At first it may seem like a bunch of redneck americans driving old P.O.S trucks with the body removed. But, I watched rock crawling on T.V. a few days ago. It is actually pretty interesting. Weight transfer is very important, otherwise they fall back off the rock. It may be really slow, but I think it deffinitely requires alot of skill then it may seem at first. Some of the drivers actually put metal bearings inside of the tire to make them grip better somehow. I guess maybe the ball bearings would be forced to the outside of the tire, and press down on the ground. Rock crawling looks pretty fun. I'd like to try it some day, more interesting then Oval or drag racing thats for sure.

You really should post pictures or smth, it could be anything.

In Estonia, we have 4x4 offroad events, that usually take place in forests. Don't know about rocks, but they usually end up in deep mud. One example of a toughest car is here, many other pictures can be found in the official homepage under "Galerii" on the left.

In Europa there is also Truck-Trial, homepage can be found here. Found this link with Google, but I've seen them in action via Finnish TV. Plenty of rocks involved.

And there is also "1nsane" type of racing that is very popular in Island. No rocks.

I started to reply to this thread earlier, but the PC crashed. I went racing after reboot instead of coming back to reply.

For the last 15 years, I have only owned (several) Toyota 4x4's. I was into the 4wheeling scene back before I got married as well has a heavy camper. Well, my weeks camping supplies was the back of the pickup, a sleeping bag, and a keg of beer to share with the wimps in the tents, LOL. Here in Pennsylvania (US) we don't have rockcrawling. It's more mud slinging and trail riding, and I've done my fair share of trailriding living near the Allegheny National Forest.

Anyways, I belonged to off-road.com's Toy4x4 email group, about 1700 members who drove/wheeled nothing but Toyota's. It was an excellent group with members who were ASE certified mechanics at the Toyota dealerships, dealership owners, and salesman included. Tons of technical help. One of the guys I conversed with regularly is this guy - Scott's 4Runner. Absolute awesome truck. The list of off-road mods is quite extensive. This was also his daily work driver, which he would show up at work in a suit climbing out of this beast all covered in mud, LOL. I remember Toyota had an extended 100,000 mile warrantee on the headgaskets back then with the V6's. He in particular had an engine seize up at 150,000 miles, called Toyota, and they replaced his engine for nothing because of the headgasket. What luck! Check out that truck in the link up there.

This is going to be a long post, as I'm going to post a quote of something someone wrote. It's pretty funny. Some background is, we have a news type hour long show over here called Dateline (or we did, may not be airing anymore). They would have different very biased stories on a variety of stuff. One show they were researching SUV's and safety. It was hugely biased as they were rear-end crash testing them. They took an old Chevy hatchback car and rear-ended another one at approximately 30 mph I think. Then they took a huge Chevy Suburban (google if you don't know how big this monster is) and rear-ended the car to show how "dangerous" they are. Of course, being as biased as they are, you could clearly see that right before impact, they stomped on the accellerator. Of course it obliterated that poor little car. In reality, it showed "gee, I'd rather be in that SUV, than in that little tiny tinbox of a car, I think I'll buy the SUV instead" LOL.

They also put the big SUV through a slalom, which they deemed SUV's are dangerous and very prone to rollovers. Well, duh!!!! But the way they threw that thing through the slalom course, any car would have been in a horrific crash. They literally threw that thing back and forth trying to roll it, where with the car, they lazily and smoothly eased through the course.

Anyways, after that show aired, it was quite the topic on a 4x4 email group you could imagine. One fellow posted up a little story which we as 4x4 enthusiasts found hysterical. The following....

Quote from Greg Sue from off-road.com's Toy4x4 email group :

[Subject: Toy4x4 List tests sports cars for Dateline
Date: Tue, 23 Jun 1998 23:37:33 -0700
From: Greg Sue
To: [email protected]

Numerous persons have reported that sports cars are dangerous, unsafe, and poorly engineered, so an investigative team from the Toyota 4x4 Mailing List was sent to validate their claims and report back to Dateline. Tested sports cars include Chevrolet Corvette, Mazda Miata, and Acura NSX, which seemed to be representative of all sports cars currently on the market (they are all more-or-less the same).

