bungee
Member Since: 17 Aug 2007
Location: a lovely place
Posts: 16
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borrowed from a website i browse
Posted - 26 January 2008 : 10:23:33
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It all started with a call from Green Flag, they stated that they had a client with a two week old RangeRover, severly damaged abandoned high in the cheviot hills. The owner had been testing out his new £60,000 toy and had driven over 3 miles from where the nearest road stopped, deep into and up onto the cheviot’s. The traction control etc was obviously working very well because where he had gotten to with dual purpose tyres was truly incredible. However when it went wrong, it went wrong in style. It appears that as he approached the brow of a ridge he stalled the thing, he applied the brakes, every thing locked and it slid of in reverse down the slope until it impacted with a dry stone dyke sheep pen, ripping the side out bending the rear suspension and wheel and setting of several air bags. He was lucky if the pen had not stopped him he would have went over an edge and dropped over a fifty foot plus cliff. Believe me Coronation Street didn’t have a look in.
It took the mountain rescue aided by the air sea rescue helicopter to recover him, as he had injured his back and they could not get any of there vehicles or heavier equipment up to him.
And Green Flag wanted me to recover this, it was well out of my area and had been declined by a good few operators, who are far better equiped than I, before they contacted me. Well obviously I said yes (Ask BBY I just cant say no when given a good going challenge)
Next day we drove to the farm yard at the end of the road, and spoke to the farmer, I was kind of hoping he might offer to help for cash. He was having none of it and replied that if the owner was silly enough to drive it in there it could stay. He then looked at our rather limited equipment and said you have no chance with that dinky toy son! But be my guest if you want to try. We left our 11T Daf in the farm yard and picked our way carefully into the hills with my Landcruiser, all three dif locks were in and it wears a good set of specialist MT tyres and it still seriously struggled, these new RangeRovers must be good. Eventually after a couple of aborted attempts some winching and numerous changes of route we got to the casualty vehicle.
First we winched it clear of the remains of the sheep pen then assembled and fitted dollies front and rear and winched it down the steepest bits on front of us then turned it around and towed it back on the dollies to the yard before loading it on the Daf. The whole thing took around 6hrs of seriously hard graft including use of several turfer type hand winches and ground anchors pulley blocks, conetic ropes sand ladders, small air bag jacks etc. At times we would have the Landcruiser lowering the casulity down on front of it and still need the turfer to pull it down through the mud despite the slopes being extreamly steep.
Not the kind of thing you would want to do every day but well worth it booth for the bill with all the extra zero's and to see the farmers face when I towed it through his farm. Sorry no pixs but maybee next time
Use this thread to tell us about your most challenging job of 2007 and what special equipment or techniques you had to employ, to get it done. Lets not just leave it all to the heavy brigade to post on there achievements, lets here from the light side too, sometimes its not the job its self thats the challenge its achieving it safely, with limited avialable resources thats the real chalenge.
Work Smarter, Not Harder.
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Sat Jan 26 2008 9:57pm
