Re: What's the stuckest you've ever been?
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Posted by Steamer on June 18, 1998 at 15:44:34:
In Reply to: What's the stuckest you've ever been? posted by Keith on June 16, 1998 at 13:27:34:
We lived on top of a mountain, but owned all the way down into the bottom of the valley. The State was taking about 1/2 acre of our land near the road, to improve a nasty curve (which caused several very mangled cars to be deposited in the creek at the bottom). Well, we figured that we'd save the State a lot of work by removing all of the timber from the parcel in question. I was using a JD350 crawler/dozer. Dad had his JD420 crawler/dozer. Our neighbor had his mid-60's MF something (I can't recall which model he had) with a big loader on it. My best friend was using my Ford 1720. We were cutting down the trees as fast as we all could go, stripping the branches, and skidding them over to the other side of the little stream. I had placed several large oak trunks over the wet area, so that the wheel tractors wouldn't get stuck. For those of you who have never run a crawler in a damp area, the track pads tend to suck the moisture up to the top very quickly. This can turn a slightly soft spot into a quagmire in a hurry. Can y'all see where I'm leading to here? Well, Dad's 420 started to slip the tracks in a soft spot, while towing a large maple trunk. I had a large oak tied on, but I ran the 350 over to where he was and used my blade against his drawbar to shove him past the spot. Well, that worked out fine, until the 350 stopped dead. The tracks did a really nice job covering me with mud! I stopped the machine to unhook the tree, and Dad hooked his chain to my blade. Right about then, the 350 decided to sink down to the hood! This tended to pull the 420 right back into the same hole! We were able to unhook the 420 and get it clear with the help of the other tractors. Hook them all to the 350 failed to remove it from the mud hole where it was sitting, still running at an idle (the intake and exhaust were in the clear). We finally popped it out by hooking my large skidding chain to a tree, fairly high up the trunk. By cutting down the tree, we found enough force to pull the 350 out of the hole. It took me two weeks to clean the mud out of all the areas it got into. The alternator, fan, etc. were all trashed from spending time running in the mud. I didn't dare try to walk back thru the quicksand hole to turn the machine off once it started sinking!
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