At 5:00 pm I was out trail riding today in my little 4x4 and piledrove my jeep in the mud way out of town. It was kinda like quicksand. Burried both driver side tires completly and door half way up and went from 15 mph to 0 instantly. Its like we fell into an invensable hole. So we walk 4-5 miles to go get a tractor to pull it out and guess what, That john deere 850 don't pull it out. It didn't even budge it. So then I call a guy that has a ford excursion to pull us out. He sounded somewhat disipontied that we asked but he did. He gets out there and a sever storm is now moving in and the sun has went down and were blocking the whole road. He gets us out and then he backs off in the ruts and gets his 8,000 lb 2004 FORD EXcersion stuck in a massive rutt and bottoms out. Now theres ground lighting all over and he's stuck and theres not a wrecker around that will come and get us. Luckly the rain missed us by like 5 miles so atleast something was on our side. I just had to type this up just to let off some flamming steam. I can't belive I got us that stuck. Now its like 12,30 am. On top of that, them wonderfull cell phones work great till your in a bind. The antenna broke off last week so we had very little signal, a battery that was running on fumes and no one would pick up the phone and it finally died. What makes it worse is I have a 12,000 lb winch I have had for 2 years sitting brand new in a box and failed to mount it to my 7.3 ford and is in storage 300 miles away. What a wast of mony when you need it. I didn;t even have my chains and comealong with me. Bottom line is, if there is any mud, Make sure you got the stuff to get out of it. Now how do you make it up to a good sameriton that you endup getting in a bind but wont accept any mony but is pissed as can be. (he said he wanted hide, not money, whatever that means??!!!) . Actually typing this out has made me cool off a little. I have had my 8,000 lb 7.3 ford 2wd down this road when it was dry and almost got stuck. Anway. Im going to go sit with his truck for the rest of the night just to make sure nobody messes with it.. Man this sucks. Anyone have any good stories that makes this one look like a walk in the park. Yall have a great night.

 

I was 4 wheelin my Dodge/Cummins in the snow right after I got it because my buddy told me his Toyota was better in the snow than my diesel (turns out they are just about equal) anyway I found a nice spot to turn around, really nice and flat and smooth..... except it was the end of a culvert that was filled with snow! The front end fell in immediately, the driver's side front tire jammed into the fenderwell, the other drooped down into the hole so far you could stand on the top of it and the fender lip was at your chest and the truck had no lift on it! The frame was flexed more than I would have ever thought possible and one of the rear wheels was in the air.

So my buddy hooks up to me with his V-6 Toyota with a tow strap. I got on the CB and said "PULL" he replied "I AM" I replied "SHNIKIE!!" My other buddy who was also in the Toyota had a '96 F-150 with a 6" lift and an 8,000# Warn winch so they went to town to get it. In the meantime I realized I was going to be covered in mud and snow anyway so I started delving into the problem with earnest. It seems that now my right front tire is flat because the culvert ripped the valvestem off of the wheel and my front Dana 60 is locked up METAL-TO-METAL with the corrugated steel. I am hooked like a fish cross-ways on the culvert.
So a couple of hours later, with Subway sandwiches in hand (man these are great guys!) the rescue has arrived. I realized we need to winch the back-end of the truck parrallel and infact INTO the ditch to get the frond diff. unhooked from the culvert. Easier said than done. Ten ply mud tires with a lot of weight on them don't like to slide sideways, the sidewall just flexes some, the F-150's 6" coils get sucked down by the Warn winch and they don't pop back up very far whan they get collapsed like that. His 6" lift took a set at about 2" and woulkd not come back up. His F-150 went back to town with the front tires looking like this /\ (the springs were Superlift and they did replace them for free).
So then I got a small piece of plywood out of the bed and jacked that one wheel that was still on the ground up, slid the plywood under it and winched it sideways off of it, REPEADEDLY until the truck was pretty much as straightened out as we could get it. Then we winched, pulled and drove it out of the ditch and up onto the road bed and changed the tire.

I worked with the guys that owned the Toyota and the Ford, we all had to be to work the next day and it was about 4 A.M. by the time we got out of the woods. Those guys went to work on time the next day and let me sleep in the next morning! The whole time I was working on getting the thing out and rolling in the mud and snow I told them "let's just forget it and I'll call a wrecker, you guys don't need to be out here like this and tearing up you suspension and winch" they wouldn't let me because it would have cost a fortune to get one out there.
I would drive to Maine for either of those guys if they needed me to, you don't get enough friends like that in life to let them down.

 

Ya, I have to work tomarrow but atleast at 7m and not in the morning. Bad thing is, this guy really didn't want to help but he did anyway. After he had got us out, i asked him if he wanted me to shine some light behind him to help out but he said he could get it. He got it right in the ditch. Hes not burried but his front diff is on the ground and nothing we have will get enough traction to pull him out. We are going to use this guys lifted f350 superduty with front and rear lockers. Hes a farmer and said its easy compared to some things he had to do. I hope he is right. I just hope nobody vandalizes it out there. We just drove out there and noone has touched it yet. Its just blocking the whole road and theres no turnaround point. I should have just left my cheap jeep there and called a wrecker tomarrow. The wrecker bill would probably cost more than the jeep is worth. Sounds like you were not in a good place either. So far there is no damage to any of the vehicles except a car wash. Well, I think Im going to head back out there and watch the road for a while and make srue no one messes with it. You know how it is. If theres something nice, someone has to tear it up.

