My Toyota Hilux Incident in Eagle Ranch, Port Dickson

On May 9th, my colleagues and I went on a sort of team building trip to Port Dickson. A lot of activities were planned including an exciting treasure hunt and a few team building exercises. (See "Misadventures on a Recce Trip to Rachado Lighthouse in Malacca", which was in preparation for this team building trip.)

One of my main responsibility was to book and pay for lodging enough for 32 people. We were on a very tight budget and the Eagle Ranch Resort was the perfect place for us as they have dormitories that could accommodate us all.

I arrived at the Eagle Ranch Resort at around 3:35pm and managed to check-in and pay for the dormitories by 3:55pm. After that, I was to proceed to Tanjung Tuan check-point to meet the rest of the treasure hunters.

As I reversed my car out of the parking lot, I did not notice that there was a drain behind. My right rear wheel went over the curb and dropped into the drain, which was about 3 feet deep.

I did not even feel the bump or the curb (as the ground was almost the same height as the curb) when my wheel went over it! My right rear absorber was caught on the curb and the wheel was dangling over the drain. I engage my 4-wheel drive and tried to maneuver out of the drain.

I tried that a couple of times to no avail and was at a lost of how to get out of that predicament!

Lucky for me a few cooks from Eagle Ranch came over and offered to help. After some brainstorming and some major teamwork (not what I had expected to be doing... :-), we got together some sawn logs, chopping boards, car-jack and a long log to try to provide traction for the dangling wheel. You can see what we did from the photos below.


We managed to raise the truck using the car-jack high enough for us to insert the sawn logs beneath it in the drain.


The long log was inserted between the wheel and the curb using the chopping boards as leverage.


We lowered the wheel on top of the sawn logs (making sure that the hand brake was on). Right after that, I could easily drive off the curb while engaged in 4-wheel drive... :-)


The cooks laughed as I took photos of them helping me out.


The cooks were very modest as I thanked them.


With my truck out of the drain, they proceed to clear the "tools".

All in all, I considered that day to be a very fortunate day. Again, the most important thing is that no one was injured and that with teamwork, we could easily solve an almost impossible problem... :-)

My other misadventures with my Toyota Hilux:

• Black Wednesday
• How to Steal a Toyota Hilux