Latest / The Overland Journal Podcast / Principles of Overlanding: Driving in Sand, Rocks, and Mud

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Principles of Overlanding: Driving in Sand, Rocks, and Mud · The Overland Journal Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to the Overland Journal podcast. I'm your
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: host Scott Brady, and I'm joined today by Sean Forman. Now,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: Sean is a land rover instructor. He plans a lot
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: of land rovers big expeditions. He plans the Defender Trophy,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: He plans the Trek events. He also does training and
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: event coordination for other manufacturers. He has a deep well
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: of experience as an instructor and as a traveler. Sean
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: has also scaled big mountains, so he's used a big
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: mountain expedition planning as well. Sean and I did have
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: an interview with him several podcasts ago, but this particular
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: podcast is around the principles of overlanding driving. So Seawan
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: and I do the deep dive into driving in sand,
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: driving in rocks, and driving in mud. But so Sean
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: and I do the deep dive into driving in sand,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: driving in rocks, and driving in mud. We also spend
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: some time talking about what you need to do before
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: you leave for a trip, kind of how to set
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: up the vehicle to be as supportive for the driver
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: as possible, so basic considerations around modifications. But this entire
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: conversation really focuses on the art of driving. We don't
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: go into a lot of high speed driving techniques because
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: that's something we're going to cover in a future episode,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: but for this one, I think it's a great conversation.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: Sean has a lot of really valuable insights, so please
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: enjoy our principles of overlanding driving. I want to take
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: a moment for a special announcement of our newest video
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: series on the Expedition Portal YouTube channel that features exploring
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: the Smoky Mountains and the East Coast. This multi part
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: series is presented by Handcook Tires and is hosted by
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: renowned explorer and photographer Sinway Xavier. This series will start
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: at the end of September and run through all of October,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: featuring a trail Scout episode, a Jeep Gladiator feature, vehicle
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: trip planning and preparation, and some installments showing the local
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: artisans and places to visit around the Smoky Mountains. We
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: appreciate Handcook's ongoing support of the overland community and this podcast. John,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: thanks for being on the podcast with us today.
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: Pleasure.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: So we're going to talk through the principles of overlanding
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: driving because it's something when we're on a long trip.
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: We have a vehicle that's kind of set up to
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: be not a master of anyone terrain unless the expedition
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: is very specific to a type of terrain, like if
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: you're in the high latitudes, then you've got something with
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: huge flotation tires. But then that vehicle wouldn't be appropriate
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: for driving through a colonial village in Central America. So
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: we typically have overland vehicles that are, you know, a
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: jack of all trades, but a master of none. So
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: it's good to talk through driving techniques that can help
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: us to maximize the performance of these near stock, often
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: heavily loaded expedition vehicles. And I think that you're the
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: perfect person to do this conversation with me because of
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: your experience with land rovers. You've also led huge expeditions
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: in the mountaineering world, even on everest, so you have
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: this understanding of that I need to be as light
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: as possible, but I also have some safety considerations, which
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: no doubt you learned in the mountains. So thanks for
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: spending the time with me today. Absolutely so the first
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: thing that I thought we would chat about is what
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: mindset we need to have and what are some of
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: the things that we need to do before we even
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: leave the house.
• 3:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I think it's interesting. So you brought up
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: the mountaineering thing up early, so I think it actually
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: translates really well because from a mountaineering side, if you
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: told somebody that you're going to go climb a big peak,
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: they would instantly go into two.
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: Different stages of preparation.
• 4:12
  Speaker 3: One step of preparation would be to prepare themselves, like
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: their body, their fitness, their ability to be able to
• 4:19
  Speaker 3: handle altitudes. You know, you're not going to find somebody
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: who's gonna go climb a big mountain and probably hanging
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: out and eating potato chips all day. For them months
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: ahead of time, there's this preparation of getting themselves mentally
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: and physically prepared for.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Well, that also translates to a vehicle expedition because even
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: though you're in a car all day, the reality of
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: it is is that being in a car all day
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: is there's a certain amount of physical fitness and physicality
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: that comes with it because it's a it's a sedentary
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: position that you're in, but it's not a sedentary role.
• 4:51
  Speaker 3: Your body is moving all the time, and your neck
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: starts to hurt and you realize that you have a
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: big head and all these sort of things. You the
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: same way your your boots start to body. After days
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: of walking in it, you start to notice all the
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: the little spots in the cars and why didn't they
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: build arm rest a little thicker, Why didn't they put
• 5:07
  Speaker 3: a little more padding here?
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Why is the seat so narrow?
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: And I've also found that it's like interrupted by periods
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: of fairly intense physicality, like when you're loading and unloading
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: a vehicle, when you're running a vehicle recovery. The number
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: of times that I've seen people in the wild, they're
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: in the terrain and they're needing to just pull that
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: sixty seventy feet of winch cable out and they're smoked.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's totally dast because.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, it's usually hot, it's usually in the
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: middle of the day. Usually they're they're uh, they're amped
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: up because they got stuck. Yeah, and they didn't take
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: a second to kind of calm things down, you know,
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: they're they're they're pretty uh, they're pretty focused, like parasympathetically,
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  Speaker 1: they're really just like in that moment, they're not really
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: thinking about how they're feeling and giving it a minute
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: just to start to collaborate around that. So one of
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: the things it I do think is important is some
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: physical fitness. You need to be able to move. You
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: need to be able to lift heavy bags, get max
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: tracks off the roof, you know, dig out with a shovel.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: I mean, you and I have done that. I mean
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: even when we were we were in the coral pink
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: sand dunes with those land rovers and we did some digging,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: like I was feeling it, you know, and because you
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: know you're doing we were doing a lot of digging.
• 6:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So well, I mean that's a that's a really
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: good like you know, driving in the sand is a
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: good way to give yourself mentally in a position to
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: realize that maybe there's improvement in driving skill, right.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: Because the you can do everything right and you still
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: get stuck.
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: So so you realize that, especially in hot places, you know,
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: when you're in the desert and things, that the more
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: you get stuck, the more difficult it is on your body.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: And there is this sort of finite amount of times
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: you could do that before you're just done.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: That's right. So yeah, driving skill is important that way.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: And we'll talk about that. Yeah, in sane, But the
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: reality is that you're most likely to get stuck when
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: it's the hottest because then the silica has heated up,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: the air has expanded between the silica, so it's actually
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: the has the least amount of weight bearing, so you're
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: more even more likely to get stuck in the heat
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: of the day. And also usually the sun is directly overhead,
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: so you don't have the good shadowing of the terrain
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: to judge the best one. You're not judging the best line,
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: so you take a bad line sand is super soft,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: you're done and you're stuck. So, yeah, you're right. It's
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: much like mountaineering.
• 7:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And you know the other part that the
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: mountaineering is like, So you have this sort of physical part,
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: but then you also have this kind of gear side,
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: which is people are going to be really conscientious about
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: what they're gonna take, what they're gonna carry, what makes
• 7:49
  Speaker 3: it comfortable, because there's this real fine line because a
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: lot of times you're carrying all your own stuff of
• 7:56
  Speaker 3: what's the kind.
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  Speaker 2: Of value proposition?
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  Speaker 3: Does this make me feel really good, so maybe it's
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: worth carrying. But if it doesn't really providing value, why
• 8:04
  Speaker 3: you're carrying it. Yeah, and because that affects you directly physically,
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: it's really relevant. And I actually think that's very relevant
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  Speaker 3: to an expedition too, is that you have a limited
• 8:16
  Speaker 3: amount of space. Oftentimes you have more space than you
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: have load capacity. So you know, you don't want to
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: just just because there's an empty spot fill it with something,
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: because there's a room for it. And of course the
• 8:29
  Speaker 3: fun thing also on expedition trips is that when you
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: do have a little space, it gives you a little
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: space to like buy things back with your stuff.
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: Brought back a wooden land rod room from Africa. You know,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: you got a little bit of you get a little
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: bit of space. But it and payload also makes a
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: huge difference in how the vehicle performs. So just because
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: we have a gross vehicle weight, especially on like a
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: one ton full sized pickup, just because we have that
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  Speaker 1: payload doesn't mean that we should use it.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: The lighter the vehicle is, the better it will perform
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: in nearly every scenario and it'll certainly be less likely
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: to break. Your reliability will improve, Your fuel consumption will improve,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: which means you can carry less fuel. So it's all.
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: It all propagates the problem once the vehicle starts to
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: get very heavy. And that's certainly part of proper planning
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: before we go. Can we need to bring the things
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: that we need to bring along, but let's minimize the equipment, Like,
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: don't bring the kettlebells. You know, it's like, you know,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: use a pulley block as a kettlebell or something. Use
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: something else. Yeah, use a spa flip a spare tire
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: for about ten minutes and you'll be You'll you'll have
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: a pretty good, pretty good workout. So I think, yeah,
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: making sure that the vehicle is light. I'm also a
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: big fan of a thorough inspection before you leave. If
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: you don't feel comfortable properly inspecting a vehicle and inspecting
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: your toolkit and your spares kit, then take it to
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: a trusted mechanic or find someone in your local club
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: that has that ex It's that going to help you
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: do an inspection before you leave for the trip.
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, knowing what you're the condition of the car
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: is quite important. And you know, I you know, I
• 10:09
  Speaker 3: got a couple of airplanes and doing a pre flight
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: it's kind of important, right, So you want to make sure.
• 10:15
  Speaker 3: I mean, the idea of a pre flight on a
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: plane isn't necessarily to make sure that the plane is perfect.
• 10:21
  Speaker 3: It's that as a pilot, you're confident that the condition
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: that it's in is there worthy, that you're in a
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: position that you feel comfortable to fly it and whatever
• 10:29
  Speaker 3: your mission is. And really it's the same with the car, right,
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: So it's it's not that the car has to be
• 10:33
  Speaker 3: one hundred percent, it's that you know exactly what you're
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: starting with and what the car should and should do, right,
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: like what you're that functionality should and so you know
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: we I mean even on a on a fleet side,
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: so like when I do you know, especially on expedition
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: type trips, but even do a ride and drive every
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: single day, every single car should be looked at and checked.
• 10:55
  Speaker 3: It's part of what I mean. I'm always a fan
• 10:58
  Speaker 3: of trying to keep a clean car. Yeah, and one
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: of the reasons that's right. I mean, if you have
• 11:03
  Speaker 3: this really filthy, nasty, dirty car, not only is it
• 11:06
  Speaker 3: harder on the car, everything creates friction and you don't
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: know what's going, but it masks things, It masks oil
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: eaks in it, and it also becomes a problem when
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: you do have to do a trail fix. You know, like,
• 11:17
  Speaker 3: the messier it is, the worse it is, the harder
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: you clean it is, and so like.
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: And if the paint is that dirty and muddy, so
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: is the radiator. Yeah, so are the inner coolers, which
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: are more and more common now.
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: Especially down low right what you know, you get where
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: that's free flowing air. And so it's part of our
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: job to really look at stuff. And also I think
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: it's a really good idea, particularly on an expedition type trip,
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: is when you do just a walk around, and the
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: walk around is something as simple as looking at the tires,
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: popping the hood. I mean, you know, I mean, check
• 11:48
  Speaker 3: the oil is great, and check the foods and all
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: that kind of stuff. But the reality of it is
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: what you're trying to do is just to make sure
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: you know what you expect it to be, taking a
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: look at it. And I mean, we did a trip
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: a few years ago. We woke up have a flat tire,
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: and honestly, it would have been an easy spot for
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: us to just not have noticed until we started to
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: drive away. And then of course then you drive away
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: and you drive ten feet and go, I have a
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: flat tire, And then you unload everything because you know,
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: you're well, you're prepared for a flat it's always a
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: pan in neck.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So now you're two hours behind.
• 12:21
  Speaker 3: So then the rest of the day is to try
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: to make up the two hours, to try to beat
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: the daylight to get to.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: The next spot, which just increases the likelihood that another
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: issue will come up.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: Correctly, it's always that right.
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: Accidents and injuries usually caused by chain of events, a
• 12:36
  Speaker 3: bunch of small things that happened to create a position
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: for something to go wrong.
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: This is a perfect example of that.
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: So take the five minutes walk around the car, maybe
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: before you load it up, you know, to have a
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: look at it.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: Another thing is like just being aware when when you're
• 12:51
  Speaker 3: driving it. The beauty of I think having a car
• 12:55
  Speaker 3: that's really functional daily and also being able to go
• 12:58
  Speaker 3: off road and have fun with is that the more
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: time you're in it, the more you start to understand
• 13:04
  Speaker 3: the sounds, the smells, the.
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: Squeaks, and the rattles.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: What's normal, it's not normal, So that when you're off
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: road and all of a sudden you start to hear
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: something that sounds like a little grinding or like, you know,
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: you maybe you get a little jounce in the suspension,
• 13:16
  Speaker 3: and all of a sudden you hear some scraping and
• 13:18
  Speaker 3: you're like, huh, that's I don't normally hear that. It
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: instantly means that you're aware enough of what the car
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: is doing to start to get some awareness on what's happening,
• 13:27
  Speaker 3: because you know, the best decision would be is that
• 13:30
  Speaker 3: you hear something, you stop, you check it, there's a problem,
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: and then you can modify the trip. But if you
• 13:36
  Speaker 3: don't realize it, you just keep going through the process.
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: This is how people stuck in the middle of nowhere well.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: And also the advantage of driving, of daily driving your
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: overland vehicle is that you pull it into parking spots
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: every day. You get the muscle memory is very precise.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: I noticed that when people drive their dailies on the trail,
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: there's so much more smooth. Their inputs are much more precise.
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: They're better able to modulate the clutch or the break
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: or earth rodel because if you if you just hop
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: into your overland vehicle twice a year, you've got a
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: whole new learning curve that you need to address. And
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: it's not saying that one is better than the other.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: But that's one of the advantages of driving, of daily
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: driving for sure, adventure vehicle too.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: Oh, I say that one of the one of the
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: hard things is that, you know, I think a lot
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: of people operate vehicles. They don't ever really learn to
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: drive them yet. They just they just learned the operations.
