Broken parts happen. You can fix them. Broken parts happen more often when you�re four-wheeling. On-trail fixes are harder: got tools, got parts, got lighting? No garage, no creeper, no parts store. Can you be prepared?

During a weeklong run through the awesomer parts of southwestern Colorado�s off-roading territories, we broke some parts � or tried to. Then we fixed them. While we were prepared to deal with some breakage, other bits, not so much. However, you can avoid some trailside freakouts with a little preparation and vision.

When you�re off-roading, what�s onboard?
- Tools? You might not be ready to rebuild a diff (or are you?), but an assortment of the usual suspects can fix a lot: popular sockets and combo wrenches, a few pointy pry/screwdriverlike objects, some snips, some pliers, a crowbar, a hammer or two, a knife, a hacksaw, a few pieces of wood to hammer on, safety glasses, a funnel, a pair of gloves.
- Work lights? A few AAA-powered LED bars or a 12-volt droplight go a long way.
- Achy breaky parts? Does your truck murder bushings? Is there a power-steering line that blows? Do you have bolts that rattle out? What about grease? Fuses? Fluids?
- �Temporary� fixes? Zip-ties, duct or gaffer�s tape. 10/12-gauge copper wire or some wire hangars. Stranded automotive wire. Spare nuts, bolts and screws, with lots of washers. Hose clamps. Loctite.

Ahhhh, OE locking hubs on a Dana 30. To upgrade, or to upgrade? Only the driver�s side bolts were walking out of the hub; as of yet, we don�t know why.

Corporate Five-Bolt Locking Hub Bolts on a Dana 30
Sooooo, what�s stronger than Loctite Red? While the five jailbird bolts holding the manual hubs together on this Dana 30 have been a flight risk for months, they were reinstalled with copious No. 263, and by all appearances we�d solved the half-day loosening issue. Or not.

Cursing red Loctite while installing hardware store bolts parked in front of a church wearing flip-flops. Some part of that has got to be a sin.

We found this handy instructional graphic for the different types of Loctite (courtesy of the Henkel Adhesives blog), and in case you�re interested, there is a wicking Loctite. Awesome.

After a day on-trail, rolling both the lumpy Kendall Mountain climb and historically rock-infested Engineer Pass, four of five bolts had departed for greener pastures (or some pastoral trailside nook). Hmmm, probably should�a checked them. If you�ve got a problem bolt, keep a few in the truck. Or a few dozen. In this case, we got lucky and Silverton�s hardware store (it�s for sale!) had a strong selection of bolts, including the type we needed. Should another dose of thread-locker not do the job (perhaps the new Loctite �Black Hold� will be enough), there�s always the old trucker�s trick of drilling and wiring each bolt head in series, or the installation of some Jeep-sized nut indicators.

Despite missing the left-right alignment of the gaffer�s tape, the stuff didn�t budge, and is still on there after three more days four-wheeling, plus the drive home.

4Runner Anti-Roll Bar Bushings (Front & Rear)
Having shredded these bushings in both the front of the truck and in back, one would be inclined to brand the axle-mounted (rear) and frame-mounted (front) �sway� bar bushings on a third-gen 4Runner a wear item. One would be right to do so. The anti-roll bars act in a partially limiting capacity at full droop for this platform, and those bushings take a beating.

While we were prepared with a backup front bushing, the departure of the rear bushing was a surprise � three front bushings had failed but never one in the back. Fortunately, the high-steel clanking of the bar-on-axle tube was readily discerned. A homefab stand-in bushing of plastic gaffer�s tape (think of the tape used to bond a carpet�s edge to cement floors in a convention center) was made by wrapping the tape around the anti-roll bar to the bushing�s thickness. Ironically (or coincidentally), we hadn�t packed any tape originally (duct tape would have worked too) until being chided into doing so at the last minute. Thanks, dude.

