moving. First to arrive were Andy and Mike's girlfriend Anne, followed soon after by Ed. Jason and Norah rounded out the day's original crew at around 11 o'clock. TimBits were devoured and plenty of BSing took place while Mike finished up the previous night's work and got the shop cleaned up a bit.

First off was a visit to the pit. It looked about the same as it did during the BBQ, but with some extra mud around the edges which made for some real nice doughnut opportunitues. Mike was the only one to try the gauntlet, and quickly found a Chinese plot to import Dakotas via the Earth's core. After a few pulls that made little progress aside from getting water up to the top of the front bumper, he was able to back out. the right side of the body took some time to drain, and it was also noted that some water entered the cab through the radio antenna wire's grommet in the passenger door jamb.

After marvelling over Mike's stupidity, and the functionality of his flower pot - cum - mud deflector, it was decided that a trip to the upper falls was in order. Heading across Ranger Gulch towards Mud Lane proved that Jon's Ram's 4WD was not completely on the fritz, since he didn't have enough 'go' to make it through in 2WD. The next bit of excitement was trying to get onto the bypass for Mud Lane. Jon's Ram walked right on, Mike had a bit of trouble but did barely make it at the second opportunity. Ed missed his first chance and got solidly caught crooked in the ruts at his second opportunity. He effectively blocked the entire trail, making it difficult to get behind him. Jon's T-hooks and Mike's Dakota took three tries to yank him free of the ruts' grip. Front tow points are a Good Idea ;-)

Before we headed down to the stream, we walked down washboard hill to take a look at things. No real descision was made until all had walked back to the top of the hill, Mike and Anne jumped in his Dak and he headed down. Once at the bottom, when everyone was caught up, Mike lead the way up to the falls, and proceeded to walk right up, as he was telling Anne that, no, these aren't the falls that usually get climbed, and in fact considering that hole I'm passing right now it's probably not a good idea to. The Climb was uneventful, and a nice photo op was taken advantage of.

The Descent was where things got interesting. When lining up for the trip down, he noticed that he was too close to the rock ledge on the left of the truck, and turned hard right. This caught some previous curb damage to that sidewall (a break in the outtermost ply) on a point sticking out from the rock face, ripping a 2" gash in the sidewall. It was quite an audible pop. He backed up to where he could drive onto dry ground and swapped in his very bald GoodLuck MT/R spare. Having lost a quarter of his traction, the trip down was even worse than it otherwise would have been, but it was luckilly a non-event.

Mike also led the trip back to the barn. He had some trouble getting back up washboard hill due to the bald GoodLuck, but a second run at it met with both success, and confusion on Ed's part: he was following, and a bit worried to loose all momentum when Mike stopped and then started backing up. Heading back towards Mud Lane, Mike intended to lead down the first route to the airstrip, but failed miserably finding a trail that was blocked within sight if the airstrip by logging debris. He and Ed turned around and then followed Jon back up to the barn along the real turn out and then up the airstrip.

Back at the barn, as expected, we met Jim Knox, and proceeded to carry on the Canadian Tradition of Murdered Tires, BS, show off Jim's exhaust cutouts - much to Norah's displeasure - throw some food on the grill and generally hang out.

Jason, Norah and Andy all left at about the same time, the rest of us stayed to eat pizza and watch videos from the previous day and from the BBQ, and Mike got his tools ready to pack back into his truck.

Cleanup - Sunday

After Mike and Jim moved back into their respective Dakotas, and Mike put the barn back into respectable shape (at least I hope I caught all of my various meses) Mike, Anne and Jim all left Sunday morning, parting at the Fredonia Tim Horton's for our respective trips home.


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