State Law Enforcement Wants This Stuck Excavator Gone NOW (Real Life Quicksand)

hey guys guess what we're back on my old island my old stomping grounds because we still have some work to do and it's probably the hardest work that we have to do yet so what we're doing is going out to fremont island because since the island was sold and donated back to the state and the nature conservancy we want to make sure it's as pristine as possible so that when people go out there they're kind of going back in the 1800s not going back to find old tractors and you know holes and stuff like that so basically we've partnered with the state to make sure the island is good to go so when people go out and visit it it's safe the old excavator you saw us get running remember how we talked about maybe bringing it back well it's coming back hopefully today we're jumping on the state airboat with uh officer curry i don't even know what's called officer curry jason's fight jason there we go look at that on a first name basis jason's gonna take us out there he's gonna show us some of the risks that we're up against especially this time of year because like he said the lake changes weekly so sometimes the lake bed's firm sometimes it's not sometimes the water's high sometimes it's low so basically what we're going to do go out there get a lay of the land figure out a game plan of how we're going to move the tractor how we're going to you know fix some of these other hazards out there and make sure that we do it and we're all on the same page this is what i love about working with the state of utah they're very open to being creative to you know solutions and that's what we're gonna go figure out right now so this is murphy and hans is on alex first time on an airboat so you ready ready to go let's go [Music] you guys already know a little bit of the story uh about how the excavator ended up here but i'll give you a quick rundown came out one sunday afternoon last may with my family in our military boat military boat sits significantly deeper in the water than this airboat does i'm talking like three foot scax so we had to park the boat like 100 yards off shore and then i went to go get the five-ton army truck to go drive down to the water pick up my family get to the island on my way down five ton got stuck which then started the chain reaction of every vehicle we had on the island getting stuck including the excavator which we're now finally going to get the rest away off the island um that's airboating on the great salt lake that was pretty cool man that's way awesome i was telling dave it was uh 15 miles an hour average is that what it was doing yeah yeah usually 40. i do about 40 with myself about 40 why did we pick up so much speed here so that's a good question i if it's shallower water then we're not pushing so much it it basically reduces the amount of displacement that the boat is displacing in the water so that's why i moved to the front to hopefully try to plant it out but i think on the way back we will go over closer to the sand bar yeah see if we can just go faster because we'll be in uh just a couple inches of water that's crazy how it made that big of a difference i mean we were going 26 right there along the shore yeah and we were going average what 15 all the way over yeah pretty cool all right well let's go see the damage this is this is the kind of beaches of normandy for me right here this is uh this is where d-day happened in the worst way that's where the tractor sunk the one spot well not the one spot but one of the wettest spots on the beach because there's got to be some sort of underground spring there because it's just mushy this is a significant spot for me because this is where all of the chaos went down in fact rather than try to explain it to you i'm just going to roll some footage and let you enjoy this ptsd filled flashback so uh first thing you're gonna see as we trek up the beach here these are crane mats which we brought out to be able to build a stable platform around the excavator that sunk we drug these things out one by one put about six on a truck at a time and then we pulled them off and we pull them out one by one i think we ended up bringing like 20 or 30 of these things out here it's just wood but obviously they were designed to be able to support the weight of the crane and the unique thing about this beach all the way around this island you're gonna find pieces of timbers that aren't from us they're actually from the old railroad trestle that when they salvaged it and tore it down a bunch of timbers washed up against the beach you saw some of that stuff that we used in my house just wood that was laying on the beach so i think the plan with the wood here is we are going to put it in a pile for now and then possibly next winter or something when it's an appropriate time come through and possibly burn it uh basically what we don't want isn't open hazards on the beach we don't want it to look like trash we don't want to be something where a hiker or a bike or somebody could come out here and get hurt on us so the plan right there is to get organized and uh deal with it when the timing is a little better this is it this is our this is our task this is the excavator like it's a 45 50 000 pound machine and it is it is pretty well done for um the engine might start again when