The WET is here.

Rob I have managed to take it all the places I have wanted to get so far. I am happy with the vehicle for what it is. I can understand the shaking to pieces, they are a pretty hard sprung vehicle. I make sure my tyre pressures are right for the job, mainly the corrogations. Admittedly I haven't yet done the sort of trips that you tour guys are doing, but I would think that problems would develop with continuous trips. There is a bloke in the top of WA who is running one and I know from the look of it, it must get a fair bit of bush work and the roads over there can be pretty average. I seriously think that suspension and tyre pressures will remove and of those self desructive tendencies. My vehicle is the 6.5 TD which had done 128K when I got it. It now has 135K on the clock. Most of it's life has been an assortment of hiway and bush. I wouldn't say it has done the hard 4wding that some vehicles get though. My treatment for it is fairly well if I want to get some where then I take it, the wheelbase is the only drawback, weight and width have not been a considration yet. It will pull my big tandem trailer up the beach (tyre pressure down to 28, 55-60 is the normal psi) without any problems, that's through the soft stuff, no sand dunes up here. I think for a tour vehicle with the correct modifications you can't go wrong, although some obviously did, lots of room, good aircon, power to tow the heavy trailers etc. Anyway I m obviously bias, it fits my five kids in no worries with all of our gear and it hasn'e let me down. Average fuel economy around town is 20lt per 100km for what it's worth. I did manage to break of one of the front sway bars. Articalation might have been a bit restricted.....

Hope this helps.

Cheers
JohnH

As I was typing that, the wind gusts were really picking up so thought I'd go out and have a suss, got a faceful of sand and dust. You gotta love the desert - midnight dust storms!

Willem it's amazing what can be achieved by momentum. Now don't go into a list of things that can be broken by momentum, I don't want to think about that. :-)

JohnH