Feature Vehicles

The truck always ran with this custom bungee cord hood-safety-system. No front bumper was utilized and only a tiny tube push bar protected things. Guess they didn't do much nudging in the early days...

Growing up with a father that loved to work on his own cars and swap engines, as well as go camping and four wheeling, really peaked George Szabo's interest in these pastimes. Young George and his father would go camping two or three times a month in the mountains near their home in Bend, Oregon. As he grew up with cars, a sprint car racer/friend got him even more interested in muscle cars, and gave him the bug to build his own 4WD vehicles...

 The stock turn signals were removed from the fenders when the tube fenders were added. The turn signals were then shaved to fit behind the cutouts in the Warn front bumper. If you could own your dream Jeep, what would it look like? Would it have a big V8 engine? Heaps of articulation? Dana 60 axles? A beautiful paint job? Nate Jensen has all of that and more in his 2005 Wrangler Unlimited...

Adam Pratt's 1978 Jeep CJ-5 is a family heirloom that's been in the family 27 years and was Adam's first motor vehicle. The years and 179,000 miles as a daily driver had not been kind to the old Jeep, so a few years back, Adam embarked on a modernizing and upgrading project. ...

THE CHEROKEE XJ DEBUTED FOR THE 1984 MODEL YEAR AND HAD A 17-YEAR RUN WITH FEW CHANGES. THAT'S LONGEVITY! NEARLY THREE MILLION WERE PRODUCED IN TWO OR FOUR-DOOR FORMS AND IN MANY TRIM LEVELS. IN PART 1, WE'LL COVER TIRES AND ENGINES...

When it was introduced in 1984, the Cherokee's unibody construction caused some die-hard four-wheelers to gasp and raise eyebrows. Others scoffed or laughed derisively. Given the "rubber" chassis of the CJs of those days, one wonders how they felt it was superior...

Ford broke new ground in 1980 by offering a revolutionary four-wheel drive front suspension and axle design underneath their newly designed line of trucks. They called the new front end design Twin Traction Beam (TTB) and it defined the Ford trucks so equipped right to the last year of its use in 1996 . In this three-part installment of Finesse 1-2-3, we’ll talk about the ’80-86 Ford "Bullnose" F-250 and F-350 trucks...

If you were having as good a start on the Supercross circuit as Josh Grant, you’d be doing “whips” or “heel clicks” as well. In 2006, only his second year as a full-time pro, Josh Grant practically took up residence on the podium in the East Supercross Lites series to finish in third place for the season. He then maintained that momentum going into the outdoor Motocross Lites series to also capture third place overall...

The perfect base For Daniel, off-road driving comes down to rock crawling events. However, according to him, the best car for these competitions is a vehicle built by Mercedes-Benz, the Unimog truck because of its portal axles that incorporate a hub reduction, its flexible ladder-frame, its locking front and rear differentials, its coil springs and its excellent reduction. Luckily, in 2002, Daniel found the perfect base: one Unimog 435 without bodywork...

Jason Rossetti, has been making tracks in the Pismo dunes for years in his 4-inch lifted ’92 Bronco and in his ’99 F-350 with a 10-inch lift. Not content with those two trucks, he now plans to tackle these soft, rolling Dunes in an ’03 Ford F-350 with a full foot of extra altitude, proving once again that size does matter. He initially visualized marching up the eastern slip face, emerging over the crest as if levitating above the sand in a ghostly gray rig...

Once the decision has been made on how you'll use your 4x4 and a body style has been selected, you're ready to make the second most important decision in any buildup project, "What size of tire are you going to run?" Whether you're building a 4x4 from scratch or upgrading the one you have, you'll need a plan. There is always some fine-tuning to do after it hits the dirt, but if you don't have a plan you may find yourself spending money reworking the vehicle instead of fine-tuning it. The first and most important decision to make on any build-up project is deciding, "How you intend to use your rig?" Is it a trail or street vehicle? Regardless of your choice there will be trade-offs...

 The PSC Steering ram is powered by tapping into the steering gear box. For that rare situation where the ram fails (ie, broken hose) it is best to carry caps to plug off the ram hoses and a spacer to fill the gap left after removing the steering ram from the steering knuckle.     In Part I we covered the planning phase of the AJ-8 Build-up...

DEALER SERVICES INTERNATIONAL (DSI) has just released their No Fear Chevrolet Silverado and GMC Sierra Limited Edition trucks — available on the GMT900 half-ton platform in both 2 and 4 wheel drive. The all new Silverado and Sierra, which GM released for the 2007 model year, represents a bold new look for these trucks. In addition, both the chassis and powertrain were redesigned giving them an edge in a very competitive segment...

Jim's planning and craftsmanship yielded a clean, strong J4000 rear axle with good articulation. Jim Mazzola works as a staff engineer at GM's advanced power train division in Detroit building concept vehicles. He is also a lifetime ambassador with United 4WD Association and a lifetime member of Great Lakes 4WD Association...

Blinding snowfields, ragged sculptures of ice, mud pits with enough suction to engulf a small city: Maybe not what you think is typical in Southern California. But, a rig like Chris Boulais' 1986 CJ-7 can locate this category of bad-butt terrain like a heat-seeking missile. Boulais' goal, when he bought the Jeep in late summer, 2005, was to build "a clean, reliable, go-anywhere vehicle...

