Devils Pit 19/09/10

My 1st PnP day ever as a driver and what a blast!! I went there with my brother and a friend and of course my truck!

I made it round all day on road tyres and only got stuck twice, both of which I got cross axled/beached

so all in all I'm bl#dy chuffed! I was expecting to be getting stuck all the time, even more so when I checked the weather and it was ment to be heavy rain the night before. I made it up some prity steep inclines, and down some even steeper decents! :shock:

I havn't washed the car yet so I dont know if these any paint damage (it was very scratchy), but as bobbinsjob warned me my rad did get clogged with silt and as a result the temp gauge kept bouncing between 80 and 100, but never went above 100 so hopfully it's a-ok! I did take a squirty bottle with me, hense why the temp went down, and then back up again. When we got back to my local yet wash I unbolted the top rad brackets, pushed it back a bit and gave it a blast and its stayed at 85 since.

The lady at the "gate" said that we'd probably loose our side steps....but they didnt even get bent! Also those standard skid plates took a beating without breaking a sweat, or breaking!

Althogh I think the cross member for the torsion bars took most the the hammering as its bang in the middle.

Heres what it looked like on the way home when we stoped off for grub. - and yes I know I diped the air box corner in the drink, but it was shallower on that side - I havn't checked the air filter to see if it got wet or not, but I guess it probably did a bit.

Are there any area's I need to clean other than the body and underside, would it be a good idea to take the skids off and yet wash the underside of the engine and g/box ect.?? any hard to get spots that need cleaning out to prevent catastrophic rust?
Dan

You're a braver man than me Dan. Great to see you had a good time. Just make sure you give the rad a good hosing and the intercooler. not jetwash bar risk of damage to the fins

Seems that your roof light gota bit of a doing too. They're blinding aircraft pilots.

I've just cleaned it and OMG! it has loads of deep scratches. what's the best thing to put on them?
thanks, dan

I had a similar problem after this weekends greenlaning. A couple of hard polishing sessions with Autoglym super resin polish sorted mine. When you say deep, do you mean to the metal ?

Don't worry about the scratches mate,you will get loads of them,i have gave up trying to polish them out

I take it,that you have not checked your air box yet :lol:

I would do asap,and take a photo,so we can see :lol:

thats right!!!! why do you think mine has more stickers than paint :oh yer:

trick of the trade, don't let any one write on a dirty car, it can be worst

make sure that every bit of that silt is cleaned off, and then I have got an electric bonnet polisher/buffer you can use if you wanna pop over to get it

I have used the coloured polishes on a car with similar problems to yours in the past with reasonable results.

http://www.halfords.com/webapp/wcs/stor ... yId_165527

I'd try it by hand first. A buffer might be a bit severe with that.

Jeez, looks like you had a great day out there! :dance:

I'll look into prices tomorrow, maybe

We had another spell of overheating today on the M11, which is strange as it was fine all day monday. This morning (before it overheated) I jet washed the engine bay with focus on the oil cooler... so it managed fine with a caped oil cooler, yet overheats with a clean(er) oil cooler....sometimes I just think its me.....but Im sure that dont make much sence???? especially as I was doing 70 (high air flow) and monday I was buzzing around town (low air flow). I'll have to have yet another look at the rad, but it should be clean now... :/

anyways, heres some more pics

- the camera hasnt picked up the dirt on the filter very well, but oh well. nothing got through the filter which is the important thing!

enjoy!

Hipo - I can't see the pics as at work (they block anything cool) but the only time I took my Frontera off road was at the Devils Pit back in Feb 08 - in fact my profile pic is from there! AWESOME DAY OUT!!

However, cleaning the clay/mud after isn't. I only live in Stevenage but had to stop 4 times due to overheating. And then, the whole truck including engine bay needed a good 6 jet washes to get clean, then the front sump guard might as well have been a massive ice cream scoup!!! No chance of getting it out of there! I saw another Fronty there that day and he was putting card in front of the rad (like a black cab in the winter), which would have been a good way of peeling the mud off for the drive home, although I'd watch the temp when playing.

That colour polish stuff in Halfords did bring the paint up nicely I must say, looked like a new paint job. I think cleaning it after was the main reason I didn't go again before selling it