it stopped last time it was not happy my start though if it does start we know the tracks function however none of the other hydraulics are functioning so the arm the swing the boom all that stuff none of it is is working so we're now in a situation where we've got a tractor that's turned sideways boom down the ground and um it's really heavy so we are going to devise a plan on how to get this thing up over the side of the island and then onto the sand bar and then transported over to the causeway onto a heavy haul truck which we will then you know haul it away so now is where we come up with this is basically where we brainstorm and there's a lot of ideas a lot of options a lot of different scenarios the biggest obstacle that we have is the really unpredictably soft sandbar so you can't just bring a low boy and a truck out here so that is idea number one which i'm sure a lot of people are saying so you're sending the semi out there not gonna work everything that comes out here has to be super high flotation um even our five-ton military trucks run the risk of getting stuck out here and they are designed for off-road travel like this so this is literally one of the most complicated most difficult recoveries that we're ever gonna do ever we gotta figure out how to get this 50 000 pound excavator transported about nine miles from here over to the main road and we have to do it across a really really smooshy soft sandbar where we have got many vehicles stuck over the years and the excavator's not functioning so it might start might drive back and forth a little bit but the boom the hydraulics the swivel all that stuff is broken so buckle up boys and girls because this will be one of the wildest one of the craziest and one of the most entertaining vlogs that we have ever done and uh i honestly couldn't be happier about it because we are here my favorite place in the world great salt lake i think step one is we're going to come out with chris and a bunch of tools and then get it running figure out if we can get the hydraulics functioning if we can get the hydraulics functioning then i'm going to be tempted to walk it as far as we possibly can if the hydraulics decide that they don't want to work then what we're going to do is probably at least get the track spinning get it running get it positioned in a way that we can then turn the body straight and then start releasing the arms i'm just running through all the different scenarios in my head of what it's going to take to get this thing off the island and i'm sure it's going to be a combination of all of our plans one single plan never works on the island this place is i don't think it's cursed it's just got it's got its own agenda and whatever your agenda is the island says no no no not in my house what was this what was what was this was this your key that was our ski that was our starter wire all right jason so we know obviously this is the elephant on the island what other items are we looking at here to make sure this is you know while we're out here what else we want to do you know having this gun is going to be huge um just as far as other equipment that pickup truck up there is is really the only other thing um i think everything else is is probably manageable so we've got a we got an old pickup truck that needs to go anything that's like trash or a hazard um most of stuff that we actually brought out to the island when we were out here for the last few years we took back we've already removed but the previous people that were out here before us had their old truck out here and they had just a bunch of miscellaneous stuff so we're going to try to pick up anything that would be a hazard anything that looks like garbage basically we want to make this place when we leave here we want it to look like it's the 1800s again and i think those are kind of the main items we'll build a checklist to show you and as we're working through this we'll kind of check one item off at a time heavy checklist yeah the heavy checkbook now what you're going to see next is a lot of equipment a lot of different machines and a lot of different guys running back and forth as we figure out how to mobilize and get the equipment out here like i said first things first is we're going to come out here and get the excavator running again you guys saw the first time it took us a couple hours but we got running and we got pulled up to here which was it was a big success it was a couple hundred yards at the beach now we just uh need to take that couple hundred yards and turn it into a cool seven miles and we're good the smell out here is all the dead brine flies like the beaches out here are 50 sand 50 dead bugs like this that's all dead bugs makes great fertilizer the next day all right guys this is always the fun part right here morning of uh first day of the recovery and uh usually the first day of the recovery is the day where we're like yeah we're gonna get this done we're gonna get the you know tractor pulled out we'll be back here by a little by dinner almost at lunch that was ambitious and then like a week later we're like okay day number seven of the recovery we'll be back home by midnight and then it's like a couple days after that so hopefully it doesn't go quite like that hopefully it becomes a little bit more uh efficient obviously we've not been out to the