From the trail & the workshop
Field Notes
Trip reports from the trail and build write-ups from the workshop — where we went, what broke, and what we'd do differently.
Out there
Trip Reports
Routes we drove, places we discovered, and the stories that came home with us.
Deep in the Owyhees
Leslie Gulch, Birch Creek, Coyote Lake and the Alvord Desert, southeast Oregon
Five rigs, five days and a lot of dust: the spires of Leslie Gulch, a homestead camp at Birch Creek, a string of river crossings, one fuel lesson, and a victory lap on the Alvord playa.
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Fortune Creek
Teanaway, Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest
A first-time off-roader, a family who came expecting a forest road, and a Wrangler from Trail & Tread. Everyone got home under their own power.
Read the trip reportIn the workshop
Build
Parts, fabrication, wiring, problem-solving, and what we learned the hard way.
The Rear End We Actually Needed: 6 Monkeys High-Clearance Bumper
WK2
Cutting the WK2 rear fascia, keeping the parking-sensor loom intact, and dialing in a reinforced 37-inch spare carrier on Jon's Granite Grand.
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Pulling Backward: A Rear Winch for the Granite Grand
WK2
The 6 Monkeys rear mounting system, Carbon Off-Road 12K, gearbox re-clocking, fairlead positioning and battery wiring that gave our WK2 a second recovery direction.
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The $500 Parts Jeep: Building a DIY Trailhawk the Factory Way
WK2
Why a totaled 2018 diesel Trailhawk was worth buying whole, what we needed to recover, and what we learned about using a donor to add Quadra-Drive II to a 2015 Limited.
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Less Pipe, More Clearance: Rethinking the 3.6L WK2 Exhaust
WK2
Why we cut back the Granite Grand's rear exhaust, abandoned the simple Flowmaster plan, and built a tucked-up system around the bumper instead.
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DIY Trailhawk: Making a Factory eLSD Work in a WK2 Limited
WK2
The real wiring, power feeds, CAN integration, donor connectors, fault diagnosis, and JScan configuration behind a working factory eLSD retrofit.
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