Latest adventure posted!!!

:)

I think a new newsgroup is in order. rec.autos.makers.vw.mudcooled

Thanks for sharing Travis.

J.

Hey Travis - thanks for sharing with us BTW - I don't know if you read my reply post wayy back when about LPS1 for waterproofing electrical stuff - if not, drop me an e-mail as it really could be helpful. One more thing about your winch - I grew up working in my dad's logging and sawmill operations and have some helpful hints on the subject of fairleads for winches to eliminate the problem of the cable piling up on one end of the drum. You have my old addy still, I presume.

Hey, Busahaulic... I just googled the newsgroup and found a couple of your posts about LPS1. Sounds very interesting. I'll have to look around and see if I can locate a local source for some of that stuff. Yeah, I know I should have a fairlead on my winch, but... I don't. No real excuse for not having one on it. Just haven't gotten around to it yet, I guess. I swapped out the broken winch with my spare so I'm back in business for now... Thanks for reminding me about the LPS-1 stuff...

Ooh! Looks like Ace Hardware carries it and they just opened up a new Ace Hardware store about 1/2 mile from my house. WOOT! Gonna pick up some of that LPS-1 stuff and try it out. Thanks for the tip!

I do too, great entertainment! Wish I could do the same.

My only offroad place doesnät have any mud. Just sand.

Jan

I'll let you know how it works out...

Not referring to the four rollers that mount a few inches in front of the drum that "they" call a fairlead. A real fairlead is pretty much what you have when you string a snatch-block directly in-line with the winch but a distance away. As you've seen, the tendency to climb up one side of the drum is greatly reduced. My dad always tried to convince me to put the winch under the middle of the jeep so we could put a real fairlead at either the front or back of the frame, thus maintaining perfect alignment to the drum no matter what angle the pull was at. The problem is obvious. With a full body on the jeep, there was no way to easily switch the cable from front to rear or vice versa, especially when the reason you needed the winch was cuz yer high centered in a mud hole with mud oozing over the front fenders! Then there was the running gear and engine in the way, going out the front. I still like the idea of a long fairlead withe the winch mounted amidships. An open-framed vehicle would be much easier to implement it in.

A customer at the shop a couple weeks back showed me how he had an extra trailer hitch receiver welded to his truck and a 12-ton winch mounted to an insert for it. It appeared to be about a 3" receiver. With that he could have a receiver at each end. The fairlead was virtually worthless however - typical 4 rollers mounted a few inches from the drum.

Have you ever seen those balloon gadgets that (JC Whitney used to sell them) you'd shove under the side of your stuck car - anywhere you could get access, and hook the hose up to the tailpipe? It was big enough that even with relatively low pressure it was able to lift the car.

I always wanted to add a hydraulically operated arm under the vehicle, something like the outrigger arms that the power company boom trucks use for stability. I envision the pivot point as being a slot so that the first movement at the pad end would be downward. Once it reached the ground and started to exert lift on the vehicle, it would slide in the pivot slot and effectively move the vehicle either fore or aft depending on which way you engineered it to go. Too bad it would also add a couple hundred pounds and would probably always be facing the wrong way - move ya back when ya can't go back...!

The best I ever actually used on the trail was when I was 18 and jeeping with another teen-ager. We were hopelessly stuck with the jeep teetering on the edge of a bank dropping off into the river (real river!) about 100 feet below! We were afraid to hike out for help as someone would sure as hell roll the thing over the bank and watch the big splash! We were able to pile up enough large rocks for a fulcrum and use about a 6-inch diameter alder tree as a lever. From about 15-20 feet out it was easy to lever the jeep back onto the trail and away we went! [I worked in a sawmill and he worked in a steel fab shop, so we were real he-men!);o)

Ah, well, whatever you rig up will probably work just fine and if not, you'll re-engineer it until it does! -BaH

No, but that sounds interesting. :-)