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: You know, if I turn the steering wheel to the right,
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: it turns right. There's no idea of like how much
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: and when and what's how's that actually translating to the ground. Sure,
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: you know, so when I turn it to the right
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: and I'm now going straight still, you know, I'm still
• 14:43
  Speaker 3: turning to the right and I'm still going straight. So
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: I keep turning it to the right, and there's no
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: like I'm asking it to do something and it's not happening.
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: So why am I continuing to perpetuate the behavior?
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: But that happens for sure, all right. So then the
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: other thing that we need to look at around prepar
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: pairing before we even go, and I'm a big proponent
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: of it, is training. So manufacturers provide training. Ford has
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: training courses, land Rover has training courses. A lot of
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: times when you buy a new vehicle, you can get
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: a training class that comes with the car. Otherwise, there's
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: a couple ways to go about it. You can go
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: to like an overland expo or training. It's at a
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: very high level, but it's also and what I mean
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: by that is it doesn't go down in the details
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: very much, but it's very affordable. So there's opportunities for
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: training around events like the Overland Expo. And then also
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: there's your local clubs, so finding other overlanders that have
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: some experience. You can learn quite a bit from traveling
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: with those who have a few miles under their belt.
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: And then, of course the most expensive but also the
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: most effective option is to find a trainer that is
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: experienced in overlanding that and help you drive your vehicle.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: The reason why I say experienced in overlanding is there
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: are a lot of very good full drive trainers, but
• 16:08
  Speaker 1: many of them lack the experience of traveling internationally. And
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that they're gonna they're going to tell
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: you something wrong, but they oftentimes they have some blind spots.
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: So for example, there are countries where tire sizes are limited,
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: so a four wal drive trainer might say, you know what,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: you could fit thirty fives on that GEP, but if
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: you take that jeep to Australia with thirty fives, it's
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: now legal on the road. Or they may recommend things
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: that start to push payload. And again in Australia they
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: actually have random gross vehicle weight checks on cars. In Australia.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: You're driving down the Udinauda track and here's a bunch
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: of police officers and they'll pull you over and put
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: you on a scale and if you're over gross vehicle weight,
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: it graduates up to the fact that they've got an
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: impound your car. Impound your car. So those are things
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: that many fold drive instructors won't know. And they also
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: may have an emphasis towards recreational driving, which that's the
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: difference between overlanding and four wheeling. Four Wheeling is sport,
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: recreational sport, which I love. I love going four wheeling
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: for the day. There's nothing more fun than that. But
• 17:16
  Speaker 1: overlanding is travel, which means that we have a totally
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: different mindset. We're going to actually look for the easiest
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: line in many cases, we're going to have the most
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: mechanical sympathy. We're going to default more towards using a winch.
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: Earlier engaging lockers earlier, airing down earlier, so that way
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: we're minimizing the impact of the vehicle. So I feel
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: trainers like yourself who have extensive international travel experience are
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: the kinds of folks that people need to be looking
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: for when they want to learn about overland driving.
• 17:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it is definitely a different thing. You know,
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: we're trying to teach people kind of the basic skills,
• 17:59
  Speaker 3: and of course it's different with everybody, but in general,
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: I would say, you know, ninety five percent of people
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: that come in, even ones who are great drivers, are
• 18:07
  Speaker 3: still really nervous about things like what are normal sounds,
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: what does trackh control sound like? What is it? What
• 18:16
  Speaker 3: does it sound like when the car's working properly? You know,
• 18:19
  Speaker 3: I think one of the advantages of having a more
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: stock vehicle versus a heavily modified one is that anytime
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: you have a heavily modified vehicle, you have a tendency
• 18:28
  Speaker 3: to want to prove to yourself that the expenditure was
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: worth the cost, meaning that you start to push the
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: limits because you want to see and you see it
• 18:37
  Speaker 3: all the time on the trail, right, you see something
• 18:39
  Speaker 3: that's really nicely built and they're trying to crawl up
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: some kind of really big rock Flix because they want
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: to see if they're ten thousand dollars suspension and shock
• 18:48
  Speaker 3: package that they bought really has that much travel in it.
• 18:52
  Speaker 3: And it's one thing just sort of screwing around on
• 18:55
  Speaker 3: a weekend, but it's a real different thing if you're
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: talking about taking a month off of work and driving
• 19:00
  Speaker 3: around the southwester heading down into the bob something. You know, like,
• 19:05
  Speaker 3: there's a time and place for things, and during a
• 19:09
  Speaker 3: trip is not the time to see the whole idea
• 19:11
  Speaker 3: is that you go through the whole trip and you
• 19:13
  Speaker 3: never notice the car right, you know, if everything works right.
• 19:16
  Speaker 3: You didn't really notice the engine, you didn't really notice
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: the transmission, you didn't really notice that your suspension.
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: Was awesome because it was just awesome.
• 19:23
  Speaker 3: And when you get done, you're like, it was a
• 19:25
  Speaker 3: great trip, not well, I think I need to have
• 19:28
  Speaker 3: bigger tires and I need to.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: And the vehicle was well suited to the trip to
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: everything else.
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: And the other thing too, and it's often overlooked, is
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: when you go get training, bring your primary travel partner
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: with you. It's one of the most common sources of
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: arguments and frustrations on travels. Also, the reality on a
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: long trip is that the primary driver can get sick
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: or injured. So imagine if you fall off the roof
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: rack and now you've got a broken ankle at your
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: right ankle, and you're a driving left hand drive, you know,
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: and you're like, yeah, like it's really really gonna be hard,
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: uh to drive with your left foot.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: So having your travel companion competent in marshaling, spotting through terrain,
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: having your travel companion comfortable and competent driving off road,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: driving the vehicle and technical terrain, it's gonna pay huge dividends.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: And it's also gonna get your travel companion more excited
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: about doing more. They're gonna have a good time.
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: So yeah, it does add a little bit of expense,
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: but sometimes you can negotiate that with a full drive trainer. Sure, Hey,
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: we're both showing up in the same car, can you
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: give me any kind of a discount? Yeah, And usually
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: they'll do that.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: Oh.
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: I think I think if they're a good trainer, they
• 20:43
  Speaker 3: should they should emphasize it. I mean, because the reality is,
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: especially especially if you're a couple. Yeah, I mean, learning
• 20:48
  Speaker 3: how to do this together. Is a little bit like
• 20:50
  Speaker 3: couple's therapy because there's a huge trust factor in wave here.
• 20:53
  Speaker 3: Typically what I see is like a guy comes in
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: with his car and brings his girlfriend and at the
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: end of the day he wants to drive his car. Yeah,
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: but the terrain means that you need to be able
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: to trust her, to be able to spot, to be
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: able to say something's not right, or or to say like, hey,
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: you gotta be gentler, you gotta you're gonna have to
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: drive this. This is really tight, you know, like you're
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: gonna have to be smooth, You're gonna have to be
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: able to open those lines of communication. So, I mean
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: it is, there's there's a lot of truth to that
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: because the reality is if if you have one person
• 21:27
  Speaker 3: who has a skill set that is required for a trip,
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: if they go down.
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the trip is over.
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: Yeah, especially medical, So you got to get cross training.
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: You got to have people on the trip. Maybe you
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: got a woofer wilderness first responder on a trip, but
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: the other person better be at least a woof of
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: make sure they got two days in a wilderness first
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: aid course. Make sure to minimum they've taken you know,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: CPR and basic first aid, Show them where the medical
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: kid is, show them what the contents of the kid is,
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: show them how to use the SAT phone, show them
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: the number to tell the medicine. Yeah, so that way
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: if something goes something is wrong. Yeah, it's our responsibility
• 22:04
  Speaker 1: as the leader of a trip or as the primary driver,
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: it is our responsibility to educate the other people in
• 22:10
  Speaker 1: the car so that they're safe because if the primary
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: driver goes down, which happens, people get sick. Yeah, you know,
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: and you got to make the ferry or whatever. Right,
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: you know, you better make sure that your travel companion
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: can do all this stuff.
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: You don't know how many times I have seen people
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: go out by a roof tent. They plan a big trip,
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: you know, it's usually like down to Baja or something, right,
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: big trip. They buy their new roof tent, and in
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: the first week the guy falls out.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: Of the roof tent.
• 22:39
  Speaker 3: I mean, it's inevitably it's always the guy that falls
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: out of the roof tent and he breaks his legs.
• 22:44
  Speaker 2: Frains his ankle.
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I think usually what it is, it's like
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: they just spend a bunch of money and they're like
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: worried that their tent's gonna get broke or something, so
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: they want to be the guy who goes up and
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: down the ladder and brings everything out of the tent, right,
• 22:56
  Speaker 3: and they slip and fall and either they have to
• 22:59
  Speaker 3: cancel their.
• 22:59
  Speaker 2: Trip or they have to do the ego check.
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: Of sitting passenger the whole time and their girlfriend or
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: wife ended up driving the whole trip.
• 23:07
  Speaker 2: Anyways.
• 23:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so you're you're absolutely right, and that you know,
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: it's part of It's kind of part of a briefing,
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: isn't it Like it's important that everybody on a trip
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: understands what you're doing, what the risks are, where those
• 23:21
  Speaker 3: sort of inherent risks are, how you mitigate them, that's right.
• 23:23
  Speaker 3: And if something does go wrong, what are your points
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: of contact and.
• 23:27
  Speaker 2: Places to do?
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: Absolutely all, right, So that covers all of the pre
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: trip stuff. Now, when you're going out that day, that's
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: when you're doing your quick inspection of the vehicle, looking
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: for fluids, leaking, looking for shocks, hanging down, looking for
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: low tires because maybe you picked up a nail or
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: something on the drive in. But you also want to
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: make sure that you've addressed ergonomics in the vehicle. Get
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: the driver's seat, get yourself in a position to maximize
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: your ability to see the trail and to handle the
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: vehicle properly. A lot of new vehicles, which is really cool,
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: have the ability to raise and lower the driver's seat
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: so like you might be in like full chill mode.
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: You know, in your Tesla auto drive into work, but
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: when you're driving your when you're driving your overland vehicle,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: you want to raise that seat up a little bit,
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: not so high that you could come in contact with
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: the ceiling under a g out or an emergency event,
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: but you want to get pretty high up so you
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: can see more of the trail. You also want to know,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: usually a vehicle, the leading lines of the hood, if
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: the vehicle was designed properly, should give you indication of
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: where the tires are, where the center point of the
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: tread is. So like on a land Rover or on
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: a jeep on you know branded here on classic vehicles,
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: you'll be able to see that front fender or at
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: least a style line in the front fender to give
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: you an indication where that tire is. So get comfortable
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: with where all that, where's the locker switch, where's the swaybar?
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: Disconnect switch, where's the hical stability control off switch, which
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: we're going to talk about when it comes to sand driving.
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: So knowing where all that stuff.
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: Is absolutely I mean, one of the things usually when
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: I just get into a car with the first time
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: with people is you're right, and get them in. I
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: usually tell them to try to sit a bit higher
• 25:17
  Speaker 3: and a bit kind of more upright. And then they
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: would typically say, especially these days, people sit really reclined.
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: And the whole thing is like if I am in
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: a car with somebody and I'm really seeing them strain
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: a lot right, usually typically see them kind of straining
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: trying to see up and over the hood, and there's
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: space there almost always there's space. I mean, I'm six seven,
• 25:35
  Speaker 3: I'm one of the few guys. Probably you don't I've
• 25:38
  Speaker 3: limited amount of space, but you don't have to, you know.
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: Like I get them to go up, to go forward,
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: to get the steering wheell in nice and tight. I
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: try to make sure that they're the right distance, but
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: also like in a position so in their hands are
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: on the wheel that the weight the weight is more
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: in the palm of the hand versus like trying to
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: hold the steering wheel with their fingers all day.
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Yep, and having left ridge. The more that the seat
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: has reclined, the less leverage. The more you're using your
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: shoulders as opposed to your major leverage point like in
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: your elbows, and you also lose a little bit of
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: dexterity and control. You know, we like you and I
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: always reinforce the people as much as possible. You're gonna
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: be driving with two hands on the wheel. When you're
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: going higher speed, you will wrap your hands around the
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: wheel or just start to wrap your hands around the wheel.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: At low speed, you're gonna take your thumbs around the
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: wheel and you're gonna place them on the sides of
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: the wheel. So that way, if you hit a rock
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: hard or something like that, or in a rut, the
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: steering wheel gets jerked out of your hand, you don't
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: end up breaking a thumb. That was very true years ago.
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: I mean, like my less ples, my FG forty did
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: try to kill me on a regular basis, even with
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: the thumb not wrapped around the wheel. But the most
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: modern fool drives have a lot of anti kickback. Some
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: of them are even now electronic steering, or they have
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: electronic pumps, and there's much much less than that, but
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: you still want to be in a good habit because
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: you never know when you might have to drive somebody's
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: old Willies or seventy series or whatever. So get in
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: the habit of doing that. And another reason why we
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: do that is that we shuffle the wheel sure when
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: we're off road. So when we're in very very tight
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: controlled situations, we're trying to provide a lot of steering precision.
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: We don't want to be hand over hand with the wheel.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: We want to be maintaining constant contact with the wheel,
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: multiple points of contact, so that way it is less
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: likely to slip off of a rock or the wheel
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: is less likely to roll on a rock and put
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: us in the wrong position.
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, we want to drive real precisely.
• 27:45
  Speaker 3: Right, So whenever we want to drive precisely means that
• 27:48
  Speaker 3: as a driver, we have to give it real precise inputs.
