Rednroll

I just got back from a trip with the family to Silver Lake Sand Dunes in Golden Township/Mears, Michigan. I thought I would share some of the things I learned during this trip.

First and most importantly, we had a great time!!! I highly, recommend it.

Here is a list of items I learned about my JK when playing in the sand. (Mods will be needed and I will appreciate any further advise).

1. Bringing your significant other with you wheeling, really does help in assisting them to understand all the time/money you spend modding and working on your JK.
Yep, the wife originally seemed "ho-hum" about this family trip I had planned for us to go off roading at the dunes. I had 2 weeks off for vacation, the 1st week was used doing the stereo-typical fam vacation stuff. Trip to the Toledo zoo, Ohio African Safarri, then traveling to Niagara falls. I even rented a Toyota Sienna Mini-van for the additional comfort and space since it was 2 couples and 2 kids. It was a good time, but next week was "MY" week planned trip to the dunes. When we got back from Niagara falls, we had troubles finding a dog sitter for the dune trip and that was enough for the wife to find an excuse to say, "I'll stay home and take care of the dog and you go by yourself!" I got that worked out (since it suddenly became my sole responsibility of a problem to resolve) and it was then pack up the JKU and head off to Silver Lake Dunes.

It only took a couple hours of being at the dunes, having a blast wheeling and the wife seeing all the other Jeeps and getting some insight of how/why all the "stuff" was needed and how it was used and as we continued to wheel around, all the good questions started to roll in such as.......
"How come your Jeep with the bigger tires seems to be struggling so much going up some of these smaller hills, while those other Jeeps with the little (stock) tires seem to have no troubles going up those bigger hills?"
- Because, I have the older 3.8L engine/trans which is a dog in comparison to their newer 3.6L/trans and since I have these larger tires the axles really need to be re-geared to provide us more low end torque/power to take us up those larger hills.
"Ohhhh...ok, how much is that going to cost to fix so we can do what all those other Jeeps are doing?"


2. Need to add a transmission cooler.
I've read a few posts in the past of others experiencing the "Hot Oil" light/ding coming on, but really never paid that much attention while reading them since I never experienced it. The biggest hills I've climbed in the past were all done in the snow/cold. When I 1st got into the dunes, I did a recon mission to get familiar with the lay out of the land, how others were wheeling and avoided doing anything potentially hazardous for the 1st time around. There is one exit area where you go up a hill which is about 500 yards in length with a moderate incline. As I was going up, there was an ATV 4 wheeler in distress who had broken a belt about mid-way going up the exit hill. He asked me if I could tow him to the top of the hill which was another 200 yards up so he could get to the parking lot where his tools were, to work on replacing the broken belt. I gave about 5 attempts to pull up the hill but was unsuccessful due to not being able to get a good running start and the added weight of the ATV. I was able to pull about 5 yards each attempt before my tires started to bury themselves into the sand. So instead, I offered to take him to the lot to get his tools/belt and bring him back. As I reached the parking lot, I was greeted with the "Hot Oil" light/ding, likely due to the towing uphill attempts. I ended up shutting down for about 10minutes to allow some cool down. Originally, I thought the "hot oil" was engine oil but after reading a few JK-forum discussions again, learned it is the trans fluid that is over heating, where it seems I need a trans cooler. As I wheeled over the next couple days, I noticed the light come on a couple other times after climbing up some more challenging sand hills as well.

3. Need to Re-gear
With 35s, current 3.73 gears and the 3.8L engine with auto-trans along with some added weight, the need to re-gear showed its head climbing the dune hills, as well when attempting to tow the ATV up the hill. There were often times when coming up a hill, the engine just felt like it was bogging down with the pedal all the way to the floor. While watching some TJ's and listening to their engines, they sounded like they had a V8 conversion, where they were easily climbing some steep hills while I was struggling on smaller hills and I just kept on thinking.....damn, I wish I had an LS V8 conversion right about now because I could definitely use some extra power. I was originally thinking 4.56 gears, but maybe I need to reconsider and think about 4.88s.

This is "test hill" which is the 1st and largest hill when you enter the dunes. I never did build up enough courage to attempt to go up it. I watched others that tried to go up, didn't quite make it and had to backup going down hill, where that just looked nerve racking to me. The picture doesn't do it justice, because it does look much larger in real life.


