What is the craziest recovery situation you made it through (or didn't make it through)?

[billiebob]

Obviously you know nothing about me. You spent a lot of time telling me to lower my air pressure. I’ve been off roading since 1960. When I started in the sport no one lowered air pressure because we typically ran 15 psi all the time. Nobody messed around with air pressure unless they were going somewhere like Pismo to play in the sand for a weekend. When we wanted to air up we drove to the nearest gas station. I’ve done hill climbs and sand drags with borrowed paddle tires running maybe 5 psi. That was in this Jeep that put out around 450 HP from a little Chevy. I’ve seen and done it all.

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You likely know this story, Parnelli Jones in the Olympia Bronco being chased by a Cessna..... and the ABC Sports commentator saying Holy, he's going faster than us. One of those moments which gave me direction.

I have tremendous respect from those years when motorsports were exponentially more dangerous than today.

 

[Ace Brown]

You likely know this story, Parnelli Jones in the Olympia Bronco being chased by a Cessna..... and the ABC Sports commentator saying Holy, he's going faster than us. One of those moments which gave me direction.

View attachment 570649

Yep, we were there. Always remember Bill Stroppe’s quote about riding with PJ: “it’s like being in a 24 hour plane crash”.


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[billiebob]

Yep, we were there. Always remember Bill Stroppe’s quote about riding with PJ: “it’s like being in a 24 hour plane crash”.


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I was in Canada watching ABC Wide World of Sports. Grade 10.

 

[Mundo4x4Casa]

A long time ago a friend and I drove my 1966 Toyota Land Cruiser FJ-40 to do some sand running, clamming,and camping at Pismo Beach. We slept right on the dunes and had a great time clamming, which was made into soup by my epicurean buddy. On our way out we happened on something called The CONDOR motorhome with both rear axles down to the pigs and the poor departure angle rear bumper on the sand. It must have been 40 feet or more long with a single wheel, non powered tag axle to help carry the considerable weight. At the time (1968) it looked like the biggest MoHo i'd ever seen. We stopped to see what was what and i made a decision to help the guy out as he was near the tide line and closing. I gave him a pressure gauge and bade him take all 8 tires down to 40 pounds. These huge 22.5's started at 110 pounds, so that kept him busy. Mostly you could just see his lower legs and feet protruding from the bowels of the MoHo. Meanwhile i wheeled around in front of him facing his headlights and hooked my Toyota factory PTO winch cable's hook around his front I-beam axle; put the winch in freespin and backed up about 100 feet in 4WD. I then put the winch into gear, pull-in position. Freeing the hubs once more, I put the Toy into reverse in low range low gear, pulling against the CONDOR moho (not moving at all) with the 40's rear axle slowly descending into the sandy abyss, right down to the rear U-joint. Next I locked the hubs once again and continued backing in low range to get the front axle to descend making my Land Cruiser essentially a dead man. This took considerable time to get everything ready and i asked the forlorn CONDOR operator if he was done yet with the tires. He said,"close enough". Alright, says I. I coached him about the pull telling him that I would go through the gears with my winch ( a real plus with a power takeoff) to get him some momentum; but under no circumstances was he to let his drive wheels spin. Just trust the floatation. Further, once he got some momentum move away from the tideline and make a wide circle around my L.C. and head back the other way without stopping. I started the pull: 1st gear/grind to 2nd gear/grind to 3rd gear; transfer case in neutral. He's now moving but got very excited and floored the MoHo, engine screaming. I thank God that the unsecured hook (it had no modern clip) fell off his axle once he let up on the tension, lest my FJ would have been wrapped up and strangled in its own cable. Making a wide and wild turn, he flew like a madman, bouncing and flailing down the beach and finally out of sight never to be seen again. We had to dig some little ramps into the sand in front of all 4 tires to get out which was easy with low pressure and no boat anchor to drag us down.
Here's a pic of the FJ-40 stuck in quicksand in Salt Creek, Canyonlands UT
jefe

 

[Mundo4x4Casa]

Obviously you know nothing about me. You spent a lot of time telling me to lower my air pressure. I’ve been off roading since 1960. When I started in the sport no one lowered air pressure because we typically ran 15 psi all the time. Nobody messed around with air pressure unless they were going somewhere like Pismo to play in the sand for a weekend. When we wanted to air up we drove to the nearest gas station. I’ve done hill climbs and sand drags with borrowed paddle tires running maybe 5 psi. That was in this Jeep that put out around 450 HP from a little Chevy. I’ve seen and done it all.

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Ace, you are correct. I know nothing about you. No offence here. What i do know is what my eyes tell me. It doesn't look like any of the tires in your excellent pix have been deflated. I may be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time. Deflating for me is the first line of offence against soft sand.

