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Henry8 Profile
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Date Registered: 07-2008
Location: North Lakes
TOTAL POSTS: 31
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Father's Day at Cooloola


After threatening for ages to not only acquire some form of off-road device, and then having actually taken delivery, Father’s Day was the day to christen our Ti, with a blast along the sand above Tewantin. It was actually my third choice, after the d’Aguilar Range run and Bribie Island, but heavy rain late in the week and unsuitable tides had me reconsidering those options. Still, it’s not too bad if the run up the Cooloola Sands is your third choice, is it?

As a shake-down exercise, we thought it best to run with my father-in-law, whose three-year-old Cherokee has seen a bit of use, and received a 3” lift along the way, and the brother- and sister-in-law in the ubiquitous Hilux twin-cab. Since the entirety of my off-road experience to-date has been in agricultural machinery (which is hard to bog, and easy enough to tow out if it happens), I thought it best to begin my exploration of the X-Trail’s capabilities with company in case the excreta hit the revolving air-stirrer.

Well we set sail with the sparrows, to pick up the rest of the party along the way, pausing at the end of a fairly lengthy queue at the Tewantin ferry to de-pressure the tyres. While the bro-in-lo had a fairly wicked-looking ARB pressure gauge with valve-pull spindle, the father-in-law produced four brass widgets to screw onto the valves and automatically drop the pressures to 22psi (Peter Brock would be proud!). We had the Jeep and the X-Trail finished in short order, and at that stage I made a mental note to get hold of some of those widgets at the next opportunity.

WE hit the sand with three hours to go to the high tide, and let the assembled hordes thunder off ahead, contenting ourselves to just trundle along line astern at a leisurely pace. No real worries there, which was about what I’d expected, judging by the experiences logged here on the forum. Our travelling companions seemed to be just testing the X-Trail’s poise, venturing gradually into the looser stuff here and there. Me, I was happy enough just to be out and about, keeping up so far.

We swung in at the Freshwater Creek camping ground for a sticky beak: the Cherokee went in ahead, and the call came back to gun it in… the F-I-L didn’t sound confident that we’d make it in without needing a snatch… but we belted in without too much wheelspin or scraping – we’d had a bit of bottoming-out on the way up, which wasn’t entirely unexpected… by this stage, I’d thought to turn the ESP off (mug), and was having a ball.

Once we’d given the kids a chance to stretch their legs, we picked a spot back out on the sand to pitch for lunch, and pulled the collection of chairs, tarps, gas bottles and barbies out of the X-Trail, and set ourselves up to watch the tide rise and fall… and we got a good look at it, as the noted 12:30 high came and went… and the water continued to rise. At 1:45 we saw the biggest surge, which lapped at the tyres on the Luxy, parked probably the furthest from the surf, but on marginally lower ground than my car and the Cherokee.

It was about then that I started thinking that the trip back would be a little more challenging. Interestingly, the traffic wasn’t all that heavy at Freshwater, and I don’t believe that we saw anyone come down from Rainbow; I think we had been overtaken earlier in the day by just about everything we saw heading south… and a wild collection it was: an F-350, stately and as big as a barge, was quite a site… among the collection of Patrols was a bewdy, with massive rubber and what seemed to be a 8-foot lift kit under it… sundry Navaras… more Luxies… a good handful of Landies… a RAV4 or two… but I didn’t see another X-Trail all day!

By the time the water had fallen a bit, and the snags had cooked, the kids had had their fair share of surf and sun and we were a fair way from where the trip had started, so we held a brief council of war, resolving to take the high line and stay out of the spray. This was going to put us squarely into some rutted and loose going… so we were looking forward to seeing how far we’d get until I’d need my shovel.

So off we trundled, with the Cherokee in the lead; aboard our Ti, we were watching his trail for diff rubbing between the ruts – a sure indication that we were going to start making some sandy noises ourselves. As we got further south, the water was still up a fair way, so we ended up as close to the dune as was polite for some distance. While there was plenty of room up high, it was surprising the number of people who were getting their jollies by blasting their vehicles through the spray and shallow water licking the sand… often in rather shiny new vehicles too! Our company seemed more and more impressed with the Ti’s poise and progress as we went; certainly there were increases in the amount of belly scraping, as the Cherokee led us into deeper sand… but we didn’t falter….

At least until we had a signalling misunderstanding with a northbound Sierra, which forced us into a sudden jink right, back to the high ground; we could see the Jeep taking big bites, slowing quickly, and I swung a little right, grabbed second and booted on, starting to panic mildly as the revs dropped quickly – we were on our belly, and the tractive effort was starting to hurt us… as the revs fell inexorable below 1200rpm, I wondered if I might’ve been able to snatch first and power on… but I couldn’t. As soon as I dipped the clutch, the thing stopped dead, before I could even think about whanging the lever into first.

