Innholdsfortegnelse for June 2016 i Four Wheeler

COVER UP Rugged Ridge announces its new line of Boulder Aluminum Differential Covers for Dana 44 and 30 axles. Each cover is said to be designed to help protect internal components from damage caused by contact with rocks and other terrain off-road, as well as aid in dissipating heat from differentials. The covers are made from A356-T6 cast aluminum and finished in matte black. Rugged Ridge Boulder Aluminum Differential Covers come complete with a magnetic drain plug and a specially designed dipstick bolt to help avoid under or overfilling the differentials. INFO: Rugged Ridge, 770/614-6101, ruggedridge.com ALL-NEW AT Pro Comp now offers the new A/T Sport all-terrain tire. The A/T Sport features a unique all-terrain rubber compound that is said to be specially formulated for balanced on- and off-road performance.…

SOMETIMES IT’S NOT THE DESTINATION BUT THE journey. And when it comes to overlanding, that trek—and the related remote camping and traveling, often to parts unknown— is precisely why we’ve gathered a ton of gear that will allow you to be self-sufficient during your adventure, from trailering and lighting to pop-up tents and blades to much more. OVERLANDING TRAILER What it is: The TrailHead from Okie Built Trailers is compact, making it handy if you’ve got a short-wheelbase rig. And it’s trailready: it has a Raptor liner to stay scratch and stain resistant and a Timbren axleless suspension for dealing with terrain and obstacles. There’s also LED lighting and a standard four-pin wiring harness. The base-model Lock N Roll Hitch is 80 inches long, 50 inches wide, and 20 inches…

THERE ARE TIMES WHEN WE JUST HEAD TO THE desert, forest, or mountains with a general area in mind, randomly exploring trails. On other occasions, we prepare by plotting courses using satellite imagery, creating an online route, and downloading it to a GPS unit to use for trail navigation. We’ve used handheld GPS units, smartphones, laptops, and various touchscreen tablets with GPS software. Each has its pros and cons. Magellan recently introduced its eXplorist TRX7, an OHV navigation solution in the form of a 7-inch touchscreen tablet. The GPSenabled unit can display maps and routes, plus record your travelled routes much like a GPS unit most of us are familiar with. Where this device stands apart is that it comes preloaded with more than 44,000 trail routes in forest and…

MOTORIZED CAMPING WAS NOT A NEW pastime in 1963, but campers built on a 4x4 chassis were still very uncommon. As far as we know, the first production compact 4x4 chassis-mounted camper came from IH (International Harvester) in 1963. Built on a Scout 80 100-inch wheelbase chassis, it remains one of the very few of its type ever built. It started early in 1962 when Fibertron, a new division of Winner Boats in Dickson, Tennessee, developed a fiberglass camper body to fit the then-new Scout chassis. It isn’t clear whether Fibertron instigated the idea or International, but Fibertron built a prototype in the summer of 1962 and the International sales department went ape over it. The Motor Truck Committee approved ordering 88 units for initial distribution and shows. A dealer…

WE WERE STANDING NEXT TO OUR ’16 Ford Explorer Platinum test vehicle in the middle of nowhere taking in the smell of pine while looking out over a picturesque valley bordered by tree-laden hills. We had just battled some of the nastiest snow we had seen in a while, and we were strategizing the best way to attack a long, steep, twisty uphill climb. Our location was somewhere in northern Illinois on an unplowed one-lane “road.” The day before the Explorer was delivered to us, the area received about 5 inches of heavy, wet snow, along with sleet and rain. Under the snow, the terrain wasn’t frozen, so it was slipperier than snot. The combination was almost a worstcase winter scenario for vehicles: resistance to all movement and very little…

OVERLANDING. IT’S ALL ABOUT GETTING FROM POINT A TO POINT B IN the most scenic, sparsely populated way possible. Unfortunately part of trekking far and away from civilization means you’re also venturing far and away from fuel stations. Normally it may not be a very big deal, but if your overlanding rig of choice just happens to be a Wrangler that gets miserable fuel economy, you’re likely to spend more of your overlanding vacation stressing about your fuel needle than enjoying the scenery out the windshield. Sure, you can strap a couple 5-gallon fuel jugs here and there, but those are bulky, clunky, can leak, and take up precious cargo space. Wouldn’t it be better to have your auxiliary fuel housed in a neat, tidy container, say, like right behind…

BRINGING HOME A USED 4X4 OFTEN REQUIRES a lot of undoing and repairing things that the previous owners cobbled together, deemed good enough, or completely overlooked. Once you get those issues out of the way, you can start in on the improvements to a new-to-you toy. Our ’97 Toyota Tacoma pickup is more of an adventure 4x4 for us, so for now we’ve skipped over the hardcore offroad products like solid axle swaps, huge tires, lockers, and so on. This truck will mostly see unimproved roads and long highway jaunts away from civilization to the outdoors. However, we still need to cover the basic on- and off-road fundamentals. To do that, we addressed five important areas of our pickup. These upgrades are simple modifications that can be made to almost…

