Comment 5856

By Ted Mitchell (registered) | Posted March 15, 2007 at 22:55:16

responding to the experience about practical experience:

I have no "serious" off road experience, meaning the hobby of taking street-legal trucks into places where you get them stuck. I think that whole thing is ridiculous, especially when you can get a used dirt bike or atv for about $2K that will leave the jeeps far behind in almost any surface conditions, especially in the muskeg and rock of northern ontario that i'm most familar with, and it's a lot more fun!

I'm essentially a farm boy, as in drive everything you can as soon as you can reach the pedals. When very young I recognized the severe limitations of trucks on roads, paved or not (especially gravel!) and I never appreciated the vicious lateral roll imparted by the live axle on the occasions I've driven off road.

so for the purpose of light off-roading, which is all that the typical suv ever sees, i find that the predictable traction of unibody / independant systems is superior to "real" 4x4 off road vehicles up to the limit of their much lower ground clearance. it is much, much harder to get a fwd car stuck than a rwd truck for example!

Most of my off road driving is on atv's and snowmobiles. I built a hovercraft once (don't do this without an effective dust filter so you can breathe) and a kind of airboat on snow skis (also don't do this, I was lucky enough to only have a broken foot before packing that one in)

So dude, i don't really understand the off roading minutiae rant, when what you say applies to 1 in 1000, compared to what I'm saying that applies to 900 in 1000.

And get a dirt bike. Cheaper, easier to fix, and more fun! You don't need a winch on it either. You can even tow a couple of them with a honda civic, although that ride may be worthy of too much laughter from the "real men" in the off road fraternity.

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