Klaas Bals' Blog

Here in Belgium there are hardly any hills. And if there are, they're slippery because of the rain. In South Africa however...

So, unfortunately, I did not record the following movie. But I did want to share it with you to illustrate what I mean when I say you can do pretty steep slopes with a Discovery 3. (If you're in a hurry, skip the first 3/4 of the movie).

One of the basic rules when driving off-road is that you need to know the terrain. If you don't, make sure to check it on foot before driving it in a 4x4. Especially on those slopes where you don't see the other side. Many people ignore this advice when they're behind the wheel. Check out this video to see someone driving too confident...

In september 2006, several weeks after the birth of my son Anders, I really couldn't resist driving offroad any longer. My offroad buddy couldn't join me so I decided to go alone. Just me, myself and my Discovery 3...

All very well, a great day, great weather, nice slopes, some sand... and then I tried to take a ditch. I couldn't take it at a right angle, because my Disco 3 would touch the ground with its belly. So I decided to take the ditch dialogonally. Unfortunately the car pulled itself straight again, I think because I didn't have enough momentum, so it got stuck with its belly on the ground.

Initially I started to shovel the ground away, but it was too hot for that to be pleasant, and I decided to use my air jack (for the first time in an offroad situation). I had bought it several weeks before at www.air-jack.com. An air jack is a large strong bag that can be inflated by simply connecting it to the exhaust pipe of an engine running idle. Because the bag is quite big, it doesn't need a high pressure to be able to raise a serious weight. The one I bought is type ELH04, and it can actually lift 4000kg.

A Discovery 3 has two exhaust pipes that are interconnected, which means you connect the hose of the air jack to one, while you need to block the other exhaust as well. So I purchased a blocking cone as well. When using the airjack by yourself, this means you have to stretch your arms to reach out for the two exhausts... not very practical...

I'm going to try to solve that using a tool I got from a friend. It's called 'packer coupling', or just 'packer', and it is used in concrete injection processes to fix cracks and water leaks in concrete. This is a metal tube with a piece of rubber, that can be tightened with a bolt. By tightening the bolt, the rubber is pushed together, which results in it becoming wider, thus blocking one of the two exhausts. At least, that's the theory, I still need to try it out...

This is a picture of such a 'packer':

In January we went 4WDing, after it had been raining for 2 weeks... It was great fun!

This movie shows a recovery of a Defender by a Discovery 3. We try to use a kinetic rope to pull him out. A kinetic rope is elastic and allows to make some speed before actually starting to pull. This has the advantage that you don't just use the pulling power of the recovering vehicle, but also the kinetic energy.

I can be dangerous to use this technique (also called snatch recovery), because when you drive too fast, the kinetic energy will be too big, and something will break (either the cable, or the attachment points on either one of the vehicles, potentially causing serious damage or injury. So only do snatch recovery with caution, and use firm attachment points on the vehicles. Even using a tow ball isn't failsafe because it could break, as can be seen in this video from someone else.

This is a very nice movie about a Defender that rolls over, and also about the recovery afterwards. (For good understading: I don't know these guys.)

This def has Simex tires, which have a very aggressive pattern for maximal grip. This means that you have more risk of rolling, because the tires won't slip, even in extreme situations. The driver is also pushing the throttle, which increases the risk of uncontrolled movements. I have the impression he did not turn off his engine right after he rolled, because it releases a lot of steam. Whenever rolling over, do remember to turn off he engine immediately to prevent engine damage.

To put the vehicle back on it's four wheels, they use 2 winches, so that they can control the vehicle much better. While they are doing this, pay attention to the marchal which is giving excellent instructions. Thanks to this, the vehicle doesn't get damaged more than it already is...

The most important thing when offroading is that you need to know the strengths and limitations of your vehicle. When driving offroad, you always look for the limitations of you car. And perhaps a Land Rover Discovery 3 has more limitations than a Land Rover Defender (although I'm not convinced of that). That doesn't really matter when the driver of the Defender goes beyond its limitations... Luckily he had a roll cage! (I already posted some pictures about this a while ago.)

This was a great opportunity as a driver of a Discovery 3 to feel actually appreciated by a Defender driver, even if it was only a couple of minutes. So all of a sudden a Discovery 3 was a first-class member Land Rover family, right? Unforunately I don't have a movie that shows how the Defender ended up on his side, but I do have some footage about the recovery.

I'm actually exaggerating here. My offroad-buddy does know the actual strengths of my Discovery 3, and at the other side I was very happy to be able to help him. It's just that most people don't believe that a Discovery 3 does handle well offroad (potentially leading to an inferiority complex, watch out ;-) , so it makes me happy to be able to help a 'real' offroad car.

On December 10th, 2006, I had the opportunity to go to the Land Rover Experience day in Doornik. It was a great day full of fun, and I learned many tips and tricks for driving a Land Rover offroad. I drove a Discovery 3 with a manual gearbox, and I must say I'm very glad I own an automatic as it drives much more relaxed and I found it equally capable offroad.

I also drove a Freelander, and I liked the car, especially because it has not much ground clearance (it has 186mm ground clearance, versus the 240mm of the Discovery 3), which means you need to drive it totally different for another Land Rover.

I finished the day in a Range Rover Sport. That car is for 95% the same as the Discovery 3 (same technolgy, same platform, same engine, ...), only the model is different. In my opinion, it was very small on the inside, compared to what I'm used to in my Discovery 3. Of course, it looks more sexy that a Disco 3, but I prefer the Disco 3 because its so practical.

I created a short movie about that day (and I just loaded these videos to my computer today, hence the delay of this post).

First, it shows the Freelander driving on a slope. The Freelander has a very low center of mass, which makes it ideal for driving sidewas on a slope without tipping over. Then the movie show the same maneuver with the Discovery 3 (first from the outside, then from the inside). When you're sitting in the car while driving such a slope, make sure you wear a diaper... very scary! The movie ends with the Defender driving down a hill (in first gear low). Pay attention to the distance the wheels move up and down (this is called the amount of wheel travel) while the bumps are driven (the vehicle is what is called cross-axled, because the axles are pushed in opposite direction): the Defender is the Land Rover with the best wheel-travel, also because it has solid axle suspension.

We did some off-road driving up an down some artificial hills near Antwerp. As it has been raining the last couple of days, the soil was pretty wet and muddy. This made things more difficult and slippery than necessary for my on-road tires. But it was very fun and interesting...

It was especially difficult to drive up the hills (I had to try several times to get the correct route and speed on every location of the hills), but driving down was also a challenge as the car had the tendency to slide down instead of drive down. In these situations, it's nice to see the Hill Decent Control (HDC) working.

HDC is an electronic system on some Land Rovers that uses the ABS sensors on each wheel to find whether it slips or grips, and then brakes each wheel individually to get the maximum grip.

Also the traction control (TC) did its job. TC is more or less the off-road equivalent to ESP. When a wheel gets less grip, because of slippery mud or simply because it's in the air and doesn't touch ground anymore, the TC will apply the brakes to that wheel so that the force can go to the other wheels that do have traction. Otherwise, because of the differentials, all the force would go to the wheels that lost traction. My car needs TC because I can only lock my center differential, and not the front or rear differential (as I alluded to in a previous post.)

The movie shows each of these systems doing their job. On the movie you can see that the HDC even illuminates the brake lights each time it automatically applies the brakes when the car descends a hill (so that is not me hitting the brakes, as proper 4x4 driving requires that you use first gear and keep you feet off the pedals when driving downhill).

As always with videos and pictures, in reality it looked a lot more spectacular than on the screen... Ask my father or my 'brother-in-law'.