island in about six months because winter and the conditions are sloppy so right now we are staging all the trucks and equipment it's crazy like you guys are going to be blown away by how much equipment and machinery and rigging and stuff we need to recover that one tractor so we've got the recovery five ton with the wrecker on the winches on it we've got my big tan five ton just a flatbed cargo truck we've got one polaris ranger we've got a polaris four wheeler the high lifter edition uh sportsman which actually does really well out on the island um i've got my raptor full of all sorts of tools and equipment and recovery gear pretty much every truck is full of recovery gear and tools and equipment right now we're gonna do something very important actually let me show you this this right here is gonna save the day this is called fluid film and this is basically well pretty much exactly what it sounds like fluid film is a product i'll show you real quick here just give you a little quick example this is a product that we spray on the bottom of all the trucks and equipment and everything to be able to keep the salt and the rust off so see that this stuff is what miracles are made of it literally protects everything so well this provides this nice heavy film of like beautiful waxy coating so we've got a bunch of cans of it and we also have a giant buck a bit bucket of it which we spray on with that guy right there pretty excited to uh to have this stuff because we did not have fluid film in the past when we struck the island and you can tell the equipment's been out there is absolutely trashed so we're going to take some extra precautions make sure everything gets sprayed down get it cleaned up and then we're headed out clear bob sled team heinz lines drive it's bob's lead time pounds a gallon so we're gonna figure out if we can refuel up at harry's yard because he's got a big pump it's way easier to use and then uh from there we've got hunter driving the flatbed we've got bud driving the wrecker five time we've got jim driving his truck we've got alec and murph dog driving my raptor we've got this dave driving the oshkosh the big het military truck and i'm driving to kent work we're gonna get player trucks but i got a question for you yeah are you excited i am so excited dave you love the island huh i love it so much bloodwind absolutely despises the island fun fact and it's not because he hates the property in the beautiful land he hates the experience because all of his experiences have been less than ideal right but you know what bud at least the convoy looks sweet we got five ton cargo truck five ton wrecker kenworth happy haul truck het which is a heavy equipment transporter military oshkosh basically designed to move tanks eight by eight we got the most excited driver in town right there decent dave just ready to go ham on that bad boy [Music] hmm [Music] we're here we're looking at the lake bed a little bit of water moved in last night which is kind of normal for the lake it changes literally hourly um anytime you get a wind what's the most common wind you get out here northwestern no it's probably a south wind pulling it from the south or coming coming south yeah so when the wind comes you got to keep in mind that the great salt lake is very shallow in a lot of parts so it's like a puddle in a parking lot the wind will come along and just kind of move the puddle around and unfortunately this is a giant puddle and when you get too much water moved onto the sandbar it's weird because some days when there's water on the sandbar it actually firms it up a little bit and then other days when there's water on the sandbar you sink it's like there's no way to predict the conditions until you get out there so the game plan right now is obviously we have all the equipment here we're gonna start small and work our way up we're gonna start with the ranger and the four-wheeler see how it feels um and then if those don't you know have any issues then we're going to move up to the five tons and then eventually the oshkosh and the track co so we're gonna start unloading feels good this is uh this is less sinkage than what we're going to used to uh grant this is the really light machine but even people when it's really bad even the ranger will have a tendency to sink a little bit so all the problem areas that i'm used to feel pretty good so far all right so we just did the first test of the lake bed to feel how soft or firm it is and it's surprisingly really nice it's not too squishy i mean granted we just did it in the ranger and the ranger doesn't weigh very much so the next vehicle we're going to take out there is the five ton with the uh fat tires um this truck has a little bit more floatation than some of the other rigs and a little less weight so assuming it does well then we'll graduate to the wrecker five sun then the oshkosh from the tractor so hunter is uh hunter actually does really well out here he kind of knows about the route perfectly you know the route just uh head out get out to the to the safe zone basically yeah a little past where we turn around just where you're not sinking are you in low all right let's see what it does [Music] looking good ah looks great i'm not mad about that wow okay so uh five ton number one just went out and that's honestly about as firm as i've ever seen it