4. Steinjager Disconnect links suck when trying to re-connect.
I installed some Steinjager front disco links prior to this trip. Disconnecting them was simple, where I was pretty happy. When I went to leave, re-connecting them was another story. The problem is that you have to push upward on a spring mechanism which really takes 2 hands where there's not much space for both hands on the passenger side. Then when you're pushing up, the sway bar is pushing upward with the link, and therefore makes it really difficult to align the joint bolt to be able to re-connect the link. I ended up driving home with my front sway bar links disconnected and am going to have to figure out a good method to reconnect these links. Right now, it seems like you need about 4 hands to reconnect these links. 2 to open the spring mechanism, 1 to push the sway bar down, and a 4th to align the mounting pinion.

5. Silver Lake Sand Dunes is a mad house on the weekends.
I spent Tues through Friday at the dunes. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday there were quite a few people on the dunes but relatively peaceful and a moderate amount of people on the dunes. When we arrived Friday morning, this place was jamming and it was an absolute mad house packed with Jeeps, ATVs, buggies, dirt bikes, trucks, etc. There's one section of the dunes which is relatively flat sand and was moist/packed down sand. On Friday, people were using this section to drag race their vehicles where it was unused during the week days. When I say drag racing, I mean it was like 8-12 vehicles would line up and then all take off racing. It looked like a lot of fun, but also seemed very dangerous. I was actually surprised and wondering, "Do they actually allow this?" They must not because, I later saw the park Ranger making the rounds and it wasn't too long after that the drag racing seemed to stop.

TheDirtman

Gearing is a big deal at that place (or any place with steep climbs) as well as very little air in the tires. I was there with 33's and 3.21 and barely got up the test hill and I had to take a long run at it to get speed. In some of the other spots I had to drive so fast that we caught some pretty good air on the back side of the dunes. Cool place to go and don't forget your flag. There was a decent pro shop at the entrance when I was there about 10 years ago.

Rednroll

Definitely needed a running start. I kept trying to find a good spot at taking an attempt run at test hill but they seem to have put some whoopty do's bumps right at the base of the hill. You can kind of see those in my pic above. They seemed large enough that I likely would have caught some air while trying to get up enough speed. So any attempt at a good running start for myself would have gotten slowed down by the added "speed bumps". I took the smaller sides of test hill and struggled (took 3 attempts then finally made it) but I was unsure if that was due to my gearing, or more so that it was much softer sand on the sides of the hill since it was the less traveled path up and over the hill, and the 3 attempts just packed the sand down for myself. I did catch some air on the downside of one of the other hills, doing exactly as you described. I went with 15psi in the tires which seemed pretty good for most everything else.

There's now 2 off road shops directly across the street from the entrance. B&L off-road has moved there. I stopped a couple times into B&L, got to know the owner Bill some since I purchased a flag mount prior which had fine pitch metric treads to mount the flag into, where B&L seemed to be the only shop that carried fine pitch thread flags that would screw into my mount. Bill was admiring the quick connect flag pole mount I had gotten, said "That's a pretty slick quick disco flag mount, where did you get it?", snapped a few pics of it, and sent it to his buddy to see if he made it, so he could source it. Looking back, it seems I purchased it from another off-road shop in Holland, MI which stated Silver Lake flags would fit it. It seems only B&L flags fit it once I got there, which was another reason Bill from B&L wanted to source the mount, and sell it.

resharp001

Sounds like you had a great time! I've only seen pics of these on the web, never in person. They looked pretty nice, but your description of having to reconnect sounds like a major PITA. Made me realize how convenient my JKS quick discos are. They are both off in under 30 sec total, and if I parked on even ground, on in about the same time. I could probably cut that time in half even if I left the top part alone and swung them up and secured them like many do, but I just go ahead and remove the entire link (usually while airing down/up)

Rednroll

Yeah, when I originally looked at the Steinjager's on the web, they looked like a nice and simple design.....but then once they're in hand and in practice, like everything you get to learn about the pitfalls.

pic for reference

That bottom collar piece furthest left needs to be pushed upwards to completely compress the spring, which is pretty simple by placing one hand on the top of link while using your other hand to push up on that collar. Once you've done that, then you just pop slide it off of that pinion bolt. Now putting it back on is the same type of exercise, except that collar piece turns while you're pushing it upwards so that the pinion hole is being blocked by the collar and since the collar piece is blocking the pinion hole you're trying to stick the pinion back onto, you're fighting trying to keep that collar piece from turning while also pushing it upwards and fighting to compress the spring, and when you have that just about managed, your sway bar is then moving upwards and no longer aligning with that pinion bolt you're trying to stick it on. All that, and you have to remember that there is grease around that collar piece for the pinion bolt, so your fingers are constantly slipping while trying to do all that.

