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My drives journey has hit a milestone. I have scored half century this past Friday. While my drive count shows 51 on the forum - I was absent on one afternoon drive, which was my 2nd drive of the day. These are a snapshots of my drives till date. Looking forward to many many more. Any and all criticisms are welcome.

Hello @Ranjan Das @Chinthaka Ruwan @JeromeFJ @Zixuan Huang - Charlie, You have been added to the drive. Please confirm the same. Thanks The New Waitlist Priority is as Follows: 1. @Lakshmi Narasimhan (2nd Drive)

Would have to go for unsafe, would need to be padded and also need to know the what the roll cage is anchored too. Seen a few roll cages in the oilfield that have been extended in front of the front seats and taken through the dashboard onto a structural member of the chassis. A few companies have it as a standard that no vehicle is allowed in the field without a full roll cage that protects A, B and C pillars

Fascinating data @Goutam, a goldmine of infos. Thanks for sharing. It would be interesting to record as well some quantitative/qualitative data about if and how you liked the drive and why, like a scoring and a preselected set of reasons for liking / disliking the drive, whether you found it easy or difficult, whether the convoy was overall up to the drive level or not, etc, ie some focus on the subjective experience. Food for thoughts, given that it looks like data mining is your passion! Kudos!

During a recent drive - I have damaged the Front recovery Point on my 2010' X-terra. Fortunately the Metal Hook was attached to the Radiator Guard & was blocked by the skid plate. Else the damage would have been more severe. On close examination, I understand that during fixing the Skid Plate + Radiator Guard (at one of the famous Garage in Al Quoz). They had welded the Nut to the chassis with few spot welds. That could not take the load during this recovery & came out. According to the mechanic: This nut was weak on my pre-owned car. So while fixing Radiator Protector he did this welding without keeping me informed. :: Before – After :: I have witnessed this happing to other X-terra during one of the Technical Challenge Drive. Thus, I was always cautious about my front recovery point. But now we have somewhat similar situation with my car. @Chaitanya D@Gaurav @Foxtrot OscarSeek your advice on how to reinforce the chassis end. Once it is secured: Option A: Will use the same stock Hook Type recovery Point - or - Option B: Should I get something like this for front end, which has 3 bolting points (two from Bottom + One from Side). Thanks.

Zed how are you bro , hope wel , I checked on google map to see the size of that mini lake , it looks like a black hole 🕳 bro , make sure we all come driving our car not carrying our car 😄

The waitlist at the moment is the following: @Rjducos#1 @Lakshmi Narasimhan #2 @Ali Abas#3 Thanks

2 bolts won't take the load. The rear recovery point on my patrol is fixed to 5 bolts for a reason! Some on the side and some on the buttom of the ladder frame.

@Hardik Mody definitely 3-hole is stronger, the 3rd vertical square hole will hold while the 2 horizontal holes get pulled and rotated (from the bolts): If you have friends in Fabrication shop, hand them this 3D design file so they can fabricate it for you: The resulting product:

You were really lucky enough that no damage happen to the recovery car and caused any injury, which is a biggest nightmare for any tow point failure. Just curious if it happened on soft or medium or harder tug, just to understand the intensity. If its hard tug, the tow rope was secured with support rope or dampers....? I am not an Xterra expert so will that Xterra point for other Xterra owners to add. From my side I can only say that all tow points (front and back) for any vehicle should have the minimum 3 bolts placement, 4 is awesome like in pintle hook of LC and Patrols.

hhhmm should it be sitting on the dash like that? i am guessing 'no' and therefore voted 'unsafe'

It is safe if it is padded and I guess the driver must wear a helmet. Otherwise might be more dangerous.

@Anish S Confirmed

Confirmed @Anish S. Thank you !

Thanks @Anish S, confirmed

Thanks Anish, confirm

Not new to me. We have done the long range patrol before once and it was an out of the world experience. It was barely any refusals and stucks during that drive.

@Frederic Data god found new best friend. Well done @Goutam on half century, wish you many more. Amazing data slicing and dicing.

