Have you ever wondered why you drive a Toyota Hilux 4x4 vehicle?What makes it so more special against other 4x4 vehicle's?
What are the reasons that made you decide to drive a Toyota 4x4?
Was it perhaps the fact that no matter what happens along the trail they just keep on going?
Or that they are easy to repair (all vehicle's can give problems, no matter what model or make)
I have asked Andy to post a few pic's that were taken today on my 1992 Toyota Hilux single cab 4x4, this is my story.
I had to go and repair a forklift this afternoon in a small town just outside Queenstown, called Cofimvaba which is about 80km from Queenstown, anyway all that I had to do was fit a new battery, on my way home I decided to phone my friend Jakes and find out if they were going out 4x4ing this afternoon, he said that they were meeting at 14h30 and were going out to the Red Bridge near Lesseyeton which is +- 8km from Queenstown, I told him that I will meet them out there about 3pm.
Thus my other friend Pieter and his beautiful girlfriend Casino (she has this other afrikaanse name that I cannot remember and thus just call her this as I think that she is very friendly to be with as well and helpful.
Thus we went out to The Red Bridge, however the other guys had already started off on the trail, thus we just followed along by ourselves, driving through the trail, water sections, up and down hills, cross axle sections and a number of other some difficult and some easy sections, we soon caught up with them, finding out that there were another five 4x4's along as well and two Quads.
I had brought along my Stihl chainsaw as well as we wanted to cut up and remove a tree that had fallen down and had covered one of the difficult section that some people like to tackle, we soon had the tree cut up and dragged it out of the way, it was a thorntree and we will go back again and cut it up for some firewood.
Anyway we all had fun driving the various obsticles along the trail and soon it was getting late round about 17h00 and we soon were on our way again, however because I was driving up front, the other guys decided to stay a little behind to finish their cooldrinks, we set off along the trail on our own, coming to this very washed away section (we had in fact had over 50mm of rain the previous week and it had washed this donga out nicely, thus Pieter hopped off the back (Casino was driving up front with me) and he then used my camera to get some nice action shots of me driving down and into this donga, with the added revolver shackles fitted to the rear of my Hilux, the bakkie's suspension articulated very well, at the bottom I turned around and then drove back up and through without any problems, with the added Marlin Crawler as well as the twin ARB Lockers this was easy, thus I then turned around and Pieter said that he wanted some extra articulation shots with the camera, thus knowing that it is better to keep away from deeper ruts, I decided to rather drive back down into this donga but this time round drive straight into the ruts.
Hoping that the rear right wheel will lift up slightly to give some excellent pic's, well I will now let the following Photo's show you all what happened
Please note: Because this all happened in such slow motion, the only damage that was caused to my bakkie was a slight dent on the left front fender, the left mirror just folded in and the glass only broke when Pieter threw his water bottle onto the seat when he had left the glass on the seat as it had come loose slightly.
The bottom line here is, yes we had fun, in fact lots of fun
Soon after we had got the bakkie out and my friend with his V8 Landcruiser had towed me back out, my steering wheel had locked and I could not start the bakkie down in the small donga.
We soon had the bakkie going again however while we were getting the bakkie to start again, the other guys had got their spades out and started to dig sand from the sides of the donga to help cover up the deep ruts to make the trail easy to get through, there is no option here but you just have to drive down this section.
Please note, ths area is basically a donga river that runs through this area and we just use it as our play area.
Photo's will follow