The Toyota 4x4 Mailing List Investigative Team (T4MLIT) took these vehicles out for a day to some of the roads they usually drive, and have made the following observations:

All vehicles exhibited a severe lack of articulation on rocky and rutted terrain (average RTI: 14). This apparent engineering error greatly contributed to numerous 3-point situations, necessitating increased throttle usage to get through certain obstacles. This increased throttle usage put driver and vehicle at great risk in off-camber situations, resulting in a roll-over of the Miata. The Miata's windshield and frame collapsed under the weight of the vehicle (the only convertible-top vehicle in the group), and it was only luck that the test driver did not suffer serious injuries. Although the driver of the Miata had only put 12 miles on the odometer, he maintained that his unfamiliarity with the vehicle's handling had nothing to do with the obvious design flaw.

All vehicles also exhibited a striking lack of ground clearance. This fact was painfully obvious when we took the NSX through a small creek, only to have the undercarriage hang up on a small rock. The resulting water cascading in through the drivers' window was slightly disconcerting to the driver, who was used to driving his taller Toyota 4Runner. The end result was that the ECU shorted out and died, but not before water was sucked in through the unusually low-mounted air intake. Our test drivers found it amazing that any vehicle manufacturer would build a vehicle with such limited ground clearance, then expect anyone to drive it on a back-road.

The vehicles were not equipped with the proper equipment for the terrain. This test involved a high-speed run on a twisting logging road, including some muddy patches. As the Corvette was the only vehicle to escape unscathed thus far (save for some minimal body pinstriping and undercarriage scrapes), we were only able to test it, and not the others. It was decided that this would not abnormally skew the test results, as this vehicle was similar in design to the other now-disabled test vehicles, and would in all likelihood produce identical test results. We found that the V8-equipped Corvette, with it's wide Z-rated mall-terrain tires, tended to fishtail wildly in corners with just a minimal application of throttle. In addition, those tires were absolutely useless in any kind of mud, and would not self-clean no matter how much spinning they underwent. This appeared to be due to the lack of voids between the lugs; we think that perhaps a narrower all-season tire may be a more appropriate venue. Finally, when we aired the tires down, the 45-series tires did not have enough sidewall bulge to protect the 17-inch aluminum rims.

As the Corvette was still running, we decided to subject it to a crash test with a SUV. Our testers used a 1997 4Runner with an ARB front bumper, 3" lift, and 33" tires, and attempted to engage the Corvette in a head-on collision. The 4Runner ended up driving over the hood of the Corvette, crushing in the Corvette's windshield with it's front tires. We propose that manufacturers who build such low-slung, aerodynamically-shaped vehicles should incorporate a frame-mounted 6-point cage to protect the occupants in the event of a front-end collision with a SUV. Still, others have proposed that instead of manufacturing passenger cars to tougher crash standards, SUVs and other vehicles should instead be manufactured to the lower crash tolerances of passenger cars! The T4MLIT thinks that all vehicles, including sports cars, semi-tractor units, and buses, should be built to SUV standards, to keep everything fair. But I digress.

This brings us to the obvious conclusion that no sports cars should be driven on rocky or rutted terrain, or they will suffer damage or even a life-threatening roll-over. And when driven on the street, they have a tendancy to severely injure their occupants when involved in an accident with a well-built vehicle. To paraphrase the great Ralph Nader, all sports cars are unsafe at any speed.

Note: The T4MLIT has submitted a warning-label design proposal to the sports car manufacturers to warn new drivers of the potential hazards:

WARNING!

This vehicle has stiffer springs, and less ground clearance than you are used to. It will not handle like your SUV. Do not attempt to drive this vehicle in the same manner as you would your SUV; doing so may result in serious injury or even death. Please read your owners' manual before attempting any hard-core 'wheeling.



Greg Sue

To close, here's some nice pictures of rock crawling in this gallery of photos. Enjoy Pics link.

good one mrodgers, I enjoyed reading that

Rigs Of Rods Is an awesome rock crawling sim in my opinion.

http://rigsofrods.blogspot.com/

it's mainly based on trucks.

It's got a rock crawler in the package, with a rock crawling course on a map.

Hmm, are there several camps in this 4x4 stuff, like rock crawlers and mud splatters etc. bit similar like we have drifters and those who don't drift on race tracks?

I have found some nice movie clips of off roading from youtube. Hard to find real good clips with good engine sounds