Thread: What a tough vehicle we have!

So normally when I go off for my two or three night camp trips I'm akin to seeing something unusual such as a 60 series or hilux on its side coming up some of the crazy tracks I drive, have seen an old mk patrol flip 3 times to destruction even, but this one was a bit different!

A couple of lads from up here (who I don't know) travelled in a 3 vehicle convoy (07 lux, jimny and 150 prado) came across some trouble when the prado bent an important linkage on the lh front strut. Popped the tyre it was that bad. The idea when we came across them was to mission back home (3hrs if your doing good) and grab the part and repair it overnight so he could limp home... Not to be... They dodgy'd it up and put the buggered rim and tyre back on and somehow managed to limp to one of the main tracks.

Then old mate (who by this time had massive toe out and a lh tyre that was shredded and a rim in self destruct mode) was driving over a wombat holed causeway and put the thing on its lid.

The hilux and jimny were both too light to even budge it and they already had broken their only snatch strap, and had killed the winch on the 150 prado...

While I didn't pull them out of the hole (a passing patrol had a pto winch which made light work of that), I did skull drag it 50m up to a safe place and out of traffic's way.

Case 2 was my mate's classic Rangie. Pot luck would see the side gears self destruct in his rear diff (normally the axles die first in the old 10splines which was odd), so lucky he was that I had good tyres and a locker...

Most of the track in to our camp spot ill use my locker on the hill climbs (about 60 of them), but this time I had to do it getting out with another 2.5t on the back! The mighty P38 didn't even flinch, low first at 1300rpm got both vehicles up everything first go!

A few things came out of this;

- Always have your own recovery gear. Never rely on someone else to have it.
- When something goes wrong, boil the jug and cool down a bit before you do something silly.
- Always carry basic tools
- Take it steady and if you can't fix it there and then, it's never too much to have someone race back to a town to get phone signal and organise help. That simple thing cost old mate a brand new 4wd.
- P38's are tough as nails!
- It's not the size of your tyres that dictates how "hardcore" your vehicle is. I had the smallest tyres of everyone this weekend (even the jimny had bigger tyres).

Cheers
Keithy

Originally Posted by rangieman

All that aside dont fool ya self about the classic 10 spline axle,s although not the strongest , In standard trim they can and often do out last the side gears made of butter in the diff

Gotta agree with that - done 3 cross pins now without breaking a 10 spline axle once.