Traction, technical question

[StG58]

I ran into a situation today that has occurred before. During the winter months around here, the TJ is loosing traction on some of the old skid trails.

The trail surface is hard pack crushed rock covered with 1 -3" of organic material saturated with water. Think fresh snot on plate glass. When the trail gets steep enough, you don't go anywhere. MT's, AT's, 4hi, 4lo, judicious use of throttle and or brakes, same results.

Anyone have any ideas on how to address this?

 

[Rob5589]

Lockers, winch, or take another line. Sometimes crap is just too nasty to reach anything hard enough to provide traction.

 

[Jerry Bransford]

Sometimes on trails like that you can improve traction by upping the tire pressure. That narrows the tire so it has an easier time digging down through the slick snot on top to the better traction located below.

 

[StG58]

Lockers, winch, or take another line. Sometimes crap is just too nasty to reach anything hard enough to provide traction.

@Rob5589, that's what I was thinking...

 

[StG58]

Sometimes on trails like that you can improve traction by upping the tire pressure. That narrows the tire so it has an easier time digging down through the slick snot on top to the better traction located below.

I'll give that a try next time! Thanks Jerry...

 

[StG58]

This is stuff is just nasty. It's hard hadpack, almost like asphalt, and about as smooth. Leaf litter and moss build up on it over the years, because they don't get driven on much, if at all. When it rains, the biological matter gets saturated as you can imagine, and acts like a lubricant. Snotty stuff a couple of inches thick over the hard pack. These skid trails are steep as well. The unfortunate part is that most of the interesting places are at the ends of these things. Getting down isn't a problem, but I've been hesitant to go down a bunch of them becaue getting out gets interesting. Lots of tree to winch from, so that's good. But no room to manuever as everything is hemmed in by brush, trees, cut banks and drop offs. Did I mention that they are usually steep? Heading down a lot of these the TJ is either standing on it's nose, or on it's tail coming back up.

Well, it's a good thing that lockers and a winch are in the plan, they'll get a lot of use.

 

[Rob5589]

We have stuff like that. Looks solid but you sink 3-4 inches into the pine straw, and that is walking. Sounds like the area needs a good burn.

Yea, winches and lockers are a good thing. I have the winch, lockers and gears should be incoming soon.

 

[StG58]

We have stuff like that. Looks solid but you sink 3-4 inches into the pine straw, and that is walking. Sounds like the area needs a good burn.

Yea, winches and lockers are a good thing. I have the winch, lockers and gears should be incoming soon.

How's the winch working out? Used it yet? A local 4x shop has an older E9000 on the shelf that he may be willing to sell really cheap just to make it go away. (It's a Toyota place, so I kind of have to sneak in on a weekday)

Oh man, if we get into burning, this thread is going to end up in the politics section...

The Forest Service, BLM and private land owners have been afraid to burn here for about 25 or 30 years. The fuel loading on the forest floor has now built up to the point that it can't be burned without crowning out and burning the place down. A bunch of the early enviromentalists went crazy on the controlled burns back in the '80's or so, and everybody just stopped, going into full-on supression mode. It's amazing what a few noisy folks with bad science in hand can accomplish.

 

[Rob5589]

No chance to use it yet. My gas tank is out, I am fixing the damn splash back problem and found the skid was hacked up by the PO and am waiting on a new one. I do have some winching gear coming this week so will try and play this weekend.

 

[Kyle]

Tire chains??

 

[StG58]

No chance to use it yet. My gas tank is out, I am fixing the damn splash back problem and found the skid was hacked up by the PO and am waiting on a new one. I do have some winching gear coming this week so will try and play this weekend.

I saw that. Looks like the PO did a real hack and slash job on the body cross pieces. Man, that's a true bummer.

Tire chains??

They used to run those on the skidders all the time around here. It does work, but it's a pain most of the time.