@Goutam first of all congratulations on your milestone! What a trove of information you just published, thank you! You are the Edward Tufte of off-roading ! Looks like as intermediate you've met more new fellow drivers by joining newbie drive events, Al Qudra the most popular location for drives, Al Faqa from where you drive with fastest pace, most drives on a Friday and in the morning, and Jeeps seem the most frequent brand in Carnity drives since you started. If everyone's profiles was updated you could even pull a chart with the drive with most nationalities in it (the United Nations drive?) 😎 Again, felicitations on reaching the 50th drive, wishing you many more to come! Wishing you safe drives ahead.

While offroading, we cross dunes by using different methods, based on how the dune is formed and what the drive level is. Once you have spent some time in the desert, you will slowly start to pay more attention to the dune formations and how we cross them. Once you reach Intermediate and Advance level, you'll need to start learning how to read these dunes in order to navigate and create your planned routes in the desert. As a rule of thumb, the prevailing wind in UAE is blowing from a North-Western direction to South-East direction from 10AM onwards. At night and in early morning it will be reversed and blow from the South-East to North-West. This is something you should remember and you will notice when you zoom into certain areas with your navigation app (Google Maps, Gaia, MotionX, Mytrails,...) you will notice that the wind from that side has caused the dunes to take on their shape. This is a general rule and will not always apply, as you will see that in certain areas where wind is coming from different directions, you will see for example "star" dunes appearing. There are different types of dunes which are separately described below. As you can see in below picture, a dune is formed when the prevailing wind blows on a mound of sand, where the grain will move into the wind direction and create a ridge. The sand which falls on the other side of the ridge, creates a slipface, and this sand is not compacted by the wind. This is the main reason why we generally drive on the prevailing wind side or the convex side of the dunes on the Newbie level. "A dune is a curiously dynamic creature," wrote Farouk El-Baz in National Geographic. “Once formed, a dune can grow. It can change shape and move with the wind. It can even breed new dunes. Some of these offspring may be carried on the back of the mother dune. Others are born and race downwind, outpacing their parents. [Source: Farouk El-Baz, National Geographic, February 1982] The shape of dunes is affected by things like the strength, direction and consistency of the winds; the consistency and amount of sand; the hardness of the terrain and the amount of vegetation. Below we will describe the most common dunes found in the UAE. Different Dunes Crescent or Barchan Dune This is the most common dune. It forms the shape of a crescent moon when the wind blows from one direction. We generally use the words concave and convex to describe both sides of the dune: * Concave is a shape that curves inwards. * Convex is a shape that curves outwards. Crescent-shaped mounds generally are wider than long. On the concave side you will have the slipface. These dunes form under winds that blow from one direction, and they also are known as barchans. Parabolic Dune A parabolic dune is similar in shape to a barchan, but it is just the opposite. The tips of this dune point into the wind, and its main body migrates with the wind, forming a depression between the tips. Because of this formation, parabolic dunes are also known as blowout dunes. These dunes often occur when vegetation stabilizes sediments and a U-shaped blowout forms between clumps of plants. Example of Parabolic dunes near Faya: https://goo.gl/maps/ob8xu3y8VJJvF6hk8 Longitudinal or "Seif" Dunes They are also often referred to to as "sand ridges" or "seifs". Their length can range from a few meters to many kilometers and their height from a couple meters high to a couple hundred meters high. Wind pushes the sand and forms ridges parallel to the prevailing wind direction with slip faces either side of the crest. Linear dunes are straight or slightly sinuous sand ridges typically much longer than they are wide. They may be more than 160 kilometers long. Linear dunes may occur as isolated ridges, but they generally form sets of parallel ridges separated by miles of sand, gravel, or rocky interdune corridors. Some linear dunes merge to form Y-shaped compound dunes. Many form in bidirectional wind regimes. The long axes of these dunes extend in the resultant direction of sand movement. Barchanoid Dunes These ridges are similar to Barchan dunes. They are connected in long crescentic waves as the sand supply is much greater than that which forms a Barchan Dune. Star Dunes These dunes are formed when there are several prevailing wind directions - there is a complex wind regime. Typically there are three or more slip faces, whilst the dunes do not migrate they grow in height. Star dunes are radially-symmetrical, spyramidal sand mounds with slipfaces on three or more arms that radiate from the high center of the mound. They are created when the winds blow equally from every direction, causing the sand dune to grow many extensions and resemble a star. They are rare and are fairly stable and remain in the same place. Some are landmarks with names. Example of a Star dune: https://goo.gl/maps/jRnYghQc8ACzVz6T7 With this knowledge, the next time you step into the desert, you can start looking at the different dune formations, and this will give you lots of knowledge that you'll be able to apply in the future when leading and navigating off-road drives.

