It's midnight you're driving down a cleaned off Mininum Mantience road and you come upon 3 inchs of snow w/ pickup tracks in it so you speed up cause you are only in 2wd thinking it will only be like that for a little bit. Next thing you know the tracks stop in a endless 2 to 3ft. snow drift. It's been 40 some degrees for the last few days and where there isn't snow there is 4 in. deep mud. As you try to stop you slide sideways for 50 ft. and almost roll it burying the truck sideways in the road, the drvers side tires are nowhere to be seen in 2.5ft of hard snow and you have to dig for the lockouts, you get back in and put it in 4wd and the truck just spins with it's half used A/T's/mudders. In front of you is about 20ft. of 2ft. of snow and a cornfield, behind you there is a 3ft. drift up to your bumper and trees. The whole truck is high centered in snow, dug down to mud and it's starting to rain lightly, you're about 3/4 a mile away from a small-small town that's been long asleep on a Sat. night. Now what?

The pickup box contains: 2 small pieces of card board from the radaitor, a plastic foldable box w/ a 14 ft. 3/8 log chain, twist clevis and hitch pin, 2 small pieces of wood, a spare tire, 1 set of snow chains, empty pop and beer cans, a gravel bag, 20 ft. of hookless 3/16 chain and jumper cables

The cab contains: a cell phone, CB radio, gloves, small wrenchs, screwdrivers, rubber floormats, cigeratte lighter spotlight w/ 12ft. cord, and your friend.

You have my truck described on my signiture and your 4wd friends are asleep and don't answer there phone, there is a man on the CB willing to pick you up if you walk to town, you have a full tank of gas and your pride to keep. It's 40 degrees, you just came from a date and you have some nice clothes on and it's pure mud and wet snow outside, so you through off your long sleeve shirt and hat, and are now dressed in a T-shirt, jeans, boots, and gloves. Now what would you do, I made it home (after an hour)

 

IS this a quiz, or a real situation? Either way here's what i would do.

Cut the bag the gravel was in so you have a vest to wear. LOL

You start digging on one tire and your friend starts on another(trying to move it forward into the 2 foot snow) Then put the chains on the driver side that is buried worse. Lay the rubber mats out in front of the left side tires with some gravel on and under them. Once you move forward some (and have a small path behind you that you just came through) i would put both the chains on front tires. Hit reverse and have the tires pointed away from the way you came in (so the front end will go that way since your in reverse) Hopefully tou have spun the truck around so you are back in your original tracks and can drive out. Leave the chains on the front tires til you get back to the main road. Then tell your friend EXACTLY what happened and you will kill him if he says anything otherwise.(that way you retain some of your ego.)

Now you can tell me why this wont work, and what you did to get out.

 

Yeah this was a real situation.

I don't wanna give it away yet b/c I didn't tell you some of the other problems. While spinning and sliding in like so I managed to pack the snow rock hard around my tires, so bad I couldn't even steer w/ power steering. The rock hard snow makes it really hard to get chains hooked or even around my tires(back side impossiable). After digging with the plastic chain box I ripped in half at the hinges me and my friend managed to get some ruts made for all 4 tires front and back scooping mud and snow, even so the truck would only move about 2 inchs back and forth, since the whole front-end was packed with snow up to the motor mounts and the back bumper hung up. The back tires are in a old rut from the other truck before me and would be easy to put chains on, but I have no weight on the back what-so-ever and it would prove useless. The front is up to the rocker panels in heavy snow all the way to the start of the pick-up box w/ no way to get under the truck without seroius excavating. I've had all 4 tires spinning with no luck and made nice rounded packed half pipes for each of them. The gravel bag wouldn't be big enough for a vest (lol).

 

you said you had a full tank of gas. You should have used a hose from the engine (all those vacuum lives would work) ti siphen some gas. Used the bucket the chain was in to spread i all around your truck.(on the snow) Then threw your cigarette lighter on it to melt all the snow.

Or you could let some air out of your tires to make them smaller than the ice case, so it would break (or crack enough so you could get it off.)

Dont know anything else, but ill keep thinking.

 

wrap the chain around the tires, and use it as a winch.

 

yea thats not a bad idea wrap the back tire with the chain n tie the other end to a tree then drive it slowly. it would either pull u out, pull the tree out, or the rear end but it could still work

 

only if hes locked

 

yeah....a l/s diff or open diff and that idea is out the window...plus you gotta be real careful not to let the chain slide off the tire esp when it's under load or it will break something! i have done this ony a couple of times but it does work!

-jason-

 

Alright alright I give up what happened. It's 11 pm here and i have to eat diner and go to bed. lol great story i am eager to here how you managed this.

Chris

 

Yeah my differental works really "good" in this situation. The problem was is the chain would have never reached anyway. Those trees were about 20ft. behind me and the closer to the trees you got the deeper the snow.

99xlt4.04x4:
"Or you could let some air out of your tires to make them smaller than the ice case, so it would break (or crack enough so you could get it off.)"

Ice case? Are you talking about when I said I had snow packed rock hard around my tires? I meant the bottom half of the tires had rock hard snow with about 1in. of clearence all around from when I was wiggling the front-end, like if you drove in a hole (my luck 4 at once), plus I was starting to dig into mud and it flung it all over the clean snow and fenders making a nice mess of things. When I came home there was about 1/2in. of silt in the bottom of the shower, so what I did wasn't fun. Plus I spent an hour cleaning my interior today and my arms are pretty scratched up.

 

I would lock my hubs. Dig out my front wheels and attach the tire chains.

Use the bag of gravel as a base, put the wood on top, use the stock jack to lift the rear tires off the ground, one side at a time, and stick whatever I could under them for more ground clearance. I would inflate the rear tires to the very max if I had to so my frame would not be high centered, even 1/2 an inch counts. If you are high centered you can never get enough traction to overcome the drag.

nearby trees = traction = lots of branches and stones under all wheels. I would lay a mat of branches to where I wanted to go.

Then I would take the tire iron and plastic box and remove all hard packed snow from under the truck and behind the bumper. The plastic box is a shovel and the tire iron is the breaker.

I would remove all the hard packed snow, plus, everything else on the downhill side of the turn sideways truck ,especially near the front wheels.

After clearing out from underneath the truck, I would deflate the rear tires and make sure I still had clearance under the frame. I would go to 15 psi if I could. I would make sure the wheels were straight, get it rolling and try to turn downhill. I would not drive into a muddy cornfield.

 

Since its just a 86 F-150 4x4 w/ a 300 on 31's, I'd just throw a match in the gas tank and hike back to town to meet that good old boy for a drink.

 

pro- I'd probably do the same. I think the first goal would be to get the chains on one end or the other, and start digging. maybe use the beer cans as traction under the chainless tires.

then again, this is coming from the guy who got his 4x4 stuck in his yard in 3" of iced up snow.

 

How would he INFLATE the tires with no air pump?

And i thought you meant the ice was wrapped all around the tires like mud does when they dont clean themselves.

I would have found syicks or whatever to use as traction. Going to the corn field sounds like a bad idea, b/c there is usually a ditch and it was probabaly filled with snow (or mud since it was melting)

But every situation is different, and what works perfectly one time won't work at all next time.

 

Hasn't the poor boy suffered enough. that was just plain old cold, funny, but cold.

Chris