- Oct 3, 2007
- 1,539
I got up early on my day off to head to my new honey hole to cut some downed wood. I stopped at Tractor Supply on the way to pick up a spare chain since most of the stuff I'm cutting is full of dirt. After that and filling my thermos with coffee I was all ready to spend a day in the woods. All in all cutting went pretty well-I snagged some semi-punky oak that was rotting from the inside out, but it was mostly pretty solid. Then I cut up another downed tree that had been taken down by the county out by the road. Not sure what it is-guesses?
It's kind of yellow/greenish inside and gets stringy when split. A lot of the bark came right off as it had started to rot already but the wood is good and solid. So as I'm finishing up I manage to find some staples in one of the trees (probably from a "No Tresspassing" sign-they were all over) and proceed to change out the chain. For some reason though the chain was clearly marked as fitting an ECHO CS400 with an 18" bar, the drive links were way too big and didn't fit the sprockets. Since the old chain was shot I decided to go home where the real fun began. Wifey went out to run some errands and I backed the truck into the side yard and down the hill as usual to offload the rounds at my processing area. Turns out I SEVERELY underestimated the amount of moisture left in the ground and began sliding sideways on the little sidehill between mine and my neighbor's house. Putting the truck into four wheel drive was no help as 9000+lbs (F-350 Powerstroke diesel + full load of wood in the bed) was now wedged against a wall of arbovita bushes in what amounted to a ditch. My General Grabber AT2s simply slicked over with mud and my open differentials spun hopelessly. Things had gotten bad.
We've only been in our house six months and don't know that many people in town, much less people with large trucks and tow straps. Therefore I did the only sensible thing-I put out a call for help on a local webforum! www.newjerseyhunter.com is another forum I spend a fair amount of time which, conveniently, is full of guys who live in rural areas of New Jersey and own trucks. Luckily one of the forum members who didn't live too far away showed up in less than an hour and yanked me out. The carnage? Multiple scratches along the passenger side of the truck, LOTS of ruts in the sideyard, three dislodged railroad ties (they lined the driveway I drove over to get to the side yard), a busted steering stabilizer (that's what dislodged the railroad ties-guess they're not made for that), and a moderately pissed off fiancee. The fiancee is getting better, but the steering stabilizer is still very broken:
It's kind of yellow/greenish inside and gets stringy when split. A lot of the bark came right off as it had started to rot already but the wood is good and solid. So as I'm finishing up I manage to find some staples in one of the trees (probably from a "No Tresspassing" sign-they were all over) and proceed to change out the chain. For some reason though the chain was clearly marked as fitting an ECHO CS400 with an 18" bar, the drive links were way too big and didn't fit the sprockets. Since the old chain was shot I decided to go home where the real fun began. Wifey went out to run some errands and I backed the truck into the side yard and down the hill as usual to offload the rounds at my processing area. Turns out I SEVERELY underestimated the amount of moisture left in the ground and began sliding sideways on the little sidehill between mine and my neighbor's house. Putting the truck into four wheel drive was no help as 9000+lbs (F-350 Powerstroke diesel + full load of wood in the bed) was now wedged against a wall of arbovita bushes in what amounted to a ditch. My General Grabber AT2s simply slicked over with mud and my open differentials spun hopelessly. Things had gotten bad.
We've only been in our house six months and don't know that many people in town, much less people with large trucks and tow straps. Therefore I did the only sensible thing-I put out a call for help on a local webforum! www.newjerseyhunter.com is another forum I spend a fair amount of time which, conveniently, is full of guys who live in rural areas of New Jersey and own trucks. Luckily one of the forum members who didn't live too far away showed up in less than an hour and yanked me out. The carnage? Multiple scratches along the passenger side of the truck, LOTS of ruts in the sideyard, three dislodged railroad ties (they lined the driveway I drove over to get to the side yard), a busted steering stabilizer (that's what dislodged the railroad ties-guess they're not made for that), and a moderately pissed off fiancee. The fiancee is getting better, but the steering stabilizer is still very broken:
