“Human wants are unlimited” - a line in my Economics textbook is something that we as offroad enthusiasts adhere to everyday and twice on Sundays (OTR-day!)
While I still drive my trusted MM540 offroad and have kept it rather barebone, our group OCG (Offroad Club of Gujarat) has a fair amount of Thars in varying stages of mods. As is the nature of an offroader, no vehicle is complete and the urge to continuously keep tinkering/adding capabilities is something most readers will relate to. This thread will talk about the evolution of a Thar from being fairly stock back in 2014 to an extremely tastefully and purposefully modded one today.
Back in September 2017, some of us decided to visit the Pune Annual Offroad Carnival hosted by a gracious group of folks and we really had a great time. Unfortunately that trip was going to cost one of us much more than just hotel, fuel, “consumables”, time and energy.
One of the vehicles on the Pune trip was a fairly well modded Thar. Here’s a list of what it had when it reached Pune:
Mechanical
- Eaton MLD
- MTs
- Ironman torsion bar and Foamcell shocks
- Winch, Snorkel and offroad bumpers
- T8 Stage 2 Tune with a Performance Exhaust
Non-mechanical
- Hardtop from Azad 4x4 which has help surprisingly well in face of abuse
- A Yellow driver seat. Cops once stopped the Thar at 1am and the only question they had was “Why one yellow seat?” The owner’s a designer and they have their quirks.
- A Thor hammer decal
- Lots of stickers from trips to Spiti in Feb, Leh in Summers, Jawai in Winters et al
Here’s a picture of it in butt-freezing temperatures in Spiti circa Feb 2017.
You’d think this many mods would typically suffice. Yes? No. Read on.
Coming back to the Pune event, it did quite well in a couple of stages and we were having a good time though we did notice how the level of competition and vehicle abuse has gone up significantly and somewhere deep down we got the feeling that a Thar with all the mods that we had was still not quite enough for even the modified class, forget the Extreme category!
In one of the SS, somehow the Stage 2 tune, a few rocks and a turned front wheel conspired to break the axle causing our Pune trip’s agenda to significantly change!
On our way back, as most Jeepers do, we reflected on the why and whats of the wrongs with the vehicle and were rather cheesed off with the front axles breaking. From reinforced axles, the thought veered to the inefficiencies of IFS vis-a-vis SFA and as you’ll know by the end of this thread that we went much far and further than we imagined with this Thar.
As is the case with over-enthusiasm, we decided to convert it to Solid axle ourselves. So we started talking to the Jeepers about parts needed, potential issues etc. We found and collected 550 OKBJ axles and other obvious parts that would be needed for the same. Let me clarify here, though I am a qualified Mechanical Engineer, I’ve never worked on these things and the owner was a Designer so between the two of us and other OCG enthusiasts we definitely gathered the confidence if not the capability to go ahead with the SFA conversion.
On one of those calls was to fellow bhpian Rajith, and I was asking him about SFA and he in turn mentioned another bhpian Arka from Chennai working on a similar conversion there.
People who know Arka from team-bhp remember his debates on the IFS vs SFA thread which kept many of us hooked back in the olden days when the Thar at launch was analyzed ad infinitum. I know Arka from 2010, when I bought my Jeep and I know him to be an extremely knowledgeable and comes with his brutally honest opinions about all things Jeep. I called him up and he said he does SFA and we discussed a fair bit about what he’s been up to and what’s possible. He sent me some pics of his work and goes without saying, it was an option we were seriously considering.
The more we talked, the more we got convinced to send the Tha(o)r from Ahmedabad to Chennai for a SFA conversion. The “initial” plan was to go with a simple solid axle conversion at the front which should take us a couple of months including the transportation. So in Dec-2017, we trucked it to Chennai and waited with bated breath.
The initial tasks outlined were:
1) Front solid-axle conversion using OKBJ 550
2) Steering setup change from Thar R&P to Bolero Camper PS with RTC Steering Damper