How About an Off Roading Jeep Pic Thread...

[janice6]

My second oldest daughter's family runs Jeeps.  There are three of them and three Jeeps.  My daughter and I have had periodic discussions of driving in snow and ice since she is in a rural hilly area in Minnesota.  She's a smart girl and is a very competent driver of 4x4's.

My first 4x4 was a '76 Plymouth Trail Duster and had full time four wheel drive when not locked up.  This vehicle was great to learn on since it did all the weird things you could think of.

The full time drive didn't lock the opposite diagonal wheels so if one corner spun, you could be screwed and have to lock it up to move.

It did have one inspiring feature that I quickly learned to appreciate.  It was, Bump steer".

If you were driving on a road with windrows of snow across it the front axel would rebound one wheel and it would spin up so when it hit the ground it was going faster than the opposite side wheel.  When first encountered it would jerk the wheel to one side of the other.

It took a very short time to understand and drive accordingly.  Other people that drove it would be very surprised when I would suck them into a situation conducive to bump steer.  The suddenly got very apprehensive till I explained why the steering wheel was jerked out of their hands.

I have had a hell of a lot of fun with my 4x4's.  I had a full set of chains and actually used them once.

We had a 20 inch snow storm during the day at work.  My daughter worked at the same plant I did, but she lived in an apartment a mile away from the plant while I lived 26 miles away.

After work she couldn't get her car to move in the snow so I volunteered to give her a lift home.  I was able to drive to her apartment complex using lots of care and finnesse.

Then her apartment complex was below street level and the lot was full of snow.  I suppose it averaged 4 feet deep from the drifting and low elevation.

I stopped at the street entrance and put my chains on all four wheels, then locked the axels in low range and slowly, very slowly plowed a groove down into the complex and right to her front door.

I went through the lot and up and out the other side.

The next time I saw her she said the apartment manager was fit to be tied.  Someone had driven through the lot and made a large deep grove in the snow.  That night it got very cold, and the moist snow froze.  The had a hell of a time cutting out the compressed snow/ice ridges I made.

The next day it snowed an additional 10 inches.  By that day the ice chunks on the roadway were like monster potholes.  Driving shook the truck so bad that I had to go slow to minimize the damage.

When I got home, I had to take out the radiator and fire up the welder to weld all the broken and stress cracked radiator mounting.  When I got home the damn radiator was being held in place by only the upper and lower hoses.  I got it fixed that night and was back on the road the next day.  Oh, the next day after a 2 1/2-hour drive, I got to work only to find that the plant was closed due to the "impassable" roads.  that's another story.

I was quite pleased with my adventure, and she got a big laugh out of it.  My record was a blizzard that took me 5 hours to get home.

[deputy tom]

We have six 4wd vehicles in our family and only one fwd car. That is my son's work car for maximum MPG since he drives a long distance to work and back. tom.