If you have ever had to make the gut-wrenching decision to leave a broken vehicle in the woods, you will understand the fear involved in coming back to a vandalized or stripped rig. This unfortunate situation recently happened to my co-worker, Ian, when he snapped a one-piece AMC 20 axle shaft on a trail near Squamish. Not having a spare axle shaft as a trail spare or one at home, he had to leave the CJ5 on the trail overnight Sunday and hope for the best. Monday morning would launch a search for the axle shaft and parts required to get the Jeep off the trail.

I arrived at work on Monday to hear about the trail break story and was asked if I could take a drive up to Squamish to help out. Ian had located a one-piece axle shaft kit with bearings in town and would have the parts ready to go that same morning. After getting the axle shaft and parts we discovered that there was no way to press the required bearing on without the drum brake backing plate. Naturally, we didn't have this necessary piece that would have greatly simplified the repair process. Instead, we had to bring a couple pieces of pipe and a mini sledge hammer and pound the bearing on in the field without a bearing press. I had seen this sledge hammer method done before, but never done it myself. But in any case, we had no other choice. Without having a brake backing plate with us at the shop, we were stuck with the hammer option. We loaded up my truck with a lot of tools, the replacement parts, grease, oil, and most importantly a last minute suggestion from our boss Al to bring a nice large piece of cardboard to work on.

After a forty minute drive along the Sea-to-Sky Highway, we reached the trail head. We were very anxious to find what had become of the abandoned rig. I was prepared for the worst. Leaving a broken rig in the bush is a very risky thing to do. As we rounded the corner and saw the Jeep, we both let out a huge sigh of relief, seeing that it was totally intact and not vandalized.

Making our way to the Jeep.

We immediately unloaded our tools, parts and supplies and set to work. The first task was getting the rear tire out of the wheel well and stabilizing the CJ. Luckily, the Jeep broke right on a raised rock fin so with a bit of forward winching we had the axle housing sitting on this natural jack stand. With the tire out of the way, the axle break was pretty easy to spot. I removed the broken hub from the rim and tire and Ian set to removing the broken axle shaft from the housing. It came out of the axle housing quite easily. At this point we were able to remove the backing plate as well so we started the process of putting together this part, the bearing and the axle shaft together. Taking a lot of care and actually reading the instructions, we made doubly sure to have all the parts on in the right sequence and right direction. The really tricky part was going to be getting the bearing to seat properly.

We stood the axle shaft on a big block of wood, slipped a pipe over and started the process of seating the bearing. I was holding the shaft and Ian was hitting the pipe with the mini-sledge. If you have never done this before, let me tell you that it's very hard to know if the bearing is correctly seated. The goal is to feel the shaft move less with each strike due to the bearing seating itself properly. As we were near this magic spot the shell and race came apart from the hammering and a few roller bearings popped out of the cage. Unfortunately for us we didn't notice this happening and hit the bearing with the pipe one more time. Much to our chagrin this deformed the bearing cage and it became impossible to put all of the roller bearings back in to the race.

We were unable to put five of the fifteen rollers back in. At this point we had no idea if the Jeep could be limped out to the main road while missing 5 of its bearings. So we made some cellphone calls to mechanics we knew. They all said it would be no problem. The Jeep could definitely be limped out to the main road but ABSOLUTELY not driven on the main road or highway. This news came as a major relief as the main objective was to get the CJ off of the trail. Getting it towed once on the main road was the least of our worries.

Ian, hard at work.

The axle flange.

The axle shaft.

We were able to easily put together the axle shaft but the next challenge was to get the tire back on the truck. Naturally the Jeep was parked on a fairly decent rock strewn incline and there was no way to move it to flat ground without getting the tire on. We had to use a Hi-Lift jack to raise the truck high enough to get the 35" tire on. Yes, it was a scary thought. One of the pieces of equipment we neglected to bring was a snatch block so we were unable to use a winch line from my truck to put tension on the opposite side of the Jeep to stabilize it. Our first attempt at jacking the truck ended with the jack flopping over and the Jeep moving sideways about a foot. Needless to say this was quite scary and made us think a bit more about what we were doing. After spending a bit of time thinking about it, we repositioned the Hi-Lift and slowly started to raise the Jeep. As it turned out, the second time was a charm and the Jeep seemed quite stable in its raised position so we quickly bolted on the tire.

Now came the final part of this story and that was successfully being able to drive the CJ out to the trail head. After all of the trouble with the bearing and falling off the jack we were plenty relieved to be able to drive the Jeep to the main road without any further problems. Like all trail fixes I seem to be involved with, this one was very time consuming and had a few different levels of frustration. However, it ended with the hoped for result which was to get the rig off the trail.

Final tally : 1 broken one-piece axle shaft and one exploded Detroit locker.

Wil