 

[billiebob]

Ace, you are correct. I know nothing about you. No offence here. What i do know is what my eyes tell me. It doesn't look like any of the tires in your excellent pix have been deflated. I may be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time. Deflating for me is the first line of offence against soft sand.

time to quit

 

[Ace Brown]

Ace, you are correct. I know nothing about you. No offence here. What i do know is what my eyes tell me. It doesn't look like any of the tires in your excellent pix have been deflated. I may be wrong. It wouldn't be the first time. Deflating for me is the first line of offence against soft sand.

I was in a situation that required me to back out. Backing in soft sand with a trailer hooked up is tricky. So rather than air down six tires and air them back up the next day I chose the method pictured. When I’m driving on a rough road for days with the truck and trailer as pictured I typically have pressure (rear to front) at 10, 18 and 15.


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[Ace Brown]

Let’s get back to the OPs topic. I just noticed the title is the worst stuck you’ve ever gotten out of or maybe didn’t. Kinda scary that we might get a ghost reporting here.


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[Ace Brown]

With the “maybe didn’t” thought in mind. I had heard this often repeated story about an old four popper jeep that got stuck in a deep sand bowl in Pismo. It was late in the evening so he stuck the keys in his pocket and walked back to camp. I’m sure there was some booze around the fire that night. Well after everyone crashed the wind got up pretty brisk. So after breakfast the entire crew went out to recover the Jeep. They searched for hours but never found it. They were just about to give up and had concluded someone had stolen it. But the owner took one more look around and tripped on something buried in the sand. It was red just like his Jeep so he started digging and found the corner of his windshield. He stayed there while all the rest went back to camp for more shovels. So after several hours of digging they recovered the poor lost Jeep. The wind had blown sand into this bowl all night and buried it. This story was relayed to me from some old time members of the Tulare County Four Wheel Drive Club.


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[68camaro]

Crazy stories for sure.....In 80's I got my Suzuki Samurai stuck up to floor boards in thick mud after delivring an important party ingredient to a clandestine teen gathering deep in woods, powerline was only access, pretty rough 4x4 trail made it accessible.....on way out I decided to take parallel mud bog route (sounded good at the time) under powerlines.....needless to say 25 yards from main road I was buried....quick call to brothers F250 or 350 got me out easy enough......

 

[Mundo4x4Casa]

During a particularly cold and wet winter for L.A. around 1976-77 a friend and I decided to take my Chevy powered 1970 Toyota FJ-55 with lots of stuff on a trip up Alamo Mountain just off I-5 near Gorman. We started out at 0:dark30 and it was cold enough that the estimated 3 feet of snow was frozen solid after being frozen, thawed, and refrozen as happens in the normally Savanna climate in So. Cal. The couple steam crossings getting there were frozen all the way across supporting our rig without falling through. Then started the steep climb up the last few miles to the summit. The road cut into the hillside was on the north side so didn't get a much sun during winter time. I had on new ******** Cepek Norseman or maybe Armstrong 11x15 Tru Trac tires on wide wheels, which were fine on snow and even icy snow. We ground our way to the top in lo/lo as the temperature started to warm. After some frolicking around the summit we had lunch and decided by early afternoon to take the leisurely trip down the mountain. It was unusually warm, i was thinking as we made our way around a curve for the descent with part of our tracks now in the sun. Up-jumped-the-devil! Making the curve and starting downhill, the rig sank down to the frame, breaking through the actually thin layer of icy snow that had somehow held us up on the ascent. Not to worry, thought I. There were many trees along the way to winch on. I got out trying to stay on the firmer icy snow on top occasionally dropping to my crotch in the white stuff. I reeled out the winch cable (Warn 8274) and proceeded to make 100 foot pulls, over and over again...going downhill! Tedious begins to describe. Probably 18 pulls in total. Toward the end of the stick, i hit a particularly firm part of the icy layer that had more freeze/thaw cycles and the entire front Warn Winch bumper pulled into a "V" shape which, of course stopped all winching ops for the day. The Cruiser's front frame horns were also pulled toward the center a few degrees. The short rest of the stick was appropriated with a short handled shovel. I know, it's not a good pic, but it was 45 years ago. jefe

 

[Mundo4x4Casa]

