Getting Stuck

Taking your vehicle offroad is inviting the challenge of the elements, with soft and uneven surfaces getting stuck will naturally happen. After all you aren’t driving to the shops, you are taking a vehicle off a well maintained and purpose designed surface (relatively speaking), and putting it into precarious situations.

Getting stuck is one thing but getting your vehicle out of trouble is a badge of honor and a rite of passage for many 4WDers and the more experienced you are the more the efficiency of your recovery skills become, making vehicle recoveries a piece of cake.

To start with drop your tyre pressures down with a purpose made tyre deflator, depending on the vehicle this can be up to half your standard pressures. The reason we use purpose made deflators is the speed and accuracy you can decrease your pressures with, the Kwiky Tyre Deflator uses clever valve core capture technology, which allows you to open up an UNRESTRICTED valve to release air extremely quickly and easily whilst the integrated bourdon tube pressure gauge gives you an accurate controlled read out of your tyres pressures, making deflation of all 4 tyres only take less than 5 minutes.

With reduced tyre pressures we gain up to 300% of the surface area on our tyres allowing us to crawl out of sticky situations with much more traction, if this doesn’t work then we may need a hand from a Domin8r X Winch or a Hercules Snatch Kit to pull our tyres into traction and drive out of trouble a lot sooner.

Taking a Puncture

This is one of those avoidable issues, however punctures can happen anywhere, at anytime, for almost any reason – many times being caused by stray screws from tradies ute trays but have no fear, a well equipped 4WD should always carry a puncture kit with it, including tyre plugs and plugging tools along with a high pressure high output compressor to reinflate your tyres and keep going down the track!

The Hercules Tyre Repair Kit includes everything you need to get your 4 doughnuts plugged and a Thumper MAX Compressor has enough grunt to get your tyres back up to pressure and your 4WD rolling down the tracks again! 

Underbody damage

When you are smashing tracks, the risk of taking damage to your vehicle’s underbody becomes more and more likely the more you take your 4WD offroad, whilst 4WDs are generally designed with this in mind, lots of vulnerable parts of your vehicle are stashed away under your 4WD. Essential parts like driveline components, fuel tanks and brake lines run the length of many vehicles, and a stray rock stick or even muddy rut could cause debilitating damage.

To protect yourself from costly damage and the potential for disabling your 4WD, you are presented with a handful of options, the first being underbody protection such as bash plates and rock sliders, however, another option is to fit a 2” suspension lift, by fitting lifted springs and improved shock absorbers under your 4WD you not only gain extra clearance, but you will allow your wheels to travel further without getting stuck so you can drive over more obstacles whilst also improving your vehicles on road handling characteristics, such as braking cornering and even accelerating.

Animal strikes
Australia is full of wildlife, and when you are travelling around areas that are away from population center’s you’ll quite quickly discover that these beautiful creatures turn into a dangerous hazard when you least expect them too.

A fully grown Red Kangaroo can reach up 2.1m Tall and weigh in excess of 90Kg this is larger than many adult men and at full speed can travel at approximately 70km/h and in one bound can travel 8-9m and up to 3m in the air.

As you can imagine, the unpredictability of a wild animal of this size and power presents a very real potential for damage to your vehicle when they jump in front of your vehicle is great particularly during the dusk and dawn periods of the day when they are grazing on the grasses and vegetation on the sides of major roads.

One of your first defenses against accidentally hitting one of these animals with your vehicle is to get an advanced heads up, and in our opinion, there is only one really good way to ensure that, by fitting a set of high output LED Spotlights to the front of your 4WD, to turn night into day!

By being aware of these issues, you can prepare yourself and your 4WD with all the right gear for the job this will not only let you have a much better time off road but could potentially save you thousands of dollars in repairs to your 4WD.