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Thank you for noticing and informing me @Sunil Mathew Sorry my bad, so let's make it 4:30 pm so that we do not miss anybody....however let's make sure we are all deflated and ready to start the drive at 4:30 PM sharp... @Alain Canivet-Abikhalil @Marwan Haddad @Christopher Assal @Zixuan Huang @Lakshmi Narasimhan @Sunil Mathew @Darren Brooke @TT_Dubai @darren thompson @RooRzOn

Its simple @Chaitanya D. Remove the fan clutch from the engine. Separate the fan clutch and the fan. The fan clutch is made of 2 circular parts secured with 4 or 5 screws. Unscrew them and tap on them to separate it. Before you do this make sure you mark the 2 pieces so that when you assemble them together the grooves inside align. There is a small wedge inside a groove in one of the circular ring and make sure you don't lose it when splitting them. Pour the silicone oil purchased previously from the AC spare part shop and reassemble making sure the outer O ring is perfectly placed and not pinched. Re fix the fan to the clutch and reinstall this assembly to the engine. The silicone oil is made by Toyota for LC and is 18ml in a tube. Grade you get here is 10001 cts which costs 20 AED. It would have been better if you get the lighter 7000 CTS grade but is not available anywhere. The principle behind this is the viscous fan clutch is actually a torque convertor you find inside your ATS gear box. There is a bi metallic strip which controls the opening and closing of the valve which holds the viscous fluid inside a reservoir. The valve opens when the bimetallic strip reaches the pre set temperature and releases the fluid into the grooves of the fan which then locks up both parts as a clutch. The fan then starts to rotate. Unfortunately the cars manufactured in America is calibrated to engage the clutch at a higher temperature to reach the optimal operating temperature of the engine faster as they have cold climate. So the fan doesn't engage for sometime as cold air is anyways flowing over the radiator. The scenario in middle east is different and its very hot climate. Its more aggravated when we take our cars to the desert. We cannot calibrate the bi metallic strip. Its pre set. The only thing we can do is increase the volume of the oil inside the clutch so that the grooves get filled up faster and lock up the fan. After this mod I think I put one tube more as the fan engages much early. Should have tried with 1 tube and then increased gradually if not satisfactory after a drive. I am not very unhappy too as my car cools even when idling as the fan gets engaged fast but the fan roar is something you have to live with when it engages. The increase of the fluid makes the fan's ratio to the pully also more and it runs faster. As I understand the max rotation of the fan with a fan clutch is not equal to the rotation of the water pump and probably fixed at 70 to 80%. In this scenario it almost reaches to 90% of the water pump's rotation. I suppose this is what makes the fan to roar. Its not always but you notice it while idling and accelerating. I have a good audio system and it doesn't bother me much. All this info I got from X forums prevalent in Australia as they have similar issues of overheating as theirs is a hot climate in the desert similar to Middle East.

@Alain Canivet-Abikhalil @Marwan Haddad @Christopher Assal @Zixuan Huang @Lakshmi Narasimhan @Sunil Mathew @Darren Brooke @TT_Dubai @darren thompson @RooRzOn Hello Everyone, I hope you all are doing well and i am looking forward to see you for the drive tomorrow. Our plan for the drive, is to start from Murquab area, work towards Lisaili and Qudra until sunset. We will go through different types of terrain with a good mixture of technical and long range dune too. I have attached the convoy list below and we will be using the Radio Channel 1 (44600625). Till then, take care and be safe.

Super drive this afternoon! We started with military precision and finished on time. Really enjoyed the tight technical stuff, a first for me . The pace was good and we covered around 62kms so we managed to stretch our legs as well. I know everyone says this but everyone drove so well, even in the soft powder criss crossing without knowing what is on the other side. We enjoyed a glorious sunset set against a postcard dune backdrop. Nice to see familiar faces and to meet new ones. Thanks again @Anish S for the planning and the lead and to the impeccable support from @Alain Canivet-Abikhalil@Lakshmi Narasimhanand @RooRzOn I came straight from the office so didn't have my big camera to take many snaps unfortunately. Have a good week ahead!

Thank you @Anish S for putting me as your second lead. You know how much I like this position I had a few refusals today, I felt that I didn't deflate my tires enough at the beginning of the ride and also probably because I was too close to you at some moments and couldn't calibrate my momentum. Overall, I really enjoyed the ride especially that you took us into unusual dune path. You really made the best out of the 3 hours of driving. Sometimes technical dunes are "too technical" but as mentioned during the drive, your track made us all enjoy it (even @RooRzOn ??) @Lakshmi Narasimhan and @RooRzOn you made such a good job that from my position I almost never saw what was happening in the back except when we were looping and got to see everyone riding superbly ! And @Marwan Haddad very well done, you managed to rectify the route perfectly several times. Cheers !