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: So if we find ourselves giving it big, over exaggerated inputs, yeah,
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: we should expect over exaggerated output from the are right. So,
• 28:01
  Speaker 3: any any time that we're typically driving precise, which is
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: in the US that's most of the drop road driving
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: we do, we're looking for precise driving. The last thing
• 28:10
  Speaker 3: we want is these big inputs that ask for the
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: car to be watch of stuff. The more we ask
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: of the car to do, the more difficult it is
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: for it, no matter what the car.
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: Is, especially in sand. I mean you see big, huge
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: steering inputs in sand you're just at I mean, you're
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: scrubbing so much speed. You're making it so difficult for
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: the car to make it through the turn, usually in
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: a sand d and you got enough room, take a
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: plan ahead and do a big we'll talk about in
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: a second, but you know, like to your point, the
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: further we plan ahead our inputs, the more likely they
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: are to be smooth and precise.
• 28:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: And learning you talk, you start to hit it a
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: little bit as understanding where that car is in space
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: kind of where it is around you. Like, you know,
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: so once once we get in the car and we
• 28:54
  Speaker 3: know where where our body is comfortable in it, it's
• 28:57
  Speaker 3: really important also for us to know.
• 28:58
  Speaker 2: Like where the differentials are, where the low spots are.
• 29:03
  Speaker 3: The things we typically see are if you're going to
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: damage a car, it's almost always the passenger rears.
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: That's the part.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: Everybody first thing to get flat damage.
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: So you know things like that, and we can mitigate
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: some of that stuff like aim in our mirrors down
• 29:18
  Speaker 3: at those back tires. We don't need to see if
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: there's traffic next to us, typically on a trail, so
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: we can use those mirrors to see what we want
• 29:25
  Speaker 3: to see, like where back tires.
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: Are, where the back of the car is.
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: The other thing is like one of the especially these days,
• 29:33
  Speaker 3: as it used to be pretty consistent, we would know
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: where the tire was, at least in front of us,
• 29:37
  Speaker 3: right like you kind of knew if you sat there
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: that the center or at least the inside of the
• 29:42
  Speaker 3: tire would be more or less lined.
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: Up with the clutch pedal or your left foot.
• 29:46
  Speaker 3: And that's not so much the case now because we're
• 29:48
  Speaker 3: just keep getting wider and wider stances.
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: And that is I.
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: Think really relevant because I was just in a you know,
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: trail Master Tacoma. Yeah, you know, it has wide stands,
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: much wider than the previous comas.
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: And if you don't realize that you're left foot when
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: it's at rest and the rest position is really on
• 30:08
  Speaker 2: the inside of the tire, you're going to be off
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: the trail all the time.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: And of course the more we're off the trail. Not
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: only does it cause a trail damage, but it causes
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: vehicle damage.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: And the likelihood of a flat and everything else.
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: And anytime we have a car that's on the on
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: the wide side means that we have to drive.
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: It more precisely.
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: It doesn't matter how good the car is, if you
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: drive it into a tree or a giant rock, it
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: will break.
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was interesting like driving Ripe. Driving the
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: Bronco Wraptor is a good example of that. I mean,
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: this thing is double locked thirty seven's suave, our disconnects,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: but it is as wide as a full sized truck. Yeah,
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: it's unbelievable, even though fortunately it's a shorter wheelbase and
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: the body is fairly narrow, thank goodness, but that is
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: a big vehicle. You really got to pay attention. Absolutely. Well,
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: let's pivot to sand driving, because I think it's one
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: of the things that people have the least opportunity to learn,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: and it especially on motorcycles, but certainly in full drives.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: It's very intimidating to people. That in mud can be
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: very intimidating to people because there's a lot more speed
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: involved and a lot more unpredictability about what's going to happen?
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: So what are some You know, you're one of the
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: best sand drivers I've seen. You tell a great story
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: about going out and a new defender with a full
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: drive instructor that had limited experience in the sand, and
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: even though he was experienced in a lot of other areas,
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: he gets stuck and he just thought he was done,
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: and you're like, wait a second, let's try something else.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: So talk a little bit about how you solve that problem.
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: And it's an important reminder that you still have a
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: couple arrows in the quiver.
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean the challenge with sand. So I would
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: say sand is probably one of the most difficult things
• 32:00
  Speaker 3: to drive in, and it's because it's probably the most
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: dynamic surface to drive and it's changing constantly. You mentioned
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: sort of time of day and temperature, and what's side
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: of the wind is it on?
• 32:10
  Speaker 2: And are you upwind or downwind?
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: And was there a little rain yesterday? Is a human?
• 32:16
  Speaker 2: I mean, are you the third car in the pack?
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: Are you are you in someplace there? I mean? Sand
• 32:21
  Speaker 2: is sand is crazy? Right? I love it? Well, that's
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: what's it's fun.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: It's a chess match. Yeah, much like snow.
• 32:26
  Speaker 3: The other thing about sand is that it's it is
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: unequivocally the most difficult thing for a vehicle to do,
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: you know, sand sand for for a vehicle. I mean, really,
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: if we if we looked at it on an engineering
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: level and we really looked at the tire aspect to
• 32:43
  Speaker 3: the sand itself, is it's like it's driving up a
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: sixty percent all the time. It's it's very hard on
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: the transmission. It's very hard on the transit and on
• 32:52
  Speaker 3: the on the engine. And because the line of being
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: able to do it well and to do it poorly
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: is is quite there at margin, you never exactly sure
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: where you're at in those sort of thresholds. Now, there
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: are some tricks we can do. Obviously, insand airing down
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: is very important, you know, trying to Now one of
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: the challenges I had with my job, I guess I
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: should backtrack a little bit, was, you know, I've done
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: a lot of testing with land Rover in the Middle East,
• 33:23
  Speaker 3: and the testing that we do there primarily is thermal
• 33:27
  Speaker 3: some of its slip control.
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: Systems, so like trying to make train response and those
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: systems work better. But the challenge there is almost everything we.
• 33:35
  Speaker 3: Do is at max gross vehicle weight, yeah, so and
• 33:38
  Speaker 3: full tire pressure. So if you can imagine like taking
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: a modern range rover on twenty threes, which you're not
• 33:45
  Speaker 3: inherently fantastic even deflated, maxing it out at gross vehicle weight,
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: and then trying to go run a test ROUTEAE multiple
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: times so you can duplicate problems hopefully not have any problems.
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: But that's sort of the day to day life of it.
• 34:02
  Speaker 3: So you become very good at sand driving because as
• 34:05
  Speaker 3: soon as you're stuck, the test is no longer a
• 34:08
  Speaker 3: valid test. And so when you're trying to do that
• 34:11
  Speaker 3: ten times and you have eight days to do it
• 34:15
  Speaker 3: in it's it's vital that you're able to drive a course.
• 34:19
  Speaker 3: And then I say a course, it's not really a course.
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: It's a route. You know, it's not like I'm it's not.
• 34:25
  Speaker 3: No, it's it's out in the in the dunes, and
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: it's we do the same same thing every time. You know,
• 34:29
  Speaker 3: it's a sign off course, but it's it's it's real terrain.
• 34:34
  Speaker 3: But to be able to duplicate that over and over
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: it's quite important. So you you become good at it
• 34:38
  Speaker 3: because your job is it's imperative to being able to
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: do the work. So you know, when I look at sand,
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: you have to like, there's so much to learn about it.
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: It's it's a super dynamic surface. It's soft, It's almost
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: like a liquid in one sense. Right, it looks if
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: you look across the.
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: Sand, dudes, it looks like an ocean. But at the
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: same standpoint, if you punched sand, it would hurt your hand.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: It becomes a solid when it's compressed quickly, which is
• 35:06
  Speaker 2: kind of Actually what we're doing in a car is
• 35:08
  Speaker 2: that we're trying to get the speed of the tire
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: right so that when it impacts the surface of the sand,
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: it wants to become a solid.
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: And with experience, not only do you I mean I
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: can almost hear it better than I can feel it
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: in a way like I can hear when the car
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: is kind of up on a plane and I'm at
• 35:26
  Speaker 3: the right speed, because as soon as I give it
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: a little more throttle, I start to dig. If I
• 35:31
  Speaker 3: back off, I start to get a lot of drag.
• 35:34
  Speaker 3: But that's it, I mean, that's part of driving it.
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: Now in modern cars, a lot of them have a
• 35:40
  Speaker 3: lot of good information. So one of the one of
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: the things, particularly like inn a land rover is that
• 35:45
  Speaker 3: you have this four by four infoscreen. You have these
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: four images that basically depict slip. So it has this
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: kind of really rudimentary green, yellow, red thing going on,
• 35:58
  Speaker 3: and it's each wheel and it shows that what you'll
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: notice in those cars is when you're just right, you're
• 36:04
  Speaker 3: in the yellow all the time. Like you can almost
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: teach somebody to drive in sand, to teach them the
• 36:09
  Speaker 3: sound and the field. Sure is, I can get them
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: up on a plane right and go just keep giving
• 36:14
  Speaker 3: it throttle until you're in the yellow, and then just
• 36:16
  Speaker 3: hold it because you know that's that's that driving skill
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: thing again, how do you hold this position?
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: Not just on or off? Sure, get up on it
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: and keep it in the yellow. And if you keep
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: it in the yellow, that's eighty percent. And then I
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: can get them to really start to feel it.
• 36:31
  Speaker 3: Sure, And then when I can feel it, and then
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: how I can start to teach them how to how
• 36:35
  Speaker 3: to actually read the sand a bit right, because you know,
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: the reading of the sand is probably more difficult than
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: the driving in a lot of ways.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: I would agree. And what's interesting about sand and one
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: of the things that I find so fascinating about it
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: is you're dealing with flotation, you're dealing with traction, and
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: you're dealing with thrust. Yeah, it's the one. Well you
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: can deal with thrust in mud, but that's fairly unlikely.
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: So if you see a sand rail, there's two will
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: drive sand rail. People like, how in the world can
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: this thing go so well in the sand. Well, first
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: of all, it's light, and it's extremely powerful, and they
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: oftentimes have paddles in the back. So that's where like thrust,
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: Like in a jet engine, we're actually displacing more mass
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: of sand than the weight of the car. So it's
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: actually thrusting the vehicle forward because of the displacement of
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: the material. Now that's very, very difficult to do in
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: an overland vehicle, especially like in a seventy series, but
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: you're getting some thrust as the wheel speed increases, and
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: you'll notice that like very powerful vehicles. That's one of
• 37:37
  Speaker 1: the ways that land Rover overcomes what I believe to
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: be an inappropriate wheel diameter is because they have a
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: high horsepower engine. So you end up with a combination
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: of some floatation because you can air down like a
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: twenty inch wheel, you can air down to twenty PSI
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: fairly confidently in the dunes, and it's where I would
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: probably start. And you know, they're terribly heavy. It's not
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: like you're, you know, driving a diesel.
• 38:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah they're not.
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they're not a diesel one ton or something like that,
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: but they do have fairly high horsepower oftentimes. Yeah, So
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: that's where you'll see like a range Rover sport, you know,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: with a with a supercharged V eight like screaming through
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: the dunes. It's not going slow, but if it's going fast,
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: it tends to keep going. Yeah, So it's pretty interesting
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: how all of those things work in concert. So if
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: your vehicle is a higher horsepower vehicle, then you can
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: take advantage of some of that thrust.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: Yeah. The horsepower makes a huge difference.
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, and it does make it more fun,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: but it also makes the consequence as much higher. So
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: I remember being in Peru with the Discovery five and
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: the difference between a successful kind of loft over a
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: dune through some and one that just absolutely autered in
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: and did a lot of damage and we had to
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: do a field repair and everything on. It was probably
• 38:52
  Speaker 1: the difference of ten miles an hour. Yeah, and it
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: just resulted in it.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: Well, that's big jump.
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: That's a challenge in the dunes is because people's we
• 39:00
  Speaker 3: kind of started to hit on it earlier, but people
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: become reactionary, right and any anytime or a reactionary to
• 39:06
  Speaker 3: anything means that things are things are influencing us to
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: have to react to it, and we want to be
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: the course of action, not the course of the reaction
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: to it. And dunes in particular, because people are so
• 39:16
  Speaker 3: afraid to get stuck, they will, you know, give or
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: hell to get up and overdoon that they may have
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: not even ever seen what's on the other side.
• 39:24
  Speaker 2: And it's kind of.
• 39:26
  Speaker 3: Important to know where you're driving, you know. And so
• 39:30
  Speaker 3: like one of the techniques that I teach all the
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: all the team a lot is that we I call.
• 39:35
  Speaker 2: It surfing a dune.
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: But basically what we what we do when we work
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: through the dunes is you know, I get I get
• 39:41
  Speaker 3: so annoyed when I see just people out on foot
• 39:44
  Speaker 3: with a radio like trying to find a route through
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: the dunes. I mean, that's fine sometimes, but if it's
• 39:50
  Speaker 3: one hundred and thirty out, it's kind of inappropriate actually,
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: And you know a lot of times if you looked
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: at a GPS sort of track of me driving through
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: the dunes, it would look like a bunch of Olympic rings.
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: I'm constantly looking up, looking at looking at the top
• 40:07
  Speaker 3: of the dune, and honestly, I can make that decision
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: really quickly if I'm in a good position, Yeah, that's
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: a good spot and a good place for me to go,
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: then I can crest over the dune. I'm never just
• 40:16
  Speaker 3: like sort of perpendicular to the top of the dune
• 40:20
  Speaker 3: kind of you know. I see these kind of cars
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: stuck at the top of the dunes, and typically that's
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: because somebody just decided that you wanted to go up
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: and over it. You know, we normally want to just
• 40:28
  Speaker 3: break over like we would in any any other thing.
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: We're trying to decrease that breakover and get to the top.
