When you are hitting the soft stuff it’s easy to give it plenty of right boot in the hopes that something magical will happen and your 4WD will automatically free itself, however 9 times out of 10 this is never the case, and often planting your right foot will end up digging you deeper faster resulting in a much harder recovery for your mates later.

When driving on off road tracks, the more experience you have the faster you will be able to react to slippery and soft terrain particularly those sections that love to eat up fully loaded 4WD’s, and even though you might be itching to unleash all of your brand new recovery gear, or test out your brand new winches full potential, there are few driving tricks and tips that will help you to get less stuck allowing you to keep your recovery gear nice and shiney for when you really need it!

First thing is first, before you dive nose deep into the deep stuff, it’ll pay to drop your tyre pressures down, this does a bunch of things for you, but without going too much into details it’ll let more of your tyres tread contact the surface of the track meaning you are less likely to dig a perfect 4WD shaped hole, instead of driving right through.

To drop your pressures accurately and blisteringly quick, you should equip your 4WD with a Kwiky Tyre Deflator, this handy tool removes your valve core and dumps out excess air extremely quickly but in control ensuring once you are at the desired pressures you won’t lose any more air.

With your tyres dropped you’d be really impressed by how capable your 4WD is, however you may still hit some terrain that slows you down and makes progress much harder, as mentioned earlier, giving it plenty of right boot rarely works, so stopping the accelerator as soon as forward progress stops will ensure you don’t sink too deep. Simply put your 4WD into reverse and back out giving yourself enough room to hit the obstacle with a little more momentum and you will be cheering!

If you find this doesn’t work and you already got really stuck sometimes turning the wheel from left to right can allow your tyres to grip the sides of the ruts and pull your vehicle free, dont try for too long, as you may end up making your situation worse.

This is where your MAXTRAX MKII come in, measuring just 1150mm long X 330mm wide x 85mm tall you can easily use the integrated handles as a shovel to help clear a path in front of  your tyres making it easier to drive through, you can also utilize an Offroad Jack to lift your 4WD up to clear the path underneath this can be particularly helpful if you are stuck up to your chassis rails, but if lifting your 4WD always use caution and never get underneath a load supported by only a jack!

Keeping these tips in mind, there are plenty of strategies you can employ to avoid these sections of track, by constantly watching the road surface and avoiding these sections of soft surface you can avoid needing to self rescue at all, or alternatively you can place at least one side of your 4WD high on terrain features like rocks or straddling the side of the ruts, this will make sure you dont get hung up on the terrain below, and should always easily be able to drive through.

Preparation is everything, and having a reliable portable air compressor  like a Thumper MKII to re-inflate your tyres when you get back to the hard roads will make sure you avoid damaging your tyres by driving at speed on low pressures. With a 12v compressor you can inflate your tyres in a matter of minutes, simply hook up your alligator clips to the battery and hook up the air hose!