Off Road Truck Trends - What's Hot for 2001

IN In lieu of four-wheel steer, some vehicles are starting to employ twin-stick transfer cases and hand-operated brakes. Say you need to make a tight right-hand turn. The rear wheels are disconnected at the transfer case, the right rear brake is applied with the hand lever, and the throttle is stomped. The vehicle will swing around and make the turn tighter than spandex on an elephant.

OUT Blowing up your steering joints or front axleshafts while showing off your tight steering radius.

IN Heavy-duty axles shaved for ground clearance or funky one-off homebuilt jobbers that give more ground clearance than Suzuki axles. Sure, you’re retaining the weight, but you’ll be able to run more horsepower to compensate for it and bigger axleshafts that can handle the abuse. This unit features a Dana 60 centersection and stub shafts with 1480 joints connecting 1.5-inch shafts to Dana 50 knuckles, as well as ram-activated four-wheel steering.

OUT The fact that this axle would cost an estimated $10,000-$12,000 to duplicate and weighs in the neighborhood of 1,100 pounds with the springs and tires installed. A shaved Dana 60 could be put in its place for less than half that cost.

IN Unimogs. That is to say, they’re about the only “abundant” vehicle we can think of that comes equipped with portal axles. Portals raise the centerline of the differential higher than the centerline of the wheels. Plus, they offer additional gearing reduction at the hub, which allows more of your torque multiplication to occur after the axleshaft, thereby reducing the chance of busted parts.

OUT Where in the wide world of sports can you find Unimog portal axles even marginally as easy as you can find Dana 60s? And you know how hard it is to find good Dana 60s! And when you do find them, how much are they going to cost? And if you can afford them, how will you narrow them to fit your vehicle? It’s only a matter of time until some wacko fits portal outers to a Dana 60. Send us pictures when you do.

IN Hydraulic rams for adjusting ride height. They allow you to raise or lower each wheel individually, generally up to 17 inches. This is the hot ticket for keeping your rig level in really off-camber situations or merely lifting a tire to throw a rock under. Airbags, while not able to lift the tire, can be useful in leveling vehicles in tilted sections and are a whole lot cheaper than hydraulics.

OUT Since the hydraulic rams don’t compress the way a regular shock absorber would, your tires effectively become the shock absorber. Ever seen a lowrider cruising down the street? Or how about an early ’80s Honda three-wheeler? Boing!

IN Cage-type buggy-style rear sections on pickups. That’s right, ditch the bed, cut the frame off behind the cab, and fabricate your own tube rear half incorporated into an in-cab cage. Build a four-link rear suspension with coilover springs and you’ll be able to spider-walk over rocks and blast through whoops in the same day. Plus, it gives you a cool place to mount a fuel cell, a battery, toolboxes, or whatever else you want.

OUT Nothing. It’s super-happy-mega-fun time and every pickup owner who doesn’t haul hay, wood, or rocks on the weekends should do it.

IN For better or worse, four-wheel steering. We remember the cheesy trend in the ’80s when guys would drape 44s from 10-bolts. Ugh! Thankfully that went the way of the chrome shock. Nowadays we’re talking beefier stuff like Steve Rumore’s twin-steer Sniper with 21/2-ton Rockwells. The proliferation of hydraulic steering systems has allowed four-wheel steering to become a viable modification.

OUT Even with the amount of progress that’s been made in incorporating hydraulic steering into 4x4s, we’re still not completely comfortable with using it on the street, especially in a four-wheel-steer application. For now it’s trail only.

OUTWe’ve noticed that anytime you put Four Wheeler paraphernalia on your rig it violently rejects it. Kind of like downing a whole bottle of ipecac. This poor Jeep made like a lemming and tossed itself over the nearest embankment to end the suffering.

IN Toyotas, Toyotas, and Toyotas. Man, we don’t know if they’re giving these things away or what, but their numbers seem to be increasing exponentially. Maybe we should call them rabbits instead of squirrels. On our last two trail rides they actually outnumbered Jeeps by more than two-to-one, and no—it wasn’t a Toyota-only trail ride.

OUT They’re starting to all be built alike. We guess that means the formula works, but somebody needs to inject fresh DNA into the gene pool before the brand starts drooling and walking into walls.

IN Goin-for-broke outlandishness. Whether it’s a street rod–inspired creation like “Speed Racer” (Sept. 2000), a wacky-sprung homebuilt buggy with a turbo’d Mazda rotary engine and V-drive, or even this S-10 Blazer on a fullsize frame complete with sunburst flamejob and Boggers, show us your creativity.

OUT Same ol’ and cheeseball. This includes CJs on 29s, carbon-fiber anything, and “Stomper”-emblazoned bugshields. They may have their place, but it ain’t in this magazine.

OUT Don’t ever, ever do this. We don’t care why. Let Pep Boys run all the two-for-one chrome exhaust tip specials it wants. It’s just not right.

IN Friendly rivalry. It’s gotten even better since the Four Wheeler boys moved in across the hall. Sweeter still is the fun we have at the expense of former 4-Wheel & Off-Road feature editor extraordinaire and Four Wheeler turncoat Craig Perronne, who now occupies the majority of his time washing shiny new test vehicles and calculating approach and departure angles into the wee hours of the night. Hey Craig, remember this? Rock on, bro!