Many thanks to @Anish S and @Lakshmi Narasimhan and @RooRzOn for managing a great drive… I enjoyed every bit of it and kudos to all drivers for a very smooth drive. Definitely need to work on my big dunes more 🙂 looking forward for many more to come 👍👍

Dear Desertnauts. A few updates about tomorrow's afternoon drive. Please note that the time has been moved from my last PM drive. We will now meet a little later, at 4:00PM sharp. The sooner we start, the more time we have for the drive, which will not be a night drive. The meeting point will be just past the Mosque, on the other side of one of the racing tracks at Lisaili. We'll move along the pylon track as long as it will be necessary to pass the camel track to their left, which runs for quite a bit. As soon as the camel track ends, we'll leave the pylon track, and enter a small but "busy" technical area, aiming for the long range dunes. We'll pick the radio channel as soon as we'll all reach the meeting point, looking for one with as few interferences as possible. First the drive will explore the parts of Lisaili closer to Margham, roaming in a south-easterly direction, then we'll turn to the west, to drive along the plateu's cordons, for most of its length. Before reaching Solar Park, we'll hang again toward the south-east, one more time, to look at some more long range, wide dunes. If all goes well, we'll look to prolonging the drive in the Qudra area, until the sun sets. In essence, given the level of the drive's members, we'll mix a well practiced track with a couple of exploration stints. Tomorrow's convoy order will be as follows: @Kalahari in Second Lead, @siddharth maheshwari at #3 @M.Seidam at #4 @Gok Krish at #5 @Islam Soliman will drive at Center Forward @Thomas Varghese at #7 @GauravSoni at #8 @Rob H will be #9 @Ahab Shamaa is #10, and @Shaaz Sha will Sweep the convoy. Looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow afternoon. Have a nice evening.

Viscose clutch fan doesn't work like a PWM controller to operate fan at variable speeds. To best of my knowledge they either fully engage the clutch (100% crank pulley speed) or not (40-50-60% depending on manufacture design). They might take few seconds to engage and disengage from 50-100% same way thermostat open and close in slow motion. BUT once engine bay temp hits the set degree required, they remain open. Water pump is mostly running 1:1 irrespective of the fan clutch engage or not as pulley and belts move at same rate without any interaction with silicon fluid inside the viscose clutch. You can switch to smaller "Water Pump Pulley" if you want faster flow. If you hear fan more now, that means your old clutch must be dead and congrats you have serviced it in low cost, as these viscose clutch are close to thousand dirham (at least for my Pajero). And sadly, most mechanic here never recommend doing such silicone top-up service, that is very famous abroad. For most off-road cars that tend to overheat borderline, switching to direct clutch fan is the first good remedy here in UAE if you wish to off-road during summer. Many years back I waited for this first step as many brainwashed me over fan noise, fuel mileage drop, loss of hp, and operating temp will take long time to reach ideal temp. Sadly all of these claims were either bogus, or not applicable here in UAE. I am running direct clutch since last 5 years and didn't felt the loss of 1 or 2 hp over 225 ponies (must be lot more with AT tires), and didn't felt 0.5L/100 fuel mileage drop as we burn more rich fuel at 6K on long climbs. If you drive this more on highway, you can keep a two set of clutch. Buy another from scrap and give it to turning shop to put two bolts across and seal it. Don't do single bolt as many lazy mechanic does, as it will result in irritating rattle. Use the direct clutch in summer and switch to OEM one in winter. Easy 50-100 dhs solution for more cooling.

I'm so surprised to see that you have done more than 600000kM on your X. 👌

Great. Try to observe performance continuously for some time!!!

Interesting @Thomas Varghese. Share more pictures of how you did it?

Looking forward to meet you all in the sand!!!

