Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2016 i Four Wheeler

SLINKY WRANGLER Already have a Rubicon Express Extreme-Duty Long-Arm suspension on your Jeep JK but covet remote-reservoir Fox coilovers with dual-rate springs, air bumpstops, and all necessary hardware and brackets to make it all work? Lucky you because the company now offers a coilover upgrade package for its top-flight Wrangler suspension, including everything you need to make the swap and take your JK to the next level. INFO: Rubicon Express, 800/776-0767, rubiconexpress.com 2015 F-150 COILOVER KIT If you’ve got a ’15 Ford F-150 and you’re the type who doesn’t buy junky parts for your brand-new $40,000 to $60,000 pickup, then BDS has the 4-inch suspension system for you. Allowing up to 35-inch tires, the BDS coilover conversion suspension features Fox 21⁄2-inch remote-reservoir coilovers up front and Fox 2.0 IFP shocks…

THE WHOLE PACKAGE: BRAINS, BEAUTY, and brawn. We honestly don’t know what that means, but we hear it a lot. And for some reason stuff like that pops into our heads when we think of the new Warn Elite-Series front and rear bumpers and PowerPlant winch we just installed on our ’07 Wrangler Rubicon project. Stupid TV. If we can take some editorial license, Warn’s Elite-Series line of bumpers is definitely the whole package. Although an inanimate object can’t have brains, the engineers who designed the stuff surely did. Both the front and rear CNC-formed bumpers hug the bodylines nicely, and the laser-cut brackets fit with no need to bust out the die grinder—just a little nipping of the factory framehorns here and there, but that’s more the fault of…

NINE HUNDRED: THAT’S THE AMOUNT OF torque, in pound-feet, that is generated by Ram’s most powerful 6.7L Cummins turbodiesel available in the ’16 Ram 3500 Heavy Duty. This new figure puts Ram on top, for now, at the time of this writing, in the never-ending power race for light trucks. This engine helps the 3500 achieve a darn impressive 31,210-pound maximum tow rating (regular cab, 4x2, dualie, based on SAE J2807 criteria). Now before we go any further, let’s be clear that the high-output Cummins is available only in the ’16 Ram 3500. It’s also important to note that the engine is mated to an Aisin AS69RC six-speed automatic transmission. If you want a manual trans mated to a diesel, you’ll need to check the box for the 350hp/660–lb-ft Cummins.…

THE OFF-ROAD EXPO, HELD EVERY YEAR IN POMONA, CALIFORNIA, IS ONE OF THE FEW INDUSTRY EVENTS where the doors are open to anyone. This event gives you the chance to ogle an abundance of new products and professionally built off-road vehicles. You have the chance to get up close and personal and ask questions about everything from new tires and lift kits for your 4x4 to fully prepped Trophy Trucks. Off-road–racing celebrities like B.J. Baldwin, Shannon Campbell, Walker Evans, Carl Renezeder, and more were in attendance for the 2015 Off-Road Expo. We spent the better part of the day fondling all the cool new 4x4 products and vehicles we could find. Here are some of our favorites. Clean GM This Chevy Silverado 2500HD 4x4 was built by Kibbetech (kibbetech.com). It…

IF YOU WANTED A LESSON ON HOW TO PULL yourself up by the bootstraps in the face of extreme adversity, Japan in the late ’40s and early ’50s was the place to get it. Their society was devastated on a level so deep it literally had to be remade from the ground up. It was far more than just dealing with the results of the major loss of population and infrastructure from the war. After decades of indoctrination by a totalitarian regime, the Japanese people had to completely change their way of thinking—about themselves and their place in the world. It was a remarkable feat that reforged the country identity and helped lead Japan into a leading position in the manufacture of cars and SUVs. In 1951, Toyota, a car…

“ONE OF THE KEY ASPECTS TO AN INSTALL LIKE THIS, WHERE TIME IS VALUABLE, IS PREPARATION.” Long hours on the job, the time-suck of commuting, and responsibilities at home leave many of us scrambling for time just to do basic maintenance on our rigs. Finding time to install a suspension lift is near impossible for many of us. But how long does installing a suspension lift actually take? We answered that question in a story titled “Five In Five,” which published in the Feb. ’04 issue of Four Wheeler. The parameters of the install were simple. First, we wanted to install 5 inches of lift under a solid front axle rig (arguably the most popular axle setup for wheelers) in five hours or less. Second, the work had to be…

HAVING REGULARLY ATTENDED the annual Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) Show for nearly two decades, we’ve seen a lot of trends come and go. It wasn’t long ago that nearly all SEMA 4x4 builds were simply garbage magnets assembled by some marketing manager that had never even driven off-road. Fortunately, it looks like those days are behind us—for the most part. Don’t get us wrong, there are still a ton of show-only 4x4s, but the ratio of functional off-road–ready wheeling rigs has certainly changed for the better. Every year, the SEMA Show has a different feel and vibe. Some years the attention is drawn to the latest hot rod, other years it’s vintage vehicles, UTVs, or race cars. This year proved to be the year of the offroad vehicle. We…

