Innholdsfortegnelse for February 2018 i Four Wheeler

GETTING YOUR 4X4 STUCK IS EASY. ONE FLIPpant stomp of the gas pedal and it’s door handle–deep in mire, or high-centered on that boulder you swore you’d checked the clearance on. You’re also wheeling solo. And your three friends with trucks are busy. And night is falling, wolves are circling—you know the drill. Bottom line: You’re getting out of this one alone. With what, you ask? Hopefully a winch, if you came prepared. The usefulness of a winch does not end at self-recovery. We’ve seen winches wrestle trees from across trails, overturn turned-over rigs, and provide the mechanical muscle to straighten trail-damaged tie rods. Not saying we advocate all these activities, but the moral of the story is that winches are powerful and versatile tools when bolted to your 4x4.…

WHEN YOU LOOK AT THE THINGS CHRYSLER Corporation was working on from the 1930s into the 1960s, you will note they were at the forefront of the technology curve. We could cite many examples in the car world, but the company’s truck developments were equally cutting edge, even if many of them never saw the light of day. In the mid-1940s, Chrysler was riding high on World War II production, and their success as the major supplier of light 4x4 trucks in that conflict gave them a lot of connections in what would become known as the Military Industrial Complex. As the Cold War heated up in the late 1940s and early 1950s, fanned by the Korean conflict, the U.S. Military began a modernization program at all levels. These developments…

TO HEAR HIS FRIENDS TALK, CHRISTIAN Zeitler is a Chevy nut and owns a small stable of older GM four-wheel drives. So, in 2008 he created the Arizona K5 club because he knew there were other Blazer nuts like himself. It started as a website and forums dedicated to those wheelers who retain a fondness for these vintage 4WDs. It’s since morphed into a Facebook page with a large group of members, and the local group has family-oriented gatherings a number of times each year. One of those events is the club’s annual birthday bash as a way to celebrate what started nearly a decade ago. As usual, in 2017 a bunch of the members headed out to the desert for a weekend of camping, wheeling, and camaraderie. On the…

PROVEN FORMULAS ARE JUST THAT—PROVEN. When it comes to building a versatile four-wheel drive, maintaining a low center of gravity (COG) is critical for creating a safe and stable vehicle on- and off-road. With ten years of production under the belt of the ’07 to ’17 Jeep Wrangler JK, there’s been plenty of time to try hundreds, if not thousands of various build configurations. For our ’13 Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon, we wanted a Jeep that could stay practical for daily needs, but not have to watch from the sidelines on more challenging off-road adventures. Fit with a modest 2.5-inch suspension system, we’ve been happy with the lift height, but were itching to get a little more clearance under our axles. To do so, we decided to move up to a…

WAGON LIFT Q I have a ’15 Ram Power Wagon and would like to put 37-inch tires on it, but nobody makes a lift kit for it! The 2500 kit will not work. AEV only has a 3-inch lift with new springs and shocks. Can you help? GARY WRISLEY VIA FACEBOOK.COM/FOURWHEELERMAG A The Ram Power Wagon suspension is nearly identical to the suspension under other Ram 2500 trucks. Of course there are small differences, such as the Articulink control arm and electric disconnecting sway bar, but the suspension mounts on the frame and axles are the same. Many different lift companies offer lifts for the ’14-’17 Ram 2500 and Power Wagon. Since 35-inch tires fit a stock Power Wagon with only minor rubbing, a 3-inch lift is all you need…

>BACK LIGHT Lazer Star Lights introduces the new PreRunner LED ChaseTail lightbar designed exclusively for recreational users. It provides rear-facing illumination for added safety in dusty and other low-visibility conditions. The 20-inch lightbar includes six 3-watt LED lamps per color. The outer ends of the ChaseTail feature amber LED lights, which can be wired into the vehicle as turn signals, as one strobe, one solid dust light, or wired together as dual solid amber dust lights. The red LED segments offer dual wires for running light and brake light functions. The center six LED lights are white and can be wired in conjunction with the vehicle Reverse lights or to a switch for a general rear lighting solution. INFO: Lazer Star Lights, 800/624-6234, lazerstarlights.com <-LOW-PRO CREEPER OEMTools introduces the Professional…