Here at Four Wheeler, we love 4x4 adventure travel, so in June 2005, we inserted two staffers, Sean Holman and Ken Brubaker, into a ’05 Hummer H2 SUT for a 9-day, 9-state, 3,698-mile, on- and offroad trip from California to Illinois. Its formal name was H2our De Force, but we simply called it H2our. The trip was documented in three consecutive issues of Four Wheeler, beginning with the Nov. ’05 issue. “H2OUR PROVED THAT INCREDIBLE ADVENTURE CAN BE HAD WITH A STOCK 4x4 AND A DESIRE TO EXPLORE.” The plan (if you want to call it that) included wheeling in each state to experience nine different types of wheeling in one trip. The trip, which began in Hollister, California, started badly when Ken split his eyebrow open on the H2’s…

2016 Chevy Silverado Realtree and GMC Sierra All Terrain X The Chevy Silverado 1500 LTZ Z71 is getting a new edition in 2016: the Realtree. As you may have suspected, it’s a camo theme— exterior graphics, headrest logos, and other miscellaneous Realtree graphics. Other additions include blackout trim, off-road assist steps, and black 20-inch wheels. Over at GMC, there’s the All Terrain X for the ’16 Sierra 1500 4WD Crew Cab and shortbed SLT models. You’re looking at a special grille, Eaton locking rear diff, Z71 off-road suspension package, spray-on bedliner, inclinometer, and All Terrain logo’d instrument cluster. “WITHOUT CREATING ADDITIONAL CAPACITY, IN THE UNITED STATES, WE NEED TO ... TO TRY AND DEAL WITH THE DEVELOPMENT OF BOTH JEEP AND THE RAM BRAND.” —SERGIO MARCHIONNE, FIAT CHRYSLER CEO,ACCORDING TO…

“THE QUESTION ON OUR MINDS WAS, COULD WE CLIMB THIS TRAIL AND WOULD IT PROVIDE THAT SPECIAL CAMPSITE WE WERE HOPING FOR?” EVER SKIPPED RIGHT TO THE middle of a book? That’s kind of what we’re doing here with a team of adventurers in AEV-modified Jeeps. Welcome to Day Five of a journey over the WABDR or, more accurately, the Washington Backcountry Discovery Route. It’s a dirt road/Jeep trail/dual-sport motorcycle path that traverses 600 miles of Washington from the Oregon border to Canada. It runs roughly parallel to the spine of the magnificent Cascade Mountain Range and offers epic scenery and views of a lifetime. By this point, the team had driven roughly 450 miles and witnessed some of Washington’s most rugged and beautiful landscapes. So far, it had been…

CAMPING IS WAY OLDER THAN FOUR-WHEELING, MANKIND HAVING “camped” through much of history. The first time somebody tossed a camper onto a 4x4 for recreational purposes is difficult to pinpoint but was likely right after World War II. That’s when truck camper manufacturing began. There were only two factory-new 4x4 pickups available then—the Dodge WDX Power Wagon and the Jeep pickup—but the market grew. By many reports, the award for the first truck camper is a virtual tie and came in 1945. Howard Cree develop the Cree Truck Coach in Michigan, and Walter King developed the Sport King about the same time. King was the first to develop the cabover camper at the end of the ’40s. The market exploded from there, and many others jumped in. By the early…

IF TENT CAMPING SEEMS LIKE AN ATTRACTIVE way of getting away from it all, but you don’t want the hassle of setting up and transporting all the equipment, a rooftop tent is definitely worth considering. James Baroud makes hard-shell rooftop tents that pop up and are usable in mere seconds, and they go back together almost as quick. The Explorer Evolution 2015 shown here has room for two adults and a child. Designed for maximum airflow with lots of screens, air circulates freely through the tent. A solar-powered vent is built into the upper hull for even more ventilation. The fan can also be reversed to draw condensation out of the tent. Inside, two removable storage pockets and a ceiling storage net help keep your things out of the way…

LOW PAYLOAD POWER WAGON Q I always enjoy reading what you write, and I hope you can help me find the correct answer to payload on a new Ram Power Wagon. After doing some research, I was told that if I order a Tradesman-based Power Wagon, I can get about 3,000 pounds of payload, which is the same as the Tradesman 2500. The dealer has some paperwork showing the one we wanted to buy having a 3,198-pound payload, but the door jamb on that truck and others we have seen only shows about a 1,500-pound payload, which is about the same as the ’14 Ram 1500 currently carrying our Four Wheel Camper. Since we bought the Four Wheel Camper because it can be taken on real 4x4 routes and find…