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: And of course the nice thing is that you kind
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: of give it some momentum and you just lift a
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: little and start to feel slow down and and kind
• 40:40
  Speaker 3: of ease over the top and then buying yourself a
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: little time, look for the next safe spot to drive
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: to drive to it, circle around, come around, look for
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: the next safe spot, and you just come around. But
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: you got to you know, from an expedition standpoint, you
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: have to understand that that works really well for the
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: first guy. Yeah, if there's five of you, the fifth
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: guys have a much harder time.
• 41:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been well, got stuck by that for sure.
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: Well, let's kind of go through what I believe were
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: some of the core principles around sand. Safety is always
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: a concern in sand, both from you've got oftentimes high heat,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: so the possibility of heat strokes. Really pay attention to
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: hydration if you're digging vehicles out, really be paying attention
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: to each other, take a break, get into the air
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: conditioning if you've got it, or at least get into
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: some shape. So there's some safety that we want to
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: be paying attention to. The other thing around safety is visibility.
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: There is a possibility, especially in a highly trafficked dune area,
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: that a vehicle could be coming the other direction. Uh,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: And that's another reason why we kind of pause at
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: the top of a dune or even do like you're
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: talking about, where we take a run along the edge
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: and we take a quick look so we can see
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: if there's other vehicles off in the distance. So we
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: if we have the opportunity to run a flag. We
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: want to run a flag. That can oftentimes be done
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: at the top of an aerial on your antenna. You
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: just slide a flag over the top, just throw that
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: in your toolkit. It's very easy to do and then
• 42:12
  Speaker 1: people are going to really see you in the sand
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: dunes a lot easier. The other thing that we want
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: to be paying attention to is our tire pressure. So
• 42:20
  Speaker 1: we want to make sure we air down before we
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: go into the sand dunes, so that way we can
• 42:25
  Speaker 1: maximize our opportunity of getting through. Know where your max
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: tracks are, know where your recovery gear is because again
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: it's hot, so we don't want to be spending a
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: bunch of time digging around for that equipment. Or you
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: forgot the lock combination to the max tracks lock, or
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: the key you don't have the key. Make sure you
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: got all that stuff before you venture off into the
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: sand dunes. We also need to make sure I mean
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: land Rivers says this best. We need to be going
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: as slow as possible, but as fast as necessary. We
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: do need to maintain momentum, but we don't want to
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: drive so fast that we start jumping off of dunes
• 43:01
  Speaker 1: or we get committed to. I mean, there's things called
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: witch's eyes. There's there's long even troughs of dunes where
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: you think you're set, but you can't even get out
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: on the other end. So we really need to be
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: paying attention to wrecking the terrain as we're driving. I
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: think that that's really important. We also want to be
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: really mindful of our driver inputs. One of the things
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: that's interesting in the sand is you'll find that you
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: need to use the brakes very little because as soon
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: as you throttle, as soon as you throttle lift you
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: talked about that sixty percent slope or that resistance, as
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: soon as you throttle lift, the vehicle will start to
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: slow down, and it can even come to a stop
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: on a downslope because there's so much resistance in the sand.
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: So you really want to be careful of that inclination
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: to stab the brakes if something feels wrong, that can
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: result in you immediately being stuck. You know, even on
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: a downslope, you can get stuck in a vehicle if
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: you stab the brakes too hard because it just forces
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: you into the sand. So we want to be really
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: gentle around our inputs. So we're going to be feeding throttle.
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: We're going to be maintaining the momentum. Think of momentum
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: in the sand as like a savings account. We want
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: to put money in, we want to put momentum in.
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: We want and then we want to be making draws
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: as we're going up the hill, but we don't want
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: to at the bottom of the hill try to put
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: in all of that money right in the bottom of that.
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: We want to be feeding in some momentum we also
• 44:27
  Speaker 1: have with these heavy vehicles, we have to be really
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: really mindful of our center and gravity. We want to
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: be careful around side slopes. Side slopes are much safer
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: at speed than they are at slow speed because you're
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: not you don't tend to slip downslope. Ye, So we
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: want to be really really mindful of that. Those are
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: some of the for me, some of the kind of
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: the basic considerations. Good communications radios really help to give
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: good communications where you're not stopping and have to communicate
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: able to kind of keep the process moving forward. For me,
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: some of those those are some of the kind of
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: the or foundational elements.
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: What else, Yeah, Well, I think I think a couple
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: of things. One is to think about in sand, You're
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: you're steering wheels.
• 45:09
  Speaker 2: Your front wheels are really acting more almost like rudders.
• 45:13
  Speaker 2: Yes you're not.
• 45:15
  Speaker 3: You're not so much using the traction of the tire
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: to get it to change direction. You're using the sidewalls
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: and inside, inside and outside. So as you as as
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: you start to feed some input into it, you know,
• 45:26
  Speaker 3: really what's happening here is you're you're putting the sidewall
• 45:29
  Speaker 3: into an liquid.
• 45:30
  Speaker 2: It's pushing up on.
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: The sides and and so this is just this this
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: sort of fine line of learning that where you're going
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: to get yourself in trouble is you're going to try
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: to give it a big input to go some player
• 45:41
  Speaker 3: ways click quickly, and it does scrub the speed off
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: really really quickly, but it also dynamically is really hard
• 45:47
  Speaker 3: on the car. And the obvious one everybody says, don't
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: don't you know, try to always stop pointed down, you know,
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: which is which is true? I would actually maybe go
• 45:57
  Speaker 3: further and say is that it doesn't necessarily have to
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: be downhill. It just has to be downhill in some direction.
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: You know, like if you're gonna get stuck, it's likely
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: flat flatter. If you're if you're really gonna get stuck,
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: it's likely gonna be someplace where you're all for Your
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: tires are kind of at the same elevation, right.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: Because if you get if you fail to climbing back down,
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: back down it exactly.
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: The other thing, too, is like with the sand, I
• 46:20
  Speaker 3: think is that there's probably less kind of driving rules
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: to put around it, you know, Like I hear a
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: lot of trainers say, you know, always use low range.
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: I would say totally.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: Depending on the sand, it depends.
• 46:32
  Speaker 3: It depends like everything else, how much tork you need,
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: and if you need a lot of torque, then you're
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: gonna need low range. If you're if you need more
• 46:39
  Speaker 3: horsepower and less tork, you're gonna want high range. It
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: is a huge advantage if you have a car that
• 46:44
  Speaker 3: you can go from low to high. Sometimes you need
• 46:47
  Speaker 3: to be in low to get going yep, and then
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: you can get on a downslope and and be going
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: ten or fifteen miles an hour and jam it into
• 46:55
  Speaker 3: in the high range.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Is a huge wagon can do that rolling gear.
• 46:59
  Speaker 2: Change, Yeah, huge advance And to that. The other things are.
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: Like and the other one too, like goes the other
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: direction like a JEP rubicon four to one transfer case
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: is not an advantage in the sand.
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: No, it's too.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: Especially in reverse. Yeah, because at least going forward you
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: have eight years in a modern right we got we
• 47:16
  Speaker 1: only got one in reverse, So oftentimes a wrangler needs
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: to be able to drive, you know, in in high range.
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: It's a rubicon.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think you know, like things like that.
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: The other thing is like just understanding the basics of
• 47:31
  Speaker 3: your vehicle's mechanics. Is it have a center locking differential?
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah?
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: Is it an open locking differential? Do I if I
• 47:37
  Speaker 3: have lockers, do I want them locked? If I if
• 47:40
  Speaker 3: I have swave bar disconnect, you know, do I want
• 47:43
  Speaker 3: them locked or unlocked?
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: It's one of the challenges that I find is that
• 47:47
  Speaker 3: everybody kind of just learns that, like when I go
• 47:49
  Speaker 3: off road, I'm supposed to push all these things. Yeah,
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: And the reality is is that we don't. We don't
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: want to do that. We want to know when to
• 47:58
  Speaker 3: engage in when to.
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: This rear difference. I mean, a front differential lock would
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: never be used in the sand. A rear differential lock
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: would rarely be used in the sand. Most likely, the
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: first thing that you're going to push when you go
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: into the sand is either sand mode if your car has.
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: If you have a sand mode, take advantage of that.
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: The car is going to be well suited towards drivings
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: and it's sand it's going to change the thresholds for
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: vehicle stability control and traction control. It's going to allow
• 48:25
  Speaker 1: for more wheel speed. If you don't have a sand mode,
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: look for the vehicle with a little squiggly line, which
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: is going to be your vehicle stability control button. In
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: most cases, particularly in the dunes, you're going to need
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: to turn that off because otherwise it's going to shut
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: you down on throttle as soon as the vehicle starts
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: to yaw or slide a little bit, and then you're
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: really stuck.
• 48:47
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: The thing to remember with dynamic stability control vehicle stability
• 48:50
  Speaker 3: is its job is to prevent rollover. Yeah, and the
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: way that it mitigates rollover is by trying to make
• 48:58
  Speaker 3: sure that the back tires are in line with the
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: front tires. And the way that it determines that is
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: through wheel speed. I mean, some cars do use the
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: actual law sensors, but in general, let's say most most
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: cars use wheel speed.
• 49:11
  Speaker 2: So in the sand.
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: If the car is doing something kind of dynamically and
• 49:15
  Speaker 3: rocking around, all four wheels are going to be spinning
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: at a different speed, and at some point the car
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: will think that it's starting to go into a slide.
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: And when it goes into a slide, the car reacts
• 49:25
  Speaker 3: in two ways. One is that it starts to engage
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: the rear brakes. It starts to engage the rear brakes
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: to get that back in back in line with the front.
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: The number one thing it does is the first thing
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: it does. It starts to pull all the throttle out,
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: pulls the torqu out. And when you turn stability control off,
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: very few cars actually let you truly.
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: Turn it off.
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: It just change the thrush.
• 49:47
  Speaker 3: It makes it so that it turns that sort of
• 49:50
  Speaker 3: breaking component off dramatically, and it changes it so that
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: the torque doesn't get pulled back near quickly. The other
• 49:57
  Speaker 3: thing I since I've talking about is I want to
• 49:59
  Speaker 3: mention it that a lot of the cars we see
• 50:01
  Speaker 3: now are starting the air suspensions becoming more and more common,
• 50:05
  Speaker 3: not less common than in sand. It's one of the
• 50:08
  Speaker 3: few places that putting the car in off road height
• 50:12
  Speaker 3: is a detriment yeahs it makes the car a lot stiffer.
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: And what we don't want to do is we're trying
• 50:19
  Speaker 3: not to use the suspension to beat the wheels down
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: into the ground. So I always tell people, you know,
• 50:25
  Speaker 3: normal red height, got you got off road hepe. If
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: you need it, if you're in a position you need it,
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: use it. But the default mode should be normal. We're
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: trying to make this thing nice and.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: Squishy, yeah, and lower the center gravity yeah.
• 50:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and just keep it soft and drive it smooth
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: and you know, use use the tools that you got.
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: And that's actually where those independent front rear vehicles can
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: really shine. It can really be beautiful in the sand.
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: Like you take a Defender one ten in the sand,
• 50:52
  Speaker 1: especially if it's got an eighteen inch wheel, that thing's
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: pretty much magic, especially with the bigger motors. Yeah, I
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: mean they rip in the sands like it's like being
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: in a doom buggy in my mind. Yeah it is,
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: you know, compared to a like a wrangler would eat
• 51:05
  Speaker 1: its lunch in the rocks. But yeah, a wrangler doesn't
• 51:07
  Speaker 1: have a prayer keeping up with a Defender one ten sand.
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: And one of these things that you sandloads to is
• 51:13
  Speaker 3: that typically sand lodes manufacturers because they know it's so
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: hard on the cars. One of one of the things
• 51:19
  Speaker 3: in sandloads is it it does everything it can to overcool,
• 51:23
  Speaker 3: you know, so it'll it'll do things like instantly ramp
• 51:27
  Speaker 3: the fans, feed the whole way to full tilt, or
• 51:29
  Speaker 3: if it has like electronically controlled thermostats, it'll open those
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: all the way up. It'll it'll do everything it can
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: to know you're basically just helping the car. Note you're
• 51:38
  Speaker 3: about to get get used hard.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: Are you familiar with anyones that will actually start to throw,
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: you know, taper back on power to keep keep it
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: keep it cool, or make disconnect the air conditioner. I've
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: seen that before.
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 51:51
  Speaker 3: I mean typically what you see is it starts manufacturers
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: will start to lose things that they feel like they
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: can lose, which will be things like air condition air
• 51:59
  Speaker 3: conditioner adds a each amount of horsepower draw right, so
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: that I think that sometimes can be more, particularly if
• 52:07
  Speaker 3: they have dual systems where they have front rear and systems,
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: it can it can use quite a lot. So I
• 52:13
  Speaker 3: know that they'll start to pull that out a lot
• 52:16
  Speaker 3: of times. What I typically find is that they will
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: start to detune the transmission automatic. Just talk about automatic,
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: of course, because the torqu converte generates so much heat.
• 52:28
  Speaker 3: So there there they will they will start to make
• 52:31
  Speaker 3: it so that and then of course you go and
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: start getting into Limp home modes and and the key
• 52:37
  Speaker 3: with Limp home in sand. When you get a fault
• 52:40
  Speaker 3: like that, which is not an uncommon thing, is that
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: you let the car just idle and you don't really
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: want to shut it off. You just let it idle
• 52:49
  Speaker 3: and you made a great time to go eat lunch,
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: you know, let it, let it do its thing, cool
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: itself off a bit and uh and most of the
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: time then you can do a key cycle. It'll come
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: back to life and the cars have begin got it.
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: So that's good, I mean the car, the cars. We
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: want the car to tell us it's too hot.
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's right. We want I get so
• 53:11
  Speaker 2: much like the check engine light comes on license, yes,
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: thank god. Right.
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: We want the feedback from the car to tell us
• 53:17
  Speaker 3: that it seems something that it seems abnormal to it,
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: even if it's an annoying thing, you know, like something
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: that you plug into a scanner and realize that you
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: can't do anything about great. It's good to know like
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: something that I did may just go outside of a
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: parameter that somebody spent a lot of time on saying
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: is normal and.
