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2 of 5
A hole in a rad hose, cut the hole out, jimmy up a mag light body and continue on your merry way.
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Electric pump overpowering your ancient carb? Wire the pump to your horn and away you go.
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Can’t get a broken axle end out of the third member; lasso it with a stick and some string.
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The problematic piece that was holding everyone up.
Story and photos by Budd Stanley, contributions by Bryan Irons, Rich Walker and Ingo Bludau
So, we have a broken rig, and nothing more than a tack, a match, some duct tape and a piece of string to fix it - no problem. This is what makes the 4WD community such a resilient bunch; it is all about overcoming challenges. Whether is to conquer an obstacle, overcome a vehicles deficiencies, or fix an unfixable rig in the middle of nowhere with nothing more than what you can find under your seat, wheelers find a way.
This final characteristic is quite likely a 4WD enthusiast’s greatest asset. To mend a broken rig in the bush and make it back to civilization without the help of outside assistance. No other sport of form of motorsport has the sheer quantity and quality of heroic stories as the wheeling community. So, we here at 4WDrive Magazine thought we would share just a small sample of our own experiences with you. Have some MacGyver moments of your own? Tell us all about it on our Facebook page.
Budd Stanley
Lets start out with my own story, a clever little move to jump-start the morning after a long night of partying. On a trip up to the northern end of Harrison Lake, the group I was with like to set up camp in style. This means patio lanterns strung throughout the forest, a big camp fire and good music coming from one of the many Samurai’s littered within a tight stand of tree’s. There was even a disco lighting system set up. I was under the impression that all this entertainment was being provided thanks to a single little Honda generator humming away out in the woods, apparently not.
After a camp breakfast and cleaning up the remnants of the night before, one of our crew went to start his Samurai, only to find a battery so dead the relays didn’t even budge. The camp was too tight for a rolling jump, but when the word went out for jumper cables, no response came back. Of course, this brought all the men in camp together in a tight circle, clutching their chins with their thumb and pointer fingers, chanting “hmmm” for an extended period of time. The bright idea of locking two trucks together at the bumpers for a ground and connecting the positive terminals with a spare steering arm came up. And so, one Sammy smashed into the other, the hoods were flung open and the steering arm was put in place. After many tries, many sparks and many worried faces, both trucks were running and we were ready for day two.
Rich Walker
On the Whipsaw (a one way trail with a different exit and entrance so you’re committed to the trail), we had one of the trucks blow an upper rad hose pretty much at the halfway point of the trail. With no replacement hose, we thought we would have to tow this truck the entire rest of the trail. One of the guys (Johny5) had a mag light and he came up with the idea to take it all apart and saw a small piece off of the handle. We then took the blown rad hose and cut out the section with the hole in it and used that small piece of the handle to make a splice into the hose. A couple hose clamps (which all trail wheelers should have at the ready at all times) and that truck not only finished the trail, but drove home on the highway too!
On another occasion, some year’s back, we had a truck have a rear wheel bearing failure a good 150+ km in the bush. With no parts or ways to fix it we decided to “peg leg” the truck to pavement at least. With a chain saw, we cut down a moderately sized tree and strapped it up into the frame and under the diff suspending the rear axle off the ground (we took the tire and drum off). We then drove as far as we could until the tree wore down enough that the axle would hit the ground, then repeated the process. The chain saw ran out of gas, as we cut the last tree to get us to pavement where we called BCAA!
Bryan Irons
Had a friend, Tim, with a 1987 Jeep YJ and through circumstances I still don’t understand, he put an electric fuel pump in for future upgrades. An old Motorcraft 2100 carburetor sat atop the cobbled together intake manifold on the original 4.2L inline-six. We were out in the toolies wheeling when suddenly Tim’s YJ stopped running. After much searching, we followed our noses and found that the carb was barfing fuel down the motors throat. It was violating mother earth at an alarming pace and I’m surprised we didn’t hydro lock the motor with fuel.
After a dissection on the trail, we realized that a pin was missing for the float in the fuel bowl and was not stopping the fuel flow entering the carb. We could not turn down the fuel pressure enough to get an even flow and hooking up a set of vice grips to control it was not an option either as the control as too sporadic. My buddy Colin (the one you read about helping out us at 4WDrive from time to time) had an ingenious plan; cycle the electric fuel pump to get just enough fuel to the carb to keep it from flooding or running dry. “But how?” you ask, with the horn button. Yep, we wired the relay for the fuel pump up to the horn output wire and Ta-da! Every time the motor started to stumble a bit, Tim would honk the horn and fire up the pump to get more fuel into the float bowl. He managed to take the wrong trail back to town, had to turn around and backtrack, then drive through the city streets all the while honking his horn. The things we do for this sport!
Ingo Bludau
We were up on the Whipsaw one day and it was wet and muddy and the equipment was taking a beating. Well, a buddy of ours snapped an axle just after it exits the third member. We pulled the wheel off, tore the brakes apart and pulled the broken axle out, but we couldn’t pull the third member out, as the broken piece of axle-end was just long enough to hold it in. We must have stared at that bloody axle for an hour wondering how we were going to get out of this situation. Then the girls started complaining that they wanted to get to camp. Our reply was, “If you know of a way to get this axle out, why don’t you give it a try then.” So, the girls start poking sticks down the axles tube with a piece of string on the end and were trying to lasso the axle out of the diff. We were standing over the top; “you’re never going to get that thing out of there!” Well, with a clunk, the girls pulled the stick out of the axle tube with the problematic axle-end dangling from the makeshift lasso and the snide comment, “Oh yeah.” All our jaws just dropped. So, off to camp we went.