The missus rolled her eyes at me then, acutely feeling the shame of a bogging. Having bogged bigger and uglier things than an X-Trail, I shrugged, and grabbed my spade. The father in law circled, sensing an opportunity to break out his new snatch gear, but the bro-in-lo and I quickly chipped the sand out from around the car. Kristy volunteered to drive it out (she nearly begged me, to my amusement), and without any fanfare, reversed it out of its reposed position, and we were free. As we were packing ourselves up again, we had a reminder of hoe easily damage is done, we were passed by a convoy, some lads in a Patrol being towed slowly homeward with an escort, smelling strongly of fried clutch… so far we were holding our heads up…

Back at the helm, the next couple of trips into the deep ruts confirmed in my mind that our previous bogging was almost certainly my fault entirely; on a number of occasions, we started working hard, revs plunging as we struggled to belly-drag ourselves through to some looser/shallower going… figuring that if we were going to stop, we were going to stop, I held second to the death… and found better ground with less than 1000rpm on the tacho – the little donk had more grunt than I was giving credit to. And it was still winning fans in front and behind, the bro-in-lo feeling confident enough to drop into our ruts behind us rather than run at our wing for fear of us crash-stopping.

Mind you, I still had a couple of close calls, giving him a two-way tip that we might be on the verge of pulling-up once or twice, but we didn’t stop… at least until we turned to drive off the beach again.

Hindsight would say that we might have made it with a bigger run-up, in first gear, but it would’ve been a tight one… the southern approach looked a bit better, but had I been alone, I would’ve certainly got out for a closer look, rather than merely gunning it behind the Cherokee. That one required snatching… we came out with a bang and a whoosh… and then ran back with shovels in hand to dig out the Grand Vitara that had bored-in and stopped 50 yards behind us. It was comforting to see some other, big rigs forced to rely on bulk grunt to tough it through there… but anyway, we drove back onto the bitumen with smiles on our dials.

While we waited for our turn at the underbody wash, we had a quick post-mortem, with the main topics of discussion being;

- the sheer amount of sand the X-Trail removed from the beach: we could see shedloads of it, and feel it above that damn lip on the rear bumper…

- the rattling exhaust, post-boggings: luckily it settled down following a good hose-out, and a mild tweak on the tailpipe

- the lack of ground clearance; note to self – ask jalal about where one can get a 3” lift kit for a T31… it seemed that the ground clearance was the main limiter on the day’s activities, although it probably stopped us before we overheated something (she smelt a bit clutchy after the stops, but at least hadn’t been slipping)

- how grunty would the diesel be?

- and how the X-Trail, according to our companions, had punched well above her weight, an opinion repeated as a Vitara was stretchered past on a tilt-tray…

All that remained was a gentle trip back home (after represuring the tyres)... which we needed to pull the fuel consumption back to reasonable figures emoticon

 All in all, a successful maiden voyage… roll on the Range!


 emoticon

Last edited by Henry8, 8/Sep/2008, 9:35 pm


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Scott (& Kristy, plus a trio of ankle-biters)

Member X-927 T31 Ti, Precision Grey manual
Fitted Options: Floor mats, window tint, tow pack, roof racks, 12' beach rod, AC/DC's "Powerage"
8/Sep/2008, 9:31 pm Link to this post Send Email PM   Send Private Message
 
Revhead Kev Profile
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Date Registered: 10-2006
Location: Mona Vale, Sydney, AUSTRALIA
TOTAL POSTS: 6355
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Re: Father's Day at Cooloola


And I bet the biggest smile is the one you get when you keep remembering how impressed the hard-core 4WD father-inlaw and brother-inlaw were with the Xtrail emoticon

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Kev X450(c) T30 Guru
03 Titanium Ti T30 Series 1 **MODIFIED**
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8/Sep/2008, 11:06 pm Link to this post Send Email PM   Send Private Message Blog
 
Naff Profile
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Date Registered: 09-2005
Location: QLD
TOTAL POSTS: 786
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Re: Father's Day at Cooloola


Excellent write up! Are you a columnist by any chance? LOL

Those deflators you mention are Staun deflators and will set you back around $70 for a set of four. I recently subscribed to the 4WD Actionmagazine and had a set sent for free. They save a bit of time in deflating, screw them on and they deflate your tyres to a preset pressure (factory default 18psi). You can change this if you want. Handy little things if you go on the beach a lot (like me).





---

My Triton GLX-R

9/Sep/2008, 12:11 pm Link to this post Send Email PM   Send Private Message MSN
 
Henry8 Profile
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Date Registered: 07-2008
Location: North Lakes
TOTAL POSTS: 31
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Re: Father's Day at Cooloola


quote:

Revhead Kev wrote:

And I bet the biggest smile is the one you get when you keep remembering how impressed the hard-core 4WD father-inlaw and brother-inlaw were with the Xtrail emoticon

Yeah, I got a bit of a chuckle out of it... I owned up and told them that you mob here had already taken them into all sorts of places that would surprise them... guess it was something for them get a bit of an insight! I've got a mate who does a bit up here with 4WDTV, who was talking to the missus this arv, and was amazed at our lack of difficulty!

quote:

Naff wrote:
Excellent write up! Are you a columnist by any chance? LOL

Those deflators you mention are Staun deflators and will set you back around $70 for a set of four. I recently subscribed to the 4WD Actionmagazine and had a set sent for free. They save a bit of time in deflating, screw them on and they deflate your tyres to a preset pressure (factory default 18psi). You can change this if you want. Handy little things if you go on the beach a lot (like me).


