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Thanks @Rahimdad for leading a wonderful newbie drive and thanks to everyone for great participation. @Frederic Nuyttens has made an awesome video of yesterday's drive

Welcome to Carnity and thanks for asking an educated question than just - I need a car. All your reference and background give me enough idea to make a perfect recommendation, but before I get on to that I like to get few tricky things clear based on my experience of owning and driving offroad for over a decade. 7 seater and a capable offroader can't go together in one sentence. For offroad - car power to weight ratio is king (google this to understand what I am saying). Higher the power to weight ratio you will enjoy that 4x4 more for offroad. Focus on buying a daily commuter + capable 4x4 than putting the Africa road trip into an equation to limit your option. You can (or should) always rent 4x4 for such special requirement than pushing your daily driver way too far, as it's just a one-off expedition you are planning (If I'm not wrong). For offroad category, sand and mountain are TWO DIFFERENT WORLD. Excellent mountain climber can be a waste in sand and vice versa, so here you need to decide which is most needed and if you need both then you will limit your choices for handful 4x4. Prado's are much better than Land Cruiser as it's tad lighter and less in size. LC is a boat and good for everything except hardcore dune bashing, if you limit to beach sand and newbie level drives you are fine with LC. Converting LC gearbox are way too out of the league to even talk about. Nissan Patrol falls in the same category of LC - heavy and reasonably good for everything except hard-core dune bashing unless you do some crazy mods and then get in trouble with RTA. Land Rover LR3, LR4, Discovery can be awesome for daily commute + mountain + beach sand but not for dune bashing. Jeep Wrangler has it all, but too small for sleeping, even unlimited one too. Xterra and FJ Cruiser are the only actual all-rounder 4x4 that you can do mountain + Sand + hardcore dune bashing + daily commute + sleep in a car. Pajero's are third best due to their limited approach and departure angle if you go this route only buy 3.8 liter and get the rear bumper metal plate to kill the sand scoop (will explain if you go this route). Once you get to the hard-core dune bashing, you can look into lifting it a two inch for better ground clearance. Now here is the tricky part, you choose what you want: Prado will give you much comfy ride for daily commute and also do whatever you want but in a long run slightly more expensive to maintain considering regular offroading. Xterra and FJC little less comfortable for the daily commute, but less maintenance in the long run with regular offroading as they are made for such use in first place. Toyota (Prado and FJC) will hold better resale value than Nissan Xterra. Xterra already discontinued and you may get spare parts for another 5-10 years or google how long Nissan committed to supporting Xterra parts. FJC is smallest of all suggested to not to best fit sleeping in car criteria. Xterra is slightly bigger than FJC and Prado is the biggest among these 3 choices. Best is to view a few cars and see how rear seats fold, to visualize if you can comfortably fit along with your offroad gears. How nice and comfortable it drives, as every person has a different definition of comfy. Hope you got enough food for thought, good luck.

Now you know rear mounted spare tyres have more benefit than one! Lol

Congratulations @Julien V for reaching the fewbie level with Carnity Offroad club. Within last 4-5 offroad drives you have shown a tremendous progress and well deserve this new offroad rank. Looking forward to seeing you growing further and helping others to learn the art of offroading in a safe environment.

Félicitations !

Congratulation @Julien V

I can’t say much about the surroundings of Shuweihat, since we went straight to the point to spent one night camping on the island. Well, to be frank, it was a terrible idea to do it during the last National Day week-end ! The place was crowded, maybe 400-500 cars on the island, most of them tourists and residents in UAE, and of course (of course ?!!) covered with garbages. We thought about heading out to find a quiet, clean and isolated place, but unfortunately we had to spend the night there because our friends were joining us in the next morning, and we wanted to keep for them the small spot we found on the sea. If you’re going on a Friday or Saturday, I think it’s wiser to follow Jeh’s recommandations : visit the Island, enjoy the beautiful creeks and the scenic views... and leave the place at the end of the day to camp anywhere else… However, if you have the possibility to go there during the week, it may be an excellent idea to settle on the island for a night or two. I will share here the nice area we found on the West side of the Island (my guess is that it can really be like heaven if you go outside the rush times). You can reach it with a simple SUV if you drive carefully, but definitely not with a sedan. Even if you are driving a 4x4, be careful once you reach the sea because the rock can be sharp. By the way, if you want to swim, don’t forget to take strong plastic sandals. Once you get on the Island, go straight on the track until you get close to the GSM antenna (yes, you have some network there), go left towards the hill and cross the fence (there a small gate in it), then follow the fence on your left hand and a few meters before the beach, turn right and find your way to your spot. Left a good news for the end : the speed limit Jeh was talking about has changed. Now, it’s 160 km/h after Abu Dhabi, which means that you can reach the Island in slightly more than 3 hours when you come from Dubai !

