If you're just getting into off-roading, this video is for you! Our expert and 30+ year WARN employee, Chad Schroll, talks about some of the differences between types of off-road vehicles, different off-road equipment, and various techniques. Even if you're a seasoned off-roader, this video can be a great refresher.

Full Video Transcript

I'm Chad Schroll, with Warn Industries; been working here about 33 years playing in the dirt since I was about five years old, I so got a lot of off-road experience. Today we're talking about entry-level off-roading and equipment needed for that. We'll cover vehicles, equipment, and techniques.

What is Off-Roading?

So what is off-roading? Could be as simple as a gravel road which is nice on a sunny day and a mess on a wet day. Depending on what you're going to try and do you need to choose the right vehicle. So no matter what vehicle you choose the most important is to learn your vehicle and how it works. Today we're going to be talking about a Jeep and a Subaru.

Let's Look At The Subaru

Let's talk about the Subaru to review the features that affect off-road performance. So the Subaru being all-wheel drive; it is computer controlled. It monitors the road conditions and adjusts for it. There's no buttons that I have to push it just does it. It's an automatic transmission; it has a manual select position, but one thing I'm missing on this guy is a super low range like a two-speed transfer case. In my experience, taking these off-road and trail riding; they're a lot of fun—don't get me wrong— but I do miss that low range

Let's talk about tires. Tires are really important when you're off-road. You can see that they've been modified, [they're] aftermarket tires; this is a BFG all-terrain tire. It is constructed a little bit differently than just a standard street tire, so it's got better traction and a better carcass that'll hold up to rocks and more jagged edges.

All right, let's talk about spare tires. On this guy you can see there's no spare tire exposed on the outside, this one's going to be inside and quite often this is what you're going to see. Where is the spare tire? We're going to dig for it on this guy a little bit. To get the spare tire out, we're gonna have to remove all this stuff set it aside, get the spare tire out, and this has a space-saver spare tire so it's a small little donut tire. And if you're 50 miles out on a gravel road, I wouldn't be so comfortable running this back.

Let's look at some ground clearance on this Subaru. When you're off-roading ground clearance under the vehicle is very important. This guy's got a pretty flat belly under there but it's good to take a look under there and see what you got; is there anything hanging down?

All right so we're looking at the front bumper on this Subaru and you can see how much it's covered up on this guy so there's not a lot of attachment points. And if you go underneath, they're hard to find and you're stuck so they're going to be hard to get to and then your straps could damage the front of your car.

This guy has a light bar on the front that's good for holding lights. It might take a little bit of a bump but you don't want to recover off this guy.

In general the Subaru is a great vehicle. It excels on-road and has strong off-road capabilities. We're done talking about Subaru now we're going to talk about the Jeep and some of the features on the Jeep that affect off-road performance.

Let's Look At The Jeep

Big difference on this guy compared to the Subaru all-wheel drive is you got to do all the controls yourself. You got your transfer case you got your shift lever for the transmission, you got your locker controls, you got sway bar controls; a lot more to work with there. But it also gives you choices, so there's pros and cons to this type of system.

Let's talk about some wheels, tires, and suspension on this guy. We've upgraded this vehicle just like we did on the Subaru; we're running some BFG mud train KM3s. Harder side carcass, good tread pattern, some side lug pattern. We also touch base on the WARN Epic Wheels here. This particular model is the Moonsault that also leads us into suspension.

To get the bigger tires in here to make clearance for these guys we've kind of gone all out on this. We got a suspension kit on this; long-arm Fabtech suspension kit with coilover reservoir shocks. It's a nice setup it's a big job to put this one on. Then we also did a little extra here; we've got Fabtech fenders and inner fenders in here. Gave us just a little bit more clearance back here so when you're really twisted up on the trail if you don't have any tire rubbage.

It's important to have a full-size spare when you're off-roading. Opposed to the Subaru we showed that had the donut spare, if we were running that we would carry a full-size spare. In this case, we've upgraded the tire sizes to a larger size that doesn't fit in the stock location so we carry this one in the bed, and it matches the rest of the tires, so we can swap it to the ground, use it in rotation, have a full-size spare ready to go.

So ground clearance on this particular vehicle it looks pretty good I mean look how high that looks. But really what you'll want to look at is back here ... so true ground clearance is not that much better than the Subaru if you're looking at the very lowest points. But in the middle break-over angle is better in that case. It's kind of back to learning your vehicle; you got to know where your low spots are and where your high spots are. Keep that in mind when you're driving the trails.