Dear All, From the start of the summer season I have experienced engine over heating issues in my X. I have experimented various ways to over come the same and spend lot of time and money to solve it. For the beginning I flushed the cooling system and cleaned it. No use. I changed all the pipes, coolant. Didn't help. Changed the radiator and the fan clutch. Result was same. Fixed additional electric fans, the over heating issue remained. I was at my wits end and had almost decided to pull out from offroading altogether during summer. It was going to be a tough decision as I don't want my car to suffer at my off roading. Whatever time I do off roading whether its early morning or afternoon or night some sort of overheating issue remained. Did more and more research on various X forums and found out there is a solution which has been overlooked by so many mechanics. The fan clutch supplied by Nissan or for that matter any other manufacturer can cater only for general use and if manufactured in America it is calibrated keeping the colder climate into consideration. It cannot be used in hot demanding conditions as it comes in stock condition or for vehicles which tow heavy loads or for offroading. The additional electric fan which I fixed in front of my radiator was actually aggravating the cooling as it disrupts the air flow when the main fan is running. That additional fan only aids cooling when the vehicle is at a stationary position when the main radiator fan slows down or stops. 400 AED and time spend sourcing the fan and fixing it went in waste. 1 day I forgot to switch off that fan and was stranded as it drained my new battery. The overheating even took a toll on me as the ECM cuts off the AC when the engine gets overheated and imagine running in the desert now without an AC. I was feeling exhausted and delirious. EUREKA. I found out that the stock fan clutch can be enhanced by adding little more silicone fluid inside the reservoir. I decided to give it one last try or give up summer offroading altogether. Bought 2 tubes of Toyota LC fan clutch silicone oil rated at 10001 CTS and opened the fan clutch and poured into it. Each tube is 18ml and costs 20 AED in a local AC spare parts store. The car runs 10 degree cooler and takes little more time to reach operating temperature but the guage needle is only half way through from C to the 2nd level whereas it was over the 2nd bar when running on tarmac till now. Wow. Now my AC runs cooler than before, cools at even idling but there is a sound of the fan running even at idling speed. I don't care as I have a good audio system installed. The fan is tighter than before when the engine is stopped and engages much faster so that engine starts to cool early. I believe as the fan engages much earlier it engages the water pump which in turn circulates the coolant even more efficiently. Maybe I could do with just 1 tube of silicone oil instead of 2 to eliminate the fan engaging sound. Another thing I noticed is that the engine oil pressure guage runs more higher than it was previous. I suppose this has enhanced the oil circulation inside. No idea what is the connection between fan clutch and engine oil circulation.

As @Islam Soliman has agreed to lead one more convoy we shall be increasing the RSVP. @Gok Krish i have added you to the drive. Please confirm

Thank you @Anish S. Please confirm start time - is it 4pm or 430pm? Calendar shows 430pm and drive detail mentions 4pm

Thanks @Anish S for todays drive, it was a stress buster for me and enjoyed it very much. Mix of slopes, technical dunes which was enjoyed by every one. You have an amazing copilot on action over radio today, thanks @Veedooshee. @Alain Canivet-Abikhalil good drive, you enjoy second lead position much!!!, enjoying the drive is the objective, continue enjoying!!! You have improved a lot on side slope couldn’t see any fish tailing, it was a pleasure watching you. If you manage to maintain the right momentum on climbing small dunes you will be perfect. But you self recover very well keep it up. @Marwan Haddadyou did drive well, nothing to worry about exiting side slope early, you will perfect it with more practice, most important is to know when to exit which you did well today. @Christopher Assal it was pleasure watching you from behind, couple of areas you slowed while approaching the dune but you managed to push at right time and crossed without getting refusal. Good drive!!! @Zixuan Huang - Charlie you really drove well today maintaining safe distance. @Sunil Mathew I could see you driving beautifully, and your confidence level has made you enjoy the drive, well done. @Darren Brooke hope you enjoyed the drive and managed on churned up sand and technical areas well. Hope you fix your car asap and rock as usual. @TT_Dubai didn’t hear you on radio, as you mentioned you enjoyed technical area very much for first time, that too from behind. Good job, continue enjoying. @darren thompson hope you enjoyed the drive with your monster Raptor specifically in the technical areas and churned up sand driving at the back of the convoy. You were quite through out the drive which shows you managed and enjoyed it throughly. @RooRzOn thanks for sweeping the convoy and you did great job. Hope you also enjoyed the drive. Over all we covered good distance in short time and exited on time with most of the time driving. It was a wonderful drive, thanks to every one in the convoy. See you all soon!!!