Get ready for real mountain exploration drive, without the tarmac road and still reach some awesome viewpoint on top of Hatta Mountain range that span from Hatta Dam to Wadi Shawka. I have done this route almost 10 years ago and just found the old waypoints for entry and exits. If they are still accessible then we are in for a great surprise as drive up to the top will test your mountain climbing skills, 4x4 handling, low gear power, braking and starting on a steep incline with slipping stones and sweaty palms. Plan to start from Al Munay area on Sharjah-Kalba road and detour towards Qur and then start climbing up and reach to the top and have some amazing views of UAE on one side and Oman on another side. We plan to end the descend near Buraq dam and visit that place if water still there. I also have plan B and C, in case if an above plan fails and that's why I'm calling it an exploration drive. When: 14 Dec 2018 Meeting time: 1:00 PM, a convoy will move sharply at 01:15 PM Where: Al Munay's Mosque GPS Coordinate: https://goo.gl/maps/sUpbcCpQo492 Level of a drive: Fewbie - Intermediate All level Type of Car: Any proper 4x4 with front and back tow hooks and 8-10 inches of ground clearance Please RSVP on the Calendar

1) Tow hook on the back was connected to the bumper instead to the chassis itself it seems. 2) Not sure if he did previous pulls on this occasion, cause he drove off pretty fast. Would have been better if he did two slower pulls, followed by a more dynamic pull like this. 3) The rear wheels of that Prado were almost 80% dug in. Does not look like they cleared the sand out first to ease the recovery.

Congrats @Julien V. Well driven and well deserved

Congrats @Julien V Well deserved !!!

Stay away from the inline 4 cyl model. Its a gutless POS. And get it from a private owner, who looks like he could have afforded it and afforded to maintain it with no fishy background stories. And the second hand car market sucks right now and is a buyers market, so don't be afraid to bargain hard or walkaway from a crappy deal. Dealers can afford to keep inventory sitting on their lot and don't negotiate much with usually cheap patch up repairs to flip over quickly. Well then its not in the running in this thread here is it. Really ? Never seen that happen and nor do I stay away from them. This honour usually belongs to blacked out lowered Patrols and Cruisers riding on 900 sand tyres with loud exhausts. But after 40 plus years in this country, never seen that happen with a Pajero. Because usually old tame uncles are found behind the wheel of one

Thank you, thank you, thank you. I can't thank you all enough. Firstly for deciding to join the early morning trip, for which everybody had to wake up early morning on a weekend. All made it to meeting point on time and departure was as scheduled. We drive at ease to the deflation point at which we had our Absolute Newbie lecture. We quickly deflated, set the radio frequencies for the new radios in the family, and fixed our flags. @Gaurav bhai was quick to assign convoy numbers and we were on our way. As usual we started with some easy dunes and slowly worked our way through some medium dune crossing. I was more than surprised to notice that everyone managed very well with hardly any refusals or stucks. We took a couple of breaks to introduce the newbies to some side sloping. These sessions were enjoyed by all. Our next stage took us to our shaded place to rest, share a whole lot of breakfast and drinks and share a few thoughts. Our last stage saw us climb the Fossil Rocks to the same disappointment of not being able to descend from it. Once again we went around the Fossil Rocks and headed out where the newbies were bid farewell and the more experienced team continued to have a quick paced drive for 30 minutes and depart just in time to catch Friday prayers, inflate and head back home. I would like to thank @Atif bhai for doing a brilliant job at being second lead. @Asif Hussain bhai and @skumar83 bhai for brilliant duties to keep the convoy moving. Special thanks to @Gaurav bhai for keeping an eagle eye on the complete convoy and time and again offering his expert advise, help and assistance to keep the convoy intact. I would also like to appreciate the very positive and enthusiastic approach from @Frederic Nuyttens, @jibransayed, @BIG T, @Rana, @Javier M, @ace1988, @Mujtaba and @Julien V Thanks for sharing your pics on the Gallery @Frederic Nuyttens, I have also shared my pics. Waiting for all to share their pics also. https://carnity.com/gallery/category/100-newbie-drive-kalbamaliha-7-dec-2018# All absolute newbie please share you thoughts here.

Yes it’s possible to sleep inside. And also you can very easily take the back seats offand use them outside the car. It’s a powerful and very reliable car, very capable off-roader, but not the most comfortable. You can have a look at this previous discussion on Carnity : https://carnity.com/topic/13309-any-tips-on-buying-a-used-xterra?tab=comments#comment-46886

I would go with Nissan Xterra with that budget. For sleeping inside i think @EmVarlet can answer if it is possible. It is powerful, easy to maintain and as i see from Emmanuel it is extreme reliable. Land Cruiser very good option but finding clean one is hard.

Pajero. Drives well both on and off road. Even if you never go to the desert, it’s perfectly fine to drive on the road every day. If you do decide to hit the sand, it’s more than capable but the departure angle on the newer models can cause problems. Cheap too. You can pick up something decent for under 20k. The LC100 is nice but it’s a bit of a beast. It will cost more to run and it’s heavier than the pajero so it’s more of a challenge to learn to drive off-road in.

