Innholdsfortegnelse for July 2015 i Four Wheeler

ken.brubaker@fourwheeler.com WE RECENTLY HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO spend 17 days with the all-new ’15 Ford F-150. During this time we piled approximately 2,400 miles on the truck throughout Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. We loaded the truck like it was a pack mule, covered a bunch of highway miles, and ran it through a variety of off-road conditions. The goal was to determine how Ford’s 13th-generation F-150 handled a variety of tasks and how it compared to other new 1⁄2-ton trucks on the market today. The Truck Ford provided us with a Ruby Red Super Crew fit with the 51⁄2-foot cargo box. The F-150 had the XLT trim and FX4 Off-Road package. Under the hood was the 3.5L Eco-Boost turbocharged V-6 engine bolted to a 6R80 six-speed automatic transmission followed…

editor@fourwheeler.com WE WERE ITCHING FOR A NEW ADVENTURE after working through the winter on projects and performing modifications to our 4x4s. We loaded our camping gear, fueled up, and set our sights on a park for a new adventure. No, not a theme park or a water park or even an off-road park. Our destination was Big Bend National Park along the Rio Grande in Texas. National parks are found all across America and offer many recreational and camping opportunities. Some parks even offer four-wheel-drive trails within their boundaries such as White Rim in Canyonlands and Black Gap in Big Bend. Big Bend has a long and interesting history. The land within the park has been governed under the flags of six different countries including Spain, France, Mexico, Republic of…

editor@fourwheeler.com THE PENDULUM OF FOUR-WHEELING HAS swung from one end of the spectrum to the other in the past decade. At one point in time, guys would spend all day running a trail less than a mile long in single-seat vehicles with tiny fuel cells. At that point, you might as well just walk. Since then, “overlanding” has been the hot trend, which, from the outside, can look like a contest to see who can bolt the most products from Australia and South Africa to their SUVs. Somewhere in the middle lie the rest of us: guys who want to take their families out for some adventure on the weekends without having to work a second job to pay for it all. However, what do you really need to take…

editor@fourwheeler.com WORKING AT FOUR WHEELER ISN’T ALL horsepower and giant tires. There are long hours for little pay, and we have gotten so good at jumping through corporate hoops we could win Best in Show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. That’d said, you didn’t pick up this magazine to listen to us whine—you want to be inspired. “Bucket list”, that sort of thing. The kind of trip you talk about for years to come. We make an effort to go on a “oncein-a-lifetime” trip at least once a year, and we have set up camp in nearly every state in the union. These are the trips that stand out in our memory as the most scenic, most remote, challenging, and all around most rewarding. It’s the kind of…

editor@fourwheeler.com WE ATTACKED THE AXLES OF OUR ’81 TOYOTA TREKKER IN PART ONE OF “Import Upgrades” (Mar. ’15) and went to work on the rear suspension in Part Two (Apr. ’15). Our truck started with many of the common popular aftermarket Toyota solid-axle improvements, and we were able to retain many of these components during the buildup of our all-terrain-eating Toyota. In this installment, we’ll focus on how the Mayhem Metal Works three-link front suspension comes together. The heart of the Mayhem Metal Works link suspension kit for Toyota 4x4s is the crossmember/skidplate assembly. This structure is easily positioned under the truck frame and welded into place. It has all of the link mounts built in, providing you with a great starting point when fabricating a custom link suspension at…

EDITOR@FOURWHEELER.COM THE SECOND-GENERATION SCOUT STARTED production in April of 1971 but wasn’t available for sale in large numbers until June. When Jerry Shook’s Scout II Cab-Top was built, almost exactly two years later in June of 1973, it was still a pretty new deal for International but one that was paying off with a big boost in Scout sales. “Cab-Top” was International’s name for the pickup version of the Scout. The Travel-Top (or Traveltop) was the station wagon and Panel-Top was the panel. You could also order a topless Roadster, and the bodies were essentially the same for all. The difference was a removable bulkhead behind the seats, and either a short cab or full-length top determined whether you had a pickup or wagon. You could also put the bulkhead…

