Tips for Off Roading. ie: What to bring, how to tackle the terrain.

[ezapar]

Here's a list of Stuff to have with you on any given day for wheeling. I took it from what's probably the highest authority when it comes to Off Road.

 

B-4 U GO.

Check these items so you may avoid making repairs on the trail.

 

Engine oil/oil filter

Tranny Fluid (90 wieght gear oil)

Brake Fluid

Belts

All lights and turn signals

Windshield fluid

Radiator coolant

Tire pressure and condition

Tow hooks, front and rear

Loose parts, ie: lugnuts, drive shaft bolts, engine and tranny mounts

 

BARE NECESSITIES

Bring this stuff and some ingenuity and you will get out of many trail mishaps.

 

A buddy with either a history in long-distance running to go get help, or his own 4X4

Duct tape (fixes everything)

Baling wire (prehistoric duct tape)

Zip-ties (modern day duct tape)

WD-40 (spraying under the disty cap helps start trucks that have been splashing thru water)

Ratchet strap (reseat tires, helps hold gear in place)

Tow strap (useful if you get stuck or need to be towed home)

Leatherman type utility tool and or swiss army pocket knife

Warm jacket (being cold makes being stuck and broke worse)

First aid kit

Jug of water

Granola bar or candy bar (food is important to survival, helps you think straight)

Fire extiguisher (tough stuff to watch the rig burn to the ground before you walk home)

Flash light (hard to walk home in the dark after you watch your rig burn to the ground)

Matches/lighter

 

 

WHAT WE ALWAYS BRING

If going wheeling for the day this is a good list of tools to bring

 

Tool bag containing:

Screw drivers

Pliers (dikes, needle-nose, channel locks, vice grips)

Hammer

Wrenches

Adjustable wrench

Socket set and wrench

Spark plug socket

Test light

Prybar

Jack of some sort (high lift, bottle, floor- depending on the terrain and size of vehicle)

Tire repair kit

Electrical tape

Allen wrenches

Hack Saw

 

PERSONAL STUFF

These will make the trip more enjoyable

 

Toilet paper

Sunscreen

Bug Spray

Food and water (no, beer doess not qualify as water)

Extra jacket

Rags/towels

 

SPARE PARTS

These begin to add weight, but it's better than the long walk home

 

Engine belts

Axles, front and rear

Spare tire

Spare nuts and bolts that are common on your rig

Fuses

Radiator Hoses

Hose clamps

Electrical crimp kit

Lug nuts

 

 

LUBES

Different goo to help you go

 

Oil

Brake fluid

Gear oil

Gas

gasket seal or silicone

Water

WD-40

 

CAMPING GEAR

Basic stuff for staying in the dirt

 

Warm Clothing and rain gear

Tent or good tarp

Camping stove and fuel

Sleeping bag and pad

Cooler

 

BONUS STUFF TO HAVE ALONG

You can get along without these, but they are plenty useful for trailside repairs

 

Air compressor or CO2 tank

Impact gun and sockets

Underhood welder

Bottle torch for freeing up sticky axles (checking them before hand doesn't hurt either)

 

GET OUT OF STUCK SITUATION STUFF

Bring more of these the farther you'll be from civilization

 

Winch or good come-a-long

Shackle or two

Spare cable

Chain (grade 70)

Snatch block

Tow Strap

Tree protector

Shovel

Ax

Gloves

Winch bag to put over the cable should it snap

2X12 or small piece of plywood for footing for the jack

 

NAVIGATION

If you don't like asking directions

 

Maps

GPS

Compass

CB

Cell phone

[ezapar]

Start off in the Dirt

To get comfortable with your Soob off-road you need to start off easy. So find a dirt road. The Buddy System is very important off-road, so don't even think about wheeling without bringing a friend's 4X4 too. A lot of the time four wheeling is about driving around the obstacles rather than over them. Look for a trail that's a mix of mild hills, ruts, and gravel so you can get a feel for how your Soob operates. Shift your tranny into 4 lo to get the best traction and keep the speed under 5 mph. Drive forward slowly, choosing the smoothest course you can take, and place each tire precislely where you think it will get the best grip. This is called picking your line, and it usually means looking for, and then driving over, the easiest path you can find.

 

 

Rockcrawling

Rockcrawling is arguably the most technical form of off-road driving. For best traction, deflate your tires to roughly half the pressure you usually use for street driving. (this will vary with the size of tire you have on your Soob.) Take a second to note if anything under your Soob looks vulnerable to damage so you can avoid dragging those parts over rocks. (Y-pipes and exaust especially) While you're out of your Soob, walk over the section of rocks you plan to drive. You want to look for the smoothest path you can take and you also want to find anything hazardous that might damage your tires. After you've picked your line, get back into your Soob and shift your tranny into 4-Lo and into 1rst gear. Roll down your windows (so you can see and hear better) and begin to creep forward following the mental line you've scouted out. Listen for tires scraping and rocks hitting your undercarriage. If the rocks are too big to straddle, you'll want to place your tires on top of them and attemp to drive over them. Be smooth and move slowely over each rock like you were picking your way thru a mine field. If you lose traction, back up and find a new line that may be easier.

 

 

Mud Bogging

Mud is the scariest terrain on the planet, cuz it's always changing. The best advice is to drive around as much of it as possible. When you have to drive through it, pick a line that looks as shallow as possible. Most drivers will shift the tranny into 4-Lo (to keep the engine from bogging down) and use 2nd gear to keep the tires spinning pretty fast. Vehicle speed is important. Drive fast enought to keep your momentum up, but slow enough that you're still in control. You'll want to avoid standing water cuz if you blast thru it you could suck water into your engine. If you go thru it too slow, you could get stuck in the soft mud underneath. When you do get stuck (and trust me you will) try backing out the way you came in, while sawing the steering wheel back and forth to fling mud out of the tires. If that doesn't work, give up and start digging. Stuff anything you can under the tires to get traction. Jacking the rig up and out of the mud can help, but if the mud is deep, most jacks will just sink. If the mud is really soupy, your stuck vehicle will tend to sink. So the faster you can get your rig out, the easier it's going to be.

