Catherine post and Jerry's break down has been rolling around in my subconscious I suppose and I have been thinking about little things over the years that solved problem for me. Im sure there are hundreds more this membership has come up with and uses/has used. Things we may not think about at the time but would remember reading about it and using it in a pinch so I thought I would make a post

Simple example of a few I used on a trip to TX when picking up an old military truck.

It was raining hard and my blower moter on my defrost went out and I couldn't see through the foged up windows. I had no place to work on it out of the rain and was not 100% sure of the problem or what was involved in fixing it. My father inlaw diagnosed the problem and walked me through fixing it on the phone. Instead of doing it in the cold rain I pulled into the bay of a car wash so I was under cover in one of the hand bays. It was raining and they had no business at the time.

On that same trip my youngest was under 2, wife went into the hotel with baggage while I checked chains and boomers on the trailer. She had gotten our son out of his car seat and let him play in the cab instead of geting him out in the rain with her full hands since I was still right there.. He locked himself in the truck with it running.

I removed the back window from the truck and got in before my wife had finished looking up and calling a lock Smith. Only took about 5 mins to put it back in. I sure was happy I had busted the back window out of a truck a few years before and watched how easy they were to put back in at the shop I took it to.

I had to load the truck on the trailer backward( bed on front of the trailer) due to how it was parked and limited space available to attempt to pull the non running truck around. The result was tail wagging the dog at speed or being light on the front of the trailer. Would have been a long dangerous trip home had i not known the cause. My solution was a stop on the side of the road in Arkansas and picking up about 250-300 lbs of large rocks and placing them on the tool tray on the front of the trailer. Problem solved.

I see small trailers being pulled down the interstate often wipping around back and forth behind the pulling vehicle. I assume the drivers have no idea why or how to fix the problem. I know as a teen I had no clue why I couldn't pull my uncles small trailer over 55 with out it wiping around when empty. I dont remember how but at some point figured it l out trailers need more weight on the front when that happens.

There could be pages of vehicle recovery stories im sure as well. I know I have them from stuck and hung up up to geting my jeep off its side and back on its wheels

One I was most scared was out running coyote traps in the river bottoms and it had been raining steady all week. Im a few miles from the nearest house when I slid into a combine rut that was filled in with mud .. and it was deep enough the truck was down on the frame. . No big deal right just a walk through slop in cold rain. EXCEPT I had my daughter about 3 months old sleeping peacefully in her car seat in the truck sinc i could drive right up to all my sets. . This was before I had a cell phone. I was flustered. All I can say is its amazing how much dirt/mud you can move with a small trapping shovel with 14" handel and how hard you can red line a small sr5 Toyota with out blowing it up. After diging enough
i would make a badger proud I Eventually got it rocking then back and forth down the rut and out of it.


So what are trick you have used get you by when stranded. Maybe somone reading your solution will rember it down the road and it will make a bad day just a little easier on them.

if stuck you can use a ratchet strap and a piece of wood to help get unstuck

Cliff noTEs please

If either your starter or your alternator quits often times tapping on them with something (axe or shovel handle often works well in the tight spaces they are in) will often cause them to start working again. Temporary fix, they will need replaced/rebuilt, but it will get you home.

Broken leaf springs, you can jack it up and put a block of wood between the axle and frame, then chain, ratchet strap, or comealong the axle both forwards and backwards so it is held in place and can't move, and drive it out.

You can simply remove a broken front shock from an early IFS Toyota and drive it without a shock. Should work on any torsion bar front end pickup, I don't know that it would work on one of the newer ones with the shock inside a coil spring unless you could figure out how to keep the coil spring in place.

As stated earlier, broken U-joints or rear driveline, remove rear driveline, put in four wheel drive and drive with the front driveline.

For being stuck, airing your tires down makes an unbelievable difference in traction in snow. I carry the little air compressors that plug in to your cigarette lighter and often air my tires down when driving in snow. You can be doing nothing but spin, get out and air your tires down to 13-14 psi, get back in and drive on over the top of the mountain.

Great info guys!

How do you easily remove the back window of a pickup truck? More details please.

