2024 Lessons Learned

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Joined
Sep 8, 2005
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147
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Colorado Springs CO
I wanted to start this thread to share some of the lessons learned throughout the year. Since we have never done this before you can put in lessons that you have learned in other years. Hopefully others can learn from your painful or expensive mistakes.

I'll go first.

If you are going to use a traction board in a location that you may loose sight of it, tie a rope to the board and the other end to a tree or to the vehicle so the board doesn't remain underwater or under the sand when the recovery is over.

When you are doing a recovery (if there isn't a dire time emergency (Fire, flood, loss of vehicle) involved). Develop a plan evaluating all suggestions and use the least amount of force necessary. One person should be the coordinator standing where each vehicle driver can hear them and only on their command perform only the action that was agreed upon.

You as the experienced operator should clearly give instructions to others as to what their actions need to be. You are responsible for checking all connections of recovery gear used on all vehicles and not be intimidated into making a decision that you are not comfortable with.

Don't be afraid to stop all actions if you see a safety issue.

Be careful where you hook to when you are attaching a strap or kinetic rope to a vehicle that doesn't have tow hooks ( the little sheet metal eyes under the imported cars are made to hold the car in the ship, not towing) do not hook to sway bars or steering linkage. attach to the front member or to an A arm. Make sure you don't jerk on these components.

Please post up your lessons that you learned so maybe others don't have to learn it the difficult way.
 
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I'm new, so I learn something on every ride - mostly that my rig can do more than I think - so lesson #1 is "go for it".
#2: Don't be stupid. Don't attempt things that you can't get out of without help, like the icy crossing. Save the daring stuff for club rides.
#3: Be rich. Still working on this one.
#4: Winches and traction boards are awesome.
 
Just remembered another one. We were driving on an icy Forest Road. The truck 2 places in front of me slid down a hill along the road and stopped at the bottom and didn't move into the open road in front of him. The truck in front of me started down the icy trail and slid into the truck that was stopped at the bottom. The lesson learned is to be aware of what is going on in front of you as well as behind you. The truck at the bottom should have moved forward and given the truck behind enough room to stop at the bottom. The truck behind should have not started down until there was sufficient room to stop.

When driving in ruts, whether in mud, snow or even dry surfaces, keep your thumbs outside of the steering wheel so if the tires catch the side of a rut and spins the steering wheel your thumbs won't get broken.
 
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Don't push a vehicle on traction boards, unless in the middle. Today, I very nearly got a board fired into my face when I fell down trying to push from behind the wheel. I saw the board start moving, but the tire cleared it before it launched.
 
When you are driving on a trail, use the radio to let the person in front of you know when you are starting down a slippery slope and let the person behind you know when you have finished a slippery downhill or topped out on a hill that has limited visibility to the top. Don't be timid to let the persons behind you know of any lines that you had good or bad traction.
 

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