Innehållsförteckning för December 2017 från Four Wheeler

THE TRANSFER CASE—ONE OF ITS BENEFITS is that low gear. It’s one of the selling points for the Jeep Wrangler Rubicon. How low you need to go is a talking point around the campfire. And it’s a focal point of what it takes to be capable of crawling a 4x4 over impassable terrain. Sure, big tires and loads of horsepower help get the job done, but ain’t nothing like low gearing to ’wheel with finesse. The aftermarket has some hardcore options in this capacity, from gears and doublers to low-range boxes and all sorts of innovation in between. Here’s a sampling of what’s available. ->MAGNUM GEARBOX FROM OFFROAD DESIGN What: The Magnum underdrive is a planetary gearbox, and finds its home between the transmission and NP205 T-case. By adding the…

THE HEAVY-DUTY PICKUP SCENE IS A BUSY PLACE THESE days. With diesel engines packing 900 lb-ft of torque, commercial-grade six-speed automatic transmissions, and towing and payload capacities perpetually climbing skyward, there is little left to be desired on these mountain movers. In fact, before any of the Big Three’s latest truck offerings even begin to break a sweat, you’ll need to obtain a commercial driver’s license. Think about that… As for the ’17 Chevrolet Silverado 2500 and 3500 HDs, GM opted to perfect its existing chassis, debut an all-new Duramax powerplant, and leave the GCWR number-chasing to Ford and Ram (for now). While this move might seem submissive, we can assure you that it’s anything but. With the majority of its customers towing between 10,000 and 20,000 pounds, it only…

HITTING THE HORSEPOWER WALL. IT’S SOMEthing no auto enthusiast ever wants to face. Unfortunately, for the owners of ’11-’14 6.7L Power Stroke-equipped Super Dutys, that moment comes before the full potential of the factory injectors can be realized. If the restrictive factory turbocharger isn’t the limiting factor, the Bosch CP4.2 high-pressure fuel pump is. With the turbo issue already addressed on this particular ’11 F-350 (in the form of a BorgWarner S366 SX-E now residing in the valley), the latter statement was the case. Due to the CP4.2 pump flowing approximately 20 percent less fuel than the popular Bosch CP3 found on comparable engines (’01-’10 Duramax and ’03-present Cummins), it can’t supply enough rail pressure to make the kind of power most enthusiasts are after. Thankfully, aftermarket options exist for…

->CAMP TAG ALONG Smittybilt introduces the new Scout trailer kit. It features independent trailing arm suspension, dual shocks, 12 inches of ground clearance, and a load capacity of 1,763 pounds. With a measurement of 47x44x21 inches, the main compartment has 33 cubic feet of storage space. A telescopic rack system provides even more carry space. The generator drawer features a mesh bottom for more air circulation. Other features include a tongue storage box, parking brake, electric breakaway system, and more. INFO: Smittybilt, 888/717-5797, smittybilt.com < HORNY Kleinn Air Horns has introduced the HK9-Slimline air horn kit after reviewing feedback from customers. The kit includes all of the same components as the original HK9, except a slim-design 3-gallon tank is included rather than the larger 5-gallon tank. The smaller-diameter tank is…

THE NEW PROCESS 241 IS AN ALUMINUM-CASE, chaindrive unit that was used in Chevy, Dodge, and Jeep 4WDs beginning in 1987. It was offered with both passenger- and driver-side front outputs, with input spline counts from 23 to 32. Low range ratio is 2.72:1 using a six-pinion planetary assembly. Versions were built for mechanical speedometer cables and for electronic vehicle speed sensors. The NP241 is a solid, reliable transfer case and superior to the NP203 it replaced. But as they age, the drivechain can stretch. Also, the synthetic pads on the shift forks wear, causing intermittent problems when the forks do not stay in their intended position. Lastly, unchecked rear seal leakage can lead to eventual lubrication starvation and failure. We needed an NP241 for a project we’re working on.…

WHETHER YOU’VE SEEN THEM STORMing through the mines, kicking up dust at the quarry, or transporting dirt in a road development setting, off-highway dump trucks possess an inherent awesomeness that’s impossible to ignore. Take one look at the articulated versions and you up the cool factor even further. These agile, earth-hauling behemoths can usually be found in fast-paced environments where productivity is key—and time is money. We stopped by John Deere’s Coal Valley, Illinois, proving grounds to get an inside look at one of the construction industry’s latest articulated dump trucks (ADTs): the 260E. Produced at Deere’s Davenport, Iowa, facility, the 260Es—and all E-Series ADTs for that matter—were designed to replace the older D models. Along with payload increases across the board, features such as locking differentials, a high-capacity transmission…

