- Location
- Roanoke VA
But sometimes when you wheel you have to work!
Our local club had access to 2k acres of private property yesterday to do some wheelin on. We immediately got off to a bad start, One of the Sammys that was going with us lost a water pump at the trail head so we parked him and loaded he and his wife up shotgun and started into the trail.A mile into the trail my Heep just died, I had fuel pressure, all of the fuses where good, I disconnected the CPS and reconnected it several times and nothing. Finally after pulling all of the relays and checking them we heard something "click" and she started on the next try? Don't know what that was but anyway!
One of the local members knew of a Sammy that was flipped and abandoned on one of the trails, the trails name is "The Gorge of Eternal Peril". There are several rigs at the bottom that have never made it out but that normally doesn't stop us. Since we had a Polaris Ranger with us we decided to take it down in there to get the waterpump off of the abandoned Sammy. While hauling tools back out of the trail and 2 successful full throttle wheelstanding runs out of there in the Ranger, on the 3rd trip it happened, the drive belt to the CVT snapped! We tried using the Rangers winch but it quicly blew its motor so we brought a XJ with a Ramsey 8500# winch on it down to the last step and pulled the Ranger up over the step softball sized rock lined washout, we pulled the Ranger 150' that time. We tried to strap the Ranger out with the XJ but with the leaves, loose rock and steepness of the trail the XJ stalled and spun out. We winched 90' at a time to get the XJ in range of the other 2 TJ's that had daisey chained themselves over the trails edge. The first TJ was strapped off to a tree and we spooled him out to the last row of cable and then the hooked him to the second TJ who we had to spool him out to the last 2 wraps, about 120'. The stuck XJ, which was locked front and rear and on 35's had to spool his winch to meet the one from the TJ. After 3 hours of winching the Polaris was out! I'm never going down that trail again, its almost impossible to walk up or down and it is impossible to get a rig back up it on its own much less pulling something else behind it!
Its a long story but there is a good lesson behind all of this; Always go prepared, go early enough in the day that if you have a issue you will have time to fix it and if your gut says don't go down that trail...DON"T GO DOWN IT!!!!
I don't have many pics but I will post them soon
Our local club had access to 2k acres of private property yesterday to do some wheelin on. We immediately got off to a bad start, One of the Sammys that was going with us lost a water pump at the trail head so we parked him and loaded he and his wife up shotgun and started into the trail.A mile into the trail my Heep just died, I had fuel pressure, all of the fuses where good, I disconnected the CPS and reconnected it several times and nothing. Finally after pulling all of the relays and checking them we heard something "click" and she started on the next try? Don't know what that was but anyway!
One of the local members knew of a Sammy that was flipped and abandoned on one of the trails, the trails name is "The Gorge of Eternal Peril". There are several rigs at the bottom that have never made it out but that normally doesn't stop us. Since we had a Polaris Ranger with us we decided to take it down in there to get the waterpump off of the abandoned Sammy. While hauling tools back out of the trail and 2 successful full throttle wheelstanding runs out of there in the Ranger, on the 3rd trip it happened, the drive belt to the CVT snapped! We tried using the Rangers winch but it quicly blew its motor so we brought a XJ with a Ramsey 8500# winch on it down to the last step and pulled the Ranger up over the step softball sized rock lined washout, we pulled the Ranger 150' that time. We tried to strap the Ranger out with the XJ but with the leaves, loose rock and steepness of the trail the XJ stalled and spun out. We winched 90' at a time to get the XJ in range of the other 2 TJ's that had daisey chained themselves over the trails edge. The first TJ was strapped off to a tree and we spooled him out to the last row of cable and then the hooked him to the second TJ who we had to spool him out to the last 2 wraps, about 120'. The stuck XJ, which was locked front and rear and on 35's had to spool his winch to meet the one from the TJ. After 3 hours of winching the Polaris was out! I'm never going down that trail again, its almost impossible to walk up or down and it is impossible to get a rig back up it on its own much less pulling something else behind it!
Its a long story but there is a good lesson behind all of this; Always go prepared, go early enough in the day that if you have a issue you will have time to fix it and if your gut says don't go down that trail...DON"T GO DOWN IT!!!!
I don't have many pics but I will post them soon
