Thread: how to make cheapy Sand tracks/ladders/mats/whatevers.....(offsite image warnings)

Sewing it up.....

ok your going to need 3 7 foot lenghts of rope and 1 10foot length

lay your pads out as your going to sew them up, turn them all over and then start out with a loop around one side of one pad.

then pass it under the pads and bring it back through the loop

then make a halfhitch heading towards the center of the crate


snig it down and keep going

once you get to the end, add a halfhitch around the outside edge of a panel and head back


you'll notice that all the crossovers of the rope lay in the vally made by the overlap of the 2 pads. thats important for longevity of the rope when you use it.
with the last panel start out the same way but just do one halfhitch in every hole in the bottom of the milk crate
(you can see in the last image that bottom part of the crate has a lot more loops in it)


a couple of things to note there are some little attention to detail things that can make a lot if difference to the durability of this thing

1. the stronger part of your side pads needs to be on top and at the front of the layout when its on the ground as your going to use it. The wheel will make short work of the skinny side if its on top.
2. you should always start out with the base closest to the tyre.
3. the knots in the rope and any place the rope crosses itself should be in the protected area of the overlap.
4. be sure before you try to use it that your tyre pressures are down.
5. use rope not wire (unless thats all you have) as wire can damage the tyre or your hand
6. If your going to add a drag up rope (to make it easy to recover) make them short loops laced through the handles of the sides and make sure that you lay them to the outside of the track (this means you have to make a left hand and right hand track) as the rope can snag on the underside of the vehicle and tangle the track up.
7. you can increase the effective ness of these by adding stiffening ropes to the underside of the pads that try to turn the track into an arch when it sits naturally on the ground.
8. it gets better if you lay one track on top of the other with the "hinges" offset into the middle of the adjacent pad and zip tie the lot together (or rope it) with the grippy sides facing out.
9. some milk crates float... dont use these the plastic is fairly soft.
10. If you get white parts in the plastic when youve used them then that part is damaged and might break later leaving a sharp edge for you to cut your hands on.

Best of luck.....

---edit----

looking at the last pic.. IF you were to add a rope to the handle side of this on it would be a left side track if you were recovering forwards and a right side if recovering backwards... IF you plan on making a left and right handed set of these then handedness will be decided when you cut them up... with the crate on its side and the bottom furthest from you If you cut to the right hand side of the side panels for the initial cut (one cut per side) then you are making a left side track (the same as what Ive done) If you cut to the left hand side of the crate then you will be making a right hand site track.

Simple, cheap, effective.

Good idea Dave. I think I'll make me some of those too.

I just happen to live half way up a bloody great big sand hill.
I'm in that wait stage of "Hurry up and wait", with my Landy.

That will keep me off the street, and out of strife, for a couple of hours.


Thank's mate.

Great work Dave and quicky done too

But you could of sanded back the rough edges a bit couldn't you????

i like your solar powered rock

the solar powered rock is one of those things that we got off of the cheapy damaged items bin at kmart....

theres at least 10 other items in the various pics that fit into the catagory of got it for next to nothing from the broken cart and it works fine or needed about 30 seconds worth of repairs.

so when are you going to get bogged to test them out and let us know how they worked?

mate as i said this morn "your a genious" im makeing some tomorrow first thing

if anyone one wants milk crates l know where to get s%^$ loads



cheers

those crates come from places like

• garage sales, they come with other jun.. umm stuff we want to buy in them
• auctions for the same reason
• when we go camping if we find em we keep em
• side of the road
• tips

bread crates also work quite well same concept but you need to cut the thing in half lenghtways they are a bit harder to stow and turn out a bit longer than those ones.

Stowing them depends on how you tie them up. The half hitching I used in this one gives the best result for debogging but is the hardest to store as its not overly flexable, It also uses close to the least amount of rope, which was important in this case as I only had about 20 feet spare on the roll (the roll in pic #3 was full before xmas)

If Im carrying them and I dont have the trailer (ie traveling from a campsite to an offroad run) then they are either under the bed in the back, down beside the bed between the fridge and the bedframe or laid out on the floor of the back seat. If im offroad then they get stowed outside on the SIII i had some elasticated straps that would let them sit on the roof (the only thing I ever roof mounted) or theyd go behind the barwork.

If you make up a pair of simple hooks that are sort of like a rounded off W you can hang 2 from the roo bar and with a pair of occy straps loop 2 more together and hang them from the spare. Ive only got the one on hand but Im sure you can work out how to do it from the pics.


no, it doesnt overly effect engine cooling, but youd want to watch the gauge a bit closer if you were having a hard time of it.

occystrap the second one to the bottom and your set.



by changing the sewing of them from the halfhitches to a figure 8 (guessing you'll want pics of that too huh?)they become much more foldable and a pair will fold up into a box about the same size as a milk crate but Ive found that they are a fair bit harder to pull up if your using them in mud, but they work really well in sand and become some 6-8 inches longer than the one that IVe shown.

when you pull these ones out of the mud Ive found that trying to pull them back over themselves starting at the end that you put closest to the tyre when you were stuck works best.

(make a3-4 foot long metal hook with a t handle like a butchers meat hook for even easier retraction)