• Help Support Hardline Crawlers :

What to do first...

KarlVP

Love that TOYOTA
Joined
Apr 2, 2006
Messages
15,214
Location
Crustys Brewery
If you had to start a rig from scratch, what would be the first thing you would do?

A little background to this questionarrie... I frequent some other boards, and am amazed at the amount of people that lock, lift, tire, OBA, etc, thier rigs before getting a winch.

I ask why?

Seriously, you could take a honda civic through the woods if it had a winch on it. You can pretty much take any 4x4 into the woods and if you get into trouble, get out your winch and do your thing.

The way I see it, if you get a lift and lockers and big tires, you can only manage to get into situations where you can get stuck in harder places to extricate yourself from. Places where winches are almost mandatory.

I do understand that there are people that modify thier vehicles to do what they want and never really push the limits of said rigs. They just like to go out and do some easy wheeling, but, why no winches?

I just don't understand, to me the wheeling in the PNW they are mandatory. No matter what class of wheeling you do. From stock, to buggy.

So, to sum it up, if you had to do it again, what would you do first.

:corn:
 
Winch and cage, fo sho. You're out of your mind to hit the trail alone without a winch, even an easy trail. Also true of a cage, but let's face it, a guy with half a brain can go all year without needing a cage, but maybe all week without needing a winch, especially with no lockers.

Everything else is luxury. Next time, I'd do both axles and drivetrain upgrades in one build, minimum.
 
CrustyJeep said:
Winch and cage, fo sho. You're out of your mind to hit the trail alone without a winch, even an easy trail. Also true of a cage, but let's face it, a guy with half a brain can go all year without needing a cage, but maybe all week without needing a winch, especially with no lockers.

Everything else is luxury. Next time, I'd do both axles and drivetrain upgrades in one build, minimum.

I'am still trying to figure out where to mount a winch on my bike. I got the bell hooked up really nice though. :haha:


yeah, Karl........ gotta agree...... should be in this order;

CAGE
WINCH
UPGRADES

Bankruptcy

starty over & do it again...... :D
 
Rock_Crusher said:
I'am still trying to figure out where to mount a winch on my bike. I got the bell hooked up really nice though. :haha:
For a bike, YOU are the wench I mean winch :flipoff:
 
Some of it is a learning curve, some of it is stupidity.

I admit I did just the same you are talking about, but I was somewhat new and didn't really know, I wheeled years without a winch. Two weeks after I installed a winch I flopped my rig.

But now, things are different. I know how important a winch is, that is why when me and friends spend half the night winching through the snow and my winch started not to work right, I didn't hesitate to spend a grand on a new winch and now I also have spare winches.

As far as the cage I can't say why I spend all that time wheeling and never had anything but a rollbar, I don't know. I think differently about it now, you should see the cage I got planned for my new project.

Some of it is , it is hard to be "COOL" with a stock rig and winch on the front.

There is so many tight:kissmyass:'s out there that they don't thank they need to spend that kind of money of safety equipment
 
I think a lot depends on where you are going to rude and how. would start with a set of used tires and wider wheels 31s you can find in many case for around 200.00
a good at least a 8000 lb winch
extra blue steel rope or =
tow strapes to warp around trees or use tie off too other things
good shovel
high lift jack
roll bar
lead the rear axle [better then welding]
lift kit
bigger tires better gears
spool rear lock
front hydro steer
rear winch and the list grows the more you get into sport the more you want or need
all depends on what you are going to do
diffrent parts of the sport place different demands on your rig face it also depends if you have to use the rigs as a daliy driver too


as to the comment about honda off road
http://www.rhino-offroad.com/index.cgi
 
Cage
Winch
Body Saw
Tires
Lockers

Then throw it all away and start over with bigger parts

Rinse

Repeat.
 
Start with learning to drive your rig. Not to insult anyone, but if you go out with a decent set of tires and get some serious seat time you'll be ahead of the game and know your rig good enough to know the answer to the "what next" question for your situation.
If you've got some money to spend on your rig and don't know what to get, spend it on gasoline and go wheelin.
 
I agree with Jim...Having the most well built and armored vehicle dont do any good if you dont know how to drive it.

as for me, I did a lift first, and will be caging it up this weekend, and currently shopping for a winch.
 
Dear karlVP;
It mostly depends on the ride as what I do first. With my YJ, the cage was one of the first things I installed. With the FJ-40 it was the winch. I've never used a cage with a hardtopped FJ-40 before because it's really not necessary. I've owned a soft topped FJ-40 which was fully caged though. I like to go with a winch first and all of the periphial recovery tools, mud chains and straps, Hi-Lift, etc. For a TAD, again it all depends on the rig. On my YJ I have Detroit Electracs, on the FJ-40 I'll install LSDs front and rear. I also like to have at least one good pair of running lights too and a pair of fogs also.
Your friend;
LAMAR
 
hi-lift, saw, and a shovel have served me well the past 7 years of wheeling in the PNW. I've had a winch now for 2 years gathering dust in the garage. I do want to get it mounted one of these days, but it's not a burning priority.

in the heep, i have yet to get stuck in a position where i didn't need the hi-lift to get off the shovel before a winch would have done any good. at least not if i didn't want to rip the damned drivetrain out from under the rig.
in one recovery, i had to hi-lift up enough to put a small sheet of plywood under the offending rock catcher to use as a skid. after that, we were able to winch forward.

with the rover, it never really got stuck, per se - it would just kind of lose traction. the underbelly was slippery enough that a highlift on the front was usually all it needed to back off a snow bank or deep mud.

some of you clowns get confused and want to pretend that there's some kind of special olympics involved with going wheeling. that's fine. darwin will catch up to your unprepared asses if you're not careful.

in the meantime, it'd be nice to see people forget about overbuilding their rigs so damned much and focus for once on where they're at, and how they got there.

using your HEAD counts for a helluva lot more than having a winch.

my .02

-curmudgeon on 31's
 
First would be cage or full tuber, good suspention seats and then harnesses after that every thing else

O ya next time heat will be rite after safety not last
 
Last edited:
Top