Four Wheeler September 2015

Time moves forward. You don’t really notice, but it never stops. I’ve got some gray creeping in my beard, and lately when I bend down low to lift something really heavy, I make this noise I don’t ever remember making. Apparently I’m getting older but my brain still thinks I’m in my 20s and immortal. So when I got a phone call on the early morning of May 22 telling me my friend and coworker of 10 years, Pete Trasborg, had died in his sleep a few hours earlier, I really wasn’t ready for it. I’m not gonna eulogize Pete here—he wouldn’t like that. But I am gonna use this opportunity to get the last word in on a buddy who I normally allowed to get the last word. For those…

SPOILER ALERT Got my May ’15 issue. Oh, the cover blurb says Pickup Truck of the Year. I’m rooting for the Colorado. I read Firing Order and the last paragraph names the winner. Thanks for spoiling the story. Do you have any spoilers for the Walking Dead too? JOHN (LAST NAME WITHHELD) VIA EMAIL Carl dies. RANDOM RAMBLE I hope you will consider publishing this missive in your magazine. I want to give a shout out to Stan at Crawlur Off Road in Indio, California. My friends at the Indio Desert Rats 4x4 Club rave about this guy. So when my ABS light came on I called Stan, and he suggested I drop by and he would take a look. I did, and Stan quickly diagnosed a bad right front wheel bearing. I was pretty happy…

EDITOR@FOURWHEELER.COM THAT’S INTERESTING What’s not on the outside counts. Ward’s named the 10 best interiors for 2015, and they included the Ford F-150 King Ranch, GMC Canyon SLT, and Jeep Renegade Limited. Porsche and Apple Watch are an item. Porsche has made it so that its Car Connect can be utilized through Apple Watch, allowing for info on vehicle status and some areas to be monitored, like controlling the windows or Carfinder for location help. Ford is offering a factory-installed strobe warning light on the ’16 Super Duty. It can be seen from 1,000 feet away. The intended audience is municipal crews or construction types. The ’15 Ford F-150 SuperCrew got a five-star overall vehicle score in NHTSA crash tests. Hello, aluminum. Hello, Future Vehicle Buyers. Autotrader studied you and found that 17 out of 4,002…

EDITOR@FOURWHEELER.COM 38 SPECIALS Mickey Thompson has introduced an innovative new wheel line developed with six-time Lucas Oil Off Road Racing Series (LOORRS) champion Brian Deegan. The Deegan 38 wheels are available in two exceptional styles for truck, SUV and Jeep: the Pro 2 Black and the Pro 4 Black. Our favorite is the heavy-duty Deegan 38 Pro 4 Black (shown), which features a race-inspired eight-spoke design with a two-stage matte-black finish and branded pop-top centercap for both two- and four-wheel drive vehicles. The Pro 4 Black is available in 15 to 17-inch fitments and carries a limited lifetime warranty as well as a one-year finish warranty. INFO: Mickey Thompson, 330/928-9092, mickeythompsontires.com MINI MAXI COOL Perma-Cool’s new Maxi-Cool Junior Transmission Cooler provides optimum cooling in a compact design. The 1⁄2-inch tubes feature Turbulators and an…

ken.brubaker@fourwheeler.com BACK IN 2012, AN IDEA WAS HATCHED THAT WOULD GATHER FULLSIZE TRUCKS for a special trail ride during the Easter Jeep Safari (EJS) in Moab. The architects of the idea, Stephen Watson, John Cappa, and Jerrod Jones, pitched the proposal to the fullsize wheeling community and 20 fullsize rigs showed up at the rally point to run the Poison Spider Mesa trail. Thus began the annual Fullsize Invasion, which has been become an annual event during, but not affiliated with, EJS. It was genius, really. Everyone knew that there were fullsize 4x4s in the Moab area during EJS week, but they were often lost in the sea of shor-twheelbase Jeeps scooting around the trails. The Fullsize Invasion offered the opportunity for like-minded folks to get together and celebrate the large-and-in-charge rigs.…

christian.hazel@fourwheeler.com THIS YEAR, TEN’S FOUR WHEELER NETWORK ENDEAVORED TO HIT YOU WITH an online Moab media blitz, providing daily live coverage video, photos, and story updates of what was happening during Easter Jeep Safari in Moab. Organizing the manpower for something like this isn’t easy (or inexpensive), so to get enough boots and tires on the ground, we opened the door to some sponsorship. But we didn’t invite just anybody with deep pockets aboard. Lots of companies make parts for off-road vehicles. Why? Because 4x4s are a hot market and there’s money to be made. Some look at what’s trending and barf out parts from a chintzy manufacturing plant, sell it through an e-commerce site, and rake in the profits while ignoring the customer service line ringing off the hook. On the…