Keith

Pry out the seal. Its just rubber a gasket with grove in the middle on each side one for the truck body and one to hold the glass. The seal stays on the window. Pry it away from the truck get something to hold it a knife or screwdriver and work it down and around with another one. When you put it back in put a small think 1/16 to 1/8 rope or cord in the grove and place the window against the truck. One you get it started pulling the cord on the inside pulls the seal out even and against the inside of the truck keeping you from spending a lot of time with some thin tool working the seal out from under the window and where its supposed to be . Worked on a 94 Toyota and 92 f 250. New trucks may be different.
B.

I probably didn't explain that very well. Maybe I can find something on line that shows it.

If you own an older Dodge truck that has an issue where the fuel pump doesn’t shutdown when you turn off the engine, this bypass trick is an inexpensive and simple fix.

Always wear good walking boots anytime you have to drive anywhere on anything

On locking your keys in the vehicle. I did this last year about 20 miles from anything. This is what I did. I had an axe in the back of the pickup, so I cut a small tree down and fashioned a wedge out of it. Done a little finishing work on it with my pocketknife. Ended up making two of them. I drove the wedge in between the door and door frame in the top back of door. Used the blade of the axe to get a small space to start the wooden wedges. Once I had a gap created, I cut a small sucker off a maple tree, long and skinny, and bent it into an arc. With this I was able to hit the door unlock. The pressure caused by the wedges won't allow the door to unlock until you remove them and release the tension. Door unlocked with no damage.

Speaking of keys. Kind of specific but interesting... 1983 style F150pickups had a bail wire over the air cleaner or master cylinder or something that was the exact shape you needed to jam through the little triangle vent window to push the button in and turn the handle at the same time to open it so you can reach in to open the door.

Doesn't work everywhere , but if you get locked out of your car -

Some police departments and some fire departments do lock out service.

Again , just some.

Check your area if those services are available if needed in the future. My city provides this for free. Some of the towns around here don't.

You can take the antenna off and use it to hit the power lock button too. Most are only finger tight.

was digging out my pond on Saturday. I'm doing it while full, because the pond is full and I don't want to empty it. Loading the dump truck dumps a lot of water on the ground and I tried for 1 too many loads and got it stuck.
The issue is, once the wheel is that deep, its easier to spin the wheel than to climb out up the 10-14" straight drop.

Since the ground was mostly firm and the problem was just too many times with the wheels in the same spot let it sink, I grabbed a shovel instead of a chain.
I dug all the way down the bottom of the tread, cleaned out to the lowest point on the tire, from there forward for 10 or 12 inches. Then made a slope up to grade.

This picture is after digging. Note the side and back look sunk very deeply, but the front does not look sunk.


The result: instead of the tire trying to lift the truck straight up, I got it rolling forward a few inches to get a run at it, then it had a ramp up.

I was able to drive out of this. The truck is 2 wheel drive with open differential.

Whether or not this works depends on why the tire sank and the condition of the soil. But when the circumstances are right for it, this is a quick & easy way to get unstuck.

If you are not getting stuck,
you're not running full potential lol.

I've taken the vin # to dealer,
and they made keys.

Last fall while elk hunting, I got stuck in soft sand, in my 2wd 01 chevy pu. Clear down to the axle. Bumpers won't work with a handyman jack. Took my floor jack down with lots of blocks so it wouldn't sink. Jacked the whole rearend up using the hitch receiver, so the bottom of the tires were a bit above level with the surface of the ground. Put my home-made angle iron ATV ramps under the tires, with 2-3' towards the direction I wanted to go. Gave me an acceleration ramp. Let the jack down, got in and gave it the goose. Walked away slick as a whistle, no slowing down until I hit the road.

No vent windows on new trucks and you can't unlock the hood from the outside. They are making them harder to break into all the time.



Newer trucks not so much. My antenna is only about 12 inches long.

Some times a thump or two on the bottom of the gas tank will get the fuel pump going again, It will need replaced soon.

Sometimes a fuel pump will work again after it cools down too. (Shouldn't let the fuel level get that low in the first place!)

I've had silinoids malfunction and bypassed them with a screwdriver or pliers to engage the starter to start my vehicle.