By purchasing these, I was hoping to eliminate the need for using any tools to take the links off and on, but I'm really starting to think to put them back on, a pair of locking pliers could come in pretty handy to hold the collar with the spring compressed which would then allow me to free up my hands to pull down the sway bar and align the pinion hole of the link with the pinion bolt. I'm also considering trying to stick some non slip floor tape onto that collar piece to help prevent my fingers from slipping off of that collar piece while trying to compress the spring. Another idea I have is to tack weld a couple of small pegs on each side of that collar to be able to grab with 2 fingers. There's definitely some room for improvements on these links.

Schlieko

Nothing specific to add -- other than I love my Currie Antirock setup. But wanted to say thank you for the post. These are some of the best types of posts on the forum. Here's my experience. Here's stuff you should consider before going. Really sweet write-up. Kudos!

jk_southwest

It definitely takes a lot of power/gearing to get through the sand.

Rednroll

I definitely found that out, or a really good running start helps as well. Only problem with the running start is that scary feeling once you reach the top since you often don't know what the other side of the hill looks like until you start cresting over it.

Gonna order the Mopar trans cooler here shortly, then start focusing on the re-gear. I'm currently thinking of going with 4.56s and have a Detroit Truetrac LSD put in the rear while I'm at it. I'ld like to do LSDs front and rear but don't want to over invest in this DANA 30 front.

Front axle upgrade not going to happen until this one breaks.

BoraBora

It has to be said: you're a very lucky man. Taking my girlfriend on a wheeling trip was easily the most painful, regrettable, and longest weekend of my life.

My miserable 2 days sounded more along the lines of: "Ugh do we have to camp, there's a hotel 2 miles away" "OMG should it be making that noise? It sounds like something is about break" "OMG we're gonna roll" "Watch out for that tree!" "Why did you go out of your way to go over that boulder?" "You scratched your brand new wheels!" "This is such a waste of money"

....

Rednroll

What you described was my concern as well going into this and to be honest, that was the reason I chose to do the trial run at Silver Lake. It was because I knew Silver Lake had a beach area where she always enjoyed going to the beach and in the event of what you described happened, then I could always take her to the beach, and then go do my thing on the dunes. It was a gamble with a back up plan, but lucky for me it worked out for the better where she really enjoyed it.

I already faced the camping vs hotel scenario last year when I originally planned this same trip. I had planned on making it a camping trip last year, since I enjoy camping but got the same moaning as you described. We didn't end up going last year since the kid got sick on the same day we were supposed to leave. So I avoided that argument this year. Muskegon, was the biggest city nearby with a Marriott hotel and was a 40min drive to the dunes. I had enough Marriott rewards points saved up from my business travels, where I booked our stays at the Marriott free of charge using those points. I was the only one taking my doors off in the parking lot and carrying them into my hotel room.

I was even the one who had to steer her away from doing some of the more daring stuff on the dunes. After awhile she was like, "Stop being such a pu**y, and just go up that bigger hill....look at that truck that didn't make it, you just need to back up if you don't make it." I had to explain to her, "Well, we have our 6 y/o in the back, and there is a risk that if I don't make it, we could start to slide sideways spinning our tires going up, or start sliding in the soft sand backing down hill which could result in putting the Jeep sideways on the hill, which if we end up putting it sideways, it is a pretty steep hill which could cause us to roll over. After I explained those possible scenarios, she was then like "Oh yeah.....maybe that's not such a good idea."

We always enjoyed going to the amusement parks in the past and to her after awhile, off roading on the dunes was just like going on the bigger/badder coasters at Cedar Pointe. I said, yep just like Cedar Pointe except with nothing to make sure we stay on the track, and no safety shoulder harnesses keeping us from being thrown out.

I'm definitely, a lucky man as you said. One step at a time. Got the off roading in to her blood this time around, next trip we'll push the camping envelope again since I think it would be great camping with other fellow Jeepers, chilling around a camp fire and knocking down a few cold ones.