- So one of the questions we get all the time
is "Can you off-road a two-wheel drive truck?"
but there's really a lot more questions
involved in that one.
Like what do you even consider off-roading?
Sometimes you might be on a gravel trail,
sometimes you might be going up a hill,
might be going through a mud hole.
There's a lot of different situations you can be in.
And there's also a lot of different two-wheel drive trucks.
So the Lexus behind me is actually
the four-wheel drive vehicle that we brought out here.
And we also brought two additional two-wheel drive trucks.
On one hand we've got a super beat-up
old manual transmission crank window GMC Sierra 2500
on some 17 by nines and 33s.
And on the complete opposite end of the spectrum,
we have a fully built PreRunner with a long travel kit.
It's also got 17 inch methods and 37 inch open country MTs.
That one's got a welded diff.
This one has an open diff,
which pretty much means it's one wheel drive.
And on this side we've got an actual
two wheel drive vehicle.
So the question is can the two wheel drive vehicles
actually be capable off road?
So we're gonna put these things
through a series of different tests today.
First of we're gonna start with the hill climb, I think,
and we'll just see what we can do,
and if we end up getting a couple of these trucks stuck.
(upbeat music)
So before we get into actually testing these things out,
I wanted to go over a few details of each vehicle
so you are a bit more familiar with them.
Our baseline four wheel drive vehicle is a Lexus GX470
which if you aren't familiar shares many similarities
with the FJ Cruiser.
But it has a 4.7 liter V8.
Another important thing to note is the
Lexus is technically all time all wheel drive,
but it has a locking center differential
to lock in four wheel drive
and also has a true manual lever to engage full low.
On top of to it has a advantage traction management system
called A-Track.
For wheels and tires Jerry's running 17 inch methods,
and just under 33 inch Wrangler dirt tracks.
Now for our two wheel drive trucks.
On the rowdy side we have a very custom F-150 PreRunner
dubbed the GT Runner.
Today was actually it's first time out
since being put on it's roof,
ironically by Jerry, the Lexus owner.
This is a 5 liter two-wheel drive F-150 with
a fiberglass front end and bed sides,
and the truck has been back halved.
There's huge amounts of travel in
King Coilover shocks and bump stops all the way around.
Dylan is also running 17 inch methods,
but has the largest tires in the group,
with 37 inch Toyo M/Ts.
Then you have the old 2500. This is actually
one of my personal vehicles, and really only gets used
to tow stuff around, which why I didn't care
that it was two-wheel drive.
It was about as bare bones as it gets
other than the 17 inch Anthems,
and 33 inch venom power X/T tires,
which we would definitely put through the paces.
To add to the fun this truck is also a 5 Speed Manual
Our first obstacle is guess you could say
was the hill climb, so jerry shot up first near effortlessly
in the Lexus and actually said when he got to the top that
he probably hit it much faster than
he actually needed to and I definitely agreed with him.
That was just too easy and we really expected nothing less.
The PreRunner is up next, now I think there are
two things to keep in mind when watching this video:
With enough speed, anything is possible.
And secondly, if you don't care,
anything can be an off-road vehicle.
So with some speed, the PreRunner hit
the bottom of the incline, and it didn"t
make it far at all before the rears started spinning,
and we just knew it wasn't going to make it up.
Now, rather than destroy the trails
for the next guys, we shut her down
and backed down the hill to give it another shot.
And again, it was the same story.
Even if with some run up, the PreRunner just
couldn't make it happen.
So I hopped in the work truck,
put it in second gear, and hit it with some speed.
And to my surprise, it did make it higher
than the pre runner, but still,
nowhere near the top. And I just about
bounced myself out of the cab doing so.
From there we got back on the gravel trail
and headed out to find the next challenge.
So we come down a hill and there's
a large, watery mud hole, and Jerry tells me
I might as well go first that way he could
pull me back out. So not knowing how deep it was
I inched my way in and just felt the front of the truck
sinking deeper and deeper, and getting water
in the intake was not something that
I was interested in. So with water up to the doors
we called it quits and I attempted to back out.
Which, didn't go all that well.
[Engine Roaring]
- [Cameraman] This is some killer footage!
Surprisingly, I actually had more
traction than I expected with the
Venom Power Tires which are super affordable.
I think if I didn't care at all and used speed,
I may have made it through going forward.
On the opposite end of that a four-wheel drive truck
with a high enough intake or snorkel
could have made it without issue
and probably could've just crawled through.
As we continued down the trail,
there were a few more muddy sections
were the Lexus just crawled through.
But to ensure I didn't get stuck,
I just gave it lots of throttle
and bounced around quite a bit.
And the PreRunner really used a similar tactic,
but wow, significantly smoother.
At one point hopped out to film
a steeper rocky section, and of course,
on camera it doesn't look like much
and it wasn't a huge feature by any means,
but it was enough to test the trucks.
So jerry was first in line again and drove right up.
You know, nothing special, just four-wheel drive,
and four high, and up he went.
So rather than approach this one with speed,
I wanted to really let the tires and the truck do the work.
So I put it in first, which is extremely low in the 2500
and crawled up it. Even at just 2-3 Miles Per Hour
it was very very rough. And the tough part about
being manual is that your front tires
will hit a rock, slow the truck down
and you don't want to stall it,
so you give it a bit of throttle,
and then it pops over the rock too quickly
and you just get this super uncomfortable
bucking back and forth. But I do have to say
at about 22 PSI the tires gripped the rocks just fine
and I had almost no wheel spin on the way up.
The PreRunner of course made it look easy.
So Pay attention to how much my cab moves,
versus the PreRunner. It just kinda floats
over the top minus one large hit
and painful metal on rock sound.
(Loud Bump)
To be fair, if we were letting the PreRunner
run as intended Dylan likely could have
hit this particular section north
of 50 or 60 miles per hour.
The last bit of fun for the day was
really just let the PreRunner
stretch her legs now this two-wheel drive shines.
Now that's not to say four-wheel drive
can't also bomb down the trails at high speed,
but two wheel drive sure is more fun.
With stock suspension, my Limitation in the 2500
was simply how much abuse I wanted to put truck through.
If you look at races like King Of The Hammers
where they have open classes and there's guys with
all wheel drive trucks running against
two-wheel drive trucks; the all wheel drive ones
handle the rocks and the vertical climbs better
but they sacrifice that top speed
and they're more prone to mechanical failures.
The two-wheel drive guys can get upwards
of 130, 140 miles per hour across the flats
but they also have to hit the inclines at high speeds,
and are usually just spinning tires and barely
making it over the top in some sections.
So, can you off road with two wheel drive?
Yeah, and with the right equipment
you might make it a lot further than you thought,
but I would still never try anything too extreme
out on your own or without a winch
because eventually you will end up stuck on something
or you'll hit something so hard that you're
gonna need a friend to drag you out of the woods
and onto a trailer.
So hopefully that answers your questions
and I hope you like the video.
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or check out our website at customoffsets.com
Peace.
(Upbeat Music)
- [Cameraman] Oh Jesus,
really glad that I put this cage on this camera
(Laughter)
Because that was not good.