Ohh I forgot to mention. The 1st tester of this technique was @Shaaz Sha. We discussed this problem of over heating and the probable solution of filling up with silicone fluid was suggested by our regular mechanic in Ajman. @Shaaz Sha promptly tested it day before yesterday and found his engine temperature maintained at manageable levels and promptly reported to me. I did the same yesterday and found it worked for me too. Everything is good except for the fan rrrrooooaaaaaarrrr when you accelerate. @Shaaz Sha also complained about the roar but its still ok if we can offroad with AC blasted on without overheating issues. I fixed additional fans for solving overheating issue as it seems these fans are bought by everybody and installed. The fans are sold like hot cakes from the shops as outside temp rises. As you correctly said these fans block air flow and it actually only helped when the car was in idle by aiding the AC to cool whereas the AC was cut off during this idling time. If you run these fans during running time it tends to increase the temp guage and I suspect these fans disrupt the air flow to the main radiator fan. By the way @Shaaz Sha's fan clutch also took 2 tubes of silicone fluid to become full. Its also a relatively new fan clutch. I suspect the manufacturer doesn't fill up the reservoir completely for some reason known to them.

Awesome @Thomas Varghese! So it's a new fan clutch but for some reason was not in "full-tank" mode 😂 Glad it wasn't because of a leak... as an owner of 2002 LC, I also replace old parts and hope it will last for another 10 years 😅 Another question: any specific reason why you install the SPAL fans in front of radiator (Pusher) type? This does block air flow and that's why most recommend behind radiator (Puller), _unless_ space is an issue ☺️

I replaced the fan clutch with a new one just 2 weeks ago. The thermostat valve was eliminated at the same time and coolant is now free flowing into the engine. When I removed the fan clutch to refill the silicone oil the reservoir took in additional 2 tubes of 18ml to become full. As its a new fan clutch and after thorough inspection no leak was found. My older fan which was replaced 1 year ago was found with a leak and that is why new fan clutch was bought.

Great job finding the solution @Thomas Varghese, however the engineer in me is curious for the "climate" reason 😁: 1. You have a Thermal-type Fan Clutch: there is a spring that's when heated between 70C-100 Celsius, it opens up the valve and releasing the silicone fluid that allows the Real Fan to engage and cool your engine. 2. The temperature that triggers the spring in the bi-metal fan clutch is the temperature at clutch's face. So if engine is already overheating + middle-east weather of 50 C, this should actually make the fan clutch engage faster 😊 3. You have fixed the issue by re-filling the silicone fluid, which _may_ indicate that there was already a Leaking Silicone Fluid issue. This would explain point #1 & #2 above where the extreme hot weather + engine overheat actually triggers the spring in the bi-metal, but because there was not enough silicone fluid, the fan did not engage (or engage some time later slowly). 4. Since your XTerra is 2008, has your fan clutch been replaced during its 13-years tenure? This would also prevent future mechanical failure of the clutch + spring issue + valve stuck in open/closed state which cannot be fixed by just re-filling silicone fluid. Granted, it's a AED 450 OEM replacement (Part Number 21082-EA200) . Or a cheaper but Heavy-Duty Hayden's 6601 But glad you solved the issue and brought interest to the fan-clutch-supposed-to-engage-fan-at-certain-temperature thingy 😊

More info can be found on this link!

Take good care of your car and it will run for ever

Hello, Looking forward to Friday. 1) I have a 2021 Jeep Rubicon which is fairly new. Before this I’ve practiced main on a 2017 Jeep Wrangler Sports Willys Edition. 2) I’ve been on a few basic lessons with friends. Over 10 bbq nights which required some basic dune driving but I’m looking to become more confident and understand the best way to use my jeep to its full potential safely while having some fun. 3) tow hooks equipped and ready to go ! thanks again for the following info. best Jason

Hello Gaurav, I would love to have you on the drive but the RSVP is full n there was no drop out so far... If ever there is any drop out, I will let u asap...

Now I have trimmed the bumper, even though its not rubbing, its in the border line. In future I am planning to increase tyre height profile and to go for wide body fenders!!!! These will definitely solve the rubbing problem but not the original issue!!!

Correct u can play with the height profile and width but not radius as far as i know. So u are still having the issue @Lakshmi Narasimhan?

I changed my rims from 18 to 17, but maintain the same tyre height profile. I had rubbing issue, even after 2” lift I had developed the same problem after few off-road drives. I guess the bumpers and fenders tend to lower/ bend after offroad drives. Need to understand this better!!!

@Abdul Rahman AK For sure, My stock rim size is 16 inches (R16). There is no way you can fit a R16 tyre on a 17 inch rim and vice versa. Instead u can opt for slightly different width and profile of tyre (at you own risk unless u have mods) but u cannot opt for a different radius unless if u change the rims. It's strange that u are having the rubbing issue since u upgraded to 2" lift kit despite the fact that u put a slightly different size of tyre. I would love to know your experience with lift kit. Which one did you put? How is it on the road?