I second the recommendation for a Land Cruiser 100 series. Having spent over a decade in the Desert Safari field these were are daily mules and been all over the deserts and mountains of this country in them. And checks all your boxes. Power wise there really isn't much difference between a V8 VXR and the straight 6 GXR. And you can hardly feel the 40HP difference. But the VXR or and the Lexus variant the LX have a lot of bells and whistles and some top spec VXRs and all LX470s have adjustable ride height a great addition for off roading. Saves you the trouble of modding and spending extra on lift kits and shit. But be careful a lot of ex safari fleet and abused shabab Cruisers are in the market. Also the V8s are a little bit of a pain to work on and maintain but reliable as fcuk not to say the 4.5 straight 6 is unreliable. The V8s Need timing belt replacement every 100k kms which is a PITA to do. And most ancillaries are deep inside.

Wow...nice surprise. Am in

Perfect analysis @Frederic Nuyttens correct on all 3 points. Others please feel free to share any other points you think might help to avoid the incident in the video.

Congrats @Julien V, well deserved. Looking forward to taking you through the paces of a Fewbie level.

A few videos to help you out in your decision

Kms unless it has verified history are easily reversible on these things takes a trip down to shj and 50dhs to reset it to anything you like. But still try to get the lowest possible but dont let that be the only factor or deal breaker. If the car is well looked after and maintained a high miler is preferable to an abused low miler. Although if looked after Ive seen them go up to 600k kms! And still drive well.. Years would be between 2003-2007 4dr V6.

being back to the initial thing was that the car would run in mena region should not be a fuss to maintain as far as i know the pajero would not fall in it nicely as the african market is much more interested in the 4 cyl diesel pajero then the 6 cyl pajero i guess @treks could shed some light in that statement and almost all the united nations missions there maintain usually the lc, and the lc pick up which is also basically the same things internally you wont have to think twice for comparing the lc vs the pajero in this market i am sure

I totally agree! Pajero is, in fact, my second option. As you mentioned, it would do both everyday drive and off-roads when needed being greatly reliable. I do appreciate your opinion. Thanks for sharing it

Don't take a Prado into Africa- I have extensive experience of African overland expeditions, and I have never seen Prado's (or SUV's in general) do well there. Best thing to do is follow Gaurav's advice; if you want to do Africa, rent a vehicle from a reputable operator.

Yes and that doesn't help.

Sleeping inside the car has some pros and cons imho. During colder winter seasons it keeps you warm, but you need proper ventilation and that means keeping some windows open. If you don't have mosquito nets you will be attacked the whole night by those little buggers. On the other hand during warmer months the lack of real ventilation will make your car too hot to sleep in. I completely understand that it's a safety choice for you. You can maybe compromise on that part with a few things: * Bring a dog with you (if you have one or maybe one from a friend). It will be a perfect companion on all your trips and dogs will alert you if something is wrong (wild animals, strangers, etc..) * Get yourself a tazer or some tear gas. If you're planning to do Africa it might come in handy. Looking at your budget of 40k i would consider a Pajero (i know i am biased ). They are reliable, not too expensive, and made for the stuff you mentioned. That budget will get you one with some miles on the clock but as there are so many available on the market that have just been used as school dropoff SUV it should be very easy to find a decent one with acceptable milage. Agree with @Gaurav on the 3.8 if you have the option of choosing. Welcome to Carnity !

Hey guys, it was a pleasure meeting all of you! I had a lot of fun and learned something new, which was nice. I hope I can join soon for the next newbie drive!

Renaults bring the stop light on for a multitude of reasons. It is linked to both the braking system and ECU so it can be confusing as to what the problem is but stop means stop and it means something needs investigating. I would recommend checking your brake fluid level. If it’s low, you have a brake leak somewhere. Then check your engine oil level. If that’s normal, find a tame mechanic and get them to plug the computer in and see what/if any fault codes come up. If you don’t have a tame mechanic, I have a diagnostic computer to suit your car so I can scan it and tell you what’s wrong but I don’t do mechanical work anymore so I can’t fix it, (I can but I’m lazy) but I can tell you what’s wrong so you can instruct someone else to fix it. If you can’t find a diagnostic expert, you can message me on here directly and I’ll try to help you out.

Lc 100 series is from 97 to 07 if you are gonna convert it to manual then I suggest you get one whose gear is already shot so you save some while using the gear chip New one although it has many options and is intelligent when you are stuck self recovering with almost no human intervention but still all those goodies are electronic so totally depending upon them will make you a lazy good for nothing spoon fed hunk

I had a chinese brand battery in my mercedes. used the car for 2 years and sold it. Surprisingly it had the same health level as the day i got it. Im not even sure if we get that battery here cuz that kinda name it had. japan import lolol SAME story with my qashqai

The jimny is worth every dirham it costs. Sure, it’s not a patrol or even a Parero. And sure you can buy a bigger car for less money. It will take a special type of mentally ill petrolhead to buy a new one but different strokes for different folks. If we all went out and bought the same car, the jimny never would have been invented and the world would be boring as heck. There’s nothing as satisfying as standing back and watching a jimny pull off a huge sidey. It puts a massive smile on your face.