Ooops, that's a bit deep.

[Sp!ke]

So a mate of mine borrowed the limo for the week for a family holiday and in return he lent me his Toyota Hilux pickup (you know, the one they couldn't kill on top gear). His parting words were to abuse it and take it off-road and stuff and have fun.

So today in my lunch break, a colleague and I thought we'd take it down to a local ford in Iver. Now this ford it turns out was rather a biggie, not just a little stream crossing the road but close on 100 yards across, of an unknown depth and flowing quite rapidly.

In THIS link its the second one down IVER.

In retrospect, I guess it has been raining quite a bit over the past couple of weeks but from the bank it didn't look too bad. I decided to go for it carefully with a view to reversing back out if it looked like it was going to get a bit hairy. Half way in, everything seemed to be going OK, 4wd, low ratio 5mph nice little bow wave and then the car stuttered to a halt - then utter silence as my colleague and I looked at each other in horror. The car refused to start after that so there was nothing to it but strip off into our undies and climb out into the water and see what could be done to remedy the situation. I opened the door of the cab and water flooded in drowning my clothes that I had just removed so as not to get them wet. I gingerly stepped in and found that certain sensitive parts of my anatomy were now under very cold water.. Oh dear oh dear, what are we going to do now .....

 

[Gollom]

Come on Sp!ke - don't leave us hanging! What happened next?

 

[GrahamC230K]

I can picture it..........and in your lunch break too. Fantastic.

 

[fnkhan68]

Well medically speaking you have done your sensitive areas a favour as their opitmum working temperature is a few degrees less then body temperature, i suggest now that you go forth and multiply, cant say the same about the pickup but what an exciting way to spend your lunch break. Have fun.

 

[Carrotchomper]

Did you read the review first?! that's bloody brilliant. Best not tell him about it whilst he still has possession of the limo!

 

[Kompressor_Dude]

Fantastic!!!

You probably arent the happiest bunny right now but you've made a few of us laugh at least!

What next? Phone in sick to work, report the Ford stolen........... oh, and find yourself a good alibi and a new limo!

 

[Sp!ke]

OK, so picture the scene, two blokes stripped to their undies trying to pick their way barefoot over a very rocky (and sharp) river bed, with the occasional expletive being uttered as bare feet landed on particularly sharp stones.

First off was look under the hood... Everything was wet.. Distributor/points, air intake... not good. My mate cranked the car over again as I was holding the plug lead, trying to see if there was a spark and Wallop it got me, 150k volts, straight through my left arm and out through my right leg into the water. Stop stop stop I shouted - he didn't hear me and continued cranking. After my electric shock treatment, We decided to see if we could push the pickup towards either bank. Much huffing and puffing and swearing about painful feet later, we gave up, it wouldn't budge it seems we might be in a spot of bother.

So I decided to look around inside the cab for some WD40 or anything else that might come in useful. Floating around the seat I spotted something that looked like rope. I gave it a tug and sure enough, we had some rope.. long too. Lets see if the rope will reach the bank we thought. So with one end tied to the Hilux, my mate started wading across to the bank behind us. He got to the other side and had about a foot and a half of rope to spare - Suddenly there was a glimmer of hope.

Standing on the far bank with rope in hand and wondering what to do next, we saw a van coming down the lane. Luckily the council driver took pity on us standing there in our undies and agreed to attempt to tow us out. 5 minutes later, we were back on terra firma and squeezing the worst of the water from our clothes that had by now been completely soaked inside the cab of the car. There's something really really unpleasant about putting on cold wet clothes but at least now we didn't look quite so silly and besides it reduced our fears of being accused of being indecently exposed or some other embarrassing offence.

Now to tackle the car... Looking at the problem, it was obvious what had happened. It looks like a viscous coupling affair on the fan, same as mercs - only the coupling had failed, and the fan was permanently on. In low ratio 4wd, high revs/low speed, the fan blades had acted like a propellor and basically drowned the engine, electrics and everything else under gallons of water. I took of the dizzy cap, wiped it dry as best as I could and did the same with the plug leads each in turn, cranked it over and she burbled back into life. Phew, what a relief.


Unfortunately it was only now that I remembered the camera so below is the only shot of the event with my mate (still in his undies) looking slightly more relaxed about the situation than he was 10 minutes earlier. Its difficult to judge from the picture but way way in the distance is a light strip on the opposing bank that we had been aiming for. We'd got about half way, certainly parallel with the big bush on the left.

I'm currently typing this at my desk, seated in my own little puddle of water with my clothes smelling of pondlife - ahh well, thats a lunch break I'll remember for many a year.

I've already decided to go back to the ford, better prepared, with a working fan and a plastic bag over the distrubutor, and a mate on standby with a long strong rope and a powerful car. That ford hasnt beaten me yet!

 

[R2e]

Great story! Something to tell your grandchildren in years to come

 

[Mozzer]

Priceless

 

[BTB 500]

Ah never realised it was a PETROL one - a diesel would have kept going!

 

[robert.saunders]

Excellent yarn, thanks! Wish my lunch breaks were as much fun

Rob

 

[Brian WH]

Great story! Something to tell your grandchildren in years to come

What Grandchildren, he has just frozen his tackle.

Great that you had the bottle to tell that story mate. Not sure I would have owned up to such a debacle. Take your swimming trunks next time and a snorkel.

 

[BonzoDog]

It's impressive that with such relatively little effort it started again.

 

[glojo]

Congratulation Sp!ke that's about the funniest message I've read on this forum. I was concerned the engine had sucked in water (doesn't compress very well ) but thank goodness nothing was damaged.

Good luck drying the dingly, dangly bits.

Regards
John

 

[Ted]

Ha Ha! made my day!

" my clothes smelling of pondlife "

No change there then!

 

[ADY1983]

Fantastic....

 

[Doodle]

At least you chose a cheap vehicle to do it in. We've recently had someone attempt our local ford in an X5...unsurprisingly they didn't make it and are now facing a fairly hefty repair bill

 

[DieselE]

Well medically speaking you have done your sensitive areas a favour as their opitmum working temperature is a few degrees less then body temperature, i suggest now that you go forth and multiply, cant say the same about the pickup but what an exciting way to spend your lunch break. Have fun.

I've highlighted in your quote what is probably a rough translation of what the Hilux's owner will tell Spike to do when he hears the tale.

 

[MBManInKen]

Brilliant! Priceless story!

 

[Dieselman]

Ah never realised it was a PETROL one - a diesel would have kept going!

Unless it sucked water into the intake, then it's definately bye bye engine.

Spike try it again but just go a little faster to push a bigger bow wave, even upto the top of the bonnet will be Ok. This will cause a depression behind the wave so the engine is in shallower water.

Still it sounds ike a good lunch time experiment.