The Springs 2012

[Busman]

It has been a great long weekend trip for the club to The Springs, west of Warwick.
I have not been to this park for a few years, but certainly enjoyed this trip and what the park has to offer.
The weather was fantastic, but certainly better suited to Eskimos at night.
The camping facilities were great, and the park was quite full of campers and wheelers alike.
A huge group of fellow GCLRO members turned out for this trip, and all had a chance to experience different types of terrain.
A few of us, including my goodself had the misfortune of breaking their vehicles.
Harry attempted a rock face near the office, and experienced major drive train failure. Broken tailshaft, front right CV & Axle. Bang bang ting
A heap of guys assisted to retrieve Harry and get the car back to camp.
I also had a major failure on the Rangie.
I was going up a steep enough track and heard a loud bang bang.
A sequence of damage occurred.
The left rear arm broke off from its weld and twisted the rear end around and broke to other side arm, then the tail shaft snapped.
I also lost power to the engine, and was not able to start the car.
A massive recovery with the help of Bullets/Pete/John R/Grant & Grimace spent over 1.5 hours assisting with this dangerous recovery.
Extra special thanks to all who assist with the recovery. (Great work by all)
After alot of strapping, etc the car was back on flat ground.
Bullets and l found the fuel line breakage and managed to bleed the system and slowly drive back to camp.
Grimace got on the phone to Greg, Guy and Darren (Jaffa), and we managed to have some parts sent out to assist, which ended up helping Harry also.
I have to say a special thanks to Guy for bringing out some parts, and also to Darren & his wife Mel who drove specially out with parts etc also. Amazing people we have in this club !!
Grimace & Darren were a great help with removing and replacing parts.
They are certainly troopers, and just fantastic blokes, who provided alot of assistance.
After getting things back together, we drove the car and heard a ting.
Bugger is that what l am thinking it is ???
Darren dropped the oil out of the rear diff, and we found a piece of tooth from the CW.
Massive damage to the car from a chain reaction of events.
Off with the tail shaft and axles, and l drove home in front wheel drive.
I got home safely, and now the Rangie is at Outcast Offroad for some surgery.
What an amazing weekend of camping with a great bunch of people !!!!
Over the Rangie issues the camping was fun and some great times around the camp fire.
Certainly look forward to another trip, and hopefully with a stronger Rangie.
Inside (Andrew), Sam & John R and others will l am sure post plenty of photos for all to see.

Cheers to all !!!

[harry]

thanks dave for the report,
and yes i too had a major failure on the rock climb,
thanks so much grimace, pete, dave and bullets jason and others for all your outstanding assistance in getting me out of that situation with the skill that you did.
before i attempted the rock climb i jammed the steering damper up so it contacted the sway bar turning left,effectively stopping the already poor power steering i have when on a track.
the tail shaft landed on a rock and said goodnight, closely followed by the front right axle, also taking out the cv.
i was left with a one wheel drive to get back to camp, but began wheelspinning on the first hill, thanks darren for the tow, and then an offer of a cv, then grimace found a front cv and axle, thanks for that, and guy had two tailshafts on board, thanks guy.
pete ratted around in the tool box and found me a pair of circlip pliers, grimace found some gasket sealant and two tailshaft bolts.
so i got going for the arvo drive.

thanks to all and the others that aren't mentioned and offered assistance.
we loved our first trip in our camper trailer and probably you missed seeing us at the fire, as we were in new camper mode.
ben did a dare and is enjoying his outing with the club.

thanks all who came along.


bring on the photos.

[inside]

We too had damage. Vehicle was completely destroyed actually. Scratch one camo truck. See pic below.

































































More pics to come.

[The ho har's]

We too had damage. Vehicle was completely destroyed actually. Scratch one camo truck. See pic below.




More pics to come.

OK who was it Marcus must be distraught

Mrs hh

[Outlaw]

Well sounds like a brilliant and entertaining trip to the Springs... even more so then usual i mean or was that

[Mrs Inside]

OK who was it Marcus must be distraught

Mrs hh

Some jolly Hilux ute did it, I heard the crunch but thought it was just the dip and rocks on the road sound...Marcus had the biggest 'O' mouth when I brought the pieces back and he saw it. But then he thought it was funny "we'll just buy another one at the shops mum" kids nowadays...

