Bridge Rescue with Argo's

[Rock Doctor]

I think some of you guys will like this one. A few friends and I went out and rescued a bridge that was washed out in the high water this spring. All togeather we had 5 Argo's and 1 quad, as well as an 8,000lb truck winch to do the pulling and lifting. I have a 4,200lb winch on my machine, and was at some times using it with a snatchblock. Even managed to stall the winch a couple times......that's over 8,000lbs pulling on the front of my machine. Happy to say that I never broke my cable, and I never ripped the front of my Argo off either
The clip is a little on the long side, but this was an all day project, and I managed to edit it down to under 10 minutes
To keep the vid under 10 minutes I had to make it run in a bit of a fastforward rate, but I,m sure you wont mind it, you probably know how dead slow a winch can pull sometimes. The voices are kinda funny at this speed
Anyway, enjoy.
RD

[jpswift1]

Very cool! That is really neat that you actually have a nice little group of AATV's to get together. What kind of battery do you have in those Argos so that it doesnt drain down from using the winch so much? Also, when I winch, I like to let a couple rags dangle on the cable just in case it were to snap, it would just drop to the ground and not snap and hit you.

[whipper-ag]

Very impressive. Argos seem to be the workhorse of ATV's. How much weight was that bridge designed to hold? Good job!

[mightymaxIV]

What a work horse those machines are! Very interesting!

[carrant]

Rock,
That's an incredible display of what these machines can do!

What type of winch do you have on your Argo?

[liflod]

With all those Argos , who needs a bridge

[Rock Doctor]

The Argo batteries are just standard automotive batteries, although some of us have the Alternator kits in our Argo's to help with the charging.
Normally I will hang a jacket or sweater on the winch line to help prevent cable whip, but in this case, with so much reconnecting and repositioning in the water, I didn't bother. I do agree that I should have taken the precaution though. The young guy in the fancy lime green Argo did break his cable, but only had about 3 ft of line out......still made a hell of a BANG and got everyones attention all gathered up into one place
The bridge was not engineered, as far as I know, we just went to rescue it (easier than building a new one and hauling it in about 6 miles through Muskeg Country). I don't know what it would have for a load rateing, but it's built with Extra Heavy Wall Drilling Pipe, a little under 4" diameter, VERY HEAVY, and has four 5/8" support cables . I would not heasitate to cross it with anything that would fit between the cables.
I have a 4,200lb RULE winch with a 50ft spool, but the 3,300 lb Rules with the 100ft spool are more common on the Argo's. 2,500lb Warn winches are the most common for the Quads in this area.
These Rule winches will lock in place when power is cut off to them, even when a load is left hanging on them, but the Warn winches will "creap" when a load is left on and power is cut off.
RD

[Rock Doctor]

liflod;
With all those Argos , who needs a bridge

I still have a Quad stranded out there in the bush, I'm going to have to try to get that out one of these days
Not everybody has an Argo, and this is what that little creek looked like in July at the normal crossing:

LOL, you just try to run a Argo across here with a woman like my wife in the Argo, you would swear to GOD that you were trying to put a cat in the bathtub


Here is a clip of some of us crossing, after the water had come down to a more reasonable level (repost)

RD