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: If you know what you did.
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: So, for instance, if you went out to the dunes
• 53:40
  Speaker 3: and you got to check engine light and a bunch
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: of codes on it, I wouldn't call that problem.
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I would say that great. Now you now you
• 53:47
  Speaker 2: know that this is what your car does. Part of
• 53:49
  Speaker 2: that knowledge operating at Yeah, you're pushing it.
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. Oh that's great. Well, that's fun to
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: talk about sand. Let's let's move on to rocks and
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: then we'll talk about mud. Rocks are fun, and a
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: lot of people really enjoy rock crawling because it does
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: feel more precise and it is really a test of
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: the vehicle and the driver kind of overcoming something that
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: looks impossible. But here's one thing to think about with
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: rock crawling. I kind of wanted to start with this,
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: is it is so tempting to continue to modify a
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: vehicle so that it has an easier time in the rocks,
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: But all that ends up happening is you just go
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: to harder and harder trails. So I think there's some
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of logic around not overbuilding the vehicle
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: because then it starts to perform poorly everywhere else. So like,
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: if you build a vehicle that's going to be masterful
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: in Moab, it's going to be terrible in the dunes,
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: it's going to have terrible fuel economy to drive down
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: the length of Baja, it's going to be really wide
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: where you don't fit in those little colonial villages of Nicaragua.
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: So in my mind, if you enjoy rock crawling, keep
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: the vehicle closer to Stock and see how much you
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: can do with it stock. Really challenge yourself and the vehicle,
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: build your spotting skills, learn how to use the vehicle,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: and really challenge yourself. With the vehicle being closer to Stock,
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: you'll have more trails available to you. Because the harder
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: the trails get, the fewer there are of them out there,
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: the consequences are much higher. Oftentimes you can't use the
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: vehicle as a daily driver. So like, for example, last
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: week I went and did a program with Toyota, and
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: they have very capable vehicles. You know, I was in
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: a TRD pro and I was in the trail hunter,
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: and I was in the new Land Cruiser. But these
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: are stock vehicles and we did some pretty We did
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: Slaughterhouse Gould, so we did some fun trails that I
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: was paying attention, like, I was really like water bars,
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: I was really being careful, So wasn't dragon. I had
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: a great time driving a totally stocked vehicle on a
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: moderately challenging trail. So I think around the rock crawling
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: thing it Unfortunately, I think people are so afraid of
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: getting stuck or their vehicle not performing well that they
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: overbuild them and as a result, you spend a ton
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: of money and you've really not learned much as a driver.
• 56:22
  Speaker 1: If you go straight to a Rubicon on thirty fives
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: and that's like you buy that off of that. I'm
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: not saying that you shouldn't, because that's an awesome car. Like,
• 56:29
  Speaker 1: if that's what you start with, you're gonna be able
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: to do ninety nine percent of the trails out there.
• 56:34
  Speaker 1: But if you start off with a tool drive or
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: something with open discs or you're left foot breaking and
• 56:38
  Speaker 1: you're like and you're really paying attention to your line,
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: you learn so much more as a driver.
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's interesting. I like, if you buy a really
• 56:45
  Speaker 3: capable car. The more built it is, the less precise
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: you have to be as a driver, and so that level.
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: The level of lack of precision, allows you to get
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: away with stuff.
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: The flip side of the coin would be is if
• 56:58
  Speaker 3: you learned to drive real precisely and then took a
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: really capable car, now you've got extreme capability.
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: A superhero.
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so you know, I see we see this a
• 57:08
  Speaker 3: lot where I live. You know, you know, somebody who's
• 57:10
  Speaker 3: got really really capable car, not necessarily that capable as
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: a package. The driver can make it go do things
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: on trails, but it's not it's not really like you
• 57:21
  Speaker 3: could say, hey, let's go try.
• 57:23
  Speaker 2: Something really tough with it. Now.
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: Rocks are an interesting one because from an engineering side,
• 57:29
  Speaker 3: rocks well, I guess I should start by two things.
• 57:32
  Speaker 3: One is that, at least from the land riverside, which
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: was most of my background on engineering, is.
• 57:38
  Speaker 2: That rock prawl mode is not necessarily moab mode.
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, they're different.
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: And and moab mode, I think, particularly for for American brands,
• 57:52
  Speaker 3: is rock mode. And the challenge there is that you know,
• 57:57
  Speaker 3: on an expedition, rarely would you find yourself in the
• 58:01
  Speaker 3: terrain of Moabb because Moab is pretty unique, right, But
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: a lot of times what we do find is we
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: find ourselves in the bottom of creek beds and we
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: find ourselves baby rocks.
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. The challenge is right there.
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: Loose is the word, that's the right word, which is
• 58:15
  Speaker 3: that we're in this position to where or screen fields
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: is another one right now, fields the challenge like things
• 58:22
  Speaker 3: are sharp. That means we got even more precise. But
• 58:26
  Speaker 3: you know what when we talk about about rocks, what
• 58:28
  Speaker 3: we're asking the car to do is this really has
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: to be our highest level of precision driving because we
• 58:34
  Speaker 3: have to know exactly where every single corner, every single tire,
• 58:37
  Speaker 3: every single rock, where it is in relation to the car.
• 58:41
  Speaker 3: And the looser it is, the more difficult it is
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: because that means that when we drive over it, it
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: might move, which means our.
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: Plan has to change constantly.
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: So this means as a driver, we have to be
• 58:52
  Speaker 3: really precise with our foot, really precise on the breaks,
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: really precise in the steering. We got to have a
• 58:58
  Speaker 3: really good spotter. Yep, you don't have a spotter. We
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: can cheat a little bit with some tech. We can
• 59:03
  Speaker 3: use cameras and things that there exist.
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: And then you still end up getting out of the
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: car line.
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: Get out and look, and sometimes you end up stacking
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: rocks too, right, like we have to do those kinds
• 59:11
  Speaker 3: of things.
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: Now, by the way, if you stack rocks on a
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: recreational full drive trail, unstack them when you come through
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: with your group so that the next group gets to
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: have the fun, the same fun. But normally when you're
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: on when you're traveling internationally, if you're on a road
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: and you do road repairs, everyone will appreciate your effort.
• 59:31
  Speaker 1: So leave it in place, in place they're they're not
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: they're just trying to get to the grocery store, so
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: they'll appreciate whatever road repair you do. But if you're
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: on a recreational trail in America or even in Europe,
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: just yeah, put it back the way it was.
• 59:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. The now from on
• 59:49
  Speaker 3: the Landers side, they do a lot of rock testing
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: in a rock quarry in way of most of that
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: gets really kind of tried and intrude, and then they
• 59:58
  Speaker 3: use Moment for their ability testing because Moab because it
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 3: has such a high traction content, and of course when
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: you make a mistake there, it's really obvious because everything
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 3: there is painful.
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: To the car and people. Right, it's like solid asphalts, right.
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 3: Plus I don't know how much more attraction is really
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 3: So you know, when we talk about you know, things
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 3: like like Moab, the reason we're precise is because we
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 3: don't want to damage the car, and then that means like,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 3: you know, slow and steady, and we can do things
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 3: with cars there that you can't do in the real world.
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: There's a lot because of the attraction levels.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 3: And sometimes I think when I see people who go
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 3: to Moab a lot and then I take them someplace
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 3: that's rock but not Moab, it becomes a challenge struggle.
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 3: They expect the traction level to be there. It's not there.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: So and I think that's why it's nice that Jeep
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: still uses Rubicon for a lot of testing. Absolutely, because
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: you end up with high traction shelfs like granite, but
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: then you end up with loose rocks, big rocks.
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, Ribacon's a great example. I mean, that's
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 3: that's a great rock cross trail. It is and it's
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: totally it's super and if you get a little rain
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 3: on it, all of a sudden, your high traction rock
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: becomes extremely low a traction almost like ice, you know,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 3: and so it's it's challenging, and yeah, it's a really
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: good example of rock.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah for sure. So rock crawling. You know, in my
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: mind you're going to want to default again towards we're
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: going to air the tires down. The reason we're not
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: looking for floatation anymore because we're typically going to be
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: on a hard surface. There could be mud and sand
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: interspersed between rocks. But the reason why we're airing down
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: in the rocks is for mechanical king and carcass deformation.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: So it's just like when a rock climber is climbing
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: up the side of a mountain. We want our hand
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: to be able to wrap around whatever available surfaces in
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: the rocks so we can pull ourselves up the mountain.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: The same thing is true of the vehicle. We want
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: that carcass to begin to to form around the rock,
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: which will put more of the carcass in contact with
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: the rock, which ramps up the available adhesion. So that's
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 1: the rubber to rock adhesion, which is there's many factors
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: of that, including compound. But then the other thing that
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: we're looking for is mechanical king so that's where we're
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 1: going to be keying the lugs of the tire to
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: the surface irregularities of the rock. So it's literally like
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: a hand coming around a boulder as you're hauling yourself
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: up a mountain. So like a mud tire can oftentimes
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: be very effective in the rocks because of that mechanical king,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: whereas an all terrain is probably going to be better
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 1: in moad because there's not as much mechanical king. There's
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: just a lot of attraction, a lot of friction and traction.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: So we want to make sure we're airing down the vehicle.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: We want to make sure that we know what our
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: low points are in the vehicle, and we want to
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: make sure that we have a spotter or at least
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: we have some tools available to us to help us
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: navigate the terrain safely. We really want to slow everything down.
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: It's very rare unless you're watching something happening in Johnson
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: Valley that you're going to be introducing a lot of
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: speed to rock crawling because the consequences and the risks
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: do the vehicle go up exponentially. Normally, when you need
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: to solve a problem with speed, you're far better off
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: pulling winchline. If you've got a winch and still keep
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: everything slow. Yeah, take it back to slow. And one
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 1: of the reasons why we drive slow in the rocks
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: is that our vehicles are suspended, so they're on air
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: bags or they're on coil springs, and when you're driving
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 1: through the rocks, the more that we get that suspension cycling,
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: we're actually losing ground clearance.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: Correct.
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: So one of the reasons why we go slow through
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: the terrain is we want to keep the vehicle as
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: high as possible so that we're not making body to
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: rock contact or transfer case to rock contact or heaven forbid,
• 1:03:48
  Speaker 1: transmission to rock contact. Right, So we're really going to
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: slow things down and that's going to keep the vehicle
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: and us safe.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's funny.
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: I was just thinking about One of the things I
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: really tell people is that a lot of this stuff
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: we can simplify, which is that if if you just
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: got out of a car and you had to walk
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: the same exact rain, like what would you do differently
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 3: or what shoes.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: Would you wear differently?
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 3: Or you know, like and rocks a great example. Right,
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: So if we if we were going to get out
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: of a creek bed. Would we sprint? Would I stand
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: and not bend my knees? Would I change my center
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: of gravity? Would it be lower? Would I want it higher?
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 3: Would I separate my feet? Would I make sure my
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 3: hands so in case? You know, like would I know
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: where the rocks are? Would I maybe check a rock
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 3: before I stepped on it to see if it moves?
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: And actually it pretty much translates to everything. Same with
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: the sand. You know, like if you tried to walk
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 3: really slowly in the sand, you would find that you
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 3: would sink in you just walked a little bit quicker.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 3: You'll notice that you'll stay on top of it. Sure,
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 3: you'll notice that you're going to work a lot harder
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 3: climbing a sand dune than you are going to come.
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: Down it, for sure, you know.
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 3: And if we snow and ice is the same right
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 3: when we get into snow and ice, which a lot
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: of people have more experienced with because we drive in
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 3: snow and ice on not everybody, but a lot a
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: lot of people do in normal day to day lives.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 3: But you know, when you get in snow and iced,
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 3: you stab the brakes really hard, you know, like you
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: smoother on the brakes, you smoother on the wheel, you're
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 3: real soft on the on the throttle pedal, you're ready
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 3: for it to slide because you've learned.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and that's that's really good.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: Wretches.
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you go like that was a little too much, right, Yeah,
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 3: so you know, I mean that's I mean, I think
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: one takeaway for people is like a lot of the
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: sort of inherent skills. If you drive someplace often, and
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: particularly if you live someplaces a lot of different kinds
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: of conditions, you know, weather conditions and stuff, you probably
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: inherently have the skill set to do it.
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: Well. Yeah, you know, it's it's not as hard as
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 2: you want to make it to be.
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 3: It's just that people don't equate like what they feel
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 3: in their feet to what the tire season.
• 1:06:00
  Speaker 2: But it's actually pretty much the same surface, right.
• 1:06:03
  Speaker 1: And I remember you mentioning that when we were doing
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: the A and E program. Yeah, with land Rover, you
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: talked to the other drivers about walking speed, and I
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: think that that was a really good example of when
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: you're walking through the rocks, you are going slowly, you're
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: really paying attention to where you're putting your feet, and
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: the same thing applies to the vehicle, so we need
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: to keep the speed low. Again, this is not recreational
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: four wheeling we're talking about, so it's a very important distinction.
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: We're talking about preserving this vehicle going through this creek
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: bed filled with boulders because we're trying to get to
• 1:06:36
  Speaker 1: this cool mission. Yeah you know. I mean, so we
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: have a place to go, and we have a ferry
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: to catch and everything else like that, so we're going
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: to slow everything down. But it really is important to
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: slow it down.
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, because right, I mean, I mean, if you
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 3: talk to guys in the militay, right, it's all about
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 3: moving through things, identifying things, being efficient with the time,
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: and not making mistakes. And that's how you do it
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 3: quickly efficiently. An efficiency comes from building mental road maps,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: looking ahead, understanding what the next.
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 2: Steps are, moving through it.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: It's when we don't do that and then we spend
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 3: twenty minutes or a half hour or an hour changing
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: the tire, or we find out that our tire was
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 3: flat because we didn't. There spare tires flat. You know
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 3: how many times I've seen that? Yeah, you know, so
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 3: like you know those this is what this whole talks about,
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 3: is like preparation, mental preparation, physical preparation.
