For future reference, Honda Ridgelines have a rear locker-esque type function called "VTM Lock". You have to put the shifter in 1st gear and push the VTM lock button on the dash. Also, riding the brake a little will transfer traction on the front-end. I've had my Ridgeline do things it should absolutely NOT be able to do. 😅
As a ridgeline owner as well, I was about to say the same of vtm-4 lock. Also, I hear so much hate on these models. I get it, they aren’t amazing at any one aspect, but man they do pretty good at a lot of things. True jack of all trades vehicle.
Matt, you are so good for Peanut and all the young folks you mentor on the channel. As a Dad myself, I'm in awe of how you handle all that. Props to you buddy!
Oh man, i had to guide a friend to get her car down from Tahoe because of a bad radiator cap. Told them to get all the water they could carry as they had to make it back to the Bay Area that night. Saved their Toyota Matrix. Fortune would have it I taught her how to bleed her system the month before. Old coolant stained the bottle and everything, did a whole flush. They got a new radiator at a shop as it was just temporarily fixed with some jb weld before. The shop had given them a bad cap and it popped in the mountains.
Coolant will boil inside the engine, that water vapor will not remove heat. Rad cap keeps coolant under pressure, raising the boiling point. Will get ya home in cool weather, thermostat removed. With t-stat in the desert, no. You'll overheat it over and over.
A girl showed me a trick that she learned from her dad. When you have a pin hole leak in the cooling system add about a half of tablespoon of table pepper. It doesn't break down and will clot small leaks in a emergency. So when you get some fast food from a drive thru save the pepper packs for the glove box.
Sometimes by accident one gets great timing. Just as Matt said “We are going to let this cool down” RU-vid served me an ad set in a snow and ice covered landscape.
This is such a great channel. I've been following for years. It's been a little hard at times to see some of the great people and personalities come and go, but just stick to your core, as you are doing, and it will continue being great. Fascinating and difficult. Rescues, and hearts and minds and personality. And I really love that it's always clean and never dirty or profane. I noticed that from the very start. Good going, people..❤
I see a lot of comments saying leave the cap off. You ever rev your engine with the cap off? You’ll loose way more water that way then with a pin leak.
@@blythkd9017the cap being installed is what raises the boiling point of the coolant. Leaving it loose, it will boil sooner. If possible (and I know some vehicles are harder to access than others) you'd be better off leaving the cap tight and removing the thermostat
@@dhag72 Yeah I get that. But in the past mostly, when we had a leak but needed to limp somewhere for repairs, we would leave the cap loose to relieve pressure to slow the leak and just try not to work the engine hard enough to need the extra cooling capacity that increased pressure in the system would provide. It's simply a limping technique.
Matt with that new shop, have a bay only for routine maintenance on all recovery vehicles! Make someone director of maintenance to ensure all vehicles get inspected weekly!
Five gallons water in desert would be good. Funnel usage would be good. New water hose would be good. This video IS good. Hope you had a great pioneer day. guys. Thanks.
Hey we saw Max briefly in the shop yard. Haven’t seen “Bad Max” since he ran away and got lost that time. Hope you’ll forgive him and take him out on a rescue again sometime. Lady too. 🙋♂️👏👏🇬🇧
Matt, most Pirates of Sand Hollow use parrots, I see Peanut identifys as a parrot now. And the Bannana is becoming HOLY! Thanks to you and the cast for the great videos!
Try to get a small interview with customer. Ask where they were headed. And how hard was it to find help out of there. I bet we are missing a lot of cool stories
Ive had good luck running the radiator without the cap when you have a coolant leak like that hose or even a split in the tanks. No pressure means no leak. Not sure how well that would go in the hot desert working hard on a recovery though.
I am watching a video where some kid says "we pulled that kid out over there!" Problem is that kid probably knows more about towing and off-roading then I ever will. This channel has taught me I shouldn't take any of my stock vehicles into sand :p Among other things.
Ok so the Banana got ac that's awesome she struggled some getting the Honda out but got it out and hopefully the radiator leak is fixed. Moorvair just doing it's thing with no problems. What a beast!
13:43 Rhett was notably absent from the whole video, until he shows up with the best line ever: "You look like a five-year-old trying to pour milk." 😂😂😂
It's a good idea to always bring another extra hose clamp and some extra rubber tubing or gasket material. It doesn't even need to be tubing really, just a thin piece of rubber will work. But pieces of thin walled tubing are good because they are already sort of round. You cut off a patch piece, put it over the puncture or laceration, and clamp down on it. The roundness of the clamp prevents it from kinking and the resistance of the tubing being patched provides just enough pressure to hold all or most of the coolant from spewing out. It's not permanent, but it's a great get you back to town patch that is super small to just have in the tool box along with some gasket material or scrap tubing. if course tubing extenders and extra tubing are even better, but then you are talking about bringing a bunch of spare parts with you, and that ideology can end with you hauling around a bunch of crap you don't need 99% of the time. A Hose clamp tho, I mean, you can put that in a shirt pocket. Small and light. You can even put some spares right on your existing tubing, just don't tighten them up so they are easy to take off and use.
