Hi like to introduce myself, I'm chris and on the 11/01/07, i helped three lots of people out with my 87 4runner. Girl and i had decided a nice little bbq lunch up at
fingal bay, port stephans area of nsw, we accessed
the beach via the lavis lane entry, fun to exprienced people, misfortune to the unwary! At the metro servo setup my baby, tyres:
check 10psi, hubs:
check, locked and cocked, Driving slowly down to dirt before hitting beach, i had a thought, lets see how far the 4runner will go before i have to change into 4wd,
well got onto soft stuff in 2wd and going good started bogging down about 300m in and changed on the fly, ie slow almost stopped. cruising along in 2nd gear and came upon a ford territory bellied, pulled up and asked the passenger if wanted a snatch, passenger said, "no hubby up track getting friends to tow them out", "so okies have a good day", get a 100metres up track sure enough there's a mitsubishi pajero bellied as
well, ok pull up and offer assistance, yes, we need assistance, so out with the snatch, now snatching is an art to be very careful, oops i stuffed that up , looped the hooks on the snatch afetr turning around setup my travel path by going forward about 30 feet, and reversing on that path, hooked the snatch over towball after
clearing a path for the wheels to go under pajero, and letting tyres down to 15 psi , then proceeded to snatch then out,
well that went easy for my first snatch, got him out easy with a gentle pull. Now the next one we cleared the sand and forgot to let down the tyres , but ended up pulling him all the way back to the harder stuff in reverse, the was a gentle pull as
well. After chattin to them a bit they were really nice people still learning there vehicles, passed on some knowledge that i leraned from reading this
forum, and practical watching my brother in law and sister do snatchs. They asked if i want anything for it and i said NO, but if they can help someone please help them as a curtisee for others. The third snatch was fun, no hooks up front for nissan pathfinder/patrol, so had to go under vehicle to attcah the snatch to crossmember, wrapped an old shirt around crossmember so as not to do any damage to strap,
well he had a buggy on a trailer, hadnt let down his tyres or the trailers, so first things first, 10 - 15 psi on the tyres, all round, atach snatch strap set up runway first then start motors an snatch ,
well trying to do this up a slight sand
hill was fun, i hind site we should have taken buggy of trailer and sntached him out and let the buggy drive out, and finally got to
fingal bay and no bbq's so went back to the next bay and found one and a park right across the street. Enjoyed bbq.
Lessons learned that day,
1, buy two rated shackles,
2, bring shovel,
3, bring soap, extra towel and another shirt (whites not good doing snatch work in)
4, get solid mounting points on front and rear of 4 runner
Anything else i should've done can anyone reckonmend any???
Thank you for reading this long/ shortened version.
Kind regards
Chris and Teena