normally let me show you we got the exception here camera accepted the murph dog got me right here is typically where we have the most issues the trucks love to sink right in this they're literally not even like moving it so this is great humber feeling good yeah i'm feeling good [Laughter] why don't you wear your waders bro so so far so good got everything unloaded uh sandbar is fuel and firm i mean not gonna uh count our chickens yet because we still gotta get the oshkosh across across there which is the heaviest one but so far so good this is the oshkosh het and it belongs to buddy harry i've been trying to buy it from him for years and uh it's been a it's been a non-negotiable deal they just don't want to sell it but they never drive it but they also say use as much as you want now we're having a little bit of a discussion because this is i've been wanting to drive this truck for a long time i've driven it here and there but never really off road so dave got the fun part he got the really fun part of driving it up here and now i have to drive it in the sand which is like kind of bull you ask me the excavator that thing travels at 3.6 miles an hour sandbar is seven miles but it's got about a two hour trip ahead of them but nobody does it better than bud kick your feet up cause and just get going [Music] good news we are all on the sandbar every single one of us and nobody's stuck yet we got through usually what's the most treacherous part we still have some kind of sketchy spots to go through over here by the island but uh here comes bud bud got the uh he threw the short stick today so he's driving okay okay well somebody got the short end of the stick and it might not have it might not have been bud today it's a dry bud just sitting there smoking a stick with this mountain dew are you kidding me i'd pick up smoking if i could all the trucks and equipment around the sandbar everything's moving along just like it should right now so you can see uh nothing's really sinking nothing's making too big of imprints and uh now we go [Music] so [Music] check [Music] all right guys great news we made it across the sand bar and the one that i was most concerned about which was the att um no big deal the only thing that's still coming is the excavator but not too worried about that especially since these vehicles uh made it no problem so now first things first we're gonna head over to the old excavator and hunter's gonna get her running uh yeah now we've got the tools the equipment the batteries the fuel the water all the stuff that we need to be able to try to bring the excavator back to life um once we get it running then we're gonna figure out what's working what's not uh the tracks last time we parked it we're working so if we get the tracks working then what the plan is to see how far we can walk it we're going to strap the boom up to itself like probably chain it up to itself and then uh we're going to walk it at least up to the flat area figure out um how much more it's going to walk if it'll walk the rest of the way across the sandbar i mean that'd be great but it'll also be a miracle so here we go you guys remember all the work that we did on this thing six months ago right one of our first youtube videos once we were coming back all sorts of mechanical work got it up and running we gotta go do all that again because we came out took the batteries out of it and we thought it was gonna stay here so cut some cords cut some cables cut some wires and so now we gotta rewire it so basically do what we did again we need to extend the positive cable because it got cut short when the battery's removed oh mr positivity how much time ash is a very lucky woman whoever packed lunch forgot the pb blaster and so now i mean we got we got this the fluid film which is kind of gonna work maybe forgot wd-40 and pb blaster which are like the two most essential items yeah they're very essential items on the island and uh drinking water oh we didn't bring them i don't need water we got lunch we do have lunch so that's good look i knew that we were probably gonna have to end up making multiple trips anyways but i didn't think we'd have to make it this soon see if we can pull the bucket off uh because the bucket is definitely just extra in fact last time the bucket it was kind of like the downfall of the machine because it was digging into the ground because the hydraulics aren't working so pull the bucket off wrap the boom up and that's definitely going to help us be able to maneuver the machine with just the tracks surprisingly these bolts are coming right off which it's very suspicious bolts are coming out which is good of the bucket it's actually surprisingly surprisingly workable the bolts are the easy part getting the giant pins out is the hard part properly we're wired up you hear it give me that fur we got it rotating so just need some star fluid [Applause] nice now that we got it chained up now we can get the tracks well get the engine running get the track spinning this bad boy is going to be well on his way to walking out there got the hydraulics up they're not functioning but their bucket is no longer in the way so now we just got to see if we can get a start again the old uh this is the the problem is we pulled like six miracles out of this thing and we're just gonna find out right now whether it's got a