SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2009

Tow it 2,000 Miles—We’ll Fix it When We Get There!

by Brian Koerner

Ibought my first Land Cruiser (an FJ40) back in1996 while in graduate school at the University of Wyoming. Shortly after buying my 40, I started hanging out on the Land Cruiser Mailing List. Through the List, I met lots of friends… most of whom I never met in person. Cruise Moab started getting my attention and the thought was always in the back of my head that I wanted to attend.

Fast-forward to 2009 and Sean O’Leary told me that he was planning to go. He used to live in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, when I lived Wyoming and was one of the guys I remembered from the LCML. He now lives in Southern Pines, North Carolina, and I live in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. I told him that I would split some driving duties with him for our 3,800 mile round trip to Moab.

Two days before our departure, I got a call from Sean saying that he had some major breakage on his 40—his transfer case had broken. I told him to just load it up on the trailer and I’d grab my spare transfer case. The plan was to repair the Cruiser on Tuesday once we got it to Slickrock, the campground in Moab.
Once in Moab, we met lots of people and many eyes were upon us for our repair in camp. Their eyes got even bigger when they realized that we had not broken anything in Moab—that we brought it that way from North Carolina. After repairing the transfer case, we pulled the 40 off the trailer only to find that there was some additional breakage in the front axle. A spare front inner axle shaft and a new ARB differential were installed and we were ready to wheel on Thursday.

The excitement of running a trail in Moab was short lived, as Sean broke a rear pinion right away on Hell’s Revenge. With the help of several Coloradoans, we were able to take the rear differential apart, pull the pinion and take a tow strap up and over the remaining portion of the trail. Friday had Sean running up to Proffitt’s Cruisers to grab another differential. I hopped in with some fellow 100 series owners, including Dan Streight from Reno, who had just completed a 12-day expedition with several other vehicles. Dan’s dog Zig enjoyed the ride and was relaxing by the time we took lunch on Hell’s Gate.

By bedtime, we had torn apart Sean’s broken differential, put the ARB into the new-to-us gears and housing, checked the wear pattern with some toothpaste (thanks for the idea Tyler, a.k.a. Tony Danza) and got everything buttoned back together just in time to attend the dinner and raffle...

Sean O’Leary may be the first guy to have towed his FJ40 2,000 miles so he could wrench on it at Cruise Moab.

Problem #2, a broken rear pinion halts Sean O’Leary’s 40 atop Hell’s Revenge.