One last stick story. With my job playing bass trombone in the L.A. Philharmonic I talked to and made many friends of trombonists in orchestras around the world, usually while we were on tour. One was Sakai Sakikibara who played in the NHK orchestra in Tokyo. He had a couple Japanese business friends who were visiting L.A. and Sakai san asked me to take them out to the desert; a place they had never seen except in cowboy movies. I picked them up at their hotel and we headed out toward Palm Springs to shoot some dunes and wheel a few two tracks off highway 111. Neither of the men spoke much English so communication was difficult often resorting to hand signals and picture painting plus my meager Japanese learned from several orchestra tours and residencies in Japan. We finished the trip and i decided to get back to the interstate by crossing the Whitewater river; a snow melt stream coming from the nearby mountains. It was very fast moving and about 50 feet across with a sandy, rocky bottom. How deep was a mystery until I dove in, hubs on, in low gear/high range. We got about 20 feet in and the front end of the FJ-55 (above) sank lower and lower. I went to low range to no avail and left the engine running as the water was up to the winch fairlead. The two men were quiet for most of the trip but began to converse very rapidly in Japanese with wide open eyes. At this time I had a exhaust stack on just for cases like this. Since I was on the uphill side of the running water i had to force the door open to get out. I slogged my way to the back of the FJ, and thankfully I had the spare tire on the floor at the rear, not on the crank up chain underneath. I opened the tailgate and retrieved the tire manhandling it across the, oh, maybe 18 inch deep whitewater to the far bank. I rolled the spare tire about 25 feet past the bank and dropped it. I returned and put the winch in neutral and pulled it across the river another 10 feet past the spare. Another trip back I put the winch in gear and got my short handled shovel and "X" tire iron out of the back, crossing the river once again to dig a 3 foot wide; 3 feet deep hole somewhat bigger than the 31 inch diameter of the tire. I dropped the "X" iron, followed by the spare into the hole and and fed the which hook through the center hooking it onto the "X" iron, pulling on the cable and buried the spare. This took a while. I got back to the FJ; forced the door open again and my feet were still in water. I swear that the FJ was a couple inches lower in the water than when we started. The controls of the Warn Winch were inside the cab using a couple buttons and a T-handle. Using almost no drive from the wheels I let the winch do the work as we climbed the low bank mostly under winch power. As we climbed the bank water was coming out of every crack and hole and opening the door some more drained out. The engine had been idling for about a half hour in the stream. The arduous task of digging up the spare and getting everything put away took some time. As we got on with the trip home one of the men asked, "what you call this?" meaning the move with the spare tire. I replied, "It's called the DeadMan technique". Both were wide eyes at this. On the 2 hour trip back to L.A. the men continued talking rapidly in Japanese with an occasional, "Deadman!" thrown in.
Below is our FJ with a 53 gallon gas tank and 5-5 gallon cans of gas. 3 spare tires. On the Gulf of California south of Puertocitos in Baja 1976. It has a stack.

 

[BritKLR]

Cough....cough... nervous look.... I was clearing out an old laptop and found these old photos of a “guy” I knew that thought a 60 with lockers could go anywhere... cough...cough......apparently not.

And, another buddy who grenaded his driveshaft on Golden Spike Trail (?) and needed to be strapped all the way down...

 

[Buddha.]

Not very expo but,
During the recession I, like many people lost my job. I was dead broke, I became a repo man. 19 years old.
I was in the middle of North Dakota in January, -30f and I was lost. It was about 12pm. It was an eight hour drive home. Pre GPS, pre smart phones. I stopped at a stop sign to think and then took a right. My F450 tow rig slid into the left ditch. Those wore out 19.5" highway tires have zero traction on ice.
I called my boss on my borrowed burner flip phone and he basically told me I was on my own. I had like $7 in cash if that. No houses in sight. Out of nowhere a ~14 year old kid shows up. He said he was out having a smoke(lol) and saw everything. He walked the quarter mile to see if I needed help. I did. He said he'd go get his step dad but the step dad wasn't gonna be happy(lol). The guy showed up in a 3/4 ton Chevy that weighed half as much as my truck, I was skeptical. The only thing the guy said was "I'm gonna be doing thirty by the time I get to the end of the strap so hold on!" I thought this was a little over dramatic but sure enough when he got to the end of the strap he was going so fast his back tires came three feet off the ground(I don't really understand how that can even happen). He barely got me out. Looking back I feel bad that I didn't have any cash to give the guy.

 

[Ace Brown]

That last one from Buddha reminded me of a stuck i had forgotten about. My first new vehicle was a 1966 Jeep CJ-5. I didn’t get it for wheeling. I just wanted it mainly for hunting, fishing and all that manly outdoor stuff. I hadn’t had it long and it was still pretty pristine and I was very proud of my little white Jeep. So I’m out scouting some back roads. I come to a tee and take a left. There’s a bunch of loose hay in the road but nothing unusual there so I start across it. Suddenly the right side drops down into this deep hole and it almost rolls. I climb out to look things over and see a tractor rumbling out towards me. The guy says he’ll pull me out for $20. So he hooks up a chain and easily pulls me out. It didn’t dawn on me to much later that this ************ had dug that hole, camouflaged it with loose hay and waited for the next sucker. This was right in front of his farmhouse. He already had the tow chain hooked up to the back of his tractor. I’ll bet he had a pretty good wad of twenties stuffed in his jeans.