On Saturday (February 11, 2006), Arizona Christian Wheelers took a day long wheeling trip to the Sunflower Mine Loop Trail, located a few miles from the town of Sunflower. This trail was approximately 3 hours from Prescott Valley each way, however the drive was well worth the years of stories and new friendships evolving from it! For this trip, we met at 7:00AM at the Prescott Valley Safeway. Chris Ayars and his son Nick decided to come along, despite the pending repairs to Brutal, and offered to trailer Taco down to Sunflower (as to test his new trailer before use at Calico and Silverton). At 7:00, we had the trailer loaded and were ready to head out of Prescott Valley to meet with some new members in Phoenix (KetCat & BigYellowJimmy).
Immediately after leaving the parking lot, we noticed that the trailer tires were SMOKING and had to pull over to inspect. Sure enough, the trailer tires were rubbing on the 1/4" steel fenders due to the excess-weight of TACO. We pulled out the high-lift jack and tried to jack the trailer up using the fender so we could bend the fender into place and get it to clear the tires. However, after multiple attempts, the fenders would simply not budge and the tires would start to smoke again. So next, we unloaded Taco from the trailer, turned it around and backed it up on the trailer to add more aft weight (taking the weight off the front trailer tire which was rubbing). This seemed to work until we hit about 50 mph and the whole trailer would start to whip back and forth because we now had to much aft trailer cg. We decided that we would have to somehow fix the fender situation or we would not be able to go. By this time we were in Dewey and were trying to find someone with a torch who could heat the fender up while bending it up with our high-lift jack. No one was open, and those that were open, were not willing to help. This takes us to about 9:00AM where the possibility of getting to Sunflower seems to be slimming. At this point we decide to call Tye (aka CJ5Driver) at Casa De Hones and headed back to Prescott Valley. Fortunately, he was home and was able to help us out with the trailer. As we rolled up to his house, he was ready to go and fixed the trailer almost immediately (A HUGE thanks to Tye!). We pulled Taco off the trailer (again) and pulled it up facing forwards to properly distribute weight on the trailer. We finally left Prescott Valley at 10:00AM and the trailer was working flawlessly. Our trip down was filled with lots of great conversation, scenic highway and anticipation to hit the trail!
We finally got to the Sunflower Mine Loop Trailhead at 1:00PM, where we quickly unloaded Taco and headed up to meet with BigYellowJimmy (Jeff) and KetCat (Ken). Just as we passed the mine, we were relieved to find Jeff and Ken waiting patiently for us to arrive. We continued up the loop trail, where we almost immediately dropped into a wash, offering just the challenge we were looking for. We had a great time witnessing the true capability of Ken's H3 as he daringly traversed his rig through the boulders (Huge props Ken!). At one point, Ken had his H3 doing a huge wheel stand while attempting to throttle his way through an obstacle inadvertently hanging his H3 up on a rear spring hanger. Later, Jeff somehow managed to wheel his BigYellowJimmy into a tree with a surprisingly small amount of damage done to his rear quarter panel. Mandi had the opportunity to wheel Taco through almost the entire wash while Chris offered her tips and advise from the passenger seat. Russell and Nick were able to passenger in Jeff's BigYellowJimmy where they were able to enjoy the trail in an open cockpit! Towards the end of the loop, we climbed several steep grades and took a break near the top. After taking a short break, we decided to head back down to the wash for some more wheelin and fellowship! We ended the day at the trailers where we had a prayer (Great Job done by Ken's daughter!), talked about future runs and trailered our rigs for the return trip! Despite the trailer problems, the run was a huge success and we had an awesome time meeting some of the newest members of ACW! We look forward to more runs in the phoenix area!