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: Having a plan, having a plan when you're going through. Yeah,
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: so what are some other things about rocks? I mean
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 1: one of the things that and we'll kind of maybe
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: rift back and forth on it, but know what capabilities
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: your vehicle has. So once what I find is, when
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: you're on a maintained road, you're probably going to maintain
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: dirt road, you're going to probably be in formal drive.
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: And then when you're on a secondary road and you're
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 1: just feeling yourself very relaxed and you're not really even
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: needing to pay that close of attention, you're still going
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: to probably be in high range, full drive. But what
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 1: I notice is like anytime the grade starts to change
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: or it changes to a two track, for example, from
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 1: a maintained road, then we're gonna want to consider going
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: down into low range. So that's a good prompt to
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: go into low range because we want to preemptively be
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: ready because you may things may be flat and seem fine,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: but then you go into a ditch and next thing
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 1: you know, you need that compounding gear to get up
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: the slope on the other side, or you need to
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 1: use some compression braking to get down, so we want
• 1:08:29
  Speaker 1: to go into low range. And then this is what
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: I find is a good prompt for like rock mode
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 1: or rear locking differential. If you stop the car and
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: you're really studying what you're about to climb, and you're
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: thinking that looks pretty challenging, it's probably a good idea
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: to either go into rock crawl mode, which may or
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: may not lock a rear differential, but or at least
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: it will at least more actively do wheel slip intervention,
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: or if you have a rear locker, go ahead and
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: lock that rear. Now, the reason why most vehicles come
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: with only a rear locking differential is because lockers are
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: most needed when you're climbing yep, and when we're climbing,
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 1: where does all the weight go? Yeare Actually that's the
• 1:09:08
  Speaker 1: reason why they don't come with just a front locker.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: There's other reasons too, but more and more though, we're
• 1:09:13
  Speaker 1: finding vehicles with front and rear lockers. So if you're
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: stopping and you're looking at a trail and you're like,
• 1:09:18
  Speaker 1: I need a spotterer and I don't know, like this,
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 1: like this looks really tough, and you got to get
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: through there, and it's straight up and down. That's when
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 1: maybe you want to consider engaging a front locker, But
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: usually I save the front locker until I really really
• 1:09:31
  Speaker 1: need it. And you definitely don't want to have a
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: front locker on when you're going in really tight steering
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: situations because you end up with a lot of understeer
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 1: and once you lock that front dip.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I think people don't realize how much
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 3: train a locker creates. Yeah, I mean, it gives you
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 3: a lot of extra traction, but that as the balance
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 3: of that is that you're putting a lot of mechanicals
• 1:09:54
  Speaker 3: train hunted things in.
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: Too drive line bind.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and particularly like typically with a lockers that in
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 3: high traction services. There I was almost going to say
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 3: they're less effective, but they're there. You're putting more strain on.
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 3: It's not that the effectiveness changes, is that.
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: The effective disc goes up, but the risk.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 2: The risk goes up.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: But yeah, so you know, a in a low traction environment,
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 3: you can kind of be an idiot with lockers because
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 3: it's not going to probably create a whole lot.
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 2: Of mechanical problems. But in a high traction surface, you're
• 1:10:22
  Speaker 2: going to have a lot of potential break in.
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I remember I was actually I think
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: it was in Panama with another vehicle was with us,
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: and they just forgot to take the vehicle out of
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 1: full drive. They pulled onto the road and blew a CV,
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: high traction right in a little bit of power. Not
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 1: they weren't being reckless.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they just.
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: Forgot to take the car out of full drive popped
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 1: a CV. So those high traction conditions, especially with lockers,
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: can really also happened in Greenland. Front left front differential
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: was locked on a high lux and they forgot that
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: it was locked and they made a tight turn and
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: blew the CV. Because running at two three p s
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 1: I even on snow, credible amount of traction. So we
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 1: really want to be careful when we're engaging the front locker.
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 1: It's something that we're going to only do for I
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: use it just for to clear an obstacle, you know,
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 1: like the rear spinning and the cars starting to slide,
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 1: and I know that the front locker. The solution. Engage
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: the front locker, get through the obstacle, turn it back
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: off again so we get full steering control. Uh, the
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 1: front differential is also going to be your weakest, not
• 1:11:27
  Speaker 1: the differential, but your cvs or your constant your constant
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: lolocity joints, or your burfields once you start to turn them.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: When they're in a straight line, they're very strong. But
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: once you start to turn them, you're rapidly losing contact
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: in the cage. So you're going to have a weaker
• 1:11:45
  Speaker 1: CV when you're in full lock or even full droop.
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 1: So I f s when you're in full droop, it's
• 1:11:51
  Speaker 1: the same angle, and a lot of people aren't aware
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: of that. So we want to be really really careful
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: about engaging a front locker, using it selectively, which would
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: be a selective front locker, and only when we absolutely
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: need to.
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and if you're spinning, I mean it's a good,
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: good time.
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: To engage, a good time to engage.
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: It's better for the trail too.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's and that's that's a really important point. We're
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: using four wheel drive to reduce trail damage. We're engaging,
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: we're locking differentials to reduce trail damage. We're airing down
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: the tires to reduce trail damage. So I think a
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: good rule also for rocks is I like the using
• 1:12:28
  Speaker 1: the wheel diameter for air pressure as a starting point.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: If you have a seventeen inch wheel, go to seventeen psi. Now,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: this depends on the vehicle. If it's a very very
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: heavy vehicle, that may not be the case. But in general,
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: if you have an eighteen inch wheel, go down to
• 1:12:44
  Speaker 1: eighteen psi. If you've got a twenty two inch wheel,
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: got twenty two psi. We don't really want to go
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: much lower than that because then we have the challenges
• 1:12:53
  Speaker 1: of wheel damage and we have the challenge of the
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 1: of the bead coming off of the wheel getting a flat.
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 1: What are some other kind of important tips that you
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: use around rock?
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Rock, I think rock is the one place we're
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 2: having a really good, well made tire really shines because
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 2: of the sidewalls.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: You're having a really good, strong sidewall tire, It makes
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: a huge difference. I mean again, that's back to the sidewall.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: Is like, because the sidewall is so it's the thing that's.
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: Going to most likely have a problem or a puncture.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah, means that we're typically not thinking about sidewalls so much,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 3: but in rocks we have to primarily think about sidewalls,
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: which also means that if there's something sharp. We want
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 3: to drive over it and not around it.
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: We want to start the face of the tire has
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: significantly it could be could have eight ten plies, Yeah, rarely,
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: side wall you're lucky if it's got two.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 2: Or three two or three.
• 1:13:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Rarely do you ever find a flat or a
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 3: tear where there's tread. It's almost always in the side wall, right,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: And and that compounds with speed. So the thing to
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 3: remember is that again when we go slow and we
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 3: drive over things, we're being nice to our car when
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 3: we have If I remember this right, it's like if
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 3: you take mass and speed, it's exponential, right, it's the
• 1:14:15
  Speaker 3: square root of which means like, if we go twice
• 1:14:18
  Speaker 3: as fast, it's four times as much energy that's transferred
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 3: into them.
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: Into the object.
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 3: So like if we think about that from a rock standpoint,
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 3: you know, if we have a really sharp rock and
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 3: we present that to the tire and we're just going
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 3: four miles an hour instead of two miles an hour,
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 3: you know, it's four times the amount of pressure that's
• 1:14:35
  Speaker 3: been exerted on that tire. So it means we have
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 3: to be really conscientious about where those side walls are, which, again,
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 3: having a good tire makes a huge difference. And it's
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 3: not just having a good tire, it's having a good
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 3: tire that's designed for sidewall protection, you know.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 2: And I always like to talk about dirt tracks.
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 1: There's commercial tires that are super strong, but they're not
• 1:14:53
  Speaker 1: going to work well in the rocks.
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I have good your dirt tracks, and
• 1:14:56
  Speaker 3: they're they're great tires, and they're the reason I like
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 3: them is they're like a good sort of i'd say,
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 3: a slight step above an all terrain, right, they're not.
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't.
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 3: Goodyear might describe them as a mud train. I would
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 3: describe them as a kind of a marginal mud train entire.
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 3: They're very good in the snow for what they are,
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 3: but the side walls are not. They're soft, they're compliant.
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: They're a very nice, compliant sidle And for me in
• 1:15:23
  Speaker 3: the way I use my car, that makes a lot
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 3: of sense. But if I were going to go to
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: some place that had days and days and days of
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 3: sharp rocks, it would be the first thing I would change.
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 3: And now they make it their tracks that has a
• 1:15:34
  Speaker 3: better cycle. I mean it's not you know, good Goodyear
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 3: comes up and say, but you know, be good have
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 3: always had really.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 2: Good side walls, and it's becoming more and more common.
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: Tires are getting better.
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: Strong.
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's really you know.
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: Like I think of the cls I have on the defender, Well, yeah,
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 1: there's I can't remember seeing an xCl flat.
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: Well it's because they might be flat. You wouldn't know
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: it because I don't.
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 1: They don't work in a lot of others. I'm not
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: trying to advocate for an X. When it comes to
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: puncture resistance, they're pretty good.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think they have.
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I wouldn't. I wouldn't doubt it at all. Yeah,
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 1: you know, rocks are a lot of fun. It's it's
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: it's a dance, whereas like snow is a chess match,
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 1: and you know sand is a is an e ticket
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: right at Disneyland. You know, rocks are definitely a dance,
• 1:16:26
  Speaker 1: and it's a dance between you and your spotter and
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 1: the vehicle. So there's you got three people involved with it,
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: and we all everybody needs to be communicating. We need
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: to be communicating to the car as smoothly as possible.
• 1:16:40
  Speaker 1: I mean, you think about if you're gonna ask somebody
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 1: to dance, you know, you're not gonna just you know,
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 1: you're gonna you're gonna, You're gonna be your inputs are
• 1:16:48
  Speaker 1: gonna be smooth. You're gonna want to be cool, you
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 1: want to be collected. And the same thing applies to
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: a car very much. And your feet are moving constantly,
• 1:16:57
  Speaker 1: and this is where it comes to the point we
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: want to talk about left foot braking. Oh yeah, So
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: the nice thing about left foot breaking in the rocks
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: and I use left foot breaking in all train and
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: all driving conditions. I drive with my left foot because
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: I've done it for so long. Left foot braking allows
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: us to put the drive line under tension.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 2: Yep.
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 1: So we're going to apply some breake and apply a
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 1: little bit of throttle. We're gonna actually modulate our speed
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: as much with the break as we are with the throttle,
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 1: and we're kind of dancing between threshold on both of
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: those to move the vehicle through the obstacle. But the
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: one thing I really like about it is you don't
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 1: have that delay when you're coming up on a rock.
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 1: You're feeding throttle and you get to the top of
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: the rock and there's still a little bit of throttle
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: being fed, but now you've got to make that transition
• 1:17:41
  Speaker 1: from the throttle to the brake, and there's a delay
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: in there that allows the vehicle to come off the
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: backside of the rock and slam down and next thing
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: you know, you got a big dent your quarter panel.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: Whereas if you kept some brake pressure on there and
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: you're kind of playing between those two thresholds, then you've
• 1:17:57
  Speaker 1: always got some drag on the brakes, which is going
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: to help us come down off the rock smoothly and
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: we're going to be more responsive to our spotter's inputs.
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 1: But there's this interesting especially even in an open diff differential.
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: In an open diff vehicle having some left foot breaking
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: because of the brake drag, it's actually going to improve
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: our traction too. Vehicle is going to be less likely
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: to spin a wheel. It's all under tension.
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 3: Well, I mean it really like left foot breaking is,
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 3: it's probably one of the most difficult skills to get
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 3: because you're asking, particularly these days, because so many people
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 3: can't drive a clutch, because really, really the muscle memory
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 3: is very similar learning how to modulate a clutch, and
• 1:18:39
  Speaker 3: so when you're trying to explain to people that you're
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: trying to apply the brake and the gas at the
• 1:18:44
  Speaker 3: same time. But if it's a little too much break,
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 3: then you can ease off that a little. But if
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 3: you start to feel it you don't have enough tork,
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: you're gonna have to get a little more gap, right.
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 3: I mean, you're constantly almost doing this, you're fighting in
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 3: a way, And of course one of the challenges these
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 3: days is a lot of manufacturers don't.
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 2: Let you do it that the car goes into like
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 2: sort of.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: That's a quick way to know that you don't want
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: to buy a car from that manufacturer if they defeat
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: traction control or they cut throttle under left foot braking,
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: and you're in an off road if you're in low
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 1: range and the car is cutting throttle or defeating tracks
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: control by a different car, because it just means that
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 1: the manufacturer doesn't understand one of the most fundamental principles
• 1:19:25
  Speaker 1: of driving off road. And there are manufacturers where that happens.
• 1:19:29
  Speaker 1: A lot of them have fixed it, because I've been
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: very vocal about that. But a land Rover will work
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 1: under left foot breaking. A Toyota now will work under
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 1: left foot braking. If you're in an appropriate off road
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 1: mode like low range or something like that. You know,
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: of course the grenadier works as it should, but you
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: want to make sure that you can left foot break
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 1: because it's so critical to avoiding body damage, being smooth
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: over the terrain and reducing trail damage.
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and you know the left foot break.
• 1:20:01
  Speaker 3: I grew up driving that old sixties series truck and uh,
• 1:20:07
  Speaker 3: you know, so basically no horsepower, lots of feedback from everything. Yep,
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 3: if you do it wrong, you know instantly because you're
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 3: either stuck or injured.
• 1:20:19
  Speaker 2: Everything inside the car is really sharp. So like if you're.
