Wire rope gripper?

[FireFighterZero]

Interestingly enough....I once used a D8 and an excavator to get a D7 unstuck from a spring.

We didn't use any gay mats or any fancy schit.

We use diesel fuel and cable.

...and momentum.

 

[flushcut]

Yes but did you knowingly drive into the spring? Mats are for going into areas that you know you will get stuck in if you don't use gay mats. Gay mat lives matter #

 

[pantheraba]

I don't even have any gay mats yet but I'm already in love with them. Just the idea of something like that that is so strong and can support and hold me gives me the warm fuzzies.

 

[treesmith]

Hopefully you won’t ever get it THIS stuck, Gary!

 

[Tree09]

I'm sorry, you have to be an idiot to get that stuck.

 

[treesmith]

But it wasn't that stuck....til it was!

 

[pantheraba]

I have seen that one and lots of others

That's what has me skeered....lol. I do not want to be "that guy."

 

[lxskllr]

Get that crane you got working, and you can just pluck it out vertically ;^)

 

[treesmith]

But Gary...you’ll ride to YouTube fame! “That Guy”!

 

[lxskllr]

"Stay tuned while Georgiaman makes a valiant attempt at Floridaman's record. Will he succeed? Georgiaman's a newcomer, so it'll be hard competing against Floridman's experience, but it's shaping up to being a close race!"

 

[WoodCutr]

I'm sorry, you have to be an idiot to get that stuck.

park the machine for the weekend, get a little rain with nobody noticing, and it sinks

OR the solid "crust layer" breaks away, you will sink a machine before you ever know it happened, there is no idiot involved at that point

 

[Al Smith]

I think in my life time I've stuck nearly anything that can be stuck .I've always got unstuck though one way or another .I will say on anything with tracks they will go though anything with the tracks above the mud .Below not so much .If you get in that situation rocking back and forth will only sink it deeper which applies to rubber tired also .
It might take a few hours to jamb ties, logs whatever to raise up but that's a better option than spending days in recovery efforts .BTW I hate mud .

 

[pantheraba]

And Ohio has some of the worst mud I have ever been in. We used to have martial arts camps at Strouds Run in Athens, Ohio...there was a particularly evil sticky mud that appeared when it rained there...different from our GA mud.

 

[Tree09]

park the machine for the weekend, get a little rain with nobody noticing, and it sinks

OR the solid "crust layer" breaks away, you will sink a machine before you ever know it happened, there is no idiot involved at that point

You should be able to tell if there's a crust by testing with your bucket before you crawl out there, and you don't park a machine in a pit overnight, especially with rain on the way. Basic common sense, I'm sorry. I've been around excavators a ton, and I've never seen one stuck. I've seen them tipped over, which is a while nother can of worms, but never stuck.

 

[WoodCutr]

You should be able to tell if there's a crust by testing with your bucket before you crawl out there, and you don't park a machine in a pit overnight, especially with rain on the way. Basic common sense, I'm sorry. I've been around excavators a ton, and I've never seen one stuck. I've seen them tipped over, which is a while nother can of worms, but never stuck.

going off my brother and dad, who are equipment operators, and damn good ones at that, shit happens

 

[Al Smith]

Old story ,long time ago . Spring time. I had a D4 in the bottom of an 8 foot deep trench .Damned old antique chewed up the Formica cam gear and it died in the hole .Then came the monsoons ,up to the radiator in water but I put a pump on it and saved it .The only way to walk it out was with the pony engine that refused to start .After about three days of tinkering I had it out and then spent three weeks finding another cam gear from a later model that was all steel .BTW although it's a small machine there is not a human being alive that could lift the radiator on one. I was over 220 pounds and 33 years old and I certainly could not .BTW that is a "war years " machine cast iron frame and galvanized steel radiator core which surprisingly does not leak .

 

[WoodCutr]

.BTW that is a "war years " machine cast iron frame and galvanized steel radiator core which surprisingly does not leak .

thats a keeper in my book

 

[lumberjack]

I’ve never owned mats, but I’ve used logs to walk through and work in some fairly impossible areas.

 

[pantheraba]

Cool, Carl!! That's one of the best examples of using logs I have seen on the webs...thanks for posting.

 

[Marc-Antoine]

park the machine for the weekend, get a little rain with nobody noticing, and it sinks

OR the solid "crust layer" breaks away, you will sink a machine before you ever know it happened, there is no idiot involved at that point

Maybe he could have sled off the mats, just behind him. He was near the bank, so the far side of the mats could be lower (or became lower, by sinking more under the weigh), giving a slippery slope. Then sliding over the edge, agravating the mat's slope and dumping himself in the deep mud.

 

[WoodCutr]

Maybe he could have sled off the mats, just behind him. He was near the bank, so the far side of the mats could be lower (or became lower, by sinking more under the weigh), giving a slippery slope. Then sliding over the edge, agravating the mat's slope and dumping himself in the deep mud.

very possible, especially if sliding sideways, steel tracks have almost no traction sideways

 

[Burnham]

Ain't that the truth .

I recall watching a Komatsu 270 slide, slowly, down a very gently inclined two lane asphalted Forest Service road coated with thin black ice. Slid for at least 150 feet. Every movement the op made to swing the arm and bucket into a place to negate the slide, just accelerated the speed a bit.

Slow motion crash into some timber on the edge of the road, eventually. No damage beyond paint scrapes.

But that was a very forgiving piece of landscape. If it had happened even a quarter mile farther west, instead of under 5 percent slopes off the side of the nearly flat roadbed, it was over 50 percent. To the east, even steeper; more like 80 percent.

Could have been ugly.

 

[Tree09]

If so, he should have benched it level so that wouldn't happen. That's the whole point of the machine in the first place. Anytime you aren't level you can't dig level, and are making the machine work far harder trying to fight gravity with the slewing bearing. They will operate on about any slope, but you are just tearing up shit for no reason. Whenever you are operating equipment, of any kind, you need to prepare the working surface.

You see the guys that really know what they're doing, they will actually climb up and intentionally work on top of the spoil pile when they're loading certain trucks, feeding rock crushers, setting equipment and pipe, etc. so that they are sitting up high enough to see better and have better and higher reach. If you are trying to grade, the first thing you ever do is find or make a level pad to work on, so everything you do is level too. With the dozer blade, you also need to be using that as a stabilizer when doing almost anything.

Just noticed b's post, i was talking about earlier about it tipping on a slope. A road is different, because you can't change it.

 

[Burnham]

As you say, Kyle. And even in that scenario, a talented, cool headed operator with a smooth touch on the joysticks and pedals could have salvaged things earlier, I believe.

Panic is a disease there is no vaccine for...you only escape it's ravages if you can control your emotions and focus on what has to be done right now...and that is all on each of us to handle by ourselves.

 

[Tree09]

Exactly. Much like climbing, driving, or anything else, you always have to be looking and thinking ahead, always thinking what can possibly go wrong.