Tuesday, April 1st, 2025, at 9:44 a.m. (MT), we received a request for help with an offroad recovery in New Mexico. The requester, Phillip Denee, submitted the following information: “1998 jeep grand cherokee. My track bar lost a nut and my bolt is bent. I don’t have a spare / I’m with the vehicle / I can help cover the cost of fuel.”
Our administrator, Al Fontan, contacted the requester and verified the contact information provided, GPS location, and current situation before sending the request to local volunteers. In this particular recovery, we contacted volunteers within a 20-mile radius.
From the group of contacted volunteers we had Clayton Kinnikin, taking over the request. He immediately coordinated with the requester who was already invited to our lobby.
Clayton later sent us a quick note we share below.
From Clayton
So this was my first recovery using this platform which was pretty painless and not too difficult. I was able to find him on the trail pretty easily, he wasn’t too far from the trail head. The nut on the track arm bolt had worked itself loose and the bolt fell out dropping the track bar. The bolt was bent and a couple of threads stripped off. I had brought a couple of different bolts but the first was too wide and the other just a hair short. Luckily I had brought a kit with extra nuts so we were able to take the original bolt and use some “Redneck Loctite” (cross thread it) in order to make it hold good enough to get off of the trail and back to the shop. I think all in all it only took us maybe 30 minutes to make the repair and get him rolling again even though he had to stay the night out there until I was able to get to him.