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 3: Not really smooth on things like you physically pay, you
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 3: get punished for it.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 3: But you know, the other the other part of it
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: is is that you know, like a good example is
• 1:20:32
  Speaker 3: because there's no articulation. A lot of times in that car,
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 3: there is a wheel in the air. You know a
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 3: lot of times you're you're kind of constantly you're not articulating.
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: You're like a you're like a buckboard wagon.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 3: So a wheels in the air, which means that my
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 3: entire axle is trying to send power to the wheel
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 3: that's got no tractions, not touching anything. So if you
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 3: don't know how to left foot break. You're you're never
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 3: going to get through it. You're you're you're literally stuck.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 3: So what most people do is then they back up
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 3: and go faster, right, so they start to add momentum
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 3: to try to just allow the cardom to fly over something.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: When you left foot break it all of a sudden,
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 3: now you go, wheel comes off the ground. You're starting
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 3: to realize what's happening. Yep, my wheels off the ground.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 3: I start to apply some brake on the left, which
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 3: means I also got to give a little more gas
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: because I'm fighting myself. Now give myself one more gas.
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 3: And want to say, now, all I'm doing really is
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 3: I'm just applying the brake to the point where that
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 3: wheel starts to lock up. Right, I'm starting to slow
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: down with the brake, and as soon as that happens,
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 3: I start to move and I now, now I'm moving.
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 2: Now I'm moving. Now I'm moving.
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 3: Now I can let off the brake a little bit
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 3: so that when I hit I know I can let
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 3: the wheel roll and.
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: You drive through and people are like, wow, that's amazing,
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 2: and it's really just it's basically break operated traffic control. Right,
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: And if we look at the tech.
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 3: Left foot breaking is one of the one of the
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 3: things that a manufacturer would love to be able to duplicate,
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 3: and they do sort of do that and what they
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 3: crawl controls and all trained proders controls. That's really what
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 3: it's trying. Everybody marketing calls it like an off road
• 1:22:07
  Speaker 3: cruise control.
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: It's really not.
• 1:22:09
  Speaker 3: What it's trying to do is it's trying to control
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 3: exactly the scenario that you were talking about. It can
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 3: actually do it better than us because it can do
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 3: it wheel by wheel.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: We can only put one input, that's it.
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 3: So it's like if we had four gas pedals and
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 3: four brake pedals and lots of legs and to be
• 1:22:26
  Speaker 3: able to push all those things. But it can. It
• 1:22:28
  Speaker 3: can literally try to apply torque as one wheel is
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 3: climbing a rock, but if the left front wheel's coming
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 3: down the rock.
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: It's applying brake on that to slow it down. Gives
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 2: us a little more control.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: It's one thing that the car doesn't know, though, is
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: what's coming up next, and that's what the driver does know,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 1: and that's why the driver can oftentimes be superior than
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: that technology. Eventually, the cameras will have AI and algorithms,
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 1: and it'll remember the rock and it'll know how far
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: it moved, and it'll know when if the rock is there,
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 1: I have no doubt, but that'll eventually. Absolutely, that'll eventually happened.
• 1:23:00
  Speaker 1: But you know, the left foot breaking, I believe is
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: a really important skill that people can learn. And one
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 1: of the best places to practice that is if you
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: just go to a parking lot that has you know,
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: basically parking curves, so you know those little kind of
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: semi triangular parking curbs. They're usually low enough where they're
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: not going to hit me. Then yeah, little concrete stops
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: and you can you know, sometimes you can find it
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: where there's one and then a couple feet later there's
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 1: another one, so you can, you know, we can mall
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: crawl and but it's a great place to learn that
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 1: left foot breaking. To climb up on that stop, come
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 1: down that way. If you hit it a little hard,
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: nothing's going to happen. If you come down a little fast,
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 1: nothing's going to happen. And start getting to where you
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 1: can be super smooth going up and over a curb
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 1: or over one of those parking stops and down the
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: other side, those are places that we can practice those inputs,
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: or on a local trail that's fairly easy. With small rocks,
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: we can really get some precision, yeah around left foot breaking.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's good to practice. I mean, you're right,
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 2: those stops are great.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: And then we actually use we use big wheel chocks
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: and when we used to do training for the military
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 1: because and we would put them in different positions so
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: that the driver had to remember where they were placed
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: and put the tire on top of those specific and
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 1: then they when an extra piece of pizza or something.
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: But you know, it's a good challenge. Those are good
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 1: little obstacles that we can set up to get more
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: comfortable with not only where our wheel is, where we're
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: moving towards, but also controlling the vehicle up and over
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: the rock. You know. Overall, I think rocks are a
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: lot of fun. It's something that people tend to like
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: to do. I think rock crawling has also become very popular.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 1: And the vehicles like a Rubicon Wrangler, incredibly well suited
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: to the task and they're amazing how they perform in
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: those conditions. But let's learn which buttons to push, Let's
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: learn how to also operate the be like what if
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: the real locker stops working. That's another example when learning
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 1: left foot breaking can really make a big difference. Knowing
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: that you're in the right in the right mode as well.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: Let's make sure we air down. Let's make sure we're
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: being mindful of our tires. Get a spot her out
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 1: sooner than you think you need to pull a winch cable,
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: sooner than you think you need to because again, we're
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 1: trying to preserve our overland vehicles for the rest of
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 1: the adventure. Somebody may be on a year long trip,
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: like we have to preserve that vehicle for another eight
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 1: nine months. Yeah, so let's slow it all down. Let's
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 1: take fewer risk, but still have fun with it. So
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: enjoy it absolutely. I also wanted to take a brief
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: moment to thank all of you for listening to the
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: Overland Journal podcast. By listening to this podcast and subscribing
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: to the Overland Journal magazine, you're supporting our employee own
• 1:25:43
  Speaker 1: and veteran owned business. Impartial reviews and in depth content
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 1: like this would not be possible without your support. If
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 1: you enjoy the podcast, I think you'd really love the
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 1: print magazine as well. And one of that subscription price
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 1: goes back into creating the content like you're listening to
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: right now. And as a special thank you for your loyalty,
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: we're giving twenty percent off any subscription, and that even
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 1: includes our special lifetime subscription which includes numerous lifetime only benefits.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: You can go to Overland Journal dot com and use
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: the Code Overland podcast at checkout. Again, that's Code Overland
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 1: Podcast at checkout, and I'll give you twenty percent off.
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: I sincerely appreciate your support. All right, so let's talk
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: about mud. Some people love mud. In fact, I find
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: people either absolutely love mud or they absolutely hate mud.
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: In fact, I think there's a whole website for land
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 1: cruisers that's called I Hate Mud, Hate so Woody that
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 1: th kudos to Witty because Woody wants to be in moad,
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 1: wants to be on rocks. He does hate mud. I
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 1: find that I'm somewhere in between. I try to avoid
• 1:26:55
  Speaker 1: it because it can be very caustic to the vehicle,
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 1: can be very difficult to clean, and you don't want
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: to leave mud on your car. It can obscure inspections
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: and all that other stuff. But sometimes you're in it,
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: and when you're in it and you're in it for days.
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: It can be a lot of fun. Yep, to do that.
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 1: It reminds you of the Camel trophy, you know. Yeah,
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 1: you start singing the Saba Malaysia.
• 1:27:16
  Speaker 2: Song in your mind.
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 1: I don't know why I still know that song. I've
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: dated myself and oh well yeah, but you know, you know,
• 1:27:27
  Speaker 1: mud is a lot of fun and it's it's also
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: very hard on the vehicle. So there's some techniques that
• 1:27:33
  Speaker 1: we want to use. So what are some of your
• 1:27:35
  Speaker 1: kind of fundamentals for mud driving.
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 3: Well's start with a couple of things before we get
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 3: into the driving part, which is a mud is again
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 3: a very dynamic surface, and one of the challenges with
• 1:27:46
  Speaker 3: mud is mud is really different in different places.
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 3: Some of the worst money I've ever had in Moab,
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 3: right because it doesn't rain there, and when it does
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 3: rain there, then the mud is really silt and it's bottomless,
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 3: so it drives and then you just drive out of it,
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 3: or you get a layer of mud, you know, four
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 3: inch layer of mud and then that whole thing sort
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 3: of breaks off in sheets versus like if we go
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 3: down to you know, the Carolina and you go down
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 3: into the clay, you know, down to warr or something
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 3: where you got a lot of clay, and and the
• 1:28:19
  Speaker 3: mud is is a little more slimy. It also has
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 3: a lot of I would call it suction. It's almost
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 3: like a you know kinds It's like, you know, there's
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 3: like a like.
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: An adhesion there.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 3: And so you know, again all these all these kind
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 3: of things. Now, the good news is is that most
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 3: of the time when you go to these places, you
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 3: can tell by other people's cars who are locals, what
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 3: the conditions and what kind of mother is, by the
• 1:28:45
  Speaker 3: way their cars are built. You go someplace and you
• 1:28:49
  Speaker 3: see cars with really tall, skinny, you know, super swampers,
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 3: some with huge.
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: Huge knobby tires. You instantly go like, okay, the mud
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: here is deep, it's endless. Yeah, and uh, and it's
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 2: you know, people have to cut their fenders out and
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: stuff because there's so much mud that sticks to the
• 1:29:09
  Speaker 2: tires they go around that they they probably have cut
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 2: them because they've been torn off at some point.
• 1:29:14
  Speaker 1: Whereas if the mud has a lot of sand in it,
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: you know, you can even get away with a mild
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: mud terrain correct because of the mud will will fling
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 1: out of the lugs more easily. If there's a higher
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: moisture content. A lot of times you can evacuate the mud,
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: yeah easily. Yeah, you're right. It varies so significantly, but
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: a lot of the same rules apply. We do we
• 1:29:35
  Speaker 1: want to wear down?
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 3: Yes, So again, if we can spread the pressure around
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 3: a little bit so we can get a little bigger
• 1:29:41
  Speaker 3: foot print, bigger footprint, we can use horsepower to advantage.
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 3: Because what we're trying to do then is what I mean, essince,
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 3: if we look at a mud train tire and mud
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 3: train tires best the day it was bought, when those
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 3: lugs are really got these nice ninety degree because what
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 3: it's doing is that that point it is acting like
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 3: that shovel like we talked about the sandrail. It's taking
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 3: the mud, it's moving it to another place. But that
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 3: also means that we need to have enough horsepower to
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 3: be able to to blace that whatever that weight is
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 3: and actually then move the car forward in it. Now,
• 1:30:15
  Speaker 3: in the old days, when we had less horse power,
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 3: we would go with a little taller, skinnier tire with
• 1:30:21
  Speaker 3: the hopes that we would dig down to where the
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 3: mud had more traction sure and less looseness, and if
• 1:30:28
  Speaker 3: you're in those conditions, it's great. And I'm still a
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 3: firm believer that a nice tall skinning tire has a
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 3: ton of advantage. But what we want to do is
• 1:30:37
  Speaker 3: we want to remember things like if all the wheels
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 3: are spinning, it indicates that we don't have a lot
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 3: of traction. Now we might be moving and we might
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 3: be flinging mud, in which case that's why it's moving.
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 3: So that's one of these times where you just sort
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 3: of leave it where it's at, let it do its thing.
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 3: Small steering inputs again.
• 1:30:58
  Speaker 1: That helps when we active with the hearing wheel and
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 1: the mud.
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Now the interesting thing is, well.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: Not much though, it's like what five ten degrees.
• 1:31:05
  Speaker 2: And what's happening there?
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 3: Actually the physics that's really quite interesting because what we're
• 1:31:09
  Speaker 3: what we're doing there is we're we're presenting the sidewall
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 3: to the tire of the tire to the essentially.
• 1:31:16
  Speaker 2: The trough of the mud, right, so the edge a little.
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 3: Bit, Yeah, But what's really happening there is that as
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 3: we turn the wheel, the power, the power is being
• 1:31:26
  Speaker 3: sent up through the front diff and as we turn
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 3: the wheel, we're transitioning power to.
• 1:31:31
  Speaker 2: The outside into the inside.
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and when we're doing there is every time we
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 3: get that position to where that power has to go
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 3: from the outside to the inside means that for a
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 3: split second we have like a locky diff we have
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 3: power equalized to the front wheels. So when we call
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 3: milking the wheel kind of it's kind of milking the cow,
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 3: kind of kind of milking the wheel and you and
• 1:31:54
  Speaker 3: you're kind of going at it, what's actually happening is
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 3: that power is getting transitioned from front side to side,
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 3: and every time it's splits through the middle, we have
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 3: really same as a new front locker. And so the
• 1:32:05
  Speaker 3: faster we can do that gives us that little thing.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 3: And a lot of times you'll find as you're starting
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 3: to get stuck and you start to so on it,
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 3: that just that little it just takes a split second
• 1:32:16
  Speaker 3: yep four or five, and then you start to feel
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 3: it moved and it goes in.
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 2: Now, the reality is if you have a front locker
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 2: and you also so it a little bit, it would
• 1:32:27
  Speaker 2: be super effective because then at that point, all you're
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 2: really doing is you're clearing a space for the.
• 1:32:31
  Speaker 1: Time, you're wiping some mud away from the front Ye,
• 1:32:34
  Speaker 1: you're biting into the sides of the rut a little bit,
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 1: and that can oftentimes be enough to give you some
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: forward and forward progress. You know, there are some dangers
• 1:32:44
  Speaker 1: in the mud. There's a lot of things that you
• 1:32:46
  Speaker 1: don't see. Can't see it's right, so there can be rocks,
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: and so it's tempting to say I'm going to solve
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: this problem with speed. I'm not going to get stuck. Well,
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 1: just know that you're assuming the risk that there's not
• 1:32:58
  Speaker 1: a log in the rut. There's not a log under
• 1:33:01
  Speaker 1: the water, there's not you know, our big rock in there.
