Nissan Patrol 4x4 (Africa)

Some 35's

Soooo far away from me, and the budget does not allow it. I am already struggling to be ready for December/January silly season.

Ek moet nog in volg 2 weke my g60 kom haal in vredenburg. Ek skuld jou nog dsai centre portion

Dankie, laat my weet wanneer jy kom.

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A little problem that became a bigger problem after fixing.

Is it possible that suspension and steering components can be too tight?
I have had a rattle on the front for a few weeks and just could not figure where it was coming from. This morning, success when the suspension was just unloaded in a way I could rattle the left radius arm, The lower mounting bolt was undone by about 3mm allowing the arm to lift and drop slightly. The bolt wearing away at the bracket. Tighten up, and find some play on the upper Panhard bush, and two other bolts on the radius arms also took a turn or two before tight.

I was very surprised this was not causing a bigger problem, and I have been very happy with the feel of the Sani since the new front tires were replaced. Steering is lighter, and he tracks better and the pulling left problem is virtually gone. The occasional death wobble that hit at around 70 moved down to 40, and very mild and hardly ever happens. So after tightening everything up, topping up the front diff, and checking oil levels of the gearbox and both transfer cases, I thought I would go for a little flex session and take the opportunity to make a video for Youtube. Hardly out the drive DW hits at under 40. I can hardly get through it. Attempted three times to get through it. Now my closest tar road is 14km away, and I was not going to drive all that way to see if a smooth surface made any difference, but I did convince myself that maybe after tightening everything up, a flex session can only help loosen everything up.
Seems I was mistaken, the 1,2km drive back home was just as bad with the DW.

Any ideas or comments would be welcome. The only thing I can think of doing is loosening all those bolts up again tomorrow, but that just does not seem right.
I did get to do some sand crawling for nearly two hours though, which was a great distraction, and I did get some video I hope. Will be downloading it from the camera shortly and see what I got .

I found my problem. One of the ball joints on the Draglink is shot. The dynamic must have changed after tightening the other stuff so that it now presents itself on the draglink and exposes the weakest part.

But I got out playing on my own in our gravel and sand pit on the farm. Just bashed it around testing lines and trying to get the feel of where traction ends and what the LSD is able to do.

Here is some video of the session.

Nice videos. It's great to see some old-school skilled crawling because these days it's all diff-locks, rev limiter, wheel spin, so seeing some finesse is still alive and well in 2020 is lekker

I love doing it super slow. Frustrates the crap out of many guys, but I suppose it's because I mess with their momentum and get them stuck And this is all still at normal (1.8bar) tire pressure. My rear tires are sketchy and can't go down too far or the darn sidewalls crack and start leaking. My front tires did it a while back, and I have not recovered yet to go out a buy another two new tires for the rear.

I have been pleasantly surprised by how far you can get crawling in the sand. Progress is slow, but better than digging in down to the chassis. I have tested on the beach and here on the farm. I have a video where I drag an old VW Combi that rolled, down a sand road. No way I can get momentum with the weight on the back, but just leaving the Sani to crawl got it out down the road, even though it took about 20 minutes, and I know lower tire pressures would have helped a lot. But at least it could do it un-attended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU490fCcqqE

Lekker David, slow and easy! The only one that doesn't like a slow recovery is the one being recovered ;-)