G’day, the other weekend we were up the Big River area in Victoria doing some fantastic 4WDing. There had been some very light drizzle in the morning leaving a slightly damp surface to some of the tracks. By afternoon we came to one track that looked really interesting. We took the chicken track down and stopped at the bottom to go and have a look at the hardcore section.

I thought maybe if the surface had been dry and we had another vehicle with us I would have given this a try. Anyhow we carried on a few other tracks and then decided to come back to this good hardcore one for another look.

Boy, even with 30 years experience you can still be wrong. The Prado would not have made it up.

This time we came across a 100 series Cruiser, being an absolute animal in trying to get up. He was kitted out with what looked like 35 inch Simex tyres and apparently a front ARB difflock. He was making so much smoke you would have thought it was a drifting competition. He didn’t want to give up (maybe he hadn’t heard about those weak front diffs) until finally there was a horrible sound from the diff.

That’s it for him, he had to gingerly back down and head for the main road. Have a look at the video here at my YouTube Video and you’ll see it all, plus some other good tracks.

So if you own and IFS 100 series, take it very easy, the diffs do break!

Tyres The Most Important Thing When 4WDing. There are all sorts of track conditions that you will encounter, so you need a tyre that is capable of handling all conditions. If you plan on using your 4x4 to actually do proper 4WDriving, my advice is to purchase a quality set of mud terrain tyres. You will have to put up with a bit extra road noise on bitumen, but the knowledge that you have the best tyre for the worst circumstance is most reassuring. We consistently get 80,000Kms from our mud tyres, but we have them balanced and rotated every 8,000Kms, so with fantastic wear like this, it doesn't make sense to limit our 4WD capability by fitting all-terrain.