• 1:33:05
  Speaker 1: There's not a very very deep hole, or that one
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: of the sides of the trail is four feet deep
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 1: and the other side is two feet deep and you
• 1:33:13
  Speaker 1: have a chance of a rollover. So there it's again
• 1:33:18
  Speaker 1: as slow as possible, but as fast as necessary. We
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 1: don't want to just solve every problem in mud with speed.
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and don't don't drive into it if you're not
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 3: willing to get out if you get stuck. I mean,
• 1:33:28
  Speaker 3: that's another thing I see that driving crazy is that
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 3: guys will drive into stuff and they have absolutely no
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 3: intention or plan on what they do. If they don't
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 3: come out the other side. You gotta be able to
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 3: get out, And to be fair, that's kind of part
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 3: of the physical fitness. Is Like if you drive into
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 3: a giant mud hole and the only way to get
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 3: out of the car is through the window, and you
• 1:33:49
  Speaker 3: can't fit through the window, you're probably not a great
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 3: place for you to go.
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: You better have some friends.
• 1:33:53
  Speaker 1: Maybe don't make that decision. I'll make sure you have
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: friends along with you, you know, or until they come
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 1: up with the you know, the the shooting winch line.
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, like Batman, like Batman exactly. Yeah, that's a great
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 3: I bet you could.
• 1:34:08
  Speaker 2: Sell that here.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, can sell a thousand of the grappling book mod Yeah,
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: absolutely so. I think mud is a lot of fun.
• 1:34:18
  Speaker 1: Like once I get I'm always hesitant to get in it,
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 1: But once I get in the mud and I'm driving
• 1:34:23
  Speaker 1: in it, you know, it is a lot of fun.
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 1: The images are always fantastic, the experience is fantastic. I
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: remember spending days and days in the mud and Guatemala
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 1: trying to get to this very remote Mayan ruin of
• 1:34:35
  Speaker 1: whole mole, and I mean we were you know, it
• 1:34:37
  Speaker 1: was you know, chainsaws and and winching and shovels and
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: and and the machetes and days and days and days
• 1:34:45
  Speaker 1: and in the mud and in the jungle. Uh. And
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 1: it's one of my fondest memories of my life. But
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: you really do have to come prepared and you have
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 1: to be prepared to be stuck.
• 1:34:54
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and you know in the mud.
• 1:34:56
  Speaker 3: Like as far as gaining traction, I guess from a
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 3: driving standpoint, it's again not wanting to give it too
• 1:35:03
  Speaker 3: much throttle. Uh, stability control you can you can shut
• 1:35:09
  Speaker 3: off there same thing as you can get into.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:35:13
  Speaker 3: If there's a if there's a mode, typically that will
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 3: detune stability control dramatically. If there's ruts, you gotta stay
• 1:35:21
  Speaker 3: in the ruts. Now that the challenge with that sometimes
• 1:35:25
  Speaker 3: is that the ruts can be.
• 1:35:26
  Speaker 2: Very very deep. But what I see is.
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 3: The thing that people forget about ruts is that most
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 3: of the time ruts give us more traction. One is
• 1:35:38
  Speaker 3: you got to remember when you're in the rut. It's
• 1:35:40
  Speaker 3: like when you drive into a car wash. You don't
• 1:35:43
  Speaker 3: try to drive out.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 2: Of the rut.
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 3: You gotta know that your wheels straight. You're going to
• 1:35:47
  Speaker 3: turn your wheel and it keeps going straight. It's not straight.
• 1:35:50
  Speaker 3: You know, you gotta keep it straight.
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 1: That's such ample. That's probably one of the most common
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 1: new driver mistakes in the mud is that you'll see
• 1:36:00
  Speaker 1: them and the tires will be parked sideways as they're
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 1: trying to go through the rut. Know that your wheels
• 1:36:06
  Speaker 1: are straight. Many vehicles have a graphic that'll show the
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 1: angle of the wheel. If not, the logo on the
• 1:36:15
  Speaker 1: wheel is a good idea unless you're more than one rotation,
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: which can happen. Yeah, but you kind of and mud
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: doesn't typically require that much steering input your smaller inputs,
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: so you don't want to go one full revolution In
• 1:36:28
  Speaker 1: most cases in the mud, if you're in a rut,
• 1:36:31
  Speaker 1: a rear locking differential is a good idea. A front
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 1: locking differential is usually not necessary. It can create some
• 1:36:38
  Speaker 1: issues with you with you turning in the mud. Once
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 1: you get on a side slope in the mud, especially
• 1:36:43
  Speaker 1: if it isn't rutted, you really want to be careful
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 1: with either locker because it can result in a lot
• 1:36:48
  Speaker 1: of downslope sliding. You're more likely to slide down slope
• 1:36:52
  Speaker 1: or slide off of your line if you have a
• 1:36:54
  Speaker 1: rear locker on or even especially a front locking differential
• 1:36:58
  Speaker 1: on in the mud, So you have to be very
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 1: mindful of am I going to slide off the line?
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 1: Am I going to slide down slope into that ditch?
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 1: Those are times when you don't want to necessarily put
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: the locking differential on, and as you're driving through this terrain,
• 1:37:13
  Speaker 1: you want to be thinking of if I slide, where
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: am I going to end up yep? Because there's a
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: really good chance you might slide and end up there.
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 1: So oftentimes I'll pick a line that ends up resulting
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: in me sliding into a safer position yep than into
• 1:37:27
  Speaker 1: maybe a rock into my door panel or a tree
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: through my windscreen.
• 1:37:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 3: People are so scared of the rets that they do
• 1:37:33
  Speaker 3: bad decisions to try to stay out of them.
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 2: What the reality is.
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 3: Is that the rets will allow the car to do things.
• 1:37:38
  Speaker 3: It's being held and the tire has traction on a
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 3: greater surface because the ret is encompassing not just the
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 3: bottom but the outside of the tire. Now, the thing
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 3: is is that when we get into mud, is that
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 3: we also, again like saying, have to make sure that
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 3: we're prepared so if we get stuck, like having shovels
• 1:37:58
  Speaker 3: max tracks can be.
• 1:38:01
  Speaker 2: You know, traction.
• 1:38:02
  Speaker 3: Boards, but you know, airing down does make a really
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 3: big difference.
• 1:38:06
  Speaker 1: Make sure your winch works you got, I mean, and
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: you have an extension in there oftentimes. I mean the
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: longest I was ever stuck was fourteen hours on the
• 1:38:16
  Speaker 1: Canning Stock route in Australia, and we've used every single
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 1: piece of recovery gear we had in all. Three trucks, yeah,
• 1:38:23
  Speaker 1: four trucks. Three trucks, yeah, three trucks, and it took
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 1: all of it because one winch broke, one line broke.
• 1:38:29
  Speaker 1: I mean, it was just very that thick clay, you know,
• 1:38:32
  Speaker 1: very very deep conditions, a lot of stition, a lot
• 1:38:35
  Speaker 1: of resistance, a lot of digging, a lot. We used
• 1:38:38
  Speaker 1: twelve max tracks to get out. So road. Yeah, we
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 1: built a road. So make sure that you have the
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 1: equipment that you need going into the terrain that you're
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 1: traveling in because it can be very, very difficult.
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 2: And use low range. I mean.
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 3: One of the things I find challenging with low range
• 1:38:52
  Speaker 3: is that people feel like low range means first gear.
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 3: Low range, yeah, and I rarely in first gear little range.
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 3: I am in the mud, probably in third or fourth gear.
• 1:39:05
  Speaker 2: Low range. Most of the time.
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 3: I mean usually depending on how many gears your transmission has.
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 3: But in most cars third third gear low range is
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 3: about the same.
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 2: As first gear high range.
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 3: And so if you know, if you're in sort of
• 1:39:17
  Speaker 3: third gear low range, and you know, if you need
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 3: a little extra torque, you can always bump it into second.
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 3: And if actually if you're finding that you're you're the wheels,
• 1:39:28
  Speaker 3: if the wheels are spinning, you.
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 2: Want to upshift, not down shift.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And I see that mistake a lot too, where
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 3: I'm losing traction. But now you are, You're you're not
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 3: moving the way you want to, but you don't need
• 1:39:40
  Speaker 3: torque to do it.
• 1:39:41
  Speaker 2: You need less tork to do it.
• 1:39:43
  Speaker 1: It will speak yeah, smud oftentimes you can evacuate the
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 1: mud and we can get that clean, biting edge back
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 1: into the mud again. And so a lot of times
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 1: you can over gear yourself. So then you're really high
• 1:39:55
  Speaker 1: in the rpm range. You're adding a lot of strain
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 1: to the motor, and you actually have as much headroom
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: as you think you do, whereas to your point, if
• 1:40:03
  Speaker 1: you upshift in the next higher gear, you have a
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 1: much higher rpm headroom to add some additional throttle get
• 1:40:10
  Speaker 1: some additional wheel speed, clear out some mud, and then
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 1: back it back off again, so you can when you
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: start moving forward again, you can back it back off
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 1: when you start slowing down, feeded a little bit of throttle,
• 1:40:20
  Speaker 1: so you start to clear out some mud and then
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: you'll get going again. But it's really it really all
• 1:40:24
  Speaker 1: like everything else. You know, it is a dance, and
• 1:40:26
  Speaker 1: you're sometimes you'll find that backing way off will get
• 1:40:29
  Speaker 1: you to come up on top again top of it.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 1: You just don't know until you start playing around with it.
• 1:40:34
  Speaker 1: And to your point, it's so regionally specific.
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know the mud. One thing to remember
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 3: with mud is that as fun as mud is, it
• 1:40:43
  Speaker 3: is the one time that we really need to make
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 3: sure afterwards.
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 2: That we get the car really cleaned. Yeah. It is
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 2: really hard on the car to have all that mud
• 1:40:52
  Speaker 2: taked in, this stuff, all that weight, and it's a
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 2: pain in the neck to do it.
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 3: Is it is not fun to go to a car
• 1:40:58
  Speaker 3: wash and get on your hands and knees and clean
• 1:40:59
  Speaker 3: them on the car. But you really got to do it,
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 3: and you'll appreciate it, especially ten years down the road,
• 1:41:04
  Speaker 3: because a lot of times mud is very caustic and
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 3: a lot of a lot of acids in it and stuff, and.
• 1:41:11
  Speaker 1: It's what chemicals alkaloli is.
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:41:13
  Speaker 3: I mean, you look at online right now, right there's
• 1:41:15
  Speaker 3: all these tools to clean out.
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 2: The inside your chassis and those chassis sprayers.
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 3: And it's for people driving in saltwater and stuff like that,
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 3: the same problem, you know.
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 1: So and the wheels can get out of balance, it
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 1: can do a lot of damage. So yeah, and all
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 1: that extra weight is going to affect acceleration, stopping, vehicle handling.
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 1: You know, you can easily add five six hundred pounds
• 1:41:36
  Speaker 1: of mud depending on the situation to the vehicle. So
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 1: you really want to make sure that you're cleaning it
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 1: out properly at the end of it. But you know,
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: have fun and mud. Don't use speed to solve every
• 1:41:48
  Speaker 1: mud problem. You use speed when you absolutely have to,
• 1:41:52
  Speaker 1: but make sure to your point that if you do
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 1: get stuck, that you have the tools and the capabilities
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: to get yourself out.
• 1:41:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, Well this has been fun, man. We could
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 1: have we could have gone on for another couple hours,
• 1:42:05
  Speaker 1: I think, so, you know, the goal around this podcast
• 1:42:08
  Speaker 1: was to provide a primer around driving off road, driving,
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: off highway driving, in the back country while you're overlanding.
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 1: Look for a local trainer, look for a local club,
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 1: find some experienced overlanders that you can go out and
• 1:42:23
  Speaker 1: travel with and learn some skills about for driving. But
• 1:42:28
  Speaker 1: be prepared ahead of time, make sure the vehicles in
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 1: good shape, as slow as possible, as fast as necessary.
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: I's still am a real big believer in land rover's
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 1: philosophy around that. Get your spot or trained, get your
• 1:42:42
  Speaker 1: co driver trained. You know, enjoy what you're doing, have
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: fun with it, but remember you got to make it
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 1: to the end of the trip, so you know, take
• 1:42:50
  Speaker 1: some as much risk out of the equation as you can.
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah, invest invest in training because the training will stay
• 1:42:56
  Speaker 3: with you no matter how many cars you buy. You know,
• 1:43:00
  Speaker 3: spend some time, spend some effort, learn this stuff, get
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 3: some skill set under your your You'll get the base
• 1:43:07
  Speaker 3: training which will facilitate you into.
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 2: Doing bigger and better stuff on your own.
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 1: And that it allows you to pay that forward to
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 1: other people, other travelers. Absolutely, you know, the number of
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 1: times that I see an experienced backcountry driver be able
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 1: to stop and help a bystander that's stuck. You know,
• 1:43:23
  Speaker 1: they followed Google with a rental card. You know, you
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: can really help people with.
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 2: Those skills too, so yeah, real transferable.
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 1: Sean, thank you so much for the time. We'll make
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 1: sure that we expand on these topics in the future.
• 1:43:37
  Speaker 1: It's always a joy to have you on the podcast.
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: You're a You're a wealth of information and you're such
• 1:43:42
  Speaker 1: an important member of the community. And how do people
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: follow you? How do they find out more information about
• 1:43:48
  Speaker 1: what you do?
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I mean, my my business website is my
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 3: business is seen to some experiences S S two s
• 1:43:56
  Speaker 3: X so as.
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: The number two s x X like X right S two.
• 1:44:00
  Speaker 3: S x dot com and see what I'm up to
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 3: and that has links to my Instagram and all that
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 3: kind of stuff. But yeah, that's probably the easiest to
• 1:44:07
  Speaker 3: I'm not I'm not super social, but.
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's probably a good all right, thank you, Sean.
• 1:44:12
  Speaker 1: We appreciate it. We thank you all for listening, and
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 1: we'll talk to you next time.