Shut off motor or not on trail.

[Huhwhye]

Whats your take on this?

I have always just let my truck idle and run all day on the trail.  I figured if something failed, like a starter full of mud or something hidden electrical coming loose I be ok until I got it back on pavement.  What do you guys do?

I have shut it down on the trail TWICE! and havent been able to fire it back up.   I had the wire that goes from the switch to the starter come off.  And the other one was a starter full of water and mud.  Since then I alway leave it running.  I figure between synthetic oil, an oil cooler and my big radiator (Turbo Truck) I'm ok.  It never gets hot.

[FATB0Y]

  My jeep used 2 put me down on a trail (would not start) all the time so I got where I never shut it off 

[brainlessfool]

works for me. when I had my boat I'd never shut it down till I got back to the pier.

[SWAMPER]

I shut it off once in a while...whenever we stop and just hangout for like 15 minutes

[MidgetMike]

I shut mine down all the time, as long as your with other people and don't have an automatic tranny you should be all right? I commonly use 4 low as my ebrake on the trail as toy e's are never that great especialy on hills. But I know what you mean I had to use my starter to finish an obstacle and burnt my alternator lead down to only 2 strands of wire, I drove on the battery for about 30 hours I couldn't believe how ling it lasted, luckly it fell of on the pavement so I could fix it and get e jump easily.   

[Rocksurfer]

I never leave my truck running unattended, or at a distance from me. You never know what may happen especially if it's an auto. With all the beating and bashing we do to our stuff a bent shift rod or linkage could put your vehicle in gear and then you'll get to watch it do a rockgarden without a pilot. As for the e-brake when I was at PVD I had to shift out of 4wd low to pass tech because it would drive away with the low gears, the brakes wouldn't hold it. Once recently I had to jump through a drivers side window to stop a truck from rolling away when the owner pulled what he thought was the hood release and pulled the brake release instead. It was quite entertaining as we tryed to stop it from rolling away and couldn't. I finally just leaped through the open drivers window and slammed on the brakes with my hand. If it had been parked with it in gear and the e-brake on that would have never happened, but since it was running and the owner just reached in to open the hood through his window, off to the races we went. For the most part if I step out of my truck I shut it down.

[burnyota]

I always turn it off after a run when we are hangin out and such.  Just dont leave it in double low and in gear with the motor runnin', cause it will still crawl and creep, but its ok, it goes real slow, and you can catch it...sometimes