Broken part - Ramsey Winch

Oh to my badluck with in a weeks time the winch cable protector fitment holder has broken. This had happen due to a friend of mine put the hook on the chrome plated rod and tighten the winch in.

There was a crack created on the holder and I removed it fully to fix it with the glue. Anyway this piece got nothing to do with the winching operations so I'm bit relaxed.

Anyway I has been successfully fixed with anabond and M-Seal combination. Since I have fixed it, no issues. However the lesson learned is that never give away recovery stuffs to untrained people for any reason.

Mahindra Classic - Ramsey Winch

A offroader without self recovery kit is dangerous as I really know what kind of help required when performing the offroad act. So I had a long wish to have a winch fitted in my jeep. But availability of good winch in India is a big issue. Forget about good one, we don't have have a bad one. The only option for us to import a winch from abroad, but it came with a big toll on import duty and shipping cost.

But I'm lucky my friend in bangalore got a lot containing few winches directly from Ramsey Winch company. I suppose they are the No.1 in the world and the only winch company that produces winches in USA only. As my friends got it directly from one of the distributor in USA, we got it in a good deal. Hmmm not to mention I have a sliece on that lot. Hence my visit to bangalore.

It was early saturyday morning around 4:00am I cranked the jeep for the recovery eqiupment purchase trip. After 6 and half hour long trip, I reached bangalore and got the winch which was safely kept in a gunny bag.
However the winch platform plate was not availed as a part of our deal, so we didn't had an option but to fabircate. The issue is that the total time to fabricate the plate may take more that 2 days but I wanted to entire thing to be completed on the same day. So my Jeeper friend Suresh came out with an option to take his mounting plate and fix the winch on my Jeep, so he can get his plate done in the due course as he lives in Bangalore itself. I must thank him a lot for the genrous help extended. He also helped the mechanics in removeing and fitting the platform on my jeep.
Here is the wire remote controller for the winch, this remote got two sides. The red one is to pull the cable in to the winch and the black side is to release the cable from the winch.
The winch also came with instuction booklet and couple of stickers and goodies.
After a day long opterations the crew in the bangalore Jeep garage got the winch mounted on my jeep.
The had couple of challenges mounting the platform and winch on my jeep as the Mahindra Classic came with fron tow hook and chrome bull bar which were not standard for the winch mouting plate.
So they did couple of alerations to the winch platform without disturbing the originality of my Jeep. Hurray after completing couple of stages the Ramsey REP 8000 was successfully fitted on my Mahindra Classic jeep.
Finally today morning I started my trip back to Chennai with newly fitted winch.
Now my jeep wears a great recovery tool that is also suggested by Mahindra the manufacturers of Mahindra Classic. Along with the winch I also got a Snatch block for the double power winching operation.
After fitting in Bangalore and today while entering to chennai the nature poured rain water excessively on my jeep saying monsoon is just getting closure for fruitful offroading days.
Now I need to upgrade my electical generator and battery in my Jeep to make the winching a pleasant one.

Mahindra Classic - Acting multipurpose

Acting multipurpose was no simple job, oh yeah the Classic often acts too much of purpose full vehicle. That too farmers like me use it to the core.
Let it be for the real and practical offroading at the farm or
carrying anythings for transport purpose, when the quantity increases there is trailer that always comes first hand for cross country transport.
Me and My Classic a bond that born for each other.

Mahindra CL340 DP - Classic - Service time

I completed a year and above offroading / driving my Classic after I completed the Mahindra Classic restoration project. What to look at now, first thing is the odo meter opps it showed 40,000 odd kms and it was 24360kms when I possessed the Jeep. Hurry more than 17,000 kms(including 1000kms of no speedo cable drive) long association with my Jeep has completed with in a year time.

I'm looking forward to grow this relationship as much as I can do.
Between the last oil service and now the jeep has completed 6,000kms and time to change engine oil, oil filter, diesel filter and fan belt. So rushed to the garage and got a request from my mechanic to service the radiator. Why to take risk added the request execution.

My jeep service is completed. The result of this service was evident in yesterday's night offroad which we did over the kelambakkam area of Chennai. We had bunch of cool offroader did a really satisfying offroad event as the dark added more fun to our OTR. Though the terrain was rough like the cactus plants seen out there the jeep engine revs felt smoother now.

