Naches Trail
Sep 26th, 2009 by C. Alexander Leigh
A lot has been said about the Naches trail, which has been positioned to me as the “rubicon of the northwest”. Naches is not the Rubicon of the anywhere, and while it’s a great area overall and the drive is pleasant, it would require weather conditions to make it more than an easy drive over. I would recommend this place to beginners with stock or lightly modified rigs who want to get a feel for things, especially slight (~ 20 degree) off camber.
Not to say that we didn’t have problems… They just came in an unexpected form. Early on I took a line a lot too left through the only mud puddle we encountered, and it was just a bit too deep and I bogged. I left it running and winched out (thankfully someone helped out on shore). That was that, like a million other times before in a lot of other vehicles.
Further down the trail the transmission began to make a horrible noise and was leaking what appeared to be water from the bell housing. At first we thought this was just water coming down off the frame, but no, the automatic had injested a lot of water while it was idling in the puddle. Granted, the water was well into the cabin and I am running three inches of lift. Anyways it turns out that on these transmissions there’s a vent on the top that loves to take in water. I dunno why its not run up with a breather like the axles (which are vented much higher), but there you go.
Thankfully there were some great folks on the trail willing to contribute what they had to the cause. Out of cell phone range and with options dwindling, another trailgoer (Scott) who was having his own transmission difficulties with a chopped intercooler line that he jury rigged back into service voluntuneered to go down to civilization and bring back some ATF.
As he headed down, I drained the chocolate milk out of the transmission. It looked bad but the seals seemed to be holding. Some folks we had hooked up with (killing me I can’t remember names) donated two quarts of engine oil and we gave that a try. Sure enough, it moved, enough to get off the Naches trail and down the road towards civilization. However when we hit a real grade, the auto blew all the oil/chocolate milk out of the dipstick and caused something that resembled an engine fire in smoke only. Glad I just installed the extinguisher, although we didn’t need it since there was no real fire.
They were dead towing me back when a couple of minutes later we saw Scott on his return trip. True to his word he had six new quarts of ATF fluid. I put three in, took another as spare, and drove it all the way home like that. It drove fine actually, so I am thinking a flush & filter and maybe some luck and it’ll be good for many miles to come.
I’m sad we didn’t make it all the way through (we basically made it through to the cabin, ~4.3 miles), or that I didn’t get to show X1 funny rocks, but there’s always next time.