Thanks Naff... no I just talk a lot the wife reckons.

Come payday, I'd reckon there'll be a set of Staun deflators in the glove box of my car!



---
Scott (& Kristy, plus a trio of ankle-biters)

Member X-927 T31 Ti, Precision Grey manual
Fitted Options: Floor mats, window tint, tow pack, roof racks, 12' beach rod, AC/DC's "Powerage"
9/Sep/2008, 7:53 pm Link to this post Send Email PM   Send Private Message
 
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Date Registered: 03-2008
Location: Marsfield, NSW
TOTAL POSTS: 165
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Re: Father's Day at Cooloola


A great write up that would be even better with pics :o)

Please take the camera next time I love that part of the world

Glad the exy did you proud. If you find a T31 lift kit >2" give me a yell

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Zhivan
Member X-790
2008 T31 - ST | Silver | CVT | Leather | Nudge Bar | Mats | Bash Plate | Roof Racks | Raised King Springs | Rear Protection Tray |
9/Sep/2008, 8:26 pm Link to this post Send Email PM   Send Private Message
 
Henry8 Profile
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Date Registered: 07-2008
Location: North Lakes
TOTAL POSTS: 31
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Re: Father's Day at Cooloola


We took a couple of fairly mundane photos (I forgot to get one of it whilse bogged), but I haven't pulled them out of the camera yet... stay tuned...

I might start asking around after lift kits, but figured if there was one, Id hear about it in here first emoticon

I did notice a bit of discussion on it in another part of the forum, but no word of a kit release as yet...

---
Scott (& Kristy, plus a trio of ankle-biters)

Member X-927 T31 Ti, Precision Grey manual
Fitted Options: Floor mats, window tint, tow pack, roof racks, 12' beach rod, AC/DC's "Powerage"
9/Sep/2008, 8:53 pm Link to this post Send Email PM   Send Private Message
 
loafer Profile
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Date Registered: 02-2008
Location: Brisbane, Qld
TOTAL POSTS: 973
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Re: Father's Day at Cooloola


Great write-up, Scott.

I'm thinking that I might take a quick trip up that way this weekend (the wife is off to Yeppoon for the weekend and leaving me and the exy behind emoticon )

What psi did you drop the tyres down to for the beach? It's been suggested to me that the exy should be okay on 15psi.

Given that I'll likely be on my own, I'll be sure to pack the maxtrax in case I get stuck - those things are brilliant emoticon .

---
Stephen
X756 (c)

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11/Sep/2008, 9:36 pm Link to this post Send Email PM   Send Private Message
 
Henry8 Profile
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Date Registered: 07-2008
Location: North Lakes
TOTAL POSTS: 31
Reply | QUOTE
Re: Father's Day at Cooloola


Stephen, it sounds like you've got it figured... I had plans to watch the Phillip Island 500 - much to wife's chagrin - she was thinking Bribie might've been worth a look this week... (patience, dear).

I was at 22psi, and didn't feel that I struggled for traction... merely ground clearance. I will consider going down as far as 18psi for future trips, just to see what happens.


Here's one photo, to show I was there!

Image

How's the serenity?

You can see where the tide would stop here...

And, our lineup, with the Ti flanked by the "heavies"


Image

Last edited by Henry8, 11/Sep/2008, 10:49 pm


---
Scott (& Kristy, plus a trio of ankle-biters)

Member X-927 T31 Ti, Precision Grey manual
Fitted Options: Floor mats, window tint, tow pack, roof racks, 12' beach rod, AC/DC's "Powerage"
11/Sep/2008, 10:22 pm Link to this post Send Email PM   Send Private Message
 
Revhead Kev Profile
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Date Registered: 10-2006
Location: Mona Vale, Sydney, AUSTRALIA
TOTAL POSTS: 6355
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Re: Father's Day at Cooloola


All you need Scott is either a spring lift or strut spacer lift and I reckon your ground clearance will almost be as much as the "tougher" guys emoticon
Then there will be no stopping you emoticon

---
Kev X450(c) T30 Guru
03 Titanium Ti T30 Series 1 **MODIFIED**
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12/Sep/2008, 12:59 am Link to this post Send Email PM   Send Private Message Blog
 
Henry8 Profile
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Date Registered: 07-2008
Location: North Lakes
TOTAL POSTS: 31
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Re: Father's Day at Cooloola


Kev, I will investigate both those options this week... keen as mustard to maximise the X'ys offroad potential... still got to get it past me mate from 4WD-TV, so if I can sneak a few tweaks into it, we'll sit him on his backside a bit too! emoticon

---
Scott (& Kristy, plus a trio of ankle-biters)

Member X-927 T31 Ti, Precision Grey manual
Fitted Options: Floor mats, window tint, tow pack, roof racks, 12' beach rod, AC/DC's "Powerage"
13/Sep/2008, 12:23 pm Link to this post Send Email PM   Send Private Message
 


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