I went wheeling with my brother today to do the 1/4 mile of mud and the first time thru everything was great. On the second trip thru, we started getting a little more daring and I got stuck. BIG TIME stuck. It turns out that my skidplate which I mangled on Friday turned into a shovel and dug the front end in really deep. My brother tried pulling me out with his Jeep, we tried the winch, the hi-lift.... The thing wouldn't move. I was finally pulled out (again) by a guy in a Jeep with a winch. Pics are forthcoming.

The carnage for the day includes a snapped synthetic winch rope, broken fairlead mount, broken bumper, water in all 4 Hella lights, 4 inches of mud in the interior of the truck, two BIG dents on my passenger side front fender, a missing maglite, a bent Jeep bumper and a damaged ego. It was fun tho.

 

jeez..you really had fun from the sound of all the damage...lol...bd

 

Yeah, and i forgot to mention the skidplate in the list of carnage. It was a very looooong day and I'm tired.

I'm seriously considering getting a receiver mount for the winch and putting on a front receiver because if I could have winched from the back, I would have been able to get out without the carnage. The guy who winched me out took all of 5 minutes while we spent all day trying to get it out.

 

glad to hear you got out... anything get hit when the rope snapped?

 

dang man that sounds like it was a great experience for you... well i have to do it but............... :Worthless

 

That's the best part about the synthetic rope... When it snaps, it drops completely dead. The only movement when the rope snapped was the tree strap sprung back. I was hoping to never have first hand experience with snapping synthetic winch rope, but at least I now know that it really is MUCH safer than steel.

EDIT: I have to wait for my brother to see if I have pics of the stuck. I'll take pics of the carnage as I remove everything tomorrow.

 

Holy Cow, Tom! I thought I was getting "too aggressive", lol. I guess with Chris and I both pushing it hard you just had to join in, lol!

Sorry about the breakage. Guess it's all part of the "game". Let me know if you need help with anything.

Looking forward to the pics, and say hello to Chris.

 

wow, good story
guess I won't be using that skid plate as a pattern
glad you made it out mainly unscathed
was the Jeeper pissed about his bumper?
do you need a splicing lesson ?

ordered a new front receiver hitch today
if it fits a 2004 it will pop out of the valance
Hidden Hitch model 5014 - only listed upto a 2003 Ranger
taking off the Reese and sending it back for credit

 

Hey, that's right, you know all that rope stuff, Neil. Can he really get it back to strength doing that?

 

Sorry bout all the damage Tom. Let me know when you mangle the rear bumper. I got a flareside rear bumper in my basement that only has a slight dent in it. I have always been a fan of the reciever mounted winches. Get those pics up tho!!!!

 

splice should be as strong as the rope, just wider
type of splice depends on if the rope has a solid or hollow core
quite a bit of pull must have been exerted on the rope, I think it had at least a 9K breaking strength and a load limit of 13K

 

i believe tom's was 16700 breaking str.
I'm wondering how he broke it...
although its very easy if you shock load it .. ie use it as a tow strap.

Rand

 

Could be he got it snagged on the edge of his mount. I know before he had some smoothing to do. If he had a bad pulling angle, who knows.

 

your not bad until u start snapping axle shafts.j/k...lol......sweet stuck man.....get some pictures up lol

 

ya he desperately needs either a plastic or alum fairlead (both for syn rope)
I still have a roller fairlead but as long as im not pulling some WACK angle it should be fine.

you Should be able to rig a pulley block to make a straight pull from anywhere as long as you have 2 trees

Well I made a diagram but the $$# board proceeded to take
all the spaces out of it and jacked it all up so i deleted it

 

Wow Tom, you broke Masterpull line! Good test though, proves it's safe. Are you going to try to call them? They might replace it as it is not that old.
In case Dem did not tell you, the syn fairlead is on it's way.

 

ha ha! I've had that happen to. I hate that.

He has a bunch of good stuff -- but not knowing his situation it's hard to tell. That section of Wharton is VERY treacherous. We got through it easy last time we went through but you could see the deep, sucking kind of mud off to the side and if you get in that -- no fun at all with most of our trucks. Not built for it.

 

Rangers arent submarines!

 

John.. Yeah, carnage is part of the fun. While I'd rather not have carnage, I've learned to accept it and take it in stride. I go in with the attitude that as long as I can drive the truck home, what it looks like when it gets there isn't important.

Neil, if we could splice the two pieces together, then I would have close to 100' again however as it is now, I can spool it back on the drum and have about 80' to the hook. That may be good enough for me right now.

I believe that there were two agrivating conditions that caused the breakage. First, I did pull from an odd angle with a steel hawse fairlead and while the edge is smooth to touch, it definitely could weaken the rope. The other condition is that the metal lug they put on the end of the rope attaches to the side of the drum and I believe that the rope actually broke where it made contact with the lug during a pull. Carl sent me an email about a device that allows you to connect the rope to the drum without the lug, and I think that's how I'm going to go.

Carl, I may call them and tell them about it. I doubt that they'll do anything tho since it's basically my fault for having the wrong fairlead and not paying enough attention to how the rope made contact with the lug. I guess it's worth a try tho. Worse case, I'll give a testamonial to how well the stuff reacts when it breaks and maybe they'll post it on their board... Hahahah....

Rand, you're right... The MasterPull rope is good to 16,600lbs or something like that. Definitely good stuff.

 

John, it looks like the new cap and rotor fixed his stalling problem:



The only pic I have of my truck... Before the stuck:



A decent pic of the terrain:


A blurry pic of my stuck from the rear:

Skidplate. I used the hi-lift to get the front end out of the water to take this pic.

 

yeah you were not kidding that skid plate is done

 

When I installed my Superline, the buttonhead allen bolt that was with the Warn wire did not fit through the Superline. I had to use a hex bolt, and it's worried me since.

I've been trying to get on that site for the line lock, but it has not been up lately. I'll keep trying, b/c I think that's the route I am going to save the line from hitting the bolt. Worst comes to worst, I'm getting out the sewing needle!

 

my WARN came with a round top hex bolt
if that side bolt worries you just take it out, cut off the terminal end of the line, fuse the end and tie it to the drum with a clove hitch
idea is to keep 5 wraps on the drum and you can just tape it at that point with some fiber tape - clove hitch can count for one wrap
the manufacturer would only sell us the line savers pre-paid, personal check OK

 

Wow, Tom, that's something. From the back, it doesn't look that deep around the cab -- didn't you say 4" or mud in the cab? I didn't like the sound of that and thought you'd be in even deeper.

It looks like your skidplate acted as a "Pull Pal" -- those shovel-like ground anchors you can get for winching where there's no trees. Not good and totally unanticipated.

And to think, I actually want to go back there again, lol!

Glad Chris's Jeep is running okay now. Good deal.

And Kiel: our Ranger's aren't submarines, but they play one on television...

 

lol, ah its fun to play in the mud but its serious business when these poor rangers get abused :-D