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Hey Doc, unfortunately I will have to drop out - my wife lands back in AUH on Saturday night…not sure I’d be very popular if I sent a taxi to meet her… 😂

Good topic @Gaurav and good to revisit. Above i made an overview last year after doing lots of trials and tribulations. If your decision is to stick to smartphone (no Garmin devices), then these options i can recommend and i use myself: CALTOPO + Best website to organize and archive all your waypoints and tracks. (not the stupid folder type). This is my main program to store all my waypoints and tracks and never lost anything. + Phone application is fine to use which many custom map functionalities but there is a bit of learning curve. - Offline download of satellite maps is only low resolution due to copyrights. This is a pending issue. Using it online works totally fine. * Cost is 50USD/year if i remember correctly. GURUMAPS (app only, no website) + Very easy to install and use the phone app to navigate. + Free version allows for basic use. 40USD single purchase for life + Satellite imagery works fine if you have data on your phone. The maps are not super crisp but not bad at all. - No offline satellite imagery download option (only offline street and topo maps available). There is a workaround but it's quite complicated and i would not recommend (fetching MBtiles through Qgis).. There is also an app called GoatMaps, which have been launched by the original founders of GaiaGPS, but it lacks a lot of the functionalities and is not running stable with me. Then you have an app and website called Backtrackmaps, which surprised me with its ease to work with and the layout is similar to GaiaGPS. The only problem i see is that this is coming from a single owner / coder who made this, so i do not consider it as a professional platform. It has however lots of potential and might be worth testing. For any drive where i have data coverage, i use Caltopo and sometimes Gurumaps. For offline navigation i use my Garmin 276cx as it allows me to download Birdview satellite imagery beforehand which is quite nice. Takes some planning but i like the device as it's bulletproof and never let me down nor overheated.

@M.Seidam I will join Saturday night

Hi @M.Seidam, confirmed, will join on Saturday.

@Emmanuel well done, im looking forward to your first ‘official’ solo lead drive

You don't know until you try it😅

When I bought my Tahoe, it came with 20" rims which meant tyre profile was not high enough. My initial desire was to just have high profile tyres so I chose to replace with 17" inch rims and tyres 275/70. The important thing that I completely missed was the original width of the rim was 7.5" vs new ones 9". I was very happy with look of the car with tyres sticking out a bit until I drove back home and tried to park. This was my first experience of tyre rubbing. I was told that the new rims were perfect for my car and with 0 offset. I had no idea what offset really meant at that point in time. Well to be honest I still have no idea 🤓. The first thought was to trim the body/fenders which I was not happy about. We then tried to tweak the alignment but was not of much help. Then the garage suggested and convinced me (very easily😆) that I will anyways do a lift since I am into off-roading. So I also got dobinsons shocks and springs with a 2 inch lift which I was very happy about mainly because of the increased ground clearance. It did help with the rubbing but not 100% when on the sands. Then we also tried some force on the fenders to push them back. Anyways right about at this time, my control arms gave up on me. I am guessing this was due to a combination of the lift and also a couple of medium level unintended jumps . I chose to go with after market control arms and guess what??!! Now my tyres was rubbing on the control arm!! because of the rim width! Only possible solution seemed to be installation of 😀25mm spacers. Guess what happended next?? Spacers meant tyres protrude out even more and again we had rubbing on the outside while turning! I succumbed to cutting my fenders, trimming body and side steps. 🤐 I will get to see the final look of the car tomorrow hopefully I did learn a lot from this experience but I keep blaming my rim choice and lack of patience as the main reason for all this trouble. Happy to hear your feedback where you think I have taken wrong decisions/solutions and what would have been possibly better choices Thanks in advance Hopefully my experience above will help new off-roaders like myself to avoid the mistakes I have already made.

You could have realized and raised this concern earlier, as sadly in mod world, ppl wanna sell more upgrades to solve one issue, which may or may not be relevant as far as they are making sales, they are happy. Starting from the beginning now, while changing 7.5 vs 9, have you considered reversing the ball joint from left to right and right to left? This is the most common hack in the US suspension system to gain a bit of extra tolerance. I recall doing the same with my wife Trailblazer when we lifted 2 inches as per US based forums. Your first concern should be thorough research on similar issue with credible data like on forums, reditt, youtube videos from the owners who have done the same upgrade before. My balljoint swap could be relevant as Tahoe and Trailblazer are sibling, so research on this specific part and find credible answers as a first starting point. Also research on swapping upper arm with ball joint, as I vaguely remember reading this part too somewhere. Also find some performance UCA that addresses this specific issue for off-road use.

hopefully back late next week and ready to drive on 23rd

Thank you @Marek for the advice. I am following all of the things you mentioned - clean filter post each drive + change it every 5k kms (replace it with a new one) along with engine oil/oil filter. However, the picture that you shared is on the dirty side of the filter and while I have sand there too, the pictures I clicked were on the clean side and towards the throttle body. I am guessing some sand will pass through regardless and will leave a coat in a year of usage will weekly driving correct? Thanks:)

you should see mine... basically that's one good reason to have a snorkel (contrary to the popular opinion that it is used for water wading). Sand will always be there. And at the bottom of your oil pan too, which shows that the fine sand actually gets into the engine causing slow but visible damage to bearings. The only way to reduce that is to remember to change your air filter (cleaning alone is also good, but that does not mean you can keep the air filter for 10kkm - not in these conditions!), clean your intake after heavy drives and don't follow regular 15kkm oil change, keep it as short as you can: 6-7kkm for those who run extreme drives is a must. And don't even think about any sport or cone filters...