THERE’S LITTLE DOUBT WHERE AUTOMOTIVE brand loyalty lies when you drive up to Greg Gilham’s house. There’s a white ’84 Dodge W150 4x4 pickup sitting behind a silver ’16 Jeep Cherokee on one side of the driveway, and a pristine silver ’90 Dodge Ramcharger nosed up to the garage door. Those are just part of this die-hard Dodge/Chrysler lover’s current vehicle collection. Greg also owns a ’35 Dodge KC 1/2-ton restorod pickup, hot-rodded ’38 Dodge coupe and ragtop, and a fully restored ’48 Chrysler New Yorker. But it was the green-and-black ’46 Power Wagon he backed out of the garage that really caught our attention. It was obvious by the stance and the deep exhaust note that this wasn’t exactly the same flathead-six–powered 4x4 that was near and dear to…

OVER THE PAST YEAR, WE’VE BEEN FORTUNATE enough to customize our ’12 Ford F-150 Raptor to better fit our needs. With a set of King shocks, Addictive Desert Design bumpers, and our 35-inch Nitto Ridge Grappler tires, we’ve been able to transform our truck into something that works even better on- and off-road. Using our truck as a base camp for photo shoots, wheeling adventures, and family trips to the beach, we found our truck was only slacking in one area—cargo storage. While there’s no shortage of bed cap options in the aftermarket, we wanted something rugged enough to survive off-road, but still stylish enough that our daily driver didn’t look like a work truck. After searching the interwebs and our local bedcover retailers, we landed on an Overland Series…

FORD’S 6.7L POWER STROKE HAS PROVEN ITSELF asa reliable workhorse engine. Many owners have even compared it to the 7.3L—the initial bearer of the Power Stroke name that was revered for its 500,000-mile durability. However, the 6.7L Power Stroke brings something to the table that the 7.3L never could: the ability to make big horsepower, easily. Thanks to its Bosch high-pressure common-rail fuel system, the piezoelectric injectors employed in the 6.7L are capable of supporting an incredible 650-700 rwhp without modification. Unfortunately, the performance capabilities of the factory turbocharger and both the high- and low-pressure fuel systems don’t allow the full potential of the injectors to be realized. After replacing the restrictive factory turbo with a higher-flowing fixed-geometry BorgWarner S366 SX-E and adding a second injection pump to the mix,…

FIRST, LET’S ADDRESS THE BIG, blue elephant in the room. With only 223 miles logged for this review, what follows is really more an overview of our total time with the ’16 Range Rover Sport SVR Four Wheeler of the Year and not so much that last couple hundred miles before the dreaded “hey, we need our vehicle back” phone call from Jaguar Land Rover. Normally we receive our test vehicles sometime in the winter months, but our SVR had to be crafted at the SVO facility in England and then delivered via ship all the way to Los Angeles. Because of that, we didn’t actually receive our Estoril Blue rocket until July. And here we are with a meager 200-something miles left in our final installment. Our strongest takeaway…

EDITOR@FOURWHEELER.COM »»»THAT’S INTERESTING -> This was the headline: “Land Rover Discovery Tows 121-ton Road Train in the Australian Outback.” The deets are, an HSE Td6 (aka diesel) towed a 328-foot-long, seven-trailer semitruck, starting from a dead stop for 10 miles (the SUV is rated for 7,716 pounds). Why? Why not? -> Ford and Domino’s are collaborating on pizza research. Specifically, how positively freaked out would you be if a driverless vehicle pulled up with your pie? Also, how positively annoyed will you be if you have to walk all the way to the curb to collect it yourself? -> Did you have money on where the next-gen Nissan Frontier would be built? We sure hope it was riding on the Canton Vehicle Assembly Plant in Mississippi. -> We guess something…

