Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2022 i Four Wheeler

I was fumbling around my office the other day and found an old photo of my K5 Blazer taken in one of the pastures near our family farm in northern Illinois. The date stamp on the back says it was taken in April 1986. To a photo critic it’s an unremarkable image. The subject is too far away and the light wasn’t very good. But when I found the photo after more than three decades, it flipped a switch in my old 58-year-old brain and I couldn’t help but smile when I thought of all the hours I spent wheeling in those rolling pastures. Typically, I can’t remember where I leave a wrench, but after all the years I could recall the small-block sounds coming from the tips of the…

Confucius said, “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” Steve Jobs said, “The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.” These truths are evident when you consider the folks who work for the Four Wheeler Network and put effort and energy into events like the 2021 Ultimate Adventure. Christian Hazel, Trent McGee, Verne Simons, and Fred Williams are all what we consider to be staff on this adventure (Fred and Trent are freelance, while Christian and Verne are salaried staff). These guys are off-road enthusiasts who figured out how to make a career for themselves in the magazine and off-road industry, most for over 20…

SPONSORED BY The companies on these pages bring you some of the latest and greatest tools to get out and experience the outdoors. From power management, storage, navigation, and communication, to the recovery gear, tires, and winch on your rig—these establishments have you covered when you kick it into four-wheel drive and hit the dirt. And did we mention Jeep? For more than 75 years, the company has built one of the best tools for exploring off-road and we were honored to have Jeep as the presenting sponsor of the 2021 Overland Adventure. Joining Jeep in making Overland Adventure possible were American Adventure Lab, Bubba Gear, Falken Tires, Midland, onX Offroad, REDARC, and Warn Industries. Throughout Overland Adventure, each company’s vehicle and wares were put through the rigors of extended…

By now you are probably wondering if our 2021 Pickup Truck of the Year-winning Ram 1500 TRX lives up to the hype. Is it a one-trick pony? Does 702 horsepower wear on you after a while? Is it too big for city driving or the trail? Is it too much truck, or is it one of the best vehicles we’ve ever had the keys to? Over the next year we plan to answer these questions, but we have a few initial thoughts through the first 3,500 miles of use. So far, we can tell you that Ram’s TRX, which is pronounced “T-R-X” and not “T-Rex”, is one of the most amazing pickup trucks we’ve driven. From the way it drives and sounds, to the way it doles out copious amounts…

Procrastination is a funny thing. Normally, when I’m eyeballs-deep in a bunch of projects I need to get done, my modus operandi is to look for more unfinished projects to add to the pile rather than dive in and start working in earnest on the stuff I’ve been letting slide. That’s kinda what I’m doing today. I’ve got a pile of new injection stuff from Holley for my little 2.5L Why-J that I need to install, but that involves building an adapter plate. Building the adapter plate requires digging out my cutting tools, welder, and a visit to the metal yard for some aluminum plate. Digging out my tools involves moving a ton of other unfinished projects that are in their way. In short, I’ve once again painted myself into…

■ If you made a reservation to order a ’22 Ford F-150 Lightning, you might not get your hands on the keys to a ’22 Ford F-150 Lightning—it might be a ’23 truck, instead. Ford cites extraordinarily high demand for the EV truck and has already spent $250 million to increase production. ■ What percentage of the plastic on the Ford Bronco Sport will come from recycled ocean plastic? The jury’s out on the exact figure, but we do know these wiring harness clips, largely invisible to the consumer, will be. Discarded fishing nets, a large source of the plastic harvested from the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea, will be used to manufacture the clips. ■ Want to crank the windows up or down in your ’22 Chevy Silverado…

Corned beef hash and eggs, a shrimp boil in the Dutch oven, smoked brisket chili with bacon—“it’s not always the most healthy, but it’s home-cooked.” While Jason Jordan might’ve been referencing the hearty meals he creates after a long day of wheeling with his family, for him, the food isn’t the only thing that’s home-cooked. When Jason was in his early teens, it was his dad, Ed, who got him into wheeling. The two explored Nevada, Arizona, and other parts of the country in a home-built Blazer lifted high with 40-inch tires. When he was 18, Jason got his own ’86 Chevy K2500 and fit it with a 4-inch lift, 37-inch HMMWV tires, and wheels to match—and the 4x4 projects kept flowing. There was a ’68 CJ with a small-block…

