The rocks that took us near to reservoir project invited me to do a balancing act, look at the picture below each wheel to be parked on rocks (photo angle is not so good but still it was fun). The fun loving crowd’s convoy reached the lush and green forest and started exploring the possible opportunities to get the rubber do its best.
Oh boy the large and small sized hard rocks all over created a big time fun, I must say the foreigners were amazed and surprised to see these kind of sports activities are happening in India. They have also acted along with us in few recoveries where the vehicles got stuck badly.
When we got queued up for obstacle crossing, myself and two my other friends got into to different path and started exploring the beautiful and most enjoyable offroad ground.
You know what the entire trip was a fun offroad trip. Every one no matter what age, gender and what brand of offroad capable vehicles participated we had fun stuffed with the trip.
The entire terrain was filled with stones, stones and stones. In general the diesel vehicles got the best ability to crawl on the rocks and stones. But all the dieselized vehicles got the tough time when we approached a giant 55-70ft incline which looked around 60-65degree angle. The photos here may not justify the angle but one must try out to believe in the kind of challenge put in front of us.
As I was crawling at another location, I really missed the opportunity to see the first vehicle or few vehicles that successfully completed the obstacle.
When I reached the massive wall, was looking at a CJ3B failing with B275 motor. The reasons I got is that not enough space for run on time and wrong gearing ratio. I told him ok, let me try now… I put on the transfer case to 4WD Low and moved the vehicles from 1st to 2nd gear and attempted to climb up the wall oh boy I could only do half of the wall. I wondered why may be it is the run on distance??? ok let me push myself little behind and run fast to climp. The massive incline is some thing that got a steep incline for 10ft from the initial ground and there was a flat surface of 1 or 2 ft before we touch the continues rest of the incline.
Hence every time after crossing the 10ft I got the engine power draining out and need to reverse off. Since I was stalled every time at the middle of the steep incline reversing the vehicle with clutch and break would have turned deadly but the proper way of doing reversing in this kind of situation is to put the transfer case gear into Low and Reverse and let the engine run and take full control of your steering and don’t even think of pressing break of clutch. Since the reverse gear on 4WD low gives the lowest possible speed you can safely ground in such situation.
Alright now it is turn for another gypsy to conquer the incline, please remember the run on space before the obstacle was really less and gypsy like petrol got the momentum really quick and started climbing up with spinning wheels ohhhhoooohhhhh there was another lesson to be learned. When obstacle like hard mud climb exercise one need to remember not to rev-up the engine and loosing fraction under the tyre. That is what happen to the gypsy since the over speed tyres started spinning the vehicle was running zig-zak and got stuck on the water ways created on the incline by rain water. Now reversing this gypsy is impossible as the gypsy ran zig-zak and out of the actual track, so we few guys went up helped to give a push from back when Captain Gopi skillfully helped the gypsy make up to the top.
Now it is the CJ3B’s last chance, let see how is he going to do so I can follow the same. By that time two of my friends who were driving MM540 came near to the obstacle that we were trying to cross. The MM 540s were also failing, must be a big deal now…
Ok, now this is the trick how to handle such situation with your dieselized heavy vehicles on climbs like this one.
to be continued….