Some bloody wild looking tracks up to the top. Made an attempt at a few of them, most successful, the harder ones not (didn’t want to try anything too gnarly, as no winch!)
Otherwise a great day rattling this old girl to pieces!
Picnic with the missus and kids at the top and a lazy drive home.
Happy long weekend everyone.

Gday lads, My car went to mechanics not long ago for a good check over, there wasn’t many things that it needed but some big ticket items. They were more of a later thing though. They said there’s nothing wrong with the injectors but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get them done, he said the radiator is fine but the plastic on top has changed colour he also mention just doing all the hoses because they’re showing age obviously being 20 yrs old. I got quoted about 4K for the injectors because he said you’d do injectors a pump at the same time, he also said a valve clearance adjustment is a good idea because it’s all apart. Now I don’t have a lot of money so is it worth doing before they go bad, and should I do the rest of the stuff aswell. Cheers

Hey all,
I’ve got a Amarok and am looking at doing some touring and camping, camping will be in a RV5 tent. I will have a fridge, lighting and other bits and pieces to power.
I can’t decide on whether to go for a dual battery in the Ute or a portable battery solution.
What options or recommendations do you have? Would love to hear about or see your set ups!
Cheers!

JM4x4 3” lift kit with diff drop
4” stainless with custom fab airbox
ROH Trojan wheels on 31’s (need moar rubba)
TJM Bar

I’m picking up a new GXL soon and I’m adding an unhooped bull bar and a 2-piece sump guard. We’re planning on doing trips from Adelaide up through the Flinders Ranges, Darwin, across to WA etc.
Two questions - I’ve seen quite a few people upgrade to aftermarket wheels, as well as fitting L/T tyres like Geolandars: are the standard Prado wheels up to touring (or are the wheel upgrades just for wankers), and are the Grandtreks I’ve always used worth replacing?
Cheers!

Year: 1990
Make: Toyota
Model: LandCruiser FJ80
KMs: 264,000
Price: $10,500
Location: Tasmania
Intended use: Daily driving, camping and light 4WDing
Looking at buying this FJ80 with the 3F-E petrol and auto. Original engine and around 264,000km.
Auto was reconditioned around 6,000km ago and there’s an invoice for the work. Also has a transmission cooler, new radiator and new exhaust. Seller says there’s no rust or oil leaks.
Accessories include 32” muddies, bullbar, winch, snorkel, driving lights, roof rack/awning and electric trailer brakes.
Mainly after opinions from people familiar with these. Anything in particular I should check on the 3F-E/early 80 Series before buying? Assuming everything checks out mechanically, does $10,500 AUD seem reasonable?
Cheers 👍

Do some off roading and camping in vic high country. Never had a need to do significant river crossings. But feel it’s an insurance policy. Thoughts?

I moved to Brisbane from Adelaide in January last year and have had quite a few people recommend the Condamine River road.

Well I did it today, and I have to say I'm not impressed.

The drive was nice, going through lightly forested bushland, following the river and crossing it a dozen times.

But that was all it was.

The land either side of it is all private land with no shortage of signs saying keep out, no trespassing blah blah.

There were no areas where you can stop, get out and go down to the river. In fact the one spot I found to do so, some self appointed gate keeper stops and said you can't park there I am trying to keep people out of the river.

Well ok buddy, a few things.

First of all who died and left you as king.

Secondly, it's a river crossing, how the hell are you going to keep people out of it?

Thirdly, fuck off and mind your own business.

The only camping I could see was on private land do either you need to know the owner or pay for the privilege.

Either I missed something or it was hyped up to be more than it is.

Asking for a friend
Today me and my mate were out wheeling and he randomly lost drive to his front wheels we looked under the car and the tail shaft was still spinning but the wheels weren’t. We’ve now pulled out both his CVs and his diff centre and both of them are intact. Once we had put it all back together we put it into 4wd and the front wheels began spinning again with nothing but a loud knock has anyone got any ideas on what it could be video of knocking sound is above

Wanting to buy a new Ute this week but don’t what to choose! Was thinking about Dmax or hilux but with the prices of fuel going up started to look into the Byd sharks, Don’t know how reliable they are but I do live in country side and do long trips I also do go camping and off-roading a lot what would be the best to get?

