Off-roading Holden Commodore?

**Tins** · 2nd February 2018, 07:52 PM

Originally Posted by cripesamighty

Whenever people say you need a 4WD to get out amongst it, I always think back at the Redex Around Australia Trials. Not too many 4WD's amongst that lot!

Evan Green wrote a book called "Journeys with Gelignite Jack" It was a tale of taking a Mini and a Landcrab on an epic 12,600 mile journey around Oz, put together by Castrol and BMC. Green tells of how these front wheel drive cars coped with this, interspersed with hilarious stories told by Jack Murray, often the hero of the Redex, who had come along as a driver.

If you can find a copy, it is well worth the read. Those two cars achieved things that would appall most people venturing outback today, in their AC equipped, electronic LCs.

**Tins** · 2nd February 2018, 07:54 PM

Originally Posted by LRT

Just the stopping is very vague above 10kph!

Steering was a little soft as well!

**rick130** · 3rd February 2018, 09:00 AM

Way back when you could still drive The Oaks fire trail in the Blue Mountains NP I was driving my Jeep up towards Linden when a Celica was coming down on one of the steepish step sections.

It would've taken a beating!

**Saitch** · 3rd February 2018, 09:25 AM

This was somewhere North of Yepoon, up Byfield way, from memory.

The Kingswood also did the old railway tunnel just East of the Isa near Malbon and the Wee McGregor Mine.
It was the Mt Isa McTaggarts reps car originally and came with some serious under body bash plates. On the tunnel track the old girl was just sliding on the front bash plate for some distance.

We used to go camping up Jimna way when you could fossick there.

**V8Ian** · 3rd February 2018, 10:37 AM

HG Kingswood, 186 Trimatic, Steve?

**Bigbjorn** · 3rd February 2018, 11:54 AM

Originally Posted by V8Ian

HG Kingswood, 186 Trimatic, Steve?

A good friend once did an around Australia trip with wife and two kids in one of those dinky little three cylinder Daihatsu pulling a light trailer with their camping gear. Didn't even get a flat tyre.

**Saitch** · 3rd February 2018, 12:23 PM

Originally Posted by V8Ian

HG Kingswood, 186 Trimatic, Steve?

HK 3 on the tree (when the linkages were ok

)

**rammypluge** · 3rd February 2018, 02:12 PM

Originally Posted by Bigbjorn

A good friend once did an around Australia trip with wife and two kids in one of those dinky little three cylinder Daihatsu pulling a light trailer with their camping gear. Didn't even get a flat tyre.

4wd's pull the chicks though?
How funscared is she?!

**JDNSW** · 3rd February 2018, 02:31 PM

Australians drove conventional cars in all sorts of offroad conditions, including an awful lot of roads that were worse than the worst offroad tracks most four wheel drive enthusiasts ever drive on today. I think for example of a family trip I was on in about 1951 to visit a friend of my mother's near Booligal. The roads west of Narrandera were essentially unmaintained goat tracks. This was in a 1931 10HP Swift. The only car problem was a cracked petrol pipe between the vacuum tank and the carburettor, probably happened on a bad bump or may have work hardened with the rough roads. Dad made a campfire to heat a makeshift soldering iron (bit of copper pipe) and soldered up the crack.

Four wheel drives did not become available in reality for this sort of travel until Jeeps appeared after WW2. Too small for most people, particularly families (and the 80 Landrover the same), very few used four wheel drives until second hand (usually ex-government) Landrovers became available in quantity in the 1960s.

And mostly, the conventional cars did reasonably well. The difference today, is that since perhaps the 1980s or 1990s, the run of the mill ordinary car has got a lot less suitable for use offroad or on bad roads. I think this was brought home to me when a great nephew of mine, around that time, having finished his apprenticeship, and having a good job, bought a Falcon ute. The day after he got it, he brought it out to show it to his grandparents on their farm - and knocked a hole in the sump on the road which he had been driving over for years, but, as an apprentice, never with a recent model car.

**steane** · 3rd February 2018, 04:29 PM

Originally Posted by Bigbjorn

The early bush motorists declared the Dodge 4 was the best bush car for just those reasons plus the long travel suspension and flexible alloy steel chassis. The tall skinny tyres would cut through the deep mud to the hard pan beneath and the wheels would flex up and down over the ruts and bumps. Good low-speed torque and crawler first gear and the old girls would keep trickling along through the black soil mud.

Yep, a great or maybe great x 2 relo of mine ran a Dodge 4 and then I think a Dodge 6 (if that's what they called the later six-cylinder version), always with a buckboard ute arrangement on the back. There's one (a 6) out at the ruins of his old date palm property on the edge of Lake Harry in SA and we have pics of the Dodge 4 getting about out in the middle of nowhere.

Thread: Off-roading Holden Commodore?

Thread Tools

Tags for this Thread

Bookmarks

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions