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A picture from off the road outing with bunch of other vehicles. Read report under SUV trail blazing thread under 4x4 excursions.

All the GV's lined up at the end to get their picture clicked.

My vehicle is first from left. See the mud splattered certificate of achievements:

During the recent trip to Bikaner I did quite a bit of off the road driving in trying to find some trails that can be used for Desert Storm 2010. Two of these were nice trails now entirely spoilt by work done under Jwahar Rozgar Yojna.

Essentially the village head are making money by getting waste from Gypsum mines dumped on to the sandy paths used by camel carts and tractors. However the end result is that this end up forming a "high" central hump and since gypsum stones are brittle even the camel carts do not use it.

I explored two of these trails and gave up on them. However not before I had to drive quite a bit on them. Most of time I would try and keep one tyre of central hump and one on the left/right edge hump. However this was not always possible and so had to take on beating on the engine guard.

Fearing the worst, after return to Delhi, I had put the car on lift and the results were surprising. Virtually no damage except some denting in the areas marked by black ink. And on the inside no where the sheet is touching the engine, transmission or body parts.

I had asked MotorCraft, M.A.S.S., to thoroughly examine the irritating rattle from "somewhere at the back". One observation I shared was that when i have people on the back seat it seems to disappear - an off chance discovery.

So off they went on a road test. First just two people then again with five on board. Then the rear seats were taken out and it was discovered that some metal plate in the right rear seat back is the cause. A bit of foam tied up around the metal stopped the niggling rattle for now.

No pictures but pointer for other GV owners who may similar/this issue.

A vexing problem arose a few days back. After an afternoon of off roading through Aravalli hills full of thorn scrub parked the car for night.

Woke up to find rear right flat. So the car was jacked up and there arose a problem:


Can you spot it?

I can spot 3 lug nuts missing. Or is it the 'stunted' screw jack?

A closer look at the problem

The problem was two wheel nuts that refused to come off. After initial unscrewing they became tight. Although I guessed the cause, and effect which was result of this. I still needed to take these out. So continued rotating the wheel spanner anti-clockwise. This also involved putting pressure by foot - like truckers do. Ultimately the nuts came off.

The effect:




What do you think is the cause?

Aahhh the offroading bit before the tyre flat.....

Just west of Faridabad run the Aravalli hills from North to South direction. The last out crop of these hill to the north is the lies in Delhi, next to the Delhi university. To south these hills continue and I believe the highest point being Mount Abu. The Aravllis are supposedly oldest hills in the world.

In the past they were covered with lots of scrub jungle that is now almost gone and is getting replaced by concrete jungle of apartments etc. Both in Faridabad and Gurgaon. Still there exist some enchanted nooks and corners in these hills that transport you from urban jungle to deep forests within matter of minutes. Jungle populated with blue bulls, spotted deer, jackals and foxes. Occasionally leopard has also been spotted and cow herds tell stories.

Mrs. Fox takes a breather while Mr. Fox bolted on seeing us approach

What was the cause of flat? A nail or thorns?
BTW, your GV is idle candidate to get "slimed"

A Thorn. You know how killer the kikkar thorns can be

Slimed? Please educate.

Stunted screw jack is ruled out as wheel is fairly squarely up in the air.

How much pressure was required to put the bolts in that shape

I guess he meant using that slime kind of stuff in your tires, right Tanveer?

Slime is a liquid thingy you put in tires. I got it done as soon as I got the new Continentals. It will prevent punctures on main tread as long as the the hole is less than 1/4" wide

Surprisingly not much more than a bit of hard pressing by foot on the vehicle's normal wheel spanner.

But question is what caused it? I have also made a thread in technical query section.

I also had a jammed bolt on rear wheel. Had to put water. Now I intend to out Zorick 88(thing like WD40) before trying to open bolts, and use a "ring spanner" instead of wheel spanner.