Innehållsförteckning för November 2015 från Four Wheeler

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY If you’re old-school, Yamaha colors will always be yellow and black. To pay homage to its roots, Yamaha is offering its ’16 lineup in the bumblebee scheme, including the insanely popular YFZ450R quad. With stuff like a 2.9-gallon fuel tank, electronic fuel injection, a long-travel suspension with reservoir shocks, and disc brakes, the ’16 YZF450R would’ve seemed like the stuff of science fiction back in 1956. Be sure to check Yamaha’s full ’16 line of motorcycles, quads, and side-by-sides. INFO: Yamaha, yamahamotorsports.com UNDER PRESSURE Not everybody runs a high-pressure fuel-injection system, but what are you supposed to do if you’ve got a high-performance carbureted system with a high-volume electric or mechanical fuel pump? If you feed the carburetor too much pressure you can jam the needle and seats,…

LAUNCHED IN 1984, THE TOYOTA 4RUNNER CONTINUES TO HAVE ONE OF the biggest enthusiast followings to date. Originally offered with a removable hard top, solid front and rear axles, and two doors, the 4Runner was the one of the best off-road–ready platforms of its time. Despite the rugged SUVs early success, the much-desired solid front axle was discarded in favor of IFS for the ’86 model year. While the 4Runner remains a staple in the off-road world, enthusiasts have been looking to recreate the magic of the early platform for decades with the late-model offerings. Casey McGoun’s ’98 Toyota 4Runner is a perfect example of combining this off-road legacy platform with modern wares. We first ran across McGoun’s 4Runner at East Coast Gear Supply in Raleigh, North Carolina, where the…

BFGOODRICH HAS BIG HOPES FOR ITS ALLnew All-Terrain KO2, the successor to the highly popular BFG A-T KO. Launched about 15 years ago, the KO set the standard for the All-Terrain category in the off-road industry, replacing the venerable All-Terrain, which could be found on everything from Baja chase trucks to lifted daily drivers. How competitive the BFG KO proved to be, right up to the introduction of the KO2, is a testament to BFG’s engineering prowess, as many still considered the aging KO to still be the standard of which all all-terrain tires should be judged. However, the reality was that the competition marched on and got much, much better during the KO’s reign. And truth be told, the KO was starting to show cracks in its armor. While…

NOT A 900 LB-FT FAN Q Regarding “Ram Truck Unveils 900 lb-ft of Torque for 2016 Cummins 6.7L Engine” on fourwheeler.com, that Ram isn’t gonna go anywhere with the junk transmission they all come with. The second and third generation trucks have terrible transmissions. My buddy has a ’14 Cummins and his transmission took a dump with 30,000 miles on it. DILLON PETERSON VIA FACEBOOK.COM/FOURWHEELERMAG A I think you might be a little misinformed. The ’16 Ram 3500 slated to get the 900 lb-ft HO Cummins engine tune comes with an Aisin AS69RC medium-duty truck transmission. The Aisin AS69RC has been the only transmission available in the 3500 behind the optional HO version of the Cummins since 2013. Ram 4500 and 5500 chassis-cab trucks have received the AS69RC for several…

SPRING SEASON IN THE SOUTHEAST IS ALWAYS A GOOD TIME FOR A WHEELING ADVENTURE. THE COLD, sleet, and ice have cleared. Then comes warmer temperatures and spring rains. For us, it was time to hit the trails again and do some exploring. But this wasn’t a simple day trip but a weeklong adventure with 13 rigs that would cover nearly 800 miles. Though many in the group had traveled hundreds of miles to get here, we stamped Seneca, South Carolina, as the start of our week. The group, known as the Florida Adventure Rigs, was vehicularly diverse. Each in the group drove the entire trip and carried all the gear needed to camp each night while we ventured from place to place. On Day One, we dropped into Southeast Overland,…

THE INTERNATIONAL HARVESTER (IH) SCOUT is 4x4 icon, but it struggled to maintain market share, especially in its last few years of production. That had less to do with the vehicle and more to do with International’s business model. We’ll save that discussion for the financial gurus on cable news. In the growing 4x4 market, Scout’s biggest marketing problem was perpetually being on the edges of the sales mainstream in a market that was growing exponentially. Yeah, they advertised, but you generally didn’t go down Main Street to kick the tires on Scouts like you did Chevys, Fords, Dodges or Jeeps. You went to the industrial district or a tractor dealer on the outskirts of town, neither being places the average mainstream buyer frequented. The marketing folks at the division…

