The 'Old' London Turnpike

[RadarRider]

I started a thread last week called "I 'Heart' Heavy", telling a story of what happened when I went down the New London Turnpike in Wyoming, RI. I had set my TomTom on the shortest route instead of fastest & it brought me to this....uh...road. It ended up being a crazy, ice-snow-& boulder infested trail that the TomTom had said was an actual, driveable road. Well, I came to a frozen creek on this road, after climbing over all sorts of obstacles, & tried to cross. To make a long story short, I couldn't make it. But after all the banging, scraping, & a host of other bad noises, the only thing that happened for damage was this:
Just broke my steering damper!


Today, I had taken a buddy with the Tank back to the New...er....Old London Turnpike because I'm trying to get him to take his '94 F-150 down this trail. It has a 4" Rough Country lift, 33" Toyo Open Country M/Ts, & AR Victor 18" Teflon rims. It looks like this:

So instead of getting snaps, I got some footage of what happened today & tried making a video. Unfortuneately, Photobucket won't download the entire finished version of the movie, so you'll have to watch it in sections. This isn't too bad because there's one clip where my friend's taping & he just can't hold a camera good. I'll give you the introductions, & let you know which one to skip if you don't want to see it(even though it was fun & we hit something big in the creek!). The only thing I broke on the Tank was the rear brake line that goes across the axle to the right/rear wheel cyl. So here it is: "The Old London Turnpike Adventure!" Enjoy!

This clip is pretty much the intro. At this point, we were where the pavement ends & the treachery was about to begin!

Here, we're on the trail having an absolute blast! Check out the TomTom on the windshield. That line in the middle of the screen is the 'road' it brought us to!

Creek intro

This is the crappy clip here, but it'll show you how hard it was to keep still trying to cross & we ended up hitting something BIG!

& here's me driving the Tank trying to get some footage of trying to get across the creek where you could actually view it. Here's where I also lost my brakes & had to drive 33mi home with the ABS & BRAKE lights on the dash.

Hope you enjoyed it. Lemme know what you think!

[RadarRider]

P.s.- My friend & I are both cityfolk & don't know a whole lot of off-roading tips, so if you've got any tricks, please share. One of these days, I'm gonna cross that damn creek!