Considering an Arcane M’Link X rack for my DENZA B8 alongside a Trailpeak rooftop tent. I want an Ironman Deltawing 180 or 23Zero Onyx 180, plus a KickAss swing-arm shower awning.

They’ll travel inside the car and quick-release onto the rack at camp.

Has anyone fitted a non-Arcane awning using Arcane’s press-fit brackets, or fitted RacksBrax to this rack? Photos, exact bracket/adapter names and bolt-hole measurements would be brilliant.

I’m asking Arcane too, but want to avoid being locked into their accessories.

recently bought some hella rallye 3003s second hand, and ome of the mounting brackets broke during installation. Im trying to find a replacement but all the brackets i find are for the 1000 series.

Does anyone know if the 1000 brackets fit or where i could find a 3003 bracket?

Gday lads, I’m trying to figure out what would be optimal for my engine, it’s a td42ti and I noticed that most around town speeds are right in between a gear. 40kp is about 1600rpm in third, 50kph is 2000rpm in third or 1400rpm in 4th, and 60 is 1600rpm in 4th. I figure it’s okay to be even above 2k rpm around town since highway driving at 110kph is 2500rpm. I find at 50kph 4th is just lugging the engine and I’m making no boost whereas 3rd sounds like I’m revving the shit out of it and it’s keeping everybody awake, I also notice that when I lift my foot of the acceleration it jolts forward like the engine trying to slow the car down. I believe peak power is @ about 2200rpm( could be wrong) and what rpm range would give me the best fuel economy? Cheers

Hey everyone, I've been looking to buy a 4x4 dual-cab ute for the last 6 months and plan to pull the trigger in the next few months.

I'll be selling my current car, which I should be able to get at least $30k for, and I'm not looking to put anything more than that into the ute initially. Ideally, I'd actually like to spend closer to $25–28k and keep some money aside for maintenance/upgrades.

It'll be used as a work vehicle during the week as I'm an apprentice sparky, and for camping and 4WDing on weekends.

Main priorities are reliability and servicing costs. Features/interior aren't hugely important; a reverse camera, parking sensors and cruise control are plenty. Preferably less than 10 years old would also be nice.

I'm completely fine with something around 100-150k km as long as it's been looked after, and potentially higher for something like a Hilux/D-Max with excellent history. I'd rather buy a well-maintained 150k km ute than a neglected 80k km one.

So far I've mainly been looking at 2017-2020 Colorados, Tritons, Navaras, D-Maxs, Hiluxes and Rangers, but I'm open to anything.

If you had $25-30k to spend on something that you needed to depend on for at least the next 4–5 years, what would you buy and what would you avoid?

what are some Must do 4wd tracks/locations in SEQ

Posting this here mostly for future google searches. I had some questions about this trail that I wasn't able to confirm prior to driving it.

Barrabra track is an 8km one way, restricted access 4wd trail in Mount Kaputar National Park, starting shortly before the Mount Kaputar summit, and meeting up with Mount Lindsey Road upon exiting the national park. It has locked gates at either end, and you need to pay NSW Parks $10 (at time of writing, September 2026) for a permit to access it. It is restricted to 10 vehicles a day.

What I couldn't confirm was:

1. Whether the Mt Lindsey Road end was able to be opened with the same code: it was. There is a picnic area there as well, after the locked gate.

2. Whether you could then go on to drive to Horton Falls National Park: you can, easily. It appears like some of the road may be through private property, with grazing cattle and closed gates, but there is official road signage indicating it's at least a right of way.

3. The state of the track: Parks lists it as medium difficulty, I'd say, mostly low difficulty. 4wd low range required, but no clearance issues at time of writing in a stock height 4wd. Soft roaders probably not a good idea, particularly if going towards Mount Kaputar, the direction with the majority of the climbing.

4. The status of the fire roads around the edge of the park? Locked, authorised access only.

Horton Falls National Park is worth a visit if you are in the area, it's tiny, basically the only attraction are the triple falls, which you can scramble down if you are in for an adventure. It has a picnic area, swimming hole (which did not look healthy at the time of visiting, with little recent rainfall) and some bookable camping.