REMEMBER THE GOOD OL’ DAYS OF SPLICING powered accessories such as off-road lights, stereos, CBs, and so on, directly into an ignition switch or cigarette lighter plug on your rig? Or, better yet, splicing them in without fuses? Sound familiar? Well, if you peeked under the dashboard of our ’62 Willys Wagon back in the mid-’80s, you would have witnessed a tangled nest of wires, going every which way and all loose. Fortunately for us wiring hacks, in 2005, Precision Designs developed a revolutionary power management system called the sPOD. The company’s very first power distribution management system was designed for Jeep TJs. Since then, sPOD has kept up with the blistering pace of electronic CAN bus in the automotive industry. Even today, the folks at sPOD are still pushing…

»»»That’s Interesting -> Toyota has opened its new headquarters, located in Plano, Texas. It’s on 100 acres. -> In case you wondered: The 475hp Hemi’d ’18 Dodge Durango SRT has an MSRP of $62,995. -> The California Off-Road Vehicle Association (CORVA) handed out its annual awards, which included the George Thomas Memorial Off-Roader of the Year (2016), which went to Neil Hamada. The Northern Club of the Year was the Bay Area Riders Forum (BARF) and the Southern Club of the Year was the Trail Crew 4x4. For a full list of winners and info about CORVA, go to corva.org. -> “Thank you Land Rover! Our Giant Factory Off-Road Team Discovery is the perfect campanion [sic] for exploring new trails.” That’s from Giant’s Facebook page, in response to a partnership…

AT THE HEART OF EVERY TRUE 4X4 IS A TRANSFER case. The transfer case receives power from the engine via the transmission and then splits it to the front and rear axles, but not all transfer cases are created equal. There are many different designs that have been utilized over the years to send power to the front and rear of our 4x4s. Some transfer cases, such as the venerable NP205, have become champions of the heavily modified off-road kingdom, while others are problematic even in stock applications. Each transfer case has pros and cons, but fortunately the aftermarket has embraced the most prevalent transfer cases and granted them an abundance of aftermarket add-ons to improve performance and reliability. We’ve compiled some of the more popular and noteworthy transfer cases…

OFF-ROAD ADVENTURES ARE OFTEN A FAMILY AFFAIR, THOUGH MANY OF THE VEHICLES ON THE market just aren’t big enough for the whole family, plus their friends and all the mandatory gear. To solve that issue, Travis Raville of Thousand Oaks, California, decided to break away from his GM love and seek out a Ford. The Ford Excursion was exactly what Travis wanted. A straight-axle up front, third-row seating with plenty of room for gear, and it could be optioned with a reliable turbodiesel powerplant. Previously, he had a seriously built Pontiac GTO. The 1,000hp car was fun, “but it was a one-way car,” Travis explains. “We’d get somewhere and it would break; it would go home on a tow truck.” He needed something bulletproof. With Excursions becoming rarer as time…

LET’S FACE IT: IF YOU SPEND OVER 100 grand on a hot 550hp vehicle that’s an SUV, you’re buying an SUV for a reason. You’re not just looking for something with absurd amounts of power that you can drive to the ski chalet, right? We mean, there are high-horsepower Audis and vehicles like that, which are just as luxurious and are actually a bit faster than the Range Rover Sport SVR that won our 2016 Four Wheeler of the Year award. And what do you do with an SUV? You haul lots of people and lots of junk. So for this test installment, that’s just what we focused on: how the “utility” sport/utility vehicle works. For starters, our SVR test model is equipped with Land Rover’s collapsible cargo carrier as…

“ZIAD ORDERED THE SHEIKH A ’95 ¾-TON, V-10–POWERED 4x4 RAM AND PROMPTLY WENT TO WORK ‘SUBURBANIZING’ IT.” Back in 1995, rumors of a Ram pickup-based SUV were swirling. In the Dec. ’95 issue of Four Wheeler we wrote that Dodge was supposedly going to call the SUV “Adventurer.” Dodge never produced the fullsize SUV. However, Sheikh Hamad Bin Hamdan Al-Nahyan, a member of the royal family in the United Arab Emirates, did have a fullsize Dodge SUV built, and we featured it. The way it went down is that Hamad enlisted the help of a friend, Ziad Alhassen, then president of West Covina Dodge, to create the truck that Dodge wouldn’t build. Ziad ordered the sheikh a ’95 3/4-ton, V-10–powered 4x4 Ram and promptly went to work “suburbanizing” it. “Ziad…