[harry]

i forgot to thank the johnr family and inside's family for the entertainment from their children, next trip, i am sure we will stock more food, it seems the robbo's don't feed their children
all the kids were so much fun to see again and learn from!

i had a fun drive with djhampson and co and thoroughly enjoyed it,then followed mrs jason before i got excited and broke it with the big boys.

we had a fun drive home with the van of david's and down cunninghams in low range to save the brakes [no trailer brakes in the v8!]

great trip,

sneaks off to ebay for some parts........

[Psimpson7]

Thanks to everyone for a great trip. Special thanks to the group leaders, spotters and TEC's duringthe weekend, JohnR, Harry, Xbox, Grimace etc etc.

The weather couldnt have been any better.

The first drive of the weekend was split into 2 main groups, group 1 with me, and group 2 with Louis. We headed out but unfortunately early on had as Dave has mentioned a fairly large and serious breakage/recovery on his Rangie. This resulted in a lengthy recovery which meant that by the time that group 2 were returning from their drive, we hadnt actually left yet!

This is really the only picture I have that shows the steepness of the climb:



Big thanks to the recovery team, who managed to safely extract the vehicle which wasnt an easy job. Bullets did an excellet job with the drag chain and ratchet straps underneath, with help from Grimace, JohnR, Presto and myself.

This was what the repair looked like - Huge thanks to Darren and Mel who drove out with spares to get Dave moving again, and it was really unfotunate that after all this effort that a broken crownwheel was discovered:



After this we drove Brisbane way with a few of teh cars fairly quickly before heading back for some well deserved lunch.



After lunch we headed down near the house to the very steep rocky climb track.

I was amazed at the improvement with my gearing and basically managed to drive bottom to top on idle with the lockers in.

JohnR also made it look pretty easy, despite one large wheel lift requiring a few KG's of ballast at one point!





Grimace in his time honoured slow and steady smoke making machine:



This picture give an idea of the steepness of the top section of this track:



From the top of the upper section:



JohnR heading up the last section:





Presto:



Harry:





Resulting as mentioned in quite a few broken parts:



This was also repaired and drove home afterwards which was a credit to all involved!

The fire on Night 2:



Next morning we again split into 2 groups. Group 1 lead by JohnR and group 2 by Louis again:

Group1 up the waterfall rock on the Skids:







Andrew (Insides awesome Perentie)







After this track we headed to the lower play gorund where everyone had a bit of a play.

Jess:



Mel:



GuyG:



Inside:



Next up was lunch! After lunch Grimace and I took group 2 through the Sids track where we had been with group 1 earlier which was really good:

Craig and Kayti:



Wombi:



DJHampson:



4fun:



Chris and Dianne:





Jess:







D3's in convoy!



XK150 (Ben, who drove really well I thought):



DJH:



That was the end of Sunday really. We had a massive fire which was excellent!

Next up was Sunday morning. We headed out agan on some tracks that the rest of group 1 had scoped out on Sunday afternoon, including the Snake pit, EFS gulley, Petes pass etc:

We went out in 1 group again here, lead by JohnR or myself depending on the section:

DJH:



Dropping into the snake pit:











Climibg out:



Last few pics I have are from EFS Gulley:







Some nice driving saw Ed get his brand new 110 through:





Thanks again to everyone. I think we had 20 or maybe 21 cars having gone through the list which is really good.

Cheers
Pete+Sam

[Grimace]

What a springs trip! What a group!

The camp fire was ORSUM (thanks to Johns idea of elongating it). Spewing I went to bed early on the last night as the camp fire the night before was of great atmosphere, thanks to all who attended and helped collect the wood and keep the fire going.

Won't blab on like a mad hatter, here are some pics instead

Dave prep'd to do a tyre change... with all four tyres positioned incorrectly!


Fry preped for his first ever wheeling session


Dave, broke...


Wheelin


A nice view


Samantha Excited (to see me)


More wheelin


Pete excited (to see me)


Even more wheelin, including Jess first club drive, of which she did very well, so wel infact she managed to read a book and navigate the tracks at the same time

[4fun]

More, more, more!!!
More pictures and more trips please (and I'll promise I'll organise one once I get settled a bit more).

I've had great fun and want to thank everyone that participated and helped out during the weekend. Awesome.

Ed.