Offroad Disasters

adkmtnoffrd

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Sep 9, 2012
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Ever been on an offroad adventure where Murphy rode shotgun? Ever ride a big bore enduro UP a ski trail at 70, in the dark, and then cracked the bottom end on a rock in a creek, thus draining most of the oil, 3 miles from a road? I have. It was a LONG walk pushing a DR650. I know Im not the only one here who has had character building events take place, offroad hahahaha, so I'd like to read about how the rest of you have fared. Have a great day
 
Oh where to begin :rolleyes: :lol:

Can't wait to hear the stories, I'll post up some of mine when I get the chance. Maybe we could make this a sticky :iconwink:
 
I must admit that I've had a few "oh :censored:" moments myself :redface:

But fortunately I've been very lucky when it comes to damage & come out relatively unscathed :iconwink:

I'll post a few of them up when I get a chance.

Regards
Mr Turbo
 
I've had an extremely close call doing a hill climb years ago, the track was loose rock and a good length climb, it required horsepower and speed to get to the top, I had a 5 month old V8 discovery automatic and boy did she fly. So I had the pedal to the metal and had a good bit of speed before the climb, feeling like the king offroad I was about to climb the peak and all of a sudden "BANG" and the seatbelt stopped my head hitting the dashboard. First thing was how the hell am I going to explain this to my wife. I stopped her at the scene and fearing the worst, the front diff was mounted on a rather deeply imbedded rock. After I backed it down without any horrible grinding noises I got underneath and found that I had dented the diff rather badly, when I got it home and did a proper examination it turns out 1.5mm further and it would have been all over.:twisted:
 
I buried a 1998 Chevy Blazer halfway up the doors in a mud/snow mix. There happened to be about 6" of ice with about 3' of mud underneath it, at the base of a hill, on an unmaintained road. I walked about 5 miles, thumbed a ride to town to retrieve my friends Dodge Ram 4x4. Drove back up into the boonies, where my buddies were waiting, chained the two trucks together and whoomp!, that big Dodge was just as buried, now chained to my rig. This was 2pm. I made it home at 1130pm, AFTER I rented a Case front end loader, drove THAT up into the woods, and pulled those two trucks out. Long day. Oh and this was mostly taking place in a snowstorm that dumped 10-14" of snow.
 
Well, I wouldn't go as far as calling it a ''disaster'' but... definitely an unfortunate event :lol:


Early october 2011. I've had the Foz for about 4 months. First car I purchased Never been offroad yet, either in this car or any other (I only drove my parent's 2006 Dodge Caravan on pavement). Coming back from an awesome, yet exhausting 4 days hike on a rather long dirt road (lots of loose rocks). I had no skidplate, I had standard summer tires (no A/T), and no experience at all :lol:

Going about 55 kph in a very long curve, then suddenly... a wild, much sharper turn appeared. Immediately followed by a second, then by... trees :lol: When I got out of the smooth curve, I saw the sudden turn and pressed slightly the brakes to slow down... bad move, I lost traction and skidded, yet managed to stay on the road. But the wrong had already been done: coming out of the second turn with less than optimal traction, the back of the Foz started going sideaways. I tried to straighten it, but only managed to loose control even more, and the car skidded right to the trees...

First reaction: Osti de câlisse (that's in french, and no I won't translate that :lol:).
Second reaction: Is everyone ok? Thankfully, everyone was.
Third reaction: got out of the car to realised that the Foz had bended down the fairly small tress, and that damage -at least to the body, was (relatively) minimal. No airbags had deployed, no windows were broken.

People from the house down the road immediately came out and offered to help pull me out with their F250, telling me I wasn't the first this happened to in this exact location, and that they were somehow used to that :lol: As the car seemed to run fine, I insisted to try to simply get back on the road on reverse. With some help to guide me and hold the trees so the wouldn't bend back up and strike the car, I managed to get out of there! I checked all the fluids levels (in case of leaks) and quickly under the car, and nothing seemed too bad except the lower cladding on the right passenger door, which had been torn off, and my front-right mudflap. Driving the 200km back home was a PITA with the steering wheel about 15° off, but we made it...

For anyone curious, these are the exact coordinates as to where this happened: 47.752446, -70.434375.
Look it up on Google Maps, you'll see the turns I'm talking about. I was going toward the east.

Picture: That's the situation I was in. Trees like those you see on the side used to be where the car is on the pic. The gut who seems to be pulling on something was trying to move a big rock (about 1ft high) that the car had dropped in front of (it's that rock which ripped off the cladding). He was unable to move it, but by flexing a big the surrounding trees, I was able to move slightly to the left and avoid the rock.

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Bottom line: even if I don't plan on rallying anytime soon, I'll probably attend one of the local rally classes anyways just to get better used to understeering, oversteering, etc... and all I need to know to keep/regain control in similar conditions. And I since got a skidplate, lift, and A/T tires are next on the list.
 
Mid 90's, Eildon State Forest - Snob's Creek road, front wheel drive hatch. Too fast in loose gravel on a right hand bend, oversteer, back end swung out, and I dropped it forwards over the cliff down towards the creek and rammed into a tree. Hitting a tree was fortunate, because it stopped me going any further. Managed to climb back up onto the road, and waited. About 1/2 an hour later I flagged down a passing 4WD - no winch though. They were able to drag my rear up the side of the cliff, but couldn't get it over the edge. Then a convoy of 4WDs came along - all with winches! It took three of them, but eventually they dragged my car back up onto the road. No major damage, just cosmetic dents. That's the only time I haven't been able to self-recover, and had to rely on others.
 
2004 6pm: drove my MQ patrol through increasingly deep watercrossings until sticking it in the middle of a lake with water over the bonnet. Walk for 3.5 hours (soaking wet) and ask the Mundairing ranger to recover me. He boggs 100m from my car and calls the Canning ranger who comes out and boggs 1km from where our cars are. Call my dad (it's now 1 am) and he makes the hour drive out and recovers the rangers cars but all three vehicles chained together can't pull me out of the mud. 3:30 am we give up and go home and in the morning while I'm phoning councils and earthmoving hire places my dad calls and one of his friendas who services hummers has borrowed one from a dealership and agrees to recover my patrol. I had to cut down trees and prune about a kilometre of track to get the thing out there. The Hummer broke a new snatch strap on effort #3 so I was to go dig myself out of the mud suction. I pretty much was underwater shovelling. The Hummer chained himself to a tree and winched me out and then I bought lots of beer for people. The alternator and starter motor were toast.
 
2008, Same road as my first disaster, different vehicle and alone. Buried a 2004 Chevy 1500 Silverado 4x4. Not just any 4x4 tho. This truck was a beast. Road was solid ice downhill for 600m. At the bottom og the hill is a 90° corner. When I say ice, I mean 14-16 inches of solid snow packed into ice. Didnt make the corner, going about 50kph, sideways. The roof of the truck was even with the roadbed,and that truck stood well over 6' on level ground with a good 14" of ground clearance. I had to do some serious chainsaw work to clear a path, so I could drag it out with a front end loader. I think I should buy a loader
 
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