I've driven school bus in 100*+F . All the students off returning from an afternoon run. The temp climbed too high. I turned the heater on, fan on high, and ran it. In minutes, the temperature was back down,, but I had to keep things this way to keep the temperature down while getting back to the bus yard. (Of course I radioed in to base to the mechanics). Valuable lesson to learn - when driving in hot conditions. I've had to use this truck on personal vehicles a couple of times. Usually, the air filter needed cleaned / replaced.
Well Matt, you know they say you learn something new every day I never ever thought of that wire in the lower rad hose to poke a hole like that I’ll remember that and if it comes down to it, I’ll take a pair of pliers in the real lately bend that end over so that way, I can’t poke a hole Good job man this is six in a row Jim from Kennerdell PA you guys run a good organization out there and again probably for the hundredth time. I absolutely love your dog such a wonderful, wonderful pet.
Until Matt found the stray reinforcement wire, I was beginning to think that you might have been visited by a migrating diamond-billed rock pecker from Moab.
After a Marmot had its way with my Jeep's radiator hose while fishing a high mountain lake my Duct Tape worked totally to get back out without any more leakage. Always carry duct tape.
I would love to share my nightmare hose pinhole story. It's a very short one so I won't hold you up. Several years ago it happened and all I could see was water under a hose behind the water pump on my 1993 Land Rover Discovery. I absolutely could not ever see a leak but after a week or so, I saw that extremely narrow spurt of coolant. It's a small moulded hose so changing it was a laugh. I couldn't even nearly get a hand on it so I had to push it on with screwdrivers. Patience is sometimes one of the most useful tools in your toolbox!!
Field fix I’ve used is good old duct tape. Wrap the leaky hose and all the gum and the fiber makeup of the tape will get you a surprisingly long way. Field tested. 👍🏻
You can tell you have loaded Dirt bike's a few times . At the Dunes I was hot and tired and thought I would just ride my 500 up the ramp . Having a lifted truck it was a little bit of a chore to get it in the bed . It didn't go well. The paddle tire pulled the ramp off and I cased it on the tail gate the bike landed on top of me and my nephew stood there laughing. Good times ✓
Those 1st gen ridgelines have what basically amounts to a rear locker, as long as the traction control is off and the gear selector is in 1st or 2nd gear. Could’ve helped a little bit.
Matt! At least 10 other people agree with me that this is the best channel on RU-vid! Sincerely mean that. You, then Robby Layton Nation! You Utah guys are the best.
You should bring flex seal/flex tape with you for moments like that coolant leak. I had a 2 inch hair line crack in the plastic radiator end caps that I put flex tape on until I could buy a new radiator. It held up good for 2 weeks with no signs of the crack growing of the tape faltering
wrong tires, bad sand. Old gen 1 that needed a lift. And just because it may have AWD it wont go everywhere. Same for any other stock truck without the goods. It's just like a car.
I've used Vetrap to do bush fixes on hoses before works pretty well to get out of a pinch. I keep it in my First Aid kit, its the best I found for finger cuts and is good for cuts on arms and legs.
Please change those worm clamps to spring ones ASAP. They're for in a pinch not for permanent use. (For anything that changes size with temp like a coolant system)
I'm going to make the most manly admission in all of manhood time. I was once rescued by a "4wd" honda Ridgeline. I had sunk my 2wd chevy c-1500 in baby powder sand at a beach in south Texas. That little honda just tugged it right out.
With that wire reinforced radiator hose, they use that on the suction side to stop the hose collapsing in on itself under suction vacuum & restricting the flow of water through the radiator & water pump. You need to put a new wire reinforced radiator hose back on there or risk cooking the engine.
The return side of the coolant system has to have some sort of reinforcement to keep the hose from collapsing under, suction. What probably happened is the inner liner was somehow compromised, the steel wire rusted through and then abraded through the outer portion. You're lucky it was a small hole and not a catastrophic failure.
There's a self sealing heat shrink tube we use to cover direct burial cables or marine cables. Those should come in pretty handy for sealing pipes n hoses. Make you a small kit out of those and keep a torch handy. It can even fix air hoses in tandem dube tubing on top of each other maybe can hold power steering hydraulic though the fluid may corrode them. I wouldn't risk hydraulic patching pressures being just too high. A coolant and distilled water spare is essential. Take it from this old desert rat. Your life could depend on Lt I usually keep water hoses Handy crimp tools too. You build and evolve that kit for over landing. Of course I also added a few extra mods for handling that killer heat on my rig beefing up some components.🤠 Matt is pretty good at what he does folks hands down. I'll share advice but I never doubt matt or his crew ever. 👌🏽😎👍🏽
I had a radiator hose blowout in my Firebird on the fast lane of the interstate in Houston during noon rush hour while on vacation. Driver in the next lane waved us down & pointed to the vapor trail behind us. The temp gauge was already nearly pegged. We coasted across the 6 lanes to the shoulder and fortuitously there was an off-ramp about a quarter-mile ahead. Unfortunately it was a (no outlet, no services) road that was about a mile long to a state inspection station. Fortunately it was open, the dude was nice, offered some tools.Fortunately it was the upper & he said he could order the part and a state truck would bring it on his return to the shop, unfortunately not until closing time, which would have been a 3-4 hr. wait. When I started taking off the hose, I noticed the rupture was just behind the connection. I was able to cut off the 4-5" of the world's longest radiator hose and it still reached. Clamped it down, thanked the State guy, and went chooglin' on down to N'awlins. The hose never failed.