Burt, The Old Man With friends Daryl and Donna

Here are some random Picture of wheeling and various short little trips I have taken with Burt, over the last few months. Looking forward to getting it out to moab in November.

 

Tested it but going up to Estes and Driving the Fall River Road to the top of the park. Did great even up to 11000 Feet.

 

Took Burt out on a few trips the last couple months I will make sure to post those here eventually.
But in bigger news.
33x10.5R15 Mickey Thompson MTZ are on the way.
Revolution 4.88 gears are on the way.
ARB Rear Air Locker is on the way.
In the mean time heres a very stuck Burt winching out of the snow drift.

 

What brand are your traction boards? I had a cheap set from Amazon that worked great for my little regular cab Tacoma but my 3/4 ton Chevy pickup demolished them.

 

I use Maxtrax, I have had those set of Purples for 5+ years now and used them probably close to 50-60 times. They work great and with the lifetime warranty it's worth the extra money.
I just got another set to have 4 after really needed them while fully stuck in a snow drift.

 

I did have to use all of the 150hp the truck has getting up the snow hills. 4th gear low was needed and a nice long run to get up some of the sections that were really rutted out by trucks on 35s and 37s

 

I also found out that Burt is the exact width of whatever they used to cut through the snow drifts, I know my Ranger likely wouldn't have fit when it came to going sound some of the curves that were cut in the drift.

I then pushed my luck and decided to drive on to of one of the drifts that hadn't been cut. The only tracks were from a vehicle on tracks, likely an argo buggy like atv.
I slowly made my way on to the drift thinking the moment I started to sink I would just gently back up, unfortunately it just broke completely through the drift and landed on the frame.

Using Maxtrax and the winch I was able to slowly make my way to that gate, where the snow has been blown off, turn the truck around. Ate some lunch, and walked the entire area between the road and where I was to find the shallowest area.

I also dropped the the Lowest pressure I have ever. About 3psi. Low enough my gauge didn't really want to read accurately. For reference my normal off road psi is around 7-8 and rocks around 6psi. 3 was totally fine for the fact I was in 1st low creeping as slow as possible, every time it started to sink at all we put the maxtrax up front and climbed back on top. Worked a treat and we got out.


I do have a couple other snow wheeling trips and photos I can post too, a lot of getting stuck and will as I have time.

 

Some people might have noticed the winch is actually different in Burt.
I was running a Warn 9.5 XP-S for a couple years. And that is in my opinion the best winch on the market for a midsized truck, SUV or Jeep. It's super reliable, crazy fast line speed under load, small footprint, and with the contactor controller it responses to inputs immediately.
However, it was overkill for Burt, and I have been building my Ranger up and it being a much heavier and needing a small footprint winch for the location it was going into it made more sense to pull it out of Burt and into the Ranger. But if I was taking the bumper off to get the winch out, I wasn't gonna put it back together without a winch. So I picked up a VR Evo 8s which is a great budget winch from Warn. And the 8000lbs rating was more than enough for Burt. After using it a few times I do wish I went to something with a bit faster line speed, with the manual trans it's hard to have as slow of control compared to the 9.5xp. Something more along the line of the Come Up DV 9s or even a Come up Seal Slim 9rs. Warn and Come up are the only winches we recommend at our shop as it's the ones we trust and use on our own trucks.
Anyways the 9.5 came out of the ARB.

And with some help from friends,
In went the VR Evo 8s

Like I said, it's a great winch and has worked the dozen or so times I have used it so far since August just slow compared to what I am used to.

The 9.5 has since found it's new home in the front of the Ranger in a hidden mount.

 

First Pieces showed up today. I have my Air locker Backorder with ARB so it wont be in until early april which will be the longest waiting point. Gears will likely be here later this week.

 

Those look sweet. What made you pick that tire?

 

It's one of the lighter 33x10.5s that I found. As well as I could have them right away instead of waiting for an odd size to finally come available through the companies we work with.
I also have always been interested in running an M/T, it's also been a tire that seems very popular in Aus but for some reason in the states mickey Thompson isn't very popular.

 

I'll be curious on how you like them.
The weight is definitely appealing. A 35 of that tire is only a pound heavier than my current 33s

 

With the 3rz I'm taking any opportunity to save a little bit of weight.

 

Same. I feel you there

 

I am tempted to put them on, but I really know its gonna be awful to drive without gears. Here at 5000 feet it would be bad and if I went anywhere into the mountains it would just be sad.

 

What factory gearing do you have?

 

Luckily the 4.10s which has helped make the truck driveable in the mountains here.

 

yea I can understand that the elevation is the biggest thing holding you back. 6k vs sea level is quite a difference in terms of performance.
I previously had the 4.30 factory gears and it wasn't terrible on 33's. But I can see your hesitation. Those duratrac's are pretty light from what I remember

 

Yup, the Duratracs were around 41lbs If I remember correctly these are 53lbs. Wheels will remain the same but its an extra 11 lbs from what it has and 1'' in leverage.

 

Going from a load C to a load E as well I assume?