seventh dinner or not because just hit the starter and just fires right up so one thing we don't know since none of the gauges or anything work is how much fuel it has so we're gonna go ahead and top it off just to be safe because we're optimistic to think that right now we're gonna get it started and it's gonna run like it did before we're gonna start cruising down the beach except we gotta find a seat bumper full of some fuel giving her some love [Music] i can't think of anything else just love just giving her love he used to tighten the belt basically time to give her a crank see if uh let's see if the old some kind of moochies in today attempt number one let's go three two one come on baby actually more comfortable the factory seat here we go it's working yes [Applause] [Music] working i don't think it's going to make it seven miles like this but at least it's able to be uh maneuvered now a little easier yeah she still got it obviously uh we knew that if we got it running that was only going to be the first part of the challenges here the next more challenging part is keeping it running because obviously all the cooling system all that stuff is pretty sad so i'm still thinking that we're gonna have to drag it i'm actually tempted to try to roll it on a couple of those timber skids and drag it without the trucks hey how fast were you going right there top speeds i mean half a mile an hour yeah it wasn't fast it's eight miles that would be an eight-hour trip no you weren't doing it even a mile an hour there it would be eight to ten hours the engine would last that long i really think we might be able to drag it you guys saw it running and driving it's great it's running working about one two miles an hour and i wouldn't even mind driving at that i mean that would suck that would be a 12-hour trip but uh the bigger issue is the engine's not going to put up with it for that long it overheated in a couple hundred yards and we knew that was gonna happen so really the biggest thing we gotta figure out right now is figure out how to get the tracks to freeze pool because then we can just drag it with the trucks nice too easy so now we are opening up the hub motors to be able to get access to the big drive motors that uh run the tracks because basically what we want to do is get them [Music] so we can drag it and the tracks will spin rather than fight us and drag that's the plan but i gotta remove four very very very crusty salty rusty old bolts which three of the fours participated this is the drive motor for the tracks so this is what drives the big sprocket 24 hours later [Applause] [Music] we gotta go get some parts and pieces so this means we're leaving you guys on the island may the odds ever be in your favor [Music] sparks is leaving which means going to get parts from jim's truck meaning helicopter from the hangar meaning bettos meaning whatever i decided to do in the next two hours one hour later do like fifth like 50 at a time nice two hours later three hours later can you move it along i'm all out of time hey get back to work nice cream got snacks got the right tools back in business i think now that we got the housing off this bad boy is going to free spool now we're in business we got the gears on the track freewheeling which means we can pull it it's not going to have a bunch of resistance this is good because now literally probably just one truck can drag this thing tracks will spin gears aren't going to hold it up we got the machine turned straight we're in business we're out of here we're home by dinner tell me more bad boy i was just keep that same energy when we're here midnight okay the same thing he said holy gosh we're making good progress yeah it looks like it i'm just i'm impressed i can't believe that this thing got running i can't believe it made it up here this far and uh it looks like possibly could be on its way off the island today listen jason you have no idea how big of an accomplishment this is for us because we may look capable but we're not it's been it's been eye-opening i'm impressed but you know honestly it does it means a lot to the division yeah to uh the conservation even holder right to have this not be another relic right we've got enough historic relics on the island we don't need uh one more so all of this work um this huge effort is greatly appreciated well i love the state was so willing to work with us on it and say everybody worked together rather than you versus him versus him versus him where in some organizations it would go like that you know here this worked out good we're moving everybody's working together yeah it's been great yeah thank you man appreciate it [Music] what a day for a day dreaming okay so we're in business we're looking good we uh tractor's pulling really nicely um tracks are freewheeling exactly how we hope they would we got it straightened out got the boom up she's ready to be pulled back oshkosh is ready to do his job um now we're just going to clean up any uh anything we left behind and hook up to the little nissan truck that's got to come back with us fill in the hole on the way out of town grab the pool we're out of here this is wild i thought it would be a weekend stop it surprisingly little went wrong yeah that's swell i can't believe it it was really smooth a lot of ingenuity and good rain were going on so far so