PLASTIC PARTS ARE MADE FOR TOYS, BUT WHEN your playground is the rock garden, those parts just don’t last. The factory bumper on our ’17 Jeep JK Wrangler suffered from a mediocre approach angle, and subsequently took a few too many love taps from the local geology. We needed something that not only allowed the Jeep’s tires to touch the rock before the bumper, but also was lightweight enough to avoid overloading the stock springs on the front end. GenRight Off Road had the solution. The company builds, abuses, and reengineers hard-core Jeep parts right here in the U.S. The owner, Tony Pellegrino, uses the King of the Hammers race as a proving ground, making sure everything built by GenRight can stand up to the toughest single-day off-road race in…

THE TOYOTA TACOMA HAS BEEN THE TOP off-road performance preference for decades when it comes to midsize pickups. However, that’s not to say there isn’t room for improvement. Even the revered TRD model trucks leave something to be desired. This is especially true when it comes to the suspension. Of course the TRD Tacoma pickups come with upgraded shocks, but as with most factory off-road shocks, they are still tuned with street use as the primary function. With that in mind, we turned to the ICON Vehicle Dynamics Stage 4 suspension system and the knowledgeable techs at SoCal SuperTrucks to tame and tune our ’17 Tacoma. The completely bolt-on and U.S.-made ICON Stage 4 Tacoma system includes ICON extended-travel remote-reservoir coilover front shocks and remote-reservoir rear shocks. The kit provides…

CAN-AM MAVERICK X3 X DS KEY FEATURES: Tri-Mode Dynamic Power Steering, 14-Inch Aluminum Beadlock Wheels With 28-Inch Maxxis Bighorn 2.0 Tires, Fully Adjustable Fox 2.5 PODIUM RC2 Piggyback Shocks WEIGHT (LB): 1,470 (Dry) WHEELBASE (IN): 102 FRONT SUSPENSION, TYPE/TRAVEL (IN): Double A-Arm With Sway Bar; 20 REAR SUSPENSION, TYPE/TRAVEL (IN): Four-Link Torsional Trailing Arm With Sway Bar; 20 FUEL CAPACITY (GAL): 10.5 ENGINE SIZE: 154hp Rotax ACE 900cc Turbocharged Triple-Cylinder Engine ENGINE COOLING: Liquid With Integrated Intercooler TRANSMISSION: Quick Response System X (QRS-X) CVT With High Airflow; L/H/N/R/P 2WD/4WD: 2/4WD With Visco-Lok Auto-Locking Front Differential COLORS: Triple Black, Circuit Yellow MSRP: $24,999 MAVERICK X3 TURBO R KEY FEATURES: Tri-Mode Dynamic Power Steering, 14-Inch Aluminum Wheels With 28-Inch Maxxis Bighorn 2.0 Tires, Fox 2.5 PODIUM Piggyback Shocks With QS3 Compression Adjustment…

WHEN WE SET OUT TO UPGRADE the current tire setup on our ’09 GMC 2500HD 4x4 Duramax, the options were limitless and a bit confusing when it came down to making a decision. We needed a tire that could handle it all. With the truck serving double and sometimes triple duty as a daily driver, tow rig, and occasional off-road expedition vehicle on the weekends, we needed a tire that could essentially do it all with ease. With that in mind, we ordered a set of 35x12.50R17 Falken WildPeak M/Ts for our GMC, mounted on a set of 9-inch-wide Raceline Avenger wheels. Built for maximum duty on or off the trail, Falken has designed a tire with strength in numbers, literally. Falken delivered exactly what we needed in the WildPeak…

SO LAST TIME WE GAVE YOU THE nuts-and-bolts overview of what our 2017 SUV of the Year Grand Cherokee Trailhawk was all about. Now it’s time to dig into the meat of the matter: What’s this thing like to live with on a daily basis? We’ve been putting it to work pulling SoCal daily driver duties mostly, with a fun off-road foray here and real hauling and towing work there. For starters, every time you step on the brake and depress the Start button, the Jeep reverts to Eco mode. It’s not a bad thing, especially considering the fact that we’re pulling down 15.45 mpg in mixed highway and in-town driving. The Eco mode not only drastically shortens the shift points to keep the engine rpms down, but the throttle…