As it is hot summer season the radiator service really helped me to attain cool engine and I added 4 liters of concentrated coolant to the radiator.

Mahindra Classic - Organic Farmer's Jeep

My new avatar is called Organic Former, Oh yeah! I'm a former now successfully done Rice, Sugar cane, Ground nut and now it is mango season. All were in the form of Organic forming.

To my assitance the Jeep really stood along as transporting medium. Last to last weekend I was carrying around 800kg of "Senthura" variety mango from the farm to Chennai's vegetable/fruit market.

I went to the farm and plucked the mangos by hand gathered them into the Jeep Trailer, it took me more than 6 hours with 2 peoples assistance to fill the trailer. By the time we finished the harvesting it was too dark to take pictures. Hence the pictures shows half filled trailer with organic mangos of my farm.


Though my farming was full with organic ideas implemented, the market seems to be looking forward to spoil the corps with various chemical processing. Especially the Calcium Carbide ripening .. which is too dangerous and toxic.


If anyone who reads this thread please understand not a single mango that are selling in Chennai's open market is organic and the ripening process is used with Calcium Carbide stones.

Calcium Carbide when mixed with water produces acetylene which is highly combustible substance and when mixed with oxygen can be used for welding and cutting metals.

Rather said that besides acetylene, ethylene which is also a plant hormone regulator is also produced and this characteristic helps in ripening of fruits. As the science says, Calcium Carbide is carsogenic in nature and it is not in purified form and contains traces of arsenic which too is toxic.

I can supply to those who can buy 50kg or more organic mangos, as the ripening process that I use is the good old home process using the dry paddy grass method.

Mahindra Classic – Jeep Thrills Anniversary

The whole weekend was Jeepers weekend for Indians as the Jeep Thrills (a Premier Indian Jeeper's Club) celebrates its 4th anniversary. Same is the reason for me to be part of the Jeeping activity last weekend.

It was started with workshop on Jeep assembling and parts, Patrick was demonstrating the internals of Jeep to the members of our club and lunch on Saturday, myself and my two pals geared up in my Explorer towards the get together organized in the evening for the Jeepers. We all traveled around 90kms to reach a rustic village, where the whole team planned to stay over night.
For me the first attraction was offroading with Anjan the founder of Jeep Thrills, we have been known to each other for a quite a long time but never did offroading together.
Secondly my two pals (Sharon, I should say a total energetic girl who cheered all of us for the Jeeping exercise and Dominic, a gentleman from Germany as a guest to the event with me.)
I think this is one of the first Jeep Thrills events where a foreigner participated. I hope he enjoyed the offroad event today as he also floated on the Palar river bed with my Explorer.
Thirdly the offroading event conducted on Sunday was on the Palar bed (a dry river that runs across Tamilnadu a state in India); This rever bed is like any other place and just safety for your jeep so you don't damage any parts. Othewise Palar or any other river or desert offroading is not so great to talk about. Since I had my friend from German wanted to play safe today ;-)
Now the actual story about the 4th Anniversary OTR, after our dinner on Saturday we crashed into the bed and the next morning was thrilling morning for me as for the above mentioned reasons. There were ten offroad capable vehicles (mostly jeeps) participated as mentioned below here:

• Mahindra Classic (1 no)
• Maruti Gypsy (1 no)
• Willys MB (1 no)
• Mahindra CJ340 (1 no)
• Toyota Landcruiser (1 no)
• Mahindra MM550 XD (1 no)
• Mahindra MM540 XD (1 no)
• Mahindra CJ500D (1 no)
• Mahindra MM540 DP (2 nos)