On this vehicle we also added some Fabtech light mounts here so you can slide these guys in and out so that's one of the benefits of this guy; you can get them a little wider a little closer in for clearance. And running some Rigid adaptive XP lights so your extra lighting will help with good visibility when you're off-roading, help other people see you as well as you see farther down the trail.

Recovery points are so important when you're off-roading. This particular Fab Fours Stubby Bumper has multiple points. You got shackle mounts you got rope attachment points up here, fog light attachments and the stubby part of it is because it doesn't extend out past the front of the tire. It gives you a good approach angle. This one also has the under crash bar there to protect the sway bar disconnect, frame-mounted so that it can handle the loads and you also have a nice location about the WARN winch.

This WARN winch is a ZEON 10 with synthetic rope on it manual transmission for disengage for freespool, and a Factor 55 FlatLink E; really like this guy. It's got this oval opening so you can cam these guys in and go direct to a bumper mount on another vehicle with that setup. One of the benefits of a WARN winch is you're out on the trail and you get yourself hung up and you're doing some self-recovery or even recovery of another vehicle you can use the winch to get yourself over obstacles instead of just pounding on your vehicle. It'll make your vehicle drivetrain last longer.

All right, we've moved around to the rear of the Jeep; this one has an aftermarket bumper back here as well WARN Elite recovery points on this guy we don't have the shackles hanging in there both sides, and we also are running a Factor 55 HitchLink on this guy. You'd screw your shackle onto this guy as well. Use this if you're going to recover off your two inch receiver. Do not use a trailer ball style. Overall the Jeep is more purpose-built for off-road use. As opposed to the Subaru which is much more of a balance for on and off-road use.

Out In The Field

We're out here in the field today we're gonna do a little bit of wheeling. We're gonna get stuck, we're gonna hook up some accessories and do some winch techniques, some hand signals, and just have a good day,. But before we get into that we're going to go over a little bit of the gear.

Going Over Your Gear

We got an air compressor for air and back up, we're doing repairs, we got a repair kit, we've got accessories for airing down, and gauges, we've got a large accessory kit, a smaller accessory kit, some maps for navigation, radio for communication, traction boards, and a shovel. This will get us going get us started we'll go over this a little bit more in detail as we need it. Pretty important to air down when you're on soft terrain sand snow mud. It will help with your traction. Today we got pretty hard sand so we're we're not too bad but we're gonna go for 15 pounds today. And just keep an eye on each tire as it goes down. There's a simple pencil gauge, just keep an eye on it. All right, now that we're down to 15 pounds on this guy we'll just work our way around the vehicle and hit each tire.

On The Trail

We're out here running in a designated area; this is an approved OHV area, and we're staying on the trail. We're paying attention even though we're going through some mud puddles and running over tree roots and stuff. Trying to be gentle, we're not spinning the tires too much. So this trail we're on today, it's not a super hard trail but it's got a lot of roots and tree roots and it's got a little bit of water, we're going to try and stay out of the water as much as we can, but there's some spots where we just can't miss it so we will gingerly dip into it and see how deep it is.

We're running diff covers on the front of this guy and rear and so if you do hit that front diff, which is the lowest part on that front axle, help protect that guy. And nice and slow travel, pick the line we're running with the spotter on this one.

When you're running with the spotter the spotter is not going to pay for your parts, so if you don't like the line you just stop wait for something that you feel comfortable with.

Getting Stuck

So here's an example: we got a couple of things going on. You got a low clearance point here, this lower control arm and the rear arm it's actually dragging on this tree root and it's lifting this back tire a little bit which you'd think would help but it's taken all the pressure off this tire so you've got no traction. You also got a wet tree right here wet tires it's just not going to grab it and it's undercut underneath so sometimes when you get a situation like that you're just going to pick another line to get that tire in a different position here either up on this edge or over that way so it's not getting that undercut bite because it won't climb out of here without winching.

Winching

All right Andrew's hooking this guy up he's going to drag this rope out. Always make sure you're wearing gloves. Let's run it in.

The tension's pulling up and at that point you don't want to touch anything, it's still not super tight it's got some flex to it, but this is where everybody gets back, the driver has control of everything, so we're ready to winch. I'm going to use some hand signals. Winch in ... and help a little bit ... little throttle, a little throttle, see how that climbed up?