This drive is organized in full compliance with the COVID19 guidelines. We expect every member that joins this drive to go through below information and strictly follow these guidelines in order not to jeopardize someone's health, and to ensure we can keep organizing these drives safely. MUST READ AND TOTALLY AGREE: COVID19 Precautions MUST READ AND TOTALLY AGREE: BAN POST Two Way Radio Guidelines Every Offroader brings his own radio, programmed to the frequencies described in below advice topic. We will not share spare radios or program your radio on the drive. If you need assistance in programming the radio, post a topic on the Carnity website with your questions and we will help you out. Make sure your radio is fully charged. It will be your only way of communication while driving. Before buying, please carefully read below advice so you are informed properly on which model / cost / shops... No radio = No drive. It is an essential tool and you should make sure you bring it on every drive and learn/practice how to use it. MUST WATCH: NEWBIE VIDEO BRIEFING Drive Details Level: Fewbie and above (All Level) Meeting time: 4:00 PM (SHARP - Without any exceptions) Meeting Point: https://maps.app.goo.gl/ZZLZV5xcjEXpwsp9 Action Plan: After finding out this week will be my 100th drive with Carnity, I chose to celebrate this occasion with as many members as possible. Hence I was given permission to post 3 drives, one for each rank, and have fun with those who will sign up, across 3 of my favorite routes. This one will take us across Murqab first, on a new route toward Lisaili, across the technical dunes and sabkhas, and eventually to Solar Park through the sector of the plateau further away from the pylons. Type of Car: Any proper 4x4 with front and back tow hooks and 8-10 inches of ground clearance. What to bring along: Loads of water, snacks (for yourself), smiles, face mask, rubber gloves, enthusiasm and willingness to learn. Approximate finish time: 7:30 PM P.S. Only join if you have a compressor to inflate your tires after the drive. LIMITED SPOTS AVAILABLE: Limited to 10 cars maximum. RSVP will close on Thursday - 9 AM. If the RSVP is full and you wish to join, please mention your name on the drive thread to add on the waiting list Latecomers will be returned back - without ANY EXCEPTIONS. Members without RSVP will be returned back - without ANY EXCEPTIONS. Members that do not confirm the terms of the COVID requirements will be removed from the RSVP list. Please withdraw your RSVP, if you aren't joining, so your spot can be taken by others. Repeated no-show members after RSVP will have their account suspended for a month. PLEASE RSVP ON THE CALENDAR

Fantastic news and well deserved. Looking forward to our next drive together @Zed

Stock Xterra tow hook is inherently weak and some older models had a wierd open D type hook which used to slip at some angle while pulling Three bolt is way safer than the stock, and make two instead of one at the front . And use Grade 10 bolts which are stronger. ( or if you can find Nissan sells the bolts separately for the tow hooks) Periodic inspection is very important to avoid failure as one can pick up rust/bends before they break. Use harness rope/safety rope while pulling especially from front , to protect in an unfortunate tow hook failure situation.

Generally the front tow hook in Xterra is inherently weak due to 2 bolts points of attachment. And I recommend to install a minimum of three bolt attachment tow hook since this has happened. However periodic inspection to the integrity of the tow hooks be it front or back for rust, bend, loosening … etc is extremely important especially after being recovered or you were the recovery car in your last drive .

Yes, Nascar mandates this Windshield "A" bar called the Earnhardt bar. In desert offroad scenario, if a car was to nosedive into our windshield, this Windshield "A" bar would protect the driver to a degree. 1998 Dave Blaney's survival of a wall-crash was attributed to the Earnhardt bar:

Hi @Ali Abas. I will put you on the WL, and will sort it out by tomorrow. Thanks

Sorry off-topic , Seems we work in the same field, which company you work for? I work for NOV

Doesnt seem to be welded to the frame and therfore it will cause more damage in case of a roll over since the metal bars will be free to move and distroy everything comes their way

Confirmed

Hi all. Looking forward to the drive this weekend. I have a little bit of off road experience (but not a lot) and I can confirm my car has the front and rear tow hooks. See you Friday Also I’m driving a Land Rover Defender pick up - stock!

