Dan, you're not a dummy. You are the reining king of small 4WD pickups pulling an off-road designed camping trailer. Therein lies the problem. If one doesn't have the inquisitiveness, time, or desire to find the 'edges' of getting stuck and where they actually are, one shys away from that threshold. I can understand that. I always enjoyed the thrill of chasing the 'stick', getting ever so much closer to the edge. When I mentioned the savvy part, it includes having the experience to know when to fold your tent and not proceed. That invisible line can only come from your own experience. I've been seriously stuck as many as 500 times in sand, snow, mud, rocks, broken axles, broken suspension, and dead engines in my time and each one was a learning experience. These were not a, "Watch this" moment, but a serious endeavor to find the edge. Powder snow up to 4 feet deep is no problem floating with lowered pressure on your tall and wide tires, all wheels under power. Sierra Cement, frozen and refrozen in as little as 8 inches deep can absolutely stop your progress no matter what you do, especially if you stay in one place and do 3 rotations of the wheels. That's all it takes: 3 rotations and the icy cup your tires are sitting in tightens up and your done, unless you have a little momentum on your side, which evaporates after the 3rd spin in one place. I've also had my Land Cruiser FJ-40 with all four chained up and not deflated with continued forward motion in 3 feet of snow. Then there's the time we went to mountains while the 4 feet of snow had a frozen crust and we could drive on that crust, just to return downhill later in the day after the sun came out a melted the crust allowing the rig to SINK into the frozen abyss. We used the Warn Winch dozens of consecutive times that day to winch downhill, 125 feet at a time. Toward the end of those pulls, we actually pulled the front bumper and winch right off the front frame rails of the FJ-55. That immediately took the wind out of our sails.
This smelling of the ozone is not confined to getting stuck. I've rolled my CJ-8 at least a dozen times, some just laying it over on it's side; mostly crawling along at low speed, and some disastrous. I'm still suffering from the effects of a cracked 3rd vertebra and a torn rotator cuff from rolls years ago. You get to know on a 1st hand basis where the tipping point is. Yes, it's me and the peanut gallery waiting for the strap:
This Physics project has graduated to the TC. Everyone watching is aghast when I get the TC on the slightest angle because it looks much worse than it actually is. With the 1100 pound Cummins; the 360 pound NV5600 manual transmission; the 140 pound NV241 transfer case and 500 pounds of heavy axles, the rig is very bottom heavy and it would take a lot of angle to make the box tip over. Nothing in the Lance is weighty up high. It just looks like it.
Meanwhile, I've had some good experience this winter with my new taller tires, lower gears, limited slips. Even in fairly deep snow the TC just keeps all four wheels grinding away with continued forward motion with a wide footprint and nothing hanging down to impede forward progress. I was hoping that would be the case. The more weight you try to move in snow, the more chance for any forward motion to be curtailed.
regards, as always, jefe
This smelling of the ozone is not confined to getting stuck. I've rolled my CJ-8 at least a dozen times, some just laying it over on it's side; mostly crawling along at low speed, and some disastrous. I'm still suffering from the effects of a cracked 3rd vertebra and a torn rotator cuff from rolls years ago. You get to know on a 1st hand basis where the tipping point is. Yes, it's me and the peanut gallery waiting for the strap:
This Physics project has graduated to the TC. Everyone watching is aghast when I get the TC on the slightest angle because it looks much worse than it actually is. With the 1100 pound Cummins; the 360 pound NV5600 manual transmission; the 140 pound NV241 transfer case and 500 pounds of heavy axles, the rig is very bottom heavy and it would take a lot of angle to make the box tip over. Nothing in the Lance is weighty up high. It just looks like it.
Meanwhile, I've had some good experience this winter with my new taller tires, lower gears, limited slips. Even in fairly deep snow the TC just keeps all four wheels grinding away with continued forward motion with a wide footprint and nothing hanging down to impede forward progress. I was hoping that would be the case. The more weight you try to move in snow, the more chance for any forward motion to be curtailed.
regards, as always, jefe