All right he's up and free at this point; we'll unhook everything get the rope wrapped back on the drum by hand and call this little winch session a day!

Using Traction Boards

We're out here in the sand. In this case we got the Gladiator stuck and I gotta admit—I don't have that much experience with the boards. They say they got a shovel capability and also I grabbed a couple of tie-down straps because they do get buried in the sand so we will hook these guys in here. What this is going to do for you ... so when they get buried in the sand, hopefully this strap stays sticking up so it's easier to find them and before I put the strap on the other one, we're gonna shovel a little bit. If I had my choice I'd rather have a real shovel.

This particular board has two different ends. This end actually says "shovel" on it so this end is your drive-on end; you don't want to spin your tires when you come up on this thing so you want to be gentle. I relieved all the holes ...
and I'm trying to get the board underneath there to get it started. Hopefully, it'll climb right up on it. All right we're gonna try and pull forward. We're cheating a little bit we got a Rubicon with lockers turned on.

This one's a little deeper. All right we're gonna go out and get stuck some more!

Kinetic Rope

All right now we're properly stuck, we've got my buddy here he's gonna help pull us out we're going to use a kinetic rope. And basically what this guy, this Factor 55, and what this guy does it'll stretch a little bit, about 30% and so when you shock load it, stretch, and kind of like a rubber band, it'll pull out stuck vehicles. You should practice a little bit before you get in a situation where you need it because this is one of those situations where if I don't do what I'm supposed to do and he doesn't do what he's supposed to do, you could end up with two rigs stuck with a tight line between it.

There's a little bit of communication that needs to happen between us before we start tugging on this guy, so we'll get hooked up then we'll talk to each other so we know what we're doing. All right I got a lot of parts out here you're thinking — what the heck am I doing? Why didn't he just hook up here? Hook up to that guy and give it a yank? Well you can do that, but you know this is all tied nicely into the frame, but if I just pull on one side, I'm still stress-loading one half of that frame, so we're going to do a bridle today. We going to use some hard shackles on this end get this guy hooked up, and what the bridle is going to do is it will equalize the load across this guy.

This will keep your frame nice and straight. Also, when you're sitting your pins, bring them up until they touch, back them off just a little bit, touch back off just a little bit. Reason for that is if you don't back them up a little bit sometimes when you pull a load on it it will tighten that guy up. Now you got to go get a tool to get this guy loose. So at this point, we're going to go to soft equipment. So we're going to do a soft shackle out here. We'll grab one end of the one end of the dynamic strap.

I gotta get one more shackle to make a connection point here to the Factor 55 HitchLink. This is going right into the vehicle frame support tow bar, hooked right directly in the frame, and now that I'm hooked up, and it's not that this vehicle is going to take off, but that vehicle being on a hill, and say for some reason it was muddy and that guy started sliding, this rope can come tight at any time so now that I'm attached I'm going to go around the front of the vehicle.

We're all hooked up back here, we're gonna do recovery here before we actually hop in the vehicles and just take off and do whatever, we're going to talk to each other so we know what needs to happen. I'm going to put it in gear, back there and very lightly help until that rope goes tight, then I'll get a little more throttle to help pull myself out. At the same time, what he needs to do, is what he gets to do the end of the rope, let off the throttle. Because if you stay hard on the throttle, you have the potential of burying the tow vehicle to the point where now both of you are stuck. All right we're going to get this cleaned up we're going to head over and do some downhill compression braking.

Compression Braking

We're gonna do descent here down a sand hill. We're going to go straight down so that you don't sidehill it, but a couple things we got going on here: we got it in four low so we got a 4:1 transfer case, so that means for every four inputs you get one output, so that's your 4:1. I also have it flipped over to manual mode and I have it locked in first gear and I'm going to just use the compression braking to go down this hill. All right as we're going down this thing, I'll have to do a little steering correction so it's going to want to slide a little bit in the sand. This could also be true in the mud, having the low gears, I'm not touching the brakes at all, this is just all compression braking so the engine's holding this back; nice and easy on the equipment; smooth transition at the bottom.

Outtro

Hey, thanks for coming out with us today. This is just a brief overview of some of the equipment and some of the techniques so there's a lot more to learn. And for more information go to warn.com. Go prepared!