Hi @Ale VallecchiI have some family coming from AD on Friday so I have put myself in your morning drive and removed myself from this afternoon drive. Many thanks and congrats on the Centurion!

Congratulations @Goutam ,very impressive and interesting data presentation, well done👏

@Ale Vallecchi Looking forward to enjoying your 100th Carnity Drive with you. Sure we will all have a memorable time

Thanks Anish. I truly enjoyed every bit of the afternoon drive. I appreciate your efforts to push me outside my comfort zone to learn new techniques such as ridge riding. Also, I got to experience night driving for the second time! Excellent track/location selection from your end as well. @Frederic it was good seeing you again and thanks for the tips and patience. See you soon on the sand.

Thank you @Anish S , @Chris Wing & @Frederic for leading the drive, it was well worth it coming from Abu Dhabi 🙂. Glad to help anytime, the rated recovery points and the towing power of Land Cruiser should be put to use whenever the right opportunity appears 😅 Looking forward to driving with you guys again on Saturday afternoons (pending wife's approval 😂)

Hello @Chris Wing @Ammar Naji @Pierre de Maigret @Arshad Roojee @Sunil Mathew @Nihal17 @Zed & @Frederic I hope you got some good rest after the long and challenging drive. I would like to thank everyone for joining and coming early for the drive. We started the drive from Murquab at a slow pace to warm up and to avoid vegetation before reaching the play area nearby. After which, we crossed a technical area in order to enjoy the dunes in Lisaili area and all of you coped with all the challenges thrown to you. The first half of the drive went smoothly and observing all drivers performing well, I decided to increase the pace and the hurdles. We got the opportunity for some more crisscrossing and few easy ridge riding where all of us got a feel of riding on the ridge. Towards the last hour of the drive, we got most of the refusal and stuck leading to an extension to a night drive until we could exit in Qudra. Overall, It was a very good mixture of different nature of terrain and challenges. We encountered from small tight dunes to tall long wide range dunes as well. We got few refusals and stuck from which we get to learn by self recovering, observing and also helping. All refusal and stuck are unique, which always give us the chance to take something new back as our experience. It was so nice to see how Ammar was surfing through the desert with his massive car, keep it up. I am very impressed by the team spirit that all of you showed to help in managing different recoveries and especially when at one point there was 2 refusals at the same time to recover. All of you were proactively getting your shovels, offer for help and took turns to shovel . It was great to see Zed showing interest in learning and performing rope recovery which he had the opportunity to practise and it was executed perfectly. Last but not least, big thanks to Frederic for his exceptional support and for always being inspiring. Thank you Chris for being a great second lead and your assistance with recoveries. Take care, See you all in some other drive, Stay Safe.

@Zed this is incredibly useful (and impressive!) - i have a spare older Samsung Galaxy 8 and now you have me considering switching my setup! Thank you for this technical Mic drop moment!

@Niki love it when a thread turns a bit more technical 😄, so I'm assuming the Bluetooth dongle you used is this Veepeak OBDCheck BLE. This one probably has an HM10 chip that allows Serial over Bluetooth Low Energy. Apple is more lenient to BLE, notable because of its iBeacon devices, so they allow more things than the Classic Bluetooth. The caveat is: Serial over BLE is capped at 2 KB / second data transfer rate (see experiments & performance charts here) while the Classic Bluetooth Serial Port Profile Specification says data is available at 128 KB / second . The usage will be: 1. If you're just checking for Diagnostic Code and Clearing the Check Engine Light (CEL) signals, using the BLE dongle with iOS is fine. I would be cautious using this dongle if a Jeeper is calibrating his speedometer after changing tire size using JSCAN . The data transfer is capped at 2 KB / second, and the calibration takes 5 minutes... if things go wrong, well, someone may break their Jeep's ECU 😅 2. If you have bigger bandwidth, you can send one time a data of size 128 KB in just one second. If your bandwidth is capped at 2 KB / second, that same 128 KB data chunk (e.g. real-time engine temperature, transmission temp, oil pressure etc.) will take 64 seconds to travel from car to phone. Besides delay, this is what we call a "chatty application" in software development, and thus instead of achieving Low Energy, your phone will drain more battery 🙂

@Zed i am actually using an iPhone (12Pro Max) running OBD Fusion App (paying a small add on for the Toyota calcs) plus a Bluetooth OBD2 Dongle (Veepeak OBDCheck BLE+ Bluetooth 4.0 adapter bought from US Amazon as the UAE didn't have this specific model). It is working great and no issues sending data to the App - maybe i am missing some functionality (but i haven't found that limit yet).