EVER DREAMED OF WALKING THE ENTIRE SEMA SHOW HELD EVERY YEAR IN Las Vegas? We have too. Even though we have been attending the event for more than a decade and generally walk 8-10 miles of show floor each day, we still feel that there were stones left unturned at the end of the trip. It’s understandable because this is the largest aftermarket automotive show in the world. There is so much stuff to see and so many aisles to walk that, no matter how hard you try, you will surely miss something. This year we set out to find our favorite 4x4 products—no small feat considering that almost 2,000 newly introduced parts, tools, and components were brought out for the 2015 SEMA show. Here is what we found in…

BEAV BRODIE, OWNER OF FORTIFIED CUSTOMS in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, had a customer bring him a ’94 Land Rover Defender 90 and a specific request. “The owner wanted to maintain the Defender look without making it flashy or overly customized. Not caring about the exterior imperfections, he wanted it to haul ass and be like new on the inside,” Beav says. Thus began a complete buildup of the Defender, the centerpiece being the installation of a GM 5.3L V-8 engine. Those Gen III/IV GM small-block engine swaps are popular in part because these ’plants are reliable and well suited for performance modifications. These engines are found in many 4x4 project rigs and are available in aluminum or cast-iron blocks, and they mate to a variety of modern or…

FREE WHEELING Q After 45 years of driving 4x4 pickups for work, I recently bought a Jeep Wrangler Rubicon and am very pleased with it. But, on all my pickups, I always had front manual locking hubs, which I would unlock during the summer months for highway driving to improve fuel economy. When I talk about locking hubs in the Wrangler communities, I am repeatedly told “The small gain in mileage is not worth the cost of installation” or “Wrangler’s axles are too small.” My last round trip to Moab was 3,500 miles, which used about 250 gallons of fuel. Even a small improvement would help. I figure about 10 trips to Easter Jeep Safari would save me $750 if I could even get just 10 percent better fuel economy.…

THAT’S INTERESTING Indeed, interesting: That Jeep Wrangler pickup we’ve been awaiting may not have Wrangler in it after all. It might actually be a new Jeep pickup with new DNA. Hmmm. More Jeep interesting: The first Cherokee produced in China has reached the end of the assembly line at the Changsha plant. And kept rolling. In order to be purchased. If you were sitting by the fire-place thinking to yourself, “I wonder how many vehicles GM sold globally in the first nine months of 2015,” then: 7.2 million. To answer your follow-up thoughts, truck sales in North America jumped 16 percent, Cadillac had record sales in China, South Korea numbers were up 11 percent, and total sales overall were down 1 percent. Corn. Leaders Farms in Ohio grew a 7-acre…

THIS IS NOT A HARDCORE OFF-ROADING story. I didn’t thrash-build a vehicle against an impossible timeline and then hit the trail against all odds to tackle the most insane obstacles in the country. There are no heroics, unless you think spending quality time with your offspring and honoring your parents qualifies. My mom and dad were big travelers. A couple years in southeast Asia on the government’s dime notwithstanding, road trips were his specialty, and we had plenty of long-distance adventures when my siblings and I were young. Some went smoothly, some were disasters, but all were memorable. There was one more crosscountry trip they had been looking forward to making after he retired that hit many of their bucket-list destinations. Just stuff they were interested in, enjoyed, or just…

WHEELING YOUR RIG HARD TAKES ITS TOLL. Welds crack, axles break, and sheetmetal gets dented over the years. Some people sell their well-worn vehicles. Others transfer the parts to a new donor. However, Dave Barry just sees this as an opportunity to take what he has learned and make his Ford Ranger even better. Dave bought his Ranger new off the lot in 1997 and has been upgrading it ever since. That has included two TTB lift kits (before he swapped in a Dana 44) and a few different link setups with the solid front axle. Plus, there have been some rollovers along the way, resulting in the addition of some tubing and removal of some sheetmetal. “One-tons and 40s would be great,” Dave admits. “But honestly, the fact that…

WE CAN’T COME UP WITH ONE OVERARCHING MANUAL ON FLAT-TOWING THAT COVERS EVERY specific vehicle on the planet. There are just too many drivetrain, steering, electrical, and other related variables, and what may work for one vehicle may completely destroy the running gear of another. That said, what we can do is provide some tips and tricks we’ve learned along the way to get you started or help you sort out flat-towing issues you may be having and make sure your toad, or towee, stays behind your tow rig until you disconnect it. Steering For starters, if your vehicle darts all over the road or suffers from death wobble when you’re driving it, the same thing will happen when you hook it to a towbar. Make sure your alignment is…