Dakar starting soon

Electric Gold Pearl - Ford Focus

2015 ?

ST - Titanium ?

Tokyo awesome

The shade of green I've been looking for

Ford Fiesta MK1

Town and Country

 

A couple of nice looking Range Rovers

The Wrangler Africa is the star of the Jeep concepts

Forget the Jeep Chief. If we're going off road, we're taking the Wrangler Africa. A turbo-diesel engine, proven Dana 44 axles, and serious steel wheels. Sold.

(by Zach Bowman roadandtrack.com 3-19-15)

Everyone's got their unmentionables in a twist over the Jeep Chief concept, and for good reason. The thing's as rad as they come, but if I'm going off road and I'm taking one of the new Easter Jeep Safari baddies with me, the Wrangler Africa is going to be my whip of choice. Why?

 

Let's start at the bottom and work our way up.

Steel. Wheels. I've had a handful of Wrangler testers, and subjected them all to the horrors of Windrock OHV park. They all came from the factory with gorgeous aluminum alloy wheels, and none of them survived the rock gardens without at least one gnarly scar. Steel isn't light, but it is durable and cheap, making it the perfect material for off-road rollers that do more than clog the Starbucks parking lot.

 

The wheels are wrapped in 35-inch BFGoodrich mud terrain tires. That's considerably taller than stock, helping to add ground clearance and negate some of the drawbacks of the long wheelbase Wrangler. The two-inch lift, with its Fox shocks, doesn't hurt either.

 

There are a set of proven Dana 44 axles front and rear, though Jeep doesn't say anything about whether or not the sticks come with lockers. The beefier front axle is a good thing with the larger tires, and the torque from the 2.8-liter turbo-diesel engine.

 

That's right, I said the magic words: turbo diesel. The 2.8-liter mill is small and fairly lightweight, but still manages to make big torque low in the rev range, right where you need it when it comes time to scramble over an obstacle. The extra fuel economy will also help you stay out longer, as will the auxiliary fuel tanks. Win.

 

Add in body protection like hood-to-roof guy wires, rock rails, and a high-clearance, steel front bumper, and you're good to tackle everything but the meatiest of trails. Oh, and if you do happen to get stuck, there's a winch up front to help yank you out.

 

Keep your Chief. I'm taking the Wrangler Africa.

 

Safari dreaming

Isuzu Trooper/Bighorn

Badge engineering is big business and it didn’t get any bigger than Isuzu in the 1990s. Their second generation Trooper (also called an Isuzu Bighorn and an Isuzu Trooper Bighorn) was sold with eight different badges and they weren’t all General Motors brands. So, in alphabetical order, they were:

Acura SLX
Chevrolet Trooper
Isuzu Bighorn
Holden Jackaroo
Holden Monterey
Honda Horizon
Opel Monterey
Subaru Bighorn
Vauxhall Monterey

Holden also turned it into a concept car, The Jack8, a revamped roofless two-door powered by GM’s Gen III V8.

Go anywhere Land Rover

RC Defender Fest - Hong Kong RC Defender Club

Color ideas for Trooper - 2016 Jeep Wrangler (unknown color)

2013/2014 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Sport (Freedom Edition) in "dune" color

Gulf

Porsche

Dakar trucks

I'm always intrigued when I see these giant trucks driving thru the desert and such during the Dakar rally.

Dakar Rally

(motorroids.com)

Since 1978, the Dakar Rally has been carving new and wiping away old lines on the palms of its contestants. Over the years. many bones have disappeared and grown as the rally tests the grit of Men, Women and their machines while they race against time, fatigue, and forces of nature to cover extreme distances on mostly non-existent routes on a map. Such is the extreme nature of the event, only a few have triumphed, many took the ultimate fall, and even those who managed to see the finish line are regarded as one of the greatest.

The event borrowed its name from the destination where the first ever rally culminated in 1978. It ran from Paris, France, to Dakar in Senegal. In 2008, security threats in Mauritania led to the cancellation of the rally that year and races since 2009 have been held in South America. Open to amateurs and professionals alike, the former typically add up to about eighty percent of the participants.

The terrain which participants encounter during the Dakar is much tougher than what one would witness in conventional rallying. There’s not much information about what lies ahead and participants and their machines go through an extreme endurance test, which they have to face every single day for two weeks straight! The distances of each stage covered vary from 273 km being the shortest to a bone shrinking 907 km! The categories of machines which participants may enrol under are Bikes/Quad, Car/SXS(SSVs/UTVs) and Truck.

All the vehicles which hit the dirt during the rally are purpose-built to take on the challenges of the event rather than being modified on-road vehicles. Most of the spectacular helicopter shots you’d see from the event will include vehicles attacking dunes, rocks, mud, gravel, inclines, sheer drops and nearly everything that will break normal axles and everyday bones within seconds.

For its 40th edition, the Dakar Rally will be held in South America this year for the 10th time. It will start in Lima, Peru, allow a rest day in La Paz, Bolivia, and then make the contestants gun it towards the finish line in Córdoba, Argentina. Spread across 14 stages, the event will cover a distance of almost 9,000 km, among which, 7 stages are 100% dunes or off-road. With over 4,500 km of special stages, there will be one marathon stage for all categories, another for bikes and quads only, and participants and their machines will spend more than 5 days at an altitude of more than 3,000 metres in the Andes!

follow the Dakar Rally daily here:

https://www.dakar.com/en/

Pharaons Rally

The Pharaons Rally is Egypt’s version of the world-famous Dakar and a thrilling endurance race across the desert. The goal is to cross the Sahara Desert in seven days, taking a 3,000 km circular route that begins under the gaze of the Sphinx in Giza, ending back in the lively Egyptian capital of Cairo. The dune defying desert-race has literally just kicked off – here’s a video update with some of the highlights so far.

The rally attracts serious big-money competitors from around the world, and involves a variety of vehicles from monster trucks to motorbikes and quads. If you’re no professional racer but a keen off-road motorist you can participate in the rally non-competitively. It is possible to rent a 4×4 and guide to follow the rally and join up with the racers after each leg at the campsite bivouac tent.

www.pharaonsrally.com

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99 Trooper off-roading in California

Clean 2000 Trooper

So I found these photos of a 2000 Trooper in pretty much pristine condition.

I wanted to post them here just as a reference to compare to my 99 Trooper of the same color, condition however is another story.

But it is good to have a reference.

Trooper with ladder

I was hoping to find a photo of a Trooper with a ladder on back door.

I wasn't sure if they made them and it's something I'm wanting to add to mine some time down the road.

Patagonia

Off-roading

Well, technically two tires are off the road.

Welcome 2018