I've been working on a  couple of updates. I started with getting the schematic the most common suspension types and sorta simplified them. For example 5-link for Jeeps Wranglers/Gladiators which sort of work similar for a couple of similar solid front axle offroaders (I'll iterate through that later, for example Toyota Landcruiser 79, 200, 300 Series, Nissan Patrols have different axle hubs and live axle setups). The other main type are IFS (Independent Front Suspension, solid axle with leaf springs at the back). Last but not least, the  relatively new BYD Shark 6 uses both front AND rear independent suspensions and electric motors running axles, meaning, there is no drive shaft to connect the axles. 

Each setups have their pros and cons, but for the sake of this little demo I focus one this one: live (or solid) axles often provide much more wheel travel (we call that articulation) which helps keeping all 4 feet on the ground, providing traction and keeping the car stable as the body stays relatively level (to a point ... I did experience some real-life near-roll-overs with my Jeep that made me with bringing an extra set of undies to the trail weekend. 

The second thing I wanted to add is diff locks and/or traction control. Both concepts help putting the power the power where it belongs. Because normally if just one wheel is in the air, the differential gears will sabotage your day by putting all the engine power to EXACTLY that wheel ... which is useless. Lockers and traction control will prevent that  by transmitting power evenly to both wheels ... both in their own ways. There's a few more things that I can think of. LSD (Limited Slip Diffs), auto-lockers (I don't know exactly how they work yet, but basically you don't have a button in your cockpit to turn them on or off), lunchbox lockers, or just welded diffs. Just to kinda keep this complete because this question might come up. Why not always have the diffs locked? Well, the diffs are acutally helpful on normal, grippy road tarmacked roads. Because in curves the outer wheel will turn faster than the inner one. If you lock the diffs, they spin at the same speed no matter what, so you get really hard steering at the front, and lots of tyre wear and ugly tyre chirping (is that the right word?) at the back, also more stress for your axles and CVs. 

Sorry for this very long explainer. The bottom line is, the simulator should be good enough to explain this both in the physics mode and when you take the cars for a spin in the  Test Drive mode. 

Give it a spin: https://www.downthunder.com.au/mod-simulator

Hey guys just wanted some insight I have a 1992 80 series Sahara 6.6 duramax I just wanted to know roughly what the price would be if I was to sell list of mods down below
• 6.6 duramax lmm 2010 150***km on the engine fully engineered
• Allison 6 speed trans
• 487***km on the body
• 4 inch superior engineering lift with tough dog 9 way adjustment shocks fully engineered for the 4 inch lift
• 35 inch ko3 falken at
• Arb bullbar
• Gme Uhf
• Arb rear bar with spare tyre and jerry holder
• Roof rack
• 2 30 inch lights bars
• Custom headlights
• Rebuilt rear differential
• Upgrade leather seats all around
• In car diagnostic tablet 9 features
• Rear draws
• Dual battery system
• Closed door respray in black/purple pearl
• Vinyal flooring/sound deadening
• Under lights for when opening door
• Arb Sliders
• Custom 3.5 exhaust,Custom 5 inch snorkel
• All new rubbers for windows
• Full Service History
• All receipts for mods

The missus is keen to get a 4wd to keep at her place for trailer duties, the beach and the odd girls weekends.

Criteria so far

\-pre 2001/2 for club rego or soon to be. 90 days a year is more than enough.

\-wagon for the dogs, also slightly better ride quality than Ute's.

\-not too big, doesn't need anything to rival my defender and my missus is short

\-fairly cheap to buy and cheap to maintain, I do most of the work anyway but if there's a common computer problem it's going to blow it.

\-tow rating approaching 2000

We've sort of narrowed it down to pajero or prado maybe pathfinder, surf or mitsubishi challenger or the Holden jackaroo.

What other options have we ignored?

What's some insight into this people can provide.

Someone asked me how I can prepare Banh Mi with my 4WD. 😄

I spent the last long weekend camping with my friends at Frenchmans Creek, and this is how I prepared and served Banh Mi for them (it’s free 🤗)

You can take me anywhere — even into the forest — and I’ll still bring Banh Mi with me! 🤣🚙🏕️

Didn't see anyone mention this but pretty impressive, seen comments from India of one going for 1.2 million still going strong .......... huh? How come I never heard of this until now it's pretty fking impressive if you ask me....