The City I stay in India is called Chennai and it has three climates: 1. Hot, 2. Hotter and 3. Hottest. This is the hottest season for Chennai, We really had toughest sand terrain as the river bed was dry, I guess sand offroading suppose to be the most stressful offroad terrain for the vehicle as the engine needs to be keep on pulling the vehicles.
I brought my tyre pressure to 20psi to float on the sand, this was suggested by Patrick. Those who have already familiar with this terrain didn’t wait for reducing their tyre pressure; almost all vehicles reduced the tyre pressue. Hot + tough with no air-conditioned drive made most of our bodied to get dehydrated. The event organizers did plan it well, we had good amount of water and butter milk on the jeeps so we were not down with dehydration issue.
We had powder like sand every where in the river bed which totally took our vehicle engines for a task.
The most difficult part was that we need to climb around 60 degree sand incline. I couldn’t cross this incline with my jeep I given up as my 4 attempts were failed already.
Here the challenges were: 1. Too steep, 2. this is sand incline, 3. the run on space for the jeeps to pickup the momentum is too less. Except the Gypsy, Land Cruiser and MM550 none of us could do it. The reason being the run on distance for Diesel engines was high but we had really little space on the bottom to pickup, but Gypsy being petrol vehicle it picked up really fast.
When we headed back, it was almost 1pm in the after noon and the offroad was really tough and everyone dipped their head into the cold water availed in the location where we stayed. Patrick's son Rufus (14yrs old) was also done a great offroad jeep driving today, Collective video graph of the Palar River bed Offroad event is uploaded to You Tube and same has been posted here:

The anniversary program was turned out good as I also met good number of jeepers and the veteran like Jeeper Patrick. All the participants (like a family) posed for a photo shot and ended the event with smile.

Treating the Trailer – Mahindra Classic

The long story short, My Explorer companion got facelift by adding color to it.

After long thinking, I decided to preserve the trailer’s body state by doing bit of body work. Initially I was not really sure if I wanted to do it now as the recession hit my work industry a lot. (Ok, who cares?)

It was on Saturday I started my trip to my home town, on the way I need to pickup my distant relative for farming ideas. Hence the one way travel extended to 350kms to my home town and 50kms for the farm.

It was fairly a decent drive and the trailer did well with the Jeep. Hmmm I noticed the brand new looked trailer's NDMS tyres started showing its face. Looks like the tyres were unused for a long time and the rubber in the tyres are dry leading the edges of the tyres get broken during the long drive.

On the way to my home town I visited East Cost Road for a minimum stretch and picked up my relative. My trailer visited the “Ayyanar Samy” temple to take pictures; since the ECR is full of beach sand I had engage 4WD in the explorer. Later in the same day I reached my home town with no big troubles and the dawn set to dark. The next day (Sunday), Me, Explorer and the Trailer started our work at 4:00AM in the early morning going towards my farm to pickup around 500kilogram of farm outputs (Rice, Black eyed bean, Chilli and Jack fruit). That was the first civilian load the trailer every carried in its life. I thought it will be a big stresses to the jeep, but my wonder no feeling of any addition.
I reached back home at my native to drop all the goods and took the trailer for the body workshop. This is the same place I did my jeep restoration. Since it was Sunday all of the laborers were on week off. I managed to knock the senior painter and called him to do my work, before that I also did bit of arc welding on the body to hide few small holes as the tinker said it need more time to do pucca job. So welding and metal pasting, though the surface inside the trailer was not made evenly with the way arc welding has done. But it solved my problem.We had tough time as it was sunday and no paint shop was open for us to buy paints. Though I decided to use low cost paint to the trailer, My painter managed knock a closed paint shop and got the paint items he required. Painter started his work by metal pasting followed by application of putty and inner painting (black) and outer painting (red). While the painter colored the trailer with red, the electrical power cut had happen and we had to abandon the job for about 2 hours. The trailer came out good but it was too late the job was completed around 6:30pm and I had to give 4 hours for the paint to dry.Since I went alone, 200kms of return trip without anyone as a passenger in the jeep during night trip with first time heavy towing experience was thrilling. Only I had bit of worry in my mind but the jeep or trailer didn’t show any symptom of the whole story and they sailed on the dark tarred road in the mid-night. First thing today I did was to click few pictures of the trailer for your eyes. The Jeep and Trailer looked as if they made for each other at my home in Chennai. Though the entire weekend was busy for three of us (Me, Jeep and Trailer) the complete plan was successful and we made the restoration of Trailer with time and cost constraints but relatively better job.

Registration number plate, electricals and T board are few missing items on the trailer and it will be carried over to forth coming weekends.

My Trailer restoration

The trailer is undergoing minor restoration, though there is not power plant for trailer the body needs some minimal attention. As the trailer was parked in the open yards in military space, I thought will do some sand blasting and minimal painting job.
But after sand blasting I found the trailer also needs some tinker job, hence sand blasted and primer applied but no painting. As the recession hit the world and the symptoms are started showing up with me, I have decided to do the painting and bit of word at later stage.

Here is the picture showing my Trailer after sand blasting and primer painting. Njoy!