Innehållsförteckning för January 2021 från Four Wheeler

JERED.KORFHAGE@FOURWHEELER.COM Mobile Saferoom If the last few items on your Sprinter van’s buildsheet happen to be electric shock door handles, ballistic armor, and smokescreen capabilities—you’re in luck! AddArmor is known for taking luxury vehicles and outfitting them so that dignitaries and enthusiasts alike can withstand and escape doomsday scenarios. The company’s fortified van can be had with seemingly normal amenities, like a bathroom, kitchen, and entertainment system. Next, customers can add barricade-busting bumpers, run-flat tires, pepper spray canisters, hidden gun ports, and escape hatches to the mix. The end result is an uparmored Sprinter van that can be built with private-jet-like furnishings on the inside. No word on the price, but AddArmor beefs up similar vehicles with packages beginning at $28,000 (on top of the vehicle’s cost). Flying Bronco? Ford…

editor@fourwheeler.com Since 2010, there has been a swear jar of sorts in the office. Every time someone either uttered the phrase “Raptor Killer” or tried to shove it into a story, another dollar was headed for the jar. Dollar after dollar, the office pot was filled, with a moratorium on the usage of the phrase until such a moment in time that a competing vehicle emerged as a legitimate contender. That time appears to have arrived, because until now there wasn’t a truck on the market that was worthy of an utterance of the phrase. After seeing the TRX for the first time and combing through the specs, we just tossed the jar into the trash and ordered pizza for the whole staff. So, what gives the ’21 Ram 1500…

jered.korfhage@fourwheeler.com When your day job is operating freight locomotives, navigating tightly wooded paths with an off-road trailer behind your rig might not be so tall of an order, just ask Brandon Hinton. “Trains are hard to drive,” he laughed, remembering his time as an engineer, “and you gotta think about a lot, like braking, because you know the train won’t stop for another two miles.” Watching Brandon weave through the trees and rocks during the 2019 Overland Adventure East made it clear that he was confident hauling big loads on the rails and the trails, and that was a skill he began sharpening when he was young. “I grew up driving beat-down logging trucks in western Kentucky,” is how Brandon explained his childhood driving experiences. He recalled white-knuckle lessons behind…

EDITOR@FOURWHEELER.COM PHOTO: JOHN CAPPA Q I dig the ’97 Toyota Tacoma that showed up in several stories online at fourwheeler.com. I know you sold it, but could you tell me the lift height and what size tires you are using on the truck? I have a truck just like it and I like how yours looks! @PEEP.SIGHT.KILLER VIA INSTAGRAM @CAPPAWORKS A The ’97 Toyota Tacoma that graced the pages of Four Wheeler and fourwheeler.com has left the building and moved on to a new owner once it hit 200,000 miles. The truck was mostly stock, but it did have a suspension lift kit already installed when it was purchased used. The lift was an older 4-inch drop-bracket–style suspension kit. It wasn’t my preference to have this style of lift on the Tacoma,…

JERED.KORFHAGE@FOURWHEELER.COM BULLETPROOF BRACKET Tired of LED light brackets that are shaky and weak? Vision X has a bulletproof mounting system to fit the ’20-up Jeep Wrangler and Gladiator. There is no drilling required and the powdercoated steel brackets use existing bolts on the cowl and give a full range of adjustability to aim the lights. Choose either the 4.7-inch CG2 Light Cannon kit with a spot beam and 10,500 raw lumens (shown) or the 3.7-inch CG2 Mini Cannon kit with a broad spot beam and 4,500 lumens. INFO: Vision X, 888/489-9078, visionxoffroad.com TOYOTA ARMS Adding inches to the ride height of your Toyota requires adjustments to camber and caster angles. Old Man Emu’s new upper control arms for the ’07-’20 Land Cruiser, ’10-’20 4Runner, and ’05-’20 Tacoma are said to…

verne_simons@motortrend.com Long ago, all over the world, jeeps helped the Allies win World War II. During the North Africa Campaign, mostly in the Sahara Desert, MB and GPW jeeps were modified by the British SAS as fast attack vehicles and they inflicted much damage on their foes. These jeeps would rush into an area, wreak havoc, usually on Axis air bases, with vehicle-mounted twin Vickers K machine guns, and then disappear back out into the desert. The SAS jeeps were sprayed in a flat sand color and fitted with extra fuel, water, and parts. Iconically, all but the two center grille slats would be removed from the grille, supposedly to aid in airflow and thus engine cooling. The history is great, and in books and on the Web there are…

