British Vehicle New Guinea

[Mike Cecil]

Lang,

I just had a look at the AEC Matador manual, and the winch overload mechanism is quite interesting. It works on the strain exerted on the winch cable rollers, rather than the winch itself, and as Maurice said, a rod mechanism connects the mechanism attached to the rollers to the engine injector pump, moving it to the engine stop position when the strain gets close to the maximum winch capacity.

There were two capacity winches: early model Matadors had a 3 ton (straight pull) winch, which was soon superseded by a 7 ton (straight pull) winch.

Mike

[Lang]

Phil

Using the logs as an "A" frame to get the truck out is standard practice and as you say very effective.

Most heavy vehicle courses in the Australian army included this trick. Cut two logs about 6" thick and 10' long and tie them strongly together with a tourniquet about a foot down from the top.

Lean them at about 30 degrees vertically on the back canvas bow or top of windshield or radiator for long nose vehicles(depending if you are pulling forward or back) spread them apart at the bottom- making the tie-rope go very tight and producing a small "V" above the rope joint.

Run the winch rope out up over the "V" and on to the anchor point. As you wind in the A-frame rises to vertical, lifting the vehicle to either pack under the wheels or continue pulling with the more advantageous upward rope angle until the frame falls over.

Winching sounds easy but a winch is not a fix-all solution as anchor point angles are seldom perfect, a badly bogged vehicle requires digging and slithering around in the mud to run ropes - if it is sitting on its belly or in deep water it may be impossible to run the rope to the front or back as required for centrally mounted winches.

The forces to drag a deeply bogged vehicle bodily out are tremendous and the creation of a decent anchor point such as burying a log in a trench takes a huge amount of work. Those dinky recovery anchors might look good in photos but unless you have perfect ground to put the pins in, Murphy's Law says there will rock, soft sand or just more of the swamp you are already stuck in. More than likely for serious stuff you will need supplementary anchors (two or more kits from other vehicles, parked vehicles, smaller nearby trees or rocks etc)

I have done years of off-road stuff with light 4x4's and had many boggings and recovery. Twice in my life I have been involved in mass boggings. Once when as a kid in an artillery regiment where it took 3 days to pull the GMC's and Studebakers with the guns out of a swamp and once where we had two 6x6 and one 4x4 International plus a farmer's huge 4x4 tractor rescue machine sunk for days in the Markham Valley in New Guinea with just swamp and no trees - they were down over the top of the wheels.

The point is, a winch is not a magic wand. Great for lightly stuck vehicles but for serious jobs a tool requiring intelligence, innovation and usually a lot of hard dirty work. And they are bloody dangerous!

Lang