SPONSORED BY Two truths and a lie with Mike Hilbrandt. He’s been part of the United States Coast Guard and on a Search and Rescue team. He’s not afraid of plowing through hood-deep fluffy powder with a lifted Subaru Forester. He spent many hours crafting the fearsome baby doll Valkyrie on the front of his Toyota HiAce Fire Truck. If you know Mike or Monica (Mike’s wife and the other driver of the Fire Truck), you might’ve already heard the story behind the unusual hood ornament and that it, in fact, took very little work to procure. But the big question is, how did this duo end up traveling North America in a Japanese Fire Truck? For Mike, he’s been a “dirt person” ever since his dad took him into…

Doing truck stuff can’t always mean playing in the dirt, and for this segment of time with the ’20 Jeep Gladiator Rubicon, we focused on one of the things that makes the Gladiator stand out from the rest of the Jeep lineup—its bed. If you haven’t caught the first two installments, ever since the ’20 Jeep Gladiator Rubicon won the 2020 Four Wheeler Pickup Truck of the Year award, we were eager to spend more time in Jeep’s first new pickup since the Cherokee–based MJ Comanche ceased production in 1992. We checked just about every box when specing our Gladiator, from the color-matched fenders and hardtop to the heated seats and the Hydro Blue Pearl-Coat paintjob. The most important stuff, the 33-inch Falken Wildpeak all-terrain tires, 4.0:1 transfer case, steel…

Bill Hetrich’s ’39 Chevy-bodied ’75 Blazer caught our attention one night as we leafed through the Four Wheeler archives. There’s far more to it than the old-iron body and Gumbo Monster Mudders. Bill used three different trucks and the bartering system to build the Corvette-Yellow machine seen here. Take a look back with us to the June 1990 issue of Four Wheeler and how Bill’s truck came to be. The process began with a ’75 Blazer which Bill and his brother stripped down to its frame. The duo took six inches out of the frame, filled in its imperfections, and painted it all, before shifting their attention to the body. According to Bill, attaching the ’39 Chevy body to its new frame “wasn’t easy, but wasn’t that hard,” and required…

BRIAN SCORED A LEGIT VAN While doing research on this apparent unicorn van I recently bought for $500, I read your article on a Pathfinder 4x4 Safari (Trail’s End, June ’21). At the end of the article, your author asks for pics of other survivors. I have one that I cannot find a single other example of. It’s an ’85 Chevy Astro van converted by Trail Wagons in California. This company was a subsidiary of Chinook RVs. They were known to send their conversion vans to Pathfinder for a 4x4 conversion. After reading your article about the ’85 prototype 4x4 drivetrain, I realized mine is identically covered. Solid lift blocks under composite springs, Dana 44 up front, and so on. Mine has the NP205 transfer case and appears to use…

Since Ultimate Adventure’s inception in 1998, video and photography has played a huge role in the event’s exposure. Over the years, video has progressed from VHS tapes to DVDs to YouTube and Motor Trend’s own streaming service. On the still photography side, the photos creatively and intricately detail the UA action. The Ultimate Adventure video crew and still photographers are more than just hired guns. They’re part of the UA family, and they work hard to cover this event, which is really as much about the family-like social aspect as the awesome action. Normally, the UA video director actually creates the videos, but this year they handed off their hard-won footage to the Motor Trend Studios, which cut and created the UA2021 videos. We thank the videographers and still photographers…

Americans love their off-road trucks. So much so that the OE manufacturers continue to add new off-road models to their lineups. When Chevrolet introduced its all-new Silverado 1500 for the 2019 model year, the company included the new Trail Boss trims alongside the company’s legendary Z71 off-road package. Today, the Custom Trail Boss and LT Trail Boss trims account for a full 30 percent of Silverado 1500 sales, while another 30 percent of trucks are sold with the Z71 package. With more than half of all Silverados sold being off-road oriented, it should come as no surprise that Chevy would look at adding yet another, more premium and more capable off-roader to the lineup. As part of its 2022 refresh, Chevy has unveiled the new Silverado 1500 ZR2. And the…

I’ve been a fan of the magazine for as long as I can remember. When I was a kid, at the store with my mom I used to grab any and all off-road magazines off the shelf and read them. You can only spend so much time looking at potato salad with your mom. Often, I came home with several of the magazines back when there were a ton. I’m sad that most of those magazines are gone, but I’m glad that Four Wheeler is still here. I’ve never written in with a question but thought I would today. I’m contemplating building a new (to me) tow vehicle although this is still all hypothetical. Something that I can use to tow my trailer with off-road toys or a camper that…