Hey guys,

I just recently bought my first Jeep (I've had it for about a week and a half) and every chance I get I'm hitting the trails and loving every minute of it. Last Sunday me and my brother decided to hit a few trails in the southern part of the valley (we live in SLC Utah) and after about 3:30 hours we started home but shortly after pulling onto the road I spotted some mud down a short path... being 90-100F the last few weeks mud is hard to come by so I couldn't pass up the chance to get some.

I pulled off the road and took a look at the mud, it was two treads full and spanned probably 15 feet in length, didn't look too deep, so I went for it... well about half way through we stopped and it didn't take long to realize I was stuck, stuck bad. I jumped out and took in the situation, mud covering half my tires (runny mud on the right side and goupy sticky mud on the left) Just having bought the Jeep a little over a week ago I haven't had time to put a winch on it so I had no way of pulling myself out. I ended up walking back to the road and flagging someone down to come pull me out.

After that I thought the fun was over and it'd be a nice story to tell everyone but the next day when I was headed to work I noticed my steering wheel shaking violently when I hit 50-65 mph, I did a little research and narrowed it down to probably needing my wheels rebalanced. I called up my dealership and asked if I could get a service appointment but with the 4th of July this week they didn't have any openings until next week well hell with this I thought and headed down to a Big O to see if they'd balance my tires for cheap, I pulled in, told the dude at the counter the situation and when he came out to look he told me that there was a ton of mud caked on the inside of the rims and it was throwing off the tire balance.

I cruised home and took the tires off (had to buy a new jack since my old one was for baby cars and had no chance of lifting the jeep high enough) and gave them a good cleaning. Ended up with 4 rocks stuck in the front left rim and a ton of mud caked onto the rear left wheel.

Jumped back on the freeway to head back to the office and everything felt normal again. Whoo! I learned my lesson this time, check mud before going nuts and wash it off afterwards!

(pictures of the Jeep stuck)
Stuck
Stuck

 

You should always try and clean the mud from underneath and in your tires before hitting the hiway

Enjoy your new Jeep

 

Living in N.E. all of my life I know that after a snow storm I need to check the tires for "caked" up snow/ sand/ mud as it acts like weights and throws off the balance of the whees.....one of these days I'll venture of "off roading" but between my "honeydo list" and work I'm a busy guy........l

 

I cruised home and took the tires off (had to buy a new jack since my old one was for baby cars and had no chance of lifting the jeep high enough)


Didn't your jeep come with one?
nice pics and thanks for bringing a camera nobody likes a thread with no pics welcome to the site
Utah looks Beautiful!!!

 

That used to happen to me all the time on my Cherokee when I lived in CT. Mostly from snow.

 

I am sure those stock tires did not help in the mud, either.

 

Similar thing happened to me once... and I have the same JK as you (2 door, silver, small tires).

Drove out through the desert, and found some nice ditches filled with water. Drove through all of them without a problem. I came up on this other one, drove in, and was coming back out the other side... and bam; nothing. Got high centered driving out of the ditch. It was a pain in the ass... I got it home and washed it off with the hose pretty well. Got on the highway a few days later and my Jeep was vibrating like crazy.... turns out one of my front wheels STILL had some mud caked around it.

So lessons learned.... careful what you drive into it (particularly mud). And make sure you wash the wheels REALLY well. lol

 

Stuck or unstuck- looks like ya had fun! Nice pix