[MUSIC PLAYING]
DAN EDMUNDS: We're headed to the Racetrack
Playa, which is a dry lake in a very remote part of Death
Valley.
And you have to drive 25 miles on this dirt road to get there.
And here is the turn off.
And so it begins.
It's called Death Valley for a reason.
It's a brutal desert landscape that's
one of the hottest places on Earth.
Daytime summer temperatures routinely top 120 degrees.
The national park is immense.
We drove more than 100 miles on paved roads within the park
before we even reached our starting point.
We had a first-generation Ridgeline.
It was in our long-term fleet.
And one of the editors wanted to come out to the racetrack
so he drove it out here.
And it's just a long, punishing, washboard dirt road.
But any kind of a pickup truck should be able to do it, right?
So he went to the racetrack, had a dinner there, came back,
got on the pavement, and instantly
realized that something was wrong.
Turned out that the shock absorbers had overheated
and all the oil had squirted out past the seals
and they were done.
And this Ridgeline comes out 10 years later
and I went to the introduction and they
talked about these new shock absorbers that it had.
And I questioned the guy after the presentation
and I told him about our trip to the racetrack
and he knew all about it.
They had gotten word of it, had received the shocks that
had been damaged and decided that that damage shouldn't
have occurred.
There are changes on this truck that
are based on what they learned.
So it was obvious that we needed to bring this new truck out
here, do the same thing, and see if it does any better.
This trip was centered around our 2017 Honda Ridgeline
long-term test vehicle.
And then there's the 2016 Toyota Tacoma TRD Off Road 4x4.
It's the unquestionable off-road leader in the segment.
Lastly, a 2006 Nissan Titan XD was
drafted to carry all of our gear,
some spare tires, and camping equipment.
My biggest concern out here with respect to this truck
has to do with the tires.
This isn't really off-roading by the context of Rubicon Trail
or Moab or anything like that.
This is a dirt road.
If you have a four-wheel-drive truck and in your ads
you're talking about Baja, and in your ads
you show things getting air, well, then, this road
is nothing.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Oh, man.
[CHUCKLES] So what do you think?
TRAVIS LANGNESS: This thing's bouncing a lot.
Does a lot of bouncing.
The rear end gets really, really loose, but--
DAN EDMUNDS: Does it kind of skip around a little bit?
TRAVIS LANGNESS: Yeah.
It's kind of fun, though.
DAN EDMUNDS: [LAUGHS]
TRAVIS LANGNESS: It's half the enjoyment.
DAN EDMUNDS: This thing feels pretty planted
when it comes to that.
It's just kind of shaking, but all four wheels
seem to be on the ground most of the time.
I have seen the Traction Control light flicker
a couple of times.
TRAVIS LANGNESS: Yeah, I've seen mine come on once or twice.
DAN EDMUNDS: I want to just look and see if there's any, like,
oil running down the shocks.
Well, this one's missing its dust boot.
Oh, wow.
This one's blown up.
Yeah, that thing just exploded or something.
TRAVIS LANGNESS: Did it happen the same on the other side?
DAN EDMUNDS: Yeah, there's oil all over the place.
Holy crap!
That's what we call a blown-out shock absorber.
So far, the Tacoma, both rear shocks are blown out on it.
The front ones look OK, but I mean, they're blown out.
The dust boots are torn and hanging
and there's oil everywhere.
The left rear shock on the Ridgeline and the fronts,
they all look dry and fine.
The right rear looks like it's weeping a little bit.
It's not as obviously damaged as the two
on the back of the Tacoma but I'm kind of speechless, really.
All right, now we have a third vehicle that's not in sight.
So we're probably going to have to drive back, bring
one vehicle, at least, and see if we can lay eyes on it.
When we finally caught up with Kurt,
we figured he'd tell us some story about a flat tire.
Instead, he showed us a piece of tailgate
trim that he'd had to go back for after it fell off.
And then he told us about this oily smell.
KURT NIEBUHR: Yeah, but I mean, are they still intact?
No, they're not.
They're blown.
TRAVIS LANGNESS: This right rear one is smoking.
KURT NIEBUHR: That explains that smell.
TRAVIS LANGNESS: Yeah.
KURT NIEBUHR: As it smells kind of like hot peanuts.
DAN EDMUNDS: Well, we learned something here today.
[LAUGHTER]
A dirt road isn't just a dirt road.
Three different vehicles, two of them with off-road packages,
and the one without the off-road package
seems to be the less damaged of the three so far.
I like to test vehicles at full pressure
because coming from the manufacturing side, that's
how we develop the cars.
That's how I start out.
And I know that our man 10 years ago didn't drop the pressure,
so we wanted to do the same thing he did.
Well, 11 miles in we discovered that we
were hurting the equipment.
We've taken about 10 to 12 PSI out of everybody's tires
and we're cutting our speed.
It feels like we're now in sync with the road more
and it's, uhh--
more of that.
But you know, we've got to try something because we still
want to go to the racetrack.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Here we are at the Racetrack Playa.
We've been here about an hour, wandering around and looking
at all the rocks and checking out the trails.
But for us, it's time for us to get
to where we plan to camp tonight before it gets dark
and we kind of have to take it slow,
because the vehicles are hurt at this point.
We've still got to go back out the way we came in.
But so far, the Ridgeline is actually
the most pleasant truck to be in.
And it seems to be holding up better than the other two.
And I wouldn't have predicted that, no way.
A lot of people like the image of off-road.
They don't necessarily go on anything more severe than this.
So if you could just kind of like logically
break down what you really need your truck to do,
you might come to the conclusion that the Ridgeline is enough.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
So it's been a long day on a brutal road.
The road really beat us up and it beat the trucks up.
We didn't get any flat tires, which I really
was very surprised about.
I thought that's what our problem would be.
We actually had more trouble with the support
truck and the other truck with the off-road package.
I thought that they would be solid as a rock
and it would just be a question of whether or not
the Ridgeline came through OK.
But actually it did a little better
than the other two trucks.
We only lost one shock, right rear, on that one.
And the other two trucks, the Tacoma and the Titan--
oil everywhere, smoke, melted boots on the shocks.
It was not the result we expected,
but it's still a pretty good result.
None of this means the Ridgeline is the better off-road vehicle.
It still lacks the clearance and gearing
to be a true mountain goat.
But on roads like this, the Ridgeline has an edge.
Thanks to independent rear suspension,
its shocks have much less unsprung weight to deal with.
And on ordinary roads, this translates
into better ride comfort.
Want to see how this all turns out?
Stay tuned for part two on Edmunds video channel.
[MUSIC PLAYING]