EDITOR@FOURWHEELER.COM THAT’S INTERESTING Kansas City Assembly Plant has now joined Dearborn Truck Plant as a builder of the F-150. Interesting factoid: The body shop has more than 500 new robots. Kia Trail’ster. We probably don’t need to tell you it’s all-wheel drive, based on the apostrophe. GM is reducing the Chevy and GMC powertrain warranty from 5 years, 100,000 miles to 5 years, 60,000 miles for ’16 models. Uber is thinking about chicks. UN Women and Uber are partnering to create a million jobs for women to be drivers by 2020. Kelley Blue Book has named its 10 Favorite New-for-2015 Cars. These include the Jeep Renegade and Ford F-150. Kelley Blue Book also named Best Family Cars for 2015, and the Ram 1500 made the list. So did the F-150,…

editor@fourwheeler.com HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT ABOUT SELLING EVERYTHING YOU OWN, GETTING IN your 4x4, and exploring the world? If the answer is yes, then overlanding will appeal greatly to your adventurous side. At its core, overlanding doesn’t require you to be rich, but it doesn’t hurt. The concept is actually pretty simple: travel beyond the tarmac and explore the roads and trails less traveled, all while living out of your vehicle. Most overland adventures focus more on exploration than conquering one trail or extreme obstacle. Some of the more purposebuilt overland rigs are part RV, part tank, with a little doomsday prepper and Mad Max influences spread about. To get a better look and understanding at the overland lifestyle, we headed to the Overland Expo East weekend experience. For 2014,…

ken.brubaker@fourwheeler.com ONE OF THE COOL THINGS ABOUT OUR JOBS HERE AT FOUR WHEELER IS THAT WE GET TO WHEEL A LOT. SOMETIMES that wheeling is at the same places you wheel and other times it’s in a unique place or under special circumstances. Some of our wheeling adventures and locations stand out from others, thus we have favorites. What follows is a collection, in no particular order, of some of our favorite destinations and trips that we’ve done. It’s by no means a complete list, but we offer ’em up as a template for you to use to plan your own 4x4 adventures. Outer Banks, North Carolina The Outer Banks of North Carolina is a string of barrier islands located between the Atlantic Ocean and the mainland. Depending on the…

editor@fourwheeler.com IF THERE ARE ANY TRENDS IN OUTDOOR GEAR FOR 2015, THEY’RE ABOUT LIGHTS, CHARGING, AND MULTIfunction. We’ve compiled this guide with products showcasing those features and more to make bringing The Great Indoors outside for your adventures. ILLUMINATED TENT Five Words or Fewer: A tent with a light. Details: This is from the Big Agnes mtnGLO family, and it’s a three-season tent with integrated LED lights in a two-door tent. You control how much light, be it full or 50 percent, and it needs just six AAA batteries. How Much: About $450 Where: Big Agnes, bigagnes.com ROOF RACK Five Words or Fewer: Carry everything necessary, and not. Details: The BajaRack has mega floorspace, mounts, and an aluminum wind deflector for less noise and drag. It’s lightweight and easy to…

editor@fourwheeler.com THE FORD F-SERIES PICKUP TRUCKS WERE INTRODUCED TO THE AMERICAN PUBLIC FOR THE ’48 MODEL year and continue to roll off the assembly line today after more than a dozen generations. These trucks have changed a lot over more than six decades. We scoured nearly 50 years of production data, and with the help of Randy Harral, Ford aficionado and owner of Driven 4x4 Parts in Phoenix, Arizona, we came up with a ton of good information. We’ll take a look at the popular 1⁄2-ton 4WD versions that have helped fourwheelers travel and play off the highway. 5th Generation (1967-1972) The late ’60s Ford pickup was the F-100 model. The 61⁄2-foot bed sat on a 115-inch wheelbase and the full 8-foot bed on a 131-inch wheelbase. Up front, Ford…

KEN.BRUBAKER@FOURWHEELER.COM At the 1997 Detroit Auto Show, Toyota displayed a ’97 4Runner that was fit with a track drive system. The system intrigued us so much that we made the trip to Toyota’s Toronto-area cold weather proving grounds to drive the vehicle and our review was published in the July ’97 issue of Four Wheeler. Toyota’s prototype track drive system was inspired by a concept car called the Mogul. This vehicle was designed by Toyota on behalf of the Japanese Forestry Service, and the vehicle was displayed at the 1995 Tokyo Auto Show. In the story, we quoted Toyota as saying that the company planned on releasing a production track drive system in Japan during the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano. Toyota was a major sponsor of the 1998 Winter…