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238 RECOVERY, CHAPTER 7 ______________ |
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I learned that we could jack the camper up in place, put big boards - I mean real big boards - under all four tires and then winch it free. The boards were like real big feet! Since the boards were shorter than the route out, it took several moves to free the camper. With the 4WD up, we were no longer bulldozing mud. This technique has been confirmed several times since. The only thing that works in deep mud, sand or snow is to jack it up, give it a runway, then pull it out. AIR DOWN Tire pressure, another basic, brings lots of questions and some reluctance. My full tire pressure brainwashing is in Volume II. Lower tire pressure, in summary, is plus three and minus one. Lower tire pressure gives you a bigger footprint. Mother Nature knows big feet work or why would She give camels and polar bears such giant bottom features? It also gives you the effect of slightly lower gearing due to a decrease in rolling radius. Lastly, it reduces what I've named obstacle-rolling resistance. This is the tire's ability to mold over rather than have to climb up a minor impediment. The only disadvantage is that lower tire pressure reduces ground clearance. That's because the 4X's weight compresses the soft tire. This also means the 4X can bounce easier and further compress the rubber. |
A
friend had parked his 4WD camper on the lower 40 of another friend's
place. Come time to go, we discovered the property's leach lines must
have been near the camper. He was stuck in the mud big time! Digging
seemed to be a losing battle. We used a winch but just moved the puller
instead of the pullee. More digging yielded dirty workers and no camper
change. With three more anchor-4Xs added to the winch end, we still had
no success. We felt like renting out the apartment-camper and never
moving it again.