 

Sounds like a 1-ton with both ends locked-up oughta get the job done.
Man I hate leaving a rig out overnight too! The few butt-heads that are out there can do a lot of damage. That shiny Excursion would be a tempting target for those @$$ ole's too! I'd sure like to catch some of them in the act! They are sneaky little suckers.

Obviously I don't know what you are facing but a winch hooked up to a solid anchor and some forward motion/wheel speed by the stuck vehicle will work wonders. Also it sounds like you have a ground-clearence issue so this might not help but dropping the airpressure in the tires on both vehicles might help. I don't want to insult your 4-wheeling intelligence though, you might already know these things

 

Well, its 8:40 am and Im back with their excursion out of the mud. We took a large tractor out there and pulled it right out. It was over a half mile back on a narrow rutted out dirt road and we had to back it out.
Also, Thats no insult to me. I was in a spot one time that I was slightly stuck in the snow and If I had let the air out of the tires I probably would have made it but i didn't think about it at the time. Problem was here all 4 tires where in puddy like mud that looked like and acted like a soft chocolet milk shake with the differental high centered on the hard dry part of the rutt about 3 feet wide. Truck wouldn't move foward or back. The good thing was this road is so bad that most sane people don't go down it so we didn't think we would have any trouble with anyone out there but just stayed there just incase. I figured just a set of lights out there would detur most people from touching it. And your right about that being a shiny excursion. It looked all washed and waxed when the sun came up.

I was talking to my brother down in flordia and his friend had just bought a new 2007 ford 1 ton 4 door about 8 months ago and was trying to help someone get out. He ended up going in too deep of water and broke a rod and put it through the block!!! Now hes paying for a new engine for helping someone. I just didn't want to get this guys truck broke.

 

When you want to play in the mud, get something serious.



And yes it has a 12,000 pound winch mounted in the rear.

 

You know, I actually thought about that truck while we were out there and how come I don't know anyone with one. Sure would have made for an easy night.

 

Things happen. Main thing is nobody got hurt.

I have had to rescue a few myself. I had to go out on the river at 3 am to get a buddy that broke down. Thank goodness for GPS. He was about 15 miles from the ramp. He gave me his grid and drove right to him.

I have left several parts in creeks down by the river. BTW, power steering will work with water for a little while.

Yeh, there some jacka$$es in this world that will tear up somebodies stuff and mess with you when you are out in the middle of nowhere. The world isn't was it was 25 years ago, thats for sure. I have my permit and I carry. Sad we have to do that nowadays.

 

which is sad,having to carry,or get a permit to do so?

 

Both. Shouldn't have to get a permit. When I was a youngster running around we never had to worry about people jumping us.. Kids could play without being picked up ect. Too many idiots around anymore.

Thank goodness my family set roots in Kentucky in the 1700's. KY is a good state to live in.

 

That's what happens when you drive a Jeep...

Jason

 

AMEN to that!
If I had the money to fight it in court (and/or maybe the *****) I would carry without my Concealed Handgun License, as it's a bunch of crap to have to have one! It's one of our basic rights: 2nd Ammend. AND the right to self defense as well as the right to the pursuit of happiness, that's hard to persue when some criminal/doper has killed you for $20! Plus the CHL costs money, we aren't supposed to have to pay to execise our rights.

By the way... my Wife took the 4 kids to the Gorcery store this morning and as they were walking into the store a guy in a Subaru ran into (well actually UNDER mostly as it has a 6" lift) her Suburban while it was parked in the lot. I have no idea how he did it but he hit it pretty hard right under the drivers side doors. Luckily he is a LEGAL resident alien from Japan with insurance and not an ILLEGAL alien or I'd be screwed! I really feel sorry for the people that get hit by illegals.

He told me in broken English that I should just keep the insurance money and not fix the Sub. Which pissed me off because he said: "your car old, you no fix, just keep money!" I told him I wouldn't trade every Subaru in the world for my 18 year old American iron. I don't think he got it until I asked him to show me a Subaru as old as my Suburban that was in as good of shape and has been driven everyday of it's life! I think he got the idea that I wasn't too happy, then when I got the video camera out I brought from home he just shut up and left me alone while I recorded the scene. I don't like being told my "old" rigs are junk! They get me there just as reliably as the new stuff does.

 

Well, atleast he had insurance and it wasn't a hit and run like we had. And I do agree that these outlast them little imports and are alot safer. as for handguns, I keep in the truck, a 22 and a 45 all the time.

 

A couple of years ago, a really old guy hit my 79 impalla wagon. When I called his insurance agent and told her that he "bent my bumper", she said it was totalled. I had a few words to say to her about that!

 

He may not have intended any disrespect.

Laws regarding older vehicles are very different in japan. A brand new vehicle must be fully inspected 3 years after first being registered at the dealer, and again every 2 years going forward. The expense of this combined with the difficulty of getting insurance on older vehicles means that its basically impossible to find anything on japanese roads that is older than 15 years. People are simply forced to keep trading up. Officially, its because of safety and emissions, in reality its just a clever way to justify their auto industry's high output.

I'll certainly have to raise some hell if such laws come to pass in my neck of the woods.....