What was your greatest “Hey watch this…” “Hold my beer…” or “I think this will work…” moment?

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  1. Long story I’ll try and summarize. Went fishing with a friend of mine in a river bottom. We were in his old and crusty CJ5 jeep. Fished all day and went to leave and start the jeep and nothing. The battery had rolled over/shorter out. We didn’t have any voltage. We were waaaaaay off the beaten path. Didn’t really tell people where we were and this was before cell phones were ubiquitous. Being a manual transmission, would’ve been easy to just push start it but we didn’t have voltage to energize the alternator. Plus, we were in a river bottom. The trail was uphill about 50 yards. We were in a pickle. No way we were getting home before dark and probably have to camp and walk out on foot in the morning. Ended up using rope and a big tree branch to sort of pry the jeep up the slope foot by foot and using the rope to tie it off. Took hours to go 50 yards. One we got onto the trail – we had a big maglite flash light with 4 D cell batteries. With duct tape, I put them in series and using wired I pilfered from the back off a of trailer harness, rigged up the alternator rectifier to be energized what I determined was about 10 volts. I hoped it would be enough. With clutch in and gear selector in 2nd gear, I released the parking brake and let it slowly come up to speed down the trail. Got up to speed that would be appropriate for 4th gear but I really wanted to spin that alternator. Moment of truth – I slowly engaged the clutch and the damn thing lit off!!!!! We were home free!!!!!

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