good yeah feel good about it we're making progress this is a flashback to when bud report that the girls don't girls cross the restaurant truck well tractor is hooked up ready to tow a little pickup truck hooked up ready to be together put a little air in the tires on the way out we're gonna fill in the hole pick up the pool we're out of here that's a beautiful day right there i'm not gonna count my chickens yet though still and be cautious [Music] let's get out of there let's find a better way to round itself up into the track he's scary parts when we come down this hill and there's no breaks on that at all so it's just going to try to chase down this truck also i don't see i just see it going straight through this fence gonna take him with him little bit i wouldn't say by a lot hmm now now we're just getting getting greedy just don't like the sounds that it's making [Music] get the rhythm section back there you see that yeah we hit an actual tabletop that was awesome never gonna excavator jump before oh now you have the first time i see just about everything when i see an excavator jump it's a dumbbell line yeah see you gotta be there okay so listen two tasks left and they're the easy ones cool fill in the hole pick up the old pool we're gonna throw the old pool in the battlefield nissan truck we're gonna fill in the hole real quick we're out of here on one piece of land here we gotta get this piece of land they call islands islands because there's water in between you make great points the in-between is the issue second-to-last task fill the hole in this is where we found water where we tried to find water there was no water no we found water meet you with your wife is this where it was [Music] [Music] so [Music] we accomplished all of our tasks so far now here comes the tricky part we're leaving the islands entering the sand bar to get back onto the causeway this is where things still could get a little bit hairy because it's gotten warmer throughout the day the ground's gotten softer um hopefully it's still stable enough to get all the equipment back across and keep in mind we're still towing the broken truck the broken tractor to piles of trash like there's still things that can go wrong but hopefully not we'll see what happens they've watched this far i mean honestly at this point i just want to congratulations just give me a nice warm congratulations that's all i'm really looking for [Music] that is what you call a miracle it never goes that smoothly not in a million years we just i mean listen we're not done yet i hate to i hate to say all right we did it because we're still no we still got plenty to go no but things are going well let's just put it that way things are going very very very better suspiciously well better don't say that trailer [Music] wow literally all i can say is wow that's hands down the smoothest recovery we've ever had of anything anywhere and honestly we went into this thinking that it was going to be the most difficult the most complicated recovery the stars aligned big time um it may have even looked easy to the viewers you guys watching this like i could have done that i promise you i promise you we should have six trucks buried to their tits and mud right now but we don't we're all loaded up we're getting the junk excavator um on the trailer we're gonna hop back to the yard tonight gotta make another trip back to grab my other uh cat 320 and then the five tons are all headed out tonight and that's it we're good to go the only thing we're waiting on is for diesel dave who is driving the other excavator somewhere between here the island the seven mile stretch so maybe he'll make it tonight maybe he'll camp on the lake bed i don't know but all i can say is if you enjoyed the video got a kick out of it you were entertained drop a comment below tell me what you think tell me what you would have done differently i love to hear people's feedback like okay i would have rigged this i would rig that fine tell me drop in the comments below like the video most importantly guys if you want a chance to win one of my toys vehicles literally my razors my slingshots we're giving away a new vehicle every two hundred two thousand subscribers that we get so we just gave away the 250 000 and the 500 000 subscriber we're well on our way to 750. so if you want a chance to win that subscribe button like the video drop a comment give it a shot [Music] come on he just left yep he said see your best friend basically what if i would have broke down out there that was a risk we were willing to take don't worry dave i got your go right tools my garage and his truck they're so light there's no super lightweight tools let's go home

Channel: HeavyDSparks

Views: 3,546,566

Keywords: helicopter, heli, flying, flight, asmr, vlog, heavy d, diesel, diesel dave, dave sparks, adventure, zion, utah, moab, go pro, travel vlog, diesel trucks, trucks, giveaway, ASMR, adventure vlog, vlogger, instagram, plane, Heavy D Sparks, diesel brothers, diesel truck, how to, Polaris, Rzr, Utv, Atv, Offroad, Fun, Crazy, Heavy d, Heavydsparks, Diesel, Dave Sparks, hot tub, reveal, finale, exploring, silver, gold, battle, tank, 6x6, pokemon, charizard, trading cards, baseball, basketball, logan paul, jake paul

Id: Sq0zMn-RrTI

Length: 41min 8sec (2468 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 07 2021