10:15a – 3:30a (Monday morning!!!) – I’m not sure we’ll be running Prittchet on our next Moab run. We might skip it for a year and try it again after we get a few successful trips under our belts. And we do this stuff for fun!
We hit the trail head at 10:15a Sunday morning with w
hat seemed like a good start. But once we made it over the first obstacle, Jolly Roger started to have battery issues with it bubbling and overheating. After stopping to let it cool and keeping an eye on it, we continued on. About an hour later on the trail, we stopped to discover that Murray had broke two motor mounts. Keep in mind, they are brand new. Not a problem for this group though. They trail fabricated some new motor mounts out of what was left, threw some extra washers in for spacing and we were off and breaking again.
At the very next obstacle, Jolly Roger’s intermediate steering when out. With the updated suspension and everything else, there’s just too much pressure and we’ll have to build that up. (I’ve got a great picture of the guys working on this for the first time with the Jeep on a 45degree angle. Check back for the picture when I find it!)

Then as we move along, Phill and I decide it’s time for us to break something. So we decided to punch a pinky size hole in our radiator AND we decided to break a center pin in our suspension. A $.94 part that Phill just happens to have a spare for. The center pin was an easy fix. While we didn’t think it’d actually work, we try using some epoxy to fill the hole in the radiator and walked to the next obstacle to watch the others go over it and let the epoxy set. An hour later and three Jeeps past Rocker Knocker…the epoxy was dry. It actually worked and we were off and breaking again!
Our next mishap would be a combo of Phill and Steve’s Jeep and the beginning of the end of a very long day. We decided to winch out of the same obstacle that Phill and I flopped on last
year but once we got up, we discovered we broke a front axle shaft U-joint. Yes folks, we actually do this for fun. Again, lucky for me…Phill had a spare. While we were fixing that, the others continued up our obstacle and Steve began with his problems. His battery was shot. We switched batteries with another rig and suddenly had a small fire under Steve’s dash. The motor ECU was up in smoke. Translation: No power, no steering, no getting off this trail before nightfall.
It took the guys five hours and three rigs to pull Steve’s Jeep 100 yards to the top of Pritchett. In this time, Aaron broke his winch cable eyelet, Phill and I broke our winch cable eyelet, and Murray broke his front lockout hub. Not a good night. We left the Jolly Roger on the trail, loaded up and headed back to camp. We made it home about 3:30a Monday morning.
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