I jumped at the news of a mod party since my truck is in pretty bad shape these days.  One of my rear FOX 2.0 shocks is completely blown, the other is leaking, one of the front FOX 2.5's is blown making the truck sit with a hilarious lean, my HID's aren't installed or hooked up, dual battery system is damaged, no radios hooked up, etc.  I also picked up a bike rack off CraigsList that, while intended to be mounted in the bed of a pickup truck, would work great on my roof.  I figured if I could mount the rack somehow and swap out my suspension for whatever crap I have laying around, it would be a good day.  Luckily I've got a few different suspensions laying around the shed for a rainy day, be it my rainy day or somebody else's.

Thanks to the quick thinking resourcefulness of 'clutch burner' we got the bike rack on no problem!

The suspension was a bit of a pain since the FOX stuff has been on there for about 18 months.  My preferred method for disassembling the front is to undo the upper control arm ball joints, but they would have none of it.  After wasting some time, I just unbolted the lowers like everybody else wanted to do in the first place.  Ah well, it was done quick after that.  Somehow I drove away with Kurt's brand new sway bar installed - an added bonus!  With the frequency of my wheeling taking a massive downturn lately, I've been slowly reinstalling practical things like the sway bars and rear seats since there's currently no reason not to have them.

It looks it's going to cost me a good few hundred bucks to rebuild the FOX stuff... Considering I haven't been wheeling much and secretly want a long travel setup anyway, I'm strongly considering selling them.  Pocketing their value would be pretty nice.

With a few Italians joining up on AZFJ.org, it was time to have a cooking battle! The event was dubbed 'Sauce on Sunday,' was to be held at homedad's house (pool!), and feature a few suspension installs.

Sauce on Sunday - AZFJ.org

Because homedad lives in Phoenix it was very hot in contrast to the perpetually perfect and beautiful weather we have here in Tucson. ;) The first order of business was to erect a gigantic shade by nailing a tarp to the house and tying it to some trucks!

Late last night, after going back and forth on what to do, I officially wimped out on doing Black Bear Pass today. The thought of doing it alone was a little scary, but adding the whole 'exploding suspension' thing into the mix made me think it would be a tremendously bad idea. Fortunately I received word that the crew from FJC-Central were going to do the Alpine Loop, so I thought I'd go with them and take it easy.

Only a couple miles into Alpine, the shocks had clearly leaked the last of their fluid and the truck was almost impossible to drive (why I even went out I'll never know). Hitting a rock about an inch tall would send the front end flying into the air, only to crash down into the ground, and over and over again... I embarrassed all of FJ kind for a huge group of Jeeps when I was coming back down the trail by struggling madly to descend a couple of 1-3 inch rock steps without smashing the front end into the ground. It was humiliating, for sure.

I told the guys at All Pro about my predicament - that I still had a week of the expedition to go, we were scheduled to be back on the road/trail the next day, and I had an undrivable truck. They helped my out big time with a seriously hardcore discount on a FOX 2.5 front and FOX 2.0 rear system that they had with them... now I would just need to install it somehow!

I pulled the FJ up into the parking lot of the Best Western and, just as the raffle was beginning, started to tear down the front end. The raffle went something like this, "And the winning ticket is BRABRABRABRABRABRA *CLUNK*"

Luckily I had the invaluable help of Mr. R2 and we were able to get everything done. Luckily too, Lance and I had every possible tool between us including air compressor, CO2 tank, impact wrenches, etc. Oh, and knowing how to install suspension was a bonus, too. ;)

The last few days have been a mad rush to get everything in order for me to leave... less than a week from my scheduled departure date, and my tuck was falling apart with no roof top tent, no storage, fridge not wired or mounted, no HAM setup, tires out of balance and one flat, etc etc. Yikes!

At Lance's we installed the tent and figured out a bunch of things. With the tent on and the time fast approaching midnight, it was time for a shakedown run - camping in the coves of Saguaro Lake!

A group of AZFJ'ers met at homedad's shop in an attempt to rob local 4x4 shops of thousands of dollars in labor for installs. Of course it was a massive success! For my truck, we installed some OME 885 front springs with 1" spacers and repaired the damaged ball joint boot on my passenger side upper control arm. I wanted to reinstall my sway bar as well for the Continental Divide Expedition, but time was short and I was missing some of the hardware.

JP from Expeditioneers happen to be in California near the location of the BajaRack facility and was nice enough to have my roof rack installed on his truck in order to bring it back to AZ and save us some shipping! So, in the evening I met him at his home for a quick install.

Later that evening it was off to Gillette to enjoy the campfire with some AZFJ folks. We talked about the new rack some and decided that it must be put through the most grueling and shocking performance test imaginable.... would it survive?

Image credit: SealClubber

Because he is a man-god, BellyDoc had Lance and I over to his home for him to work on our trucks. Not only does this save a ton of time and money, but his work is better and certainly more thoughtful than what we could get anywhere else.