[ezapar]

If you've got something to add that I neglected to mention, please send me a PM, we'll figure out how to add it in.

 

Thanks,

EZ

[ezapar]

Snow

 

Submitted by zyewdall

 

Just a quick writeup of my experience

 

Offroading in the winter often means snow. Which means you have issues with ground clearance, traction, and visibility.

 

Visibility: You can't see what is under the snow. Sometimes what looks like a bump is actually a hole, the edge of the road cut -- or even an iced over stream. What looks flat could be a basketball sized rock to take out your oil pan, or a buried tree across the trail that will smash the front alighnment up. It's best if you've seen the area without snow, and know what's under there.

 

Ground clearance: In snow, you are often not only dealing with low traction, but also dragging parts of the car through snow plowing a trench. If you've got enough traction, this can be hard on clutches and engines because they are working alot harder. If you don't have enough traction, you can end up stuck, sometime without enough weight on the wheels to move. See types of snow below. Ground clearance is usually what stops my subaru in the snow, not traction per se.

 

Traction: In general, narrower tires are better in snow. Higher ground pressure packs down soft snow, and can allow you to dig through to dirt or gravel underneath. However, certain conditions (spring drifts) are better with wide tires. In driving in snow, be prepared to suddenly have the car do strange things -- slide sideways, turn by itself, etc, depending on which particular wheels have traction and which don't, and which way the underlying ground is sloping.

 

Type of snow:

 

Fresh cold powder. The easiest type of snow to drive in. If you've got good snowtires, the car may not even feel the snow. But watch out for buried obstacles. It's easy to be blasting along through a foot of powder like it's nothing, and run into a rock or tree stump that you didn't see.

 

Old windblown power. This type of snow acts more like sand, being rather heavy, and flowing like a pile of sand. It's not hard enough to drive on, but too hard to easily go thorugh, and it won't pack. You'll often be driving along perfectly fine, then encounter a deeper drift on a corner, and grind to a to a stop. Spinning the wheels and digging/churning your way through can work if you don't get high centered. It can be hard to get a good track established in this, because the wheels just churn the powder from front to back, rather than pushing it aside or packing it down.

 

Fresh wet snow. This type isn't too bad, but is quite a bit slipperier than fresh powder. Keep speed up. Often this type of snow brings alot of small trees and brush down on the trail when it falls, so watch out for that. If this stuff is deep enough, it can high center you (especially with uneven terrain underneath), and it's so slippery, that it doesn't require too much weight taken off the wheels to start them spinning. Spinning the wheels in this type of snow is usually not good -- it gives good lubrication so they'll happily spin with no movement of the car, unless you can dig through to dirt with agressive tires or chains.

 

Old wet snow. Heavy dense stuff that is like driving through pineapple jello. Often has layers of ice in it too. Often the way to get through this is to have chains and a low crawling gear, in order to slowly crunch through layers and pack them down into a useable track (and if it's too deep, watch the ground clearance).

 

Spring drifts. This is what the old windblow powder turns into by April or June when all but the deepest drifts have melted away. These drifts are often frozen solid at night (or in the early morning when you head up a trail), and you may be able to drive right over them. During the day, they thaw, and turn into the wet version of old windblown powder. Still a heavy unstable substance, but really slippery now too. These drifts are often off camber, and the top will thaw first, so you may be able to drive up onto a drift, then slide off the side. Or it may be frozen just enough to drive up on top, then break through and sit on the frame with the wheels in soft holes -- these can be suprisingly deep too -- sometimes what looks like a short section of snow is actually 4 feet deep in the middle. Multiple vehicals with winches are usually needed for these. ATV'ers like these conditions, because they can run over the top of many of these, being lighter with large tires.

 

Ice mixed with snow. Often you'll encounter snow with iced over tracks in the bottom from where someone who drove through in the slush which then froze. A light covering of snow can disguise this ice, but will make great lubrication. You may think you can spin the wheels a little and dig down to dirt, only to find a layer of glazed ice at the bottom. Chains can dig in and let you still move.

 

You can also encounter snow with an ice layer on top -- if it rained then refroze. This is nasty, as the ice layer is exactly where you are dragging your undercarriage and can grab on and stop you.

 

Streams combined with snow are a challenge. Often they are still flowing underneath, but are frozen on top. Is it strong enough to hold the car up, or will you break through into little water filled holes? If it's still open flowing water across the trail for a while (a stream fording for example), it often has ice shelfs at the edges, which can blow out tires, or just be too high an obstable to climb back out of the open stream. And of course, it's cold -- what may have been fun squishy sounding shoes from having to do a water recovery in the summer, may be more like frostbitten frozen feet in the winter. Streams can also flow across a road and freeze into a glazed ice layer which gives zero traction (especially if it's still got a little liquid water on top)

 

And one fun aspect of snow is that if you abandon a stuck vehical with ideas of coming back tomorrow, it may snow another foot over night, and it may be permanently stuck till spring. Keep this in mind if you head out without sufficient recovery capability.

 

Winter driving equipment that you should carry. In addition to normal stuff.

 

Big scoop shovel

Chains

cross country skiis (they are pretty fast to get back out if you need to, compared to walking)

Down sleeping bag.