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Super Bronco Crawler Guy (a yearlong Silverton resident � how cool is that?) stopped to help diagnose the blown power-steering line on the Renegade. We pulled the belt and limped it back to the cabin.

GM Power-Steering Pressure Line
The CJ-7 Renegade in our group was a small-blocked restomod that was still shaking out some cobwebs and flaws. One of the things that had been... underdesigned... was a problematic power-steering hose: a return-pressure hose (the �suck� hose) had been used on the pressure side of the power steering pump (the �push� side). Apparently, there is a difference.

Bob from Bob�s Truck Parts & Hoses in Durango not only knew what hose was necessary, he had a machine to build them (and another machine to pressure-test) in-house.

During high-twist �froading moments, the steering pump overloaded the lower-strength line and popped it at the fitting. These parts had divorced before, but another low-pressure hose was put back in place of the previously blown line (not realizing that it was the wrong line altogether). On-trail a half-hour out of Silverton, the low-pressure line blew again, so limping back wasn�t much trouble.  This was good, because there was no spare.  Instead, we slipped off the power-steering pump belt and arm-wrestled the truck home. A proper replacement was found in nearby Durango � a hard-working farm and trucking town � with a truck mechanic named Bob at Bob�s Truck Parts & Hoses. Bob made a new line out of 4000psi Gates SAE 100R2 (mmmmight be enough). Next time, a $40 spare will be in the bits box.

The magic shock-proof zip-tie. The FJ�s owner was so awesome he didn�t even stop to trim it, and yes, this was after almost a week of off-roading.

Dearly Departed Lower Shock Bolt on Live-Axle FJ Cruiser
This one was worth a laugh and about three beers. After days of �froading, the lower bolt holding the port shock absorber to the axle of a late-model FJ Cruiser shook itself out, and its replacement � a relatively undersized black zip-tie of unknown manufacture � kept the shock in place for the rest of the week on-trail and, like the little piggies do, all the way home.

A simple fix: a tiny new hole and a zip-tie succeeded where pop fitting after pop fitting had mysteriously departed. We�ll leave it and report back if it ever fails.

While the wisdom of having zip-ties along for any trucklike adventures is indefatigable, the logic of one enduring this sort of load may surprise you. A well-balanced suspension component (such as one that would be designed by a Toyota engineer) puts relatively little stress on a shock, especially in low-speed settings like on-trail (it doesn�t hurt if your shocks are blown...). In fact, your author has four-wheeled with just one shock damping the whole rear axle after grenading the driver�s side rear shock (seriously, it exploded). The less there is to dampen, the less stress there is on that shock-to-axle connection, and as in this case, one lone zip-tie was sufficient.

Flapping and Flopping Plastic Panels #1 and #2
With mods come changes to parts, and changed parts occasionally interfere with original equipment. With the removal of OEM 4Runner bumpers and their replacement with high-clearance tube/plate bumpers, more air than originally intended flows into the engine bay, and in turn, causes several plastic wheel-well panels to puff into the wells. This wouldn�t be a big deal, but the upsized Nitto knobbies used on the truck for off-roading take up more wheel-well space and rub against those pillowing panels. Whoops.

What do you mean you don�t keep a jar of worn out reciprocating saw blades on your workbench? You�re clearly not doing enough sawing. We drove it in like a nail, and someday we�ll paint it black.

Around town, the rubber-on-plastic interference was a case of misdemeanor battery, but at freeway speeds through the southwestern desert, these plastics deformed enough that the tires began commiting felony cannibalism. A zip-tie � from the cluster of that we keep strapped to the rollbar (credit where credit�s due: we saw that trick on Dave Collier�s Gnarly Racing pleasure juggy) � pulled the well liner back, and a leftover reciprocating saw blade pinned the master cylinder shroud in place where no plastic pop fitting could cope. Never be afraid to repurpose good chunks of metal like a Sawzall-style blade � name brand ones are sturdy and have a lot of uses even after the teeth are dulled (though the bimetal blades are tricky to weld).

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