Long story short, on a 'wheeling trip I ended up on the wrong side of a trench that was about 4 feet wide and 3+ feet deep - and needed to get across it to get back to civilization. It had been a long and frustrating day and was after dark, so I just decided that if I hit the trench with enough speed I'd sort of skip across the top of it without falling in - and yes, I realized that it would be really hard on the truck to do that. Anyway, it worked (more or less) though it was rough enough that it knocked out a taillight and threw everything around the cab...even my magnetic GPS antenna and phone antenna came off, which is the first time that'd ever happened without actually hitting something. I figure there's about a 50/50 chance I damaged the front axle, but I knew that risk when I did it.
Anyway, after the fact I realized that I should have disconnected the airbags...though luckily they didn't go off. That got me wondering - I often pull the fuse to disable the ABS when I'm out wheeling, but I don't normally pull the airbag fuse. Does anyone here normally do that? I'm thinking I might start in the future.
Also, through my misadventures that day I not only lost a taillight, I bent my brushguard, mangled a rear fender, and was having problems with the charging system (which was hopefully just snow on the belt). I also found the only mud around in mid-January (considering it's well below freezing) and the entire front of the truck is coated in mud. Does anyone have any tips for getting mud off a truck when it's only 10 or 20 degrees out? In the past I've gone to a carwash that had heated water, but the truck still freezes up afterwards and it seems like I spend the rest of the winter battling with it. I'm wondering if there's something I can spray it with to remove the mud, but that has a lower freezing point than water...maybe RV antifreeze? I've never put that on painted surfaces, though...it'd be a bummer if it took all the paint off.
I'd still have to heat it up beforehand, because frozen mud sticks to the truck like glue...I have to thaw it out before I can get it off. I used a spray bottle filled with the deicing windshield washer fluid to wash the mud off the side windows, but it'd be a little pricey to use that to wash the whole truck.
Normally I wouldn't care about the mud, but the problem is brushing new snow off a truck covered in frozen mud is sort of a pain...though I suppose that my truck has enough scratches that I wouldn't even notice new ones. My friends pointed out that I'm the only person who could find mud when the ground's frozen solid and the lakes have enough ice that people are driving on them.
My lessons for the week are to avoid mud in the middle of winter, and don't try to jump a PW over stuff unless you have a take-off ramp.
I suppose that with a tarp I should be able to do it relatively cleanly...and I certainly have plenty of those plastic tarps sitting around. I'd do it here, but even though I have 4 outbuildings none of them have room for the truck right now...at least not without having to move a *lot* of stuff around. I miss the 30x40 foot garage with 10-foot ceilings I had at my last place in lower Michigan...that made working on the truck a lot easier. For a quick fix I'll probably just pour hot water over the hood, because that's the biggest problem area for cleaning off snow...though I'll have to avoid getting any on the glass, since that can cause it to crack. Well, I should say it could make it crack worse - it's already cracked from when a tree jumped out at me on a narrow trail. Dang sneaky trees, always trying to dent my truck.