jered.korfhage@fourwheeler.com After wedging through dank slot canyons and trekking on foot over miles of hostile terrain back to basecamp, Jason Naparalla and his adventure crew are ready to unwind with hot showers and a hearty camp meal. Thankfully, those luxuries are found in Jason’s Conqueror UEV-390 off-road trailer. What makes it better? His ’10 Ford SVT Raptor has everything it takes to get a crew of canyoneers and the trailer deep into the bush, and back. Canyon crawls—it’s what motivates Jason and his friends to pack up their gear and drive far into the desert over tough terrain to locate a trailhead. From there, the crew typically travels on foot into frighteningly tight slot canyons where light can be limited, mistakes can be deadly, and helicopter rescues are the norm.…

jered.korfhage@fourwheeler.com How do you communicate with others when traveling in your 4x4? Sure, a shout out the window or a text message can get the job done in a pinch, but what happens when phone service dries up and the next rig in your party is just disappearing in the dust ahead of you? Citizens Band (CB) radio has been a stalwart for person-to-person communication, with its beginnings dating back to the 1940s. CB operators are permitted to transmit on 40 channels in the high-frequency band, and in the United States, a license is not necessary for operation. Transmission power on CB radios is limited to four watts in the U.S., and its range can vary from a few thousand feet to a few miles, depending on conditions and equipment.…

EDITOR@FOURWHEELER.COM “I SHOULD HAVE KEPT IT” Here’s a photo of my ’52 Dodge Power Wagon that I owned for 18-plus years. In a weak moment I sold it to buy a tractor. In hindsight, I should have kept it. I set it up with a plow and jib crane for building my post and beam garage. I purchased it sight unseen from the Ruby Gulch Volunteer Fire Department in Montana and had it shipped to me in Vermont. I put a lot of time and effort into it over the years, but it was a great truck. CHARLIE VIA EMAIL ADHESIVE TAPE TIPS This is regarding your interesting article in the March 2020 issue (Firing Order, “Duct Tape, Painter’s Tape & Gaffer’s Tape”). As you can see from the picture,…

christian_hazel@motortrend.com One of the unique and beloved aspects of Ultimate Adventure (often simply referred to as “UA”) is that every year the sponsors, participants, and sometimes even members of staff don’t know where the event will be taking place until just a few short weeks before check-in day. We give them just about enough time to make their travel arrangements, but in terms of doing any special preparation to their vehicles—aside from maybe requiring some specific deep-water fording capabilities or adding extra fuel or bear-proof food storage—we intentionally leave everybody in the dark. So, for the weeklong hard-core off-road wheeling, camping, driving, surviving, and exploring experience that is Ultimate Adventure, you need to really know your machine and how to make it work in almost any terrain. There’s no time…

jered.korfhage@fourwheeler.com This tire grabs hard—punishing the mud, putting rocks in a rubbery chokehold, and demanding attention from the trailhead to the beachfront. Before we even got ahold of Mickey Thompson’s newest mudder, we were aware of the accolade bestowed upon the Baja Pro XS: The world’s tallest DOT-approved light-truck tire. Yes, you can buy them in sizes up to 58 inches (that’s almost five feet tall), and drive ’em on the road, no problem. “Streetable.” That’s the S in the Baja Pro XS’s name, and part of what separates it from its off-road-use-only cousin. Mickey Thompson refined the tire’s design by adding sipes, narrowing the gaps between tread blocks, and constructing the sidewalls from four plies of nylon; just to name a few of the tire’s facets. The resulting rubber…

editor@fourwheeler.com These days, 40-inch tires seem like the norm, and it isn’t uncommon for people to install hydraulic-assist steering on their street-driven 4x4s (or full hydraulic on trail-only-buggies). Our ’06 LJ has 37-inch tires and the factory steering system definitely didn’t like to turn them when they were aired down on the trail. We assumed that we needed hydraulic-assist steering, but after talking to Tom Allen at PSC Motorsports he explained that might not be the case. PSC Motorsports offers a whole host of options for ’87-current Jeep Wranglers. Given our tire size and the amount of road miles we drive, Allen recommended the company’s Big Bore XD replacement steering box. The Big Bore box is a bolt-on upgrade for ’03-’06 Wranglers that replaces the factory ZF steering box. A…