Collecting mishap photos

Here are a couple of photos of me with a 4WD / ZERO WD vehicle.

The vehicle is a 1987 Honda Wagovan. The World's greatest vehicle if you change out the wimpy 13 inch rims to 14 or 15 inch rims.

4WD with a super low gear. We used to call shifting into that gear, cramming it into "granny". The only year Honda made that vehicle was in 1987. The modern mini SUVs don't have a super low gear.

The photos show me using a a lousy axle jack to slowly build a platorm underneath the rear wheels. Took me 3 hours to get the car back onto the road.

If I had been equipped with a Hi-Lift truck jack complete with a wheel rim adapter I would have been back on the road in ten minutes.

Here is the Hi-Lift website.

[www.hi-lift.com]

Bart







Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/06/2012 10:28AM by Debbie Woolf.

I have been out with both the gentlemen prominent in this thread.If this turns into a pissing contest of "near miss" disasters and in fact "hit" disasters, the urine will be running deep.

Wrong, John,

I've already conceded to Bob as winner.

And Bob and I have both put you at harm a couple of times in near mishaps in the collecting process..

Does that explain your light agitation ? Williams Creek road ?

Bart

The cool part about those people that survived the crash, Bob, is that that 15 year old Jay, still collects actively every year with his dad...both much older now of course, and Jay is one of the premier rare and soft stone cutters in North America. So I am personally glad we didn;t lose either one.

The picture of Bart jacking up the back of his Wagovan reminded me of a funny incident in the southern Black Hills years ago. I was driving my pickup along a fairly good bulldozed road on an up slope, sort of musing about the fine afternoon and thinking of some things that needed doing on our project. And I drove the two outside wheels off of the road. No harm done. Just couldn't go any where. But, I did have a handy man jack a shovel and, fortunately, a full load of 4x4 claim posts. Good, solid fur. None of those crappy plastic things they use now. It took close to two hours to dig, jack up and set cribbing under the vehicle. Nice solid cribbing; you miners would have approved.

I climbed in the cab, crossed my fingers, and gave it the gas. The truck moved about 2 feet and 4x4 posts started flying everywhere. The truck settled down in pretty much the same position that I had started in. I had forgotten to put the thing in 4WD!

There was less digging to do, so re-building the cribbing only took another hour. Lesson learned, the truck crawled off the posts in good order.

Cheers!

Steve

Another vehicular mishap, on the road out of Rock Candy mine, circa mid-80's. This Chevy was affectionately known as the White Whale, became a flatbed when the pickup bed fell off on the road to Spruce. Drove it over the bank on a foggy morning when I was headed to Grand Forks to pick up a film crew. The small sapling at the front end was all that kept it from rolling over a 100 ft. cliff. That was the first bit of 'luck'. The second was having the the other pickup come around the corner shortly after I'd climbed out the passenger window, knees knocking. That pickup's driver was going up to retrieve his dozer from a logging camp further up the road. His dozer jerked the Whale back onto the road, the only injury being a severely bent rear bumper.

The Whale then moved to Spruce, where at the end of the next mining season, it wouldn't start, and we left it at the Spruce trailhead. That winter, the road had a major slumping failure, which made the Whale the only vehicle inside the slump, which took the FS 2 years to fix. Mounted bench seats on the boards, so it held 12 people, seat belted in, for our trips to Spruce.

Final chapter for the Whale involved an overzealous King County sheriff, who ticketed it for 'being parked over the centerline'. Centerline of a one-lane dirt road, that is! Had it towed, which is no small feat from Spruce. Went to court to protest that, and the judge instructed the county to buy the Whale for the $1500 I had paid for it. Lots of adventure in a free truck.

Bob