Posted by Merrill Fish on May 06, 1999 at 20:29:34:
In Reply to: Just brought home *new* Power Wagon posted by Grant on May 05, 1999 at 18:06:35:
Congratulations on your new "baby", and welcome to the group. Be prepared to endure derisive laughter, comments about ugly trucks, and other things such as that. Keep this site in your bookmarks, so you can correspond and comiserate with some "sane" people once in a while. Now, to my soapbox.......
Fred has gotten you started well. Low is slow, and slow is absolutely best. However, first gear will also develop the most pulling power, and depending on the situation you may find yourself in, may quickly overload your equipment and rigging tackle to the point of failure. Take precautions to protect yourself when using the winch, such as the already mentioned coat, or more preferably, a heavy blanket or tarp draped over the winch cable between the truck and the load. Another tactic is to open the hood of the truck, so if something gets loose and starts flying around, it will have less chance of coming through the winshield at you; it will just wreck your truck, but that can be fixed. A really hurt person is unacceptable, but we will try to fix them, too, if we can. With the hood up the operator will need to hang out of the door to see clearly, but for my $$, that is clearly acceptable.
Sorry to sound so grave; I don't want to spoil anybody's enjoyment of these things. I survived a winchin gfailure with only a terrible headache, and some neck wreck, but the truck wasn't as fortunate; totaled the front sheet metal and cooling system all the way to the water pump.
Please, be careful.
M