Just to add on @Niki's already sound advice: Bluetooth doesn't work with iPhone, as a developer I find it painful that Apple does not support the Bluetooth Serial Port Profile mechanism (https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204387) . If your main devices are iOS ecosystem (iPhone, iPad), then you need to buy the Wi-Fi version of the OBD dongle. Otherwise, Bluetooth works fine for Androids... if you're multi-platform person and uses both iPhone and Android, then you need to buy the dongle that supports both, or buy 2 dongles for each device 😁

@Lorenzo Candelpergher I second @Zed advice - JScan software and then work back from this to identify the OBD2 sensor to use. I recommend going for a Bluetooth v4 module as a min (i preferred to avoid the wifi variant as you can have concurrent bluetooth connections vs a single wifi). The BlueDriver you linked is a great unit and fast - just check it is compatible with JScan. That said - I don't think this will solve your original issues of the warning light - however will allow you to reset it yourself. Sometimes this sensor can trigger if the steering column is off center? however if it was that i suspect the garage would have corrected immediately (link) There's a separate group on Carnity for OBD2 fans where folks have helped me setup up the dials and what useful (and what isn't). Below is my current dash during drives and every few weeks i just run the scanner to see if any error codes have been picked up.

Dear @Lorenzo Candelpergher, 500aed seems expensive, double that and you will probably get the Autel brand which most professional garages use 😂 I suggest to use the reverse-engineer approach from the software to the hardware instead: I asked my Jeep friend and he said to use JScan software. Once you know which software you want to use, look for the "supported scanners" page. The "Highly Recommended" scanner for JScan which is iCar Pro is only 100 dirhams on Amazon ☺️ http://jscan.net/supported-and-not-supported-obd-adapters/ As for the original idea to get it, the tool will help towards it but not the root cause: the car ECU will gladly handover the scanner all the diagnostic error codes that it currently has. Next you need to download the Jeep Maintenance Manual to find out what Jeep dealers need to do when diagnosing the codes. Sometimes 3 errors are caused by just 1 error: I had multiple ABS errors and 1 wheel sensor, turns out replacing the wheel sensor eliminates all the ABS errors too 😁 It could be fun, it could be frustrating, nevertheless you'll learn something about how your car works ☺️

Wow! That was fast, got in nick of time!! Goes on to say how much we look forward to Islam’s @Islam Soliman drives. See you guys on Friday.

Thank you very much @Anish S and @Frederic for the beautiful drive of yesterday. Really enjoyable and quite technical, presenting all necessary challenges. A very nice pace and a stunning sun set. No better way to en-up the week-end!

Most budget OBD scanners are made to read out and reset faults that create an Engine Check Light. Diagnostics like the one you are describing will most likely need more advanced OBD readers that are equipped with historical trending based parameter sets. I think these are more in the 3-4000 AED range to start. I have a DragonMart one for basic fault resetting and also a Bluetooth chip that works with the Torque Pro Android App.

@Lorenzo Candelpergher I use an OBD to better monitor the coolant and air intake temperature in my car, the device I have is obdlink mx+. During our last drive in Area 53 I recorded the whole drive using Dash Command, almost 2GB of data, which I still have to analyze. The Patrol Y61 seems to have limited sensors, other cars like yours probably have more and an OBD will be a good addition to your tool box.

It looks too extreme to me, leaving too much exposed . I've seen the bottom corners shaved off , looks better

Well done @Nivin for sharing this, reading at 20 times pressing knob, I highly doubt if most Xterra owners know this little secret. I seriously wish such digital temp monitoring tool comes stock in most 4x4 as needle gauge has immense dead spot and will not move from 70-105 degrees and by the time it moves, its already too late.