WE KNEW WE WERE IN for a serious beating from our loyal followers as soon as we tallied the votes. How could we let the car-based and polarizingly shaped Cherokee beat the old-school Toyota 4Runner TRD Pro for Four Wheeler of the Year honors? Impossible! Blasphemy! Unfollow! Cancel my subscription! All of us who participated in the weeklong testing process knew why it was so well deserved. The Toyota drives and feels like a 10-year-old truck. The Cherokee feels like tomorrow’s SUV. It’s stylish, smooth, quiet, sporty, and efficient. The interior is modern, comfortable, and smacks of quality materials and assembly. Most important of all, it’s extremely capable and fun to drive in the dirt, and if you’re one of the many doubters of its off-road chops, you should really…

November 3-6 What: SEMA Show Where: Las Vegas, Nevada Hosted by: Specialty Equipment Market Association Info: semashow.com November 5-7 What: 2nd Greenbrier Valley Jeep Jamboree Where: White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia Hosted by: Jeep Jamboree USA Info: 530/333-4777, jeepjamboreeusa.com November 7-8 What: Lucas Oil Off-Road Regional Series Arizona Where: Phoenix, Arizona Hosted by: Lucas Oil Info: lucasoilregionalaz.com November 13-15 What: Bronco Daze 2015 Where: Borrego Springs, California Hosted by: Early Bronco Registry Info: earlybronco.com November 13-15 What: Panamint Valley Days Where: Trona, California Hosted by: California Association of 4WD Clubs Info: cal4wheel.com November 14 What: Getting Started Off-Road Driving Where: Gorman, California Hosted by: Badlands Off-Road Adventures Info: 310/613-5473, 4x4training.com November 15 What: Day 2 Getting Started Driving Off-Road Where: Mojave, California Hosted by: Badlands Off-Road Adventures Info: 310/613-5473, 4x4training.com…

YOU’VE DONE IT AGAIN! NOT LONG AGO WE COMPILED info on 31 rigs submitted by their owners and we asked you to cast your vote for which 10 of these awesome Top Truck Challenge 2015 hopefuls would make the trek to Hollister, California, for our giant, weeklong, seven-event off-road thrashfest. You responded with an avalanche of ballots and we tallied the votes. The Top 10 votegetting rigs were notified that they had been given the nod by you and were invited to compete in the 23rd running of Top Truck Challenge, better known as TTC. As usual, we also included two alternates in case up to 2 of the 10 competitors couldn’t make it, and that’s exactly what happened this year. Of the 31 TTC hopefuls, 14 were GM vehicles,…

ADDING BIGGER TIRES TO A 4X4 IS A RITE OF passage that we all go through in our early days of four-wheeling. Most of us are of the mentality that you can never have too much of a good thing, like ice cream, bacon, and of course, big gnarly tires! The more rubber between your wheels and the trail, the more places your rig can conquer off the beaten path. While it sounds like a great idea, it’s not without some consequences, the biggest of which will be having enough power to make your rig move out of its own way with the parasitic loss of larger tires. The quickest way to gain that lost power back is to upgrade the gears on your rig to a lower ratio (numerically…

IT EASILY WON OUR 2015 FOUR Wheeler Pickup Truck of the Year competition. In fact, it won by such a wide margin that we began our yearlong test of the 2015 Ram Power Wagon with very high expectations. So far we’ve found the Power Wagon to be an exercise in excesses. There are no halfmeasures. Our test model arrived outfitted in exactly the same configuration as the vehicle we had in our testing, which is to say, excessively luxurious. The Lariat package gets you all the bells and whistles from front power seats with integrated heat and A/C to the high-end sound system, leather, bright grille, and dual-zone HVAC. Take all that luxury and apply the Power Wagon package and you’re talking excessively potent off-road performance, with a disconnecting front…

In the Sept. ’00 issue of Four Wheeler, we trotted out the first story in a series about contributor Jim Allen’s Project Bummer Dude. This project included removing the body of Project Blazer, a diesel-powered ’83 K5, and replacing it with a Tatonka Products Bummer fiberglass utility body. At the time, and even now, this could be considered heresy by the K5 faithful. As a matter of fact, we recently put Project Bummer Dude on the list of the worst Four Wheeler projects (“Five Floppers,” Aug. ’14). Ouch. The Bummer looked suspiciously like a certain military-based vehicle that was red hot at the time. The story noted that the body fit most GM, Ford, and Dodge trucks and SUVs. It could be configured as a long- or short-wheelbase pickup with…