The truck you see here is the work of one man over three years. When Jim Davis of Vancouver, Washington bought this ’71 Chevy it was, to put it mildly, a disaster. The paint was gone, the body was rusted, the interior looked like a cat had given birth in it and the engine was blown...

When the screen on the Garmin Zumo began showing a vast nothingness to my East at the same time the boredom of the smooth state highways changed to the rough texture of country blacktop, I knew Deepwoods was close to getting its first chance to prove its worth in the real world since we began the project truck almost a year earlier. I'd been on the road since 5 am, leaving my office in Long Beach, Mississippi, before the roosters were up. Lights blazing and cruise control locked in at a leisurely 70 mph as indicated by Zumo, my destination was the Mossy Oak world headquarters in West Point, Mississippi, a short 230-mile jaunt nearly due North from the coast...

The Tundra is the type of truck that’s easy to let the imagination run a little wild on how one can personalize it to suite the avid off-road adventurer. But rather than just imagining, we are going to bring as much of that to life as possible during the next few months as “Project Deepwoods” takes shape in these pages. The palette for our transformation: an ’07 Tundra Double Cab 4x4 SR5 powered by Toyota’s awesome 381hp 5...

In the last installment we upgraded the exhaust on our 2007 Tundra Double Cab 4x4 and installed a couple of bed storage boxes. This month we continue improving Project Deepwoods' utility and performance. Our goal at the end is to have a truly unique 4x4 for the avid off-road adventurer...

Camoclad delivers the camouflage graphics printed on 4' Wx5'L vinyl sheets of 3M Controltac 160-C, a 4 mil-thick , premium vinyl film designed for dry application to vehicles. The back of the 3M graphic vinyl is covered with pressure-activated microscopic pockets of adhesive that allow the film to be repositioned during installation until pressure is applied to the film surface by hand or with a squeegee. The vinyl can be easily removed by simply peeling it away from the vehicle body...

Vehicle safety and aerodynamics have made major advancements in the last 10 years. The body lines are smoother to reduce wind drag, and air bags surround the interior to provide the occupants with instant protection  in an accident. Our Project Deepwoods Toyota Tundra Double Cab 4x4 is a prime example of such technological leaps...

During the past few issues we've undertaken a number of additions to our 2007 Toyota Tundra Double Cab 4x4 to make it more suited for our intended use off the beaten path, namely as a vehicle for the avid outdoorsman. We've added a winch and front-end protection, made some minor suspension changes, installed some much needed mapping and communications tools, added a bit of side protection, and wrapped it in full camouflage graphics. But we see a need for more upgrades to make Project Deepwoods a real head-turner and solid performer in our outdoor pursuits...

We've had a lot of fun playing with our 2007 Toyota Tundra Double Cab 4x4. We started this project with one goal in mind: making the Tundra into a truck the avid outdoorsman/hunter would love to own. During the past few months we've worked our way slowly toward that goal by adding aftermarket products as they became available for Toyota's brand new full-size pickup...

NO off-roader worth his/her salt would ever disrespect one of the true big daddies of the SUV scene, the Toyota Land Cruiser. Introduced as the FJ series in 1960, it was simplicity personified; an all-grunt, take-it-anywhere rig. Despite its susceptibility to rust, this backcountry bruiser was just plain tough, taking on all sorts of rough-and-tumble terrain and then begging for more...

ONE SPECULATION as to why the major eastern Colorado cities of Denver, Fort Collins and Colorado Springs exist is because when the westward- ho settlers arrived in their Conestoga wagons and got their first glimpse of the imposing Rocky Mountains, they surely said, “Hey, these high plains look like a nice place to settle down,” or perhaps, “If you think we’re gonna drive these rickety things over those mountains, you’re crazy. ” The Colorado portion of the Rockies boast 52 mountain peaks rising over 14,000 feet above sea level (and something like 250 miles of mountains from east to west), so some of that reasoning seems logical, if untrue. Truth is, Denver and those other so-called Front Range cities date back to gold and silver rush days and even prior as outposts for fur traders...

LITTLE TRUCKS WITH BIG TIRES ARE JUST PLAIN COOL. Although there aren’t a whole lot of aftermarket options available for Ford Rangers, the way people build trucks today, that problem is easily overcome with some ingenuity. By the time they get to be as big as this one, most of the stock stuff has been tossed anyway...

Ryan Dodd's passion is flying-but not in an airplane or hang glider. This 23-year old can launch himself 35 feet in the air at about 70 mph off a floating ramp, and travel 230 feet pulled by a 400hp powerboat, before floating back down to the water. He's been water skiing, jumping and executing tricks in mid-air competitively since he was 17, and the long, long list of records and championships attests to how well he does it...

When Rob and Donna Boggio backed their trailer into the driveway with a basket-case 2wd S-10 on the back, the concept idea of building a high-end rig had been milling around in their heads for a while. They wanted a real-world wheeling rig, and one that didn't look like a cookie-cutter copy of every 4x4 on the trail: A rig that would turn heads in a crowd of Jeeps, Toyota's. ...

Joel Behr has what some would consider a dream job. By night he manages a club in Las Vegas, Nevada. One advantage of working nights is that Joel's days a mostly free to do with as he pleases...