A working bumpstop might also give the feeling of bottoming out. The reason I feel this is because from the pictures the distance of the tyre from the fender seems to be higher

I measured the distances but since it is in an angle, the distance between the gap of the bump stop and the gap between the tyre and fender varies so its hard to know the correct distance. But i think if i extend the height of the bumpstops, it might solve the issue.

Waitlist 1. Gok Krish

Dear @Ale Vallecchi good evening. My apologies for the last minute cancellation due work commitment . I have to travel to Abu Dhabi tomorrow and shall be late . I still hope my place can be taken by someone in waitlist. Good luck all!

Hi, I am driving a 2014 Mitsubishi Pajero 4x4 with tow hooks at front and back. No experience in desert driving. Hoping to get a good start with your guidance on coming Friday 😁 Regards, Yogesh (aka Yogi)

Please add me to the waitlist as my 1st drive.

Hello Everyone, For sometime now, i find that my front tyres are rubbing under the fender, around the fender liner/shield area (I attached a photo for the same). The rubbing does not happen on road at all, however while off-roading, the rubbing occurs occasionally when attempting a climb and descend. My car and it's suspension system is stock. Recently i changed all the bushes for the control arms and i replaced the original shocks to KYB gas shock absorber. The tyre size also is the recommended one as per the owner's manual (265/70R16). I wanted to know how to solve this issue and wanted to know your views as well. The suggestions i received so far from mechanics are an upgrade to a lift kit and secondly a stiffer spring on the existing shocks.

I got Profender shocks (adjustable), it is good both off-road and on road as you have the adjustment option you can play with and set it to your comfort.

No, that's what its there for, and offroading its normal to hit them. Removing or shortening the bump stop would cause issues to all of those.

If reached, the compression limit of the bump stop, wouldn't this become a cause of concern for other issues apart from the tire rubbing a fender? For example: risk of bending axles, damaging shocks? Seems as if bump stops are sometimes overlooked as an integral part of the suspension and by doing a quick search there seem to be interesting options, including hydraulic bump stops. Any views? Hope this is not deviating too much from the original topic raised by Anish.

Welcome to the club @SUNIL KUMAR ! Below posts should get you in the right direction: You can consider following shops: - ACE, AdventureHQ, Speedex, DragonMart, and some typical offroading shops.

I can collect it from @Thomas Varghese. thanks buddy thanks @Thomas Varghese, I will collect it when ever we meet in ajman

Better upload the video to Youtube and then share the link (embed it)

Because of the motion ratio of the suspension geometry you can't directly compare distance from a bump stop to total wheel travel. If you know the motion ratio you could do the math but its not going to solve anything without knowing the compression limit of the bump stop. You mentioned the tires are the same as OE sizes, but every manufacturer makes tires slightly different within the same standard tire size. Look up the actual overall diameter for your original factory tires and compare to the actual diameter of what you have. More than likely they're slightly taller which is why they rub, but it doesn't appear to be doing significant damage just very light rubbing, which I wouldn't be concerned about.

@Lawrence_Chehimi There is no rubbing when driving on road neither when steering nor on bump. But it happens only when off-roading especially if i go on a bump at a speed.

Hi @Anish S, since I've done a lift I can answer this: 1. You need to look into BODY LIFT (not suspension lift), this moves the body away from the frame (but not giving you a higher ground clearance like suspension lift), so your tyres will not rub the top. 2. If Body Lift is not an option, or after you did Body Lift there's still rubbing, look into "Pounding/Hammering the Pinch Weld", this is best shown in pictures here >> Finally, the Pinch Weld Mod – ADVENTURETACO 3. There's a 3rd option if you don't like modifying your car and keep it as much stock as possible: downgrading your tyre profile. Currently it's 265/70 = 70% x 265mm = 185.5mm = 7.3 inch sidewall. If you decrease the sidewall, say getting a 255/70/R16 = 70% x 255mm = 178.5mm = 7 inch sidewall, less 0.3 inch. Will lessening sidewall to -0.3" prevent rubbing? You need to test this... if you have friends with 255/70/R16 who are willing to lend you their tires for testing all good, else it's a bit of a hassle to hunt for 2nd hand tires and re-sell them if they still rub or you don't like the lower profile... Good luck with whatever choice tho 🤙

@Anish S, are you sure you are buttoming out? There is another reason why this might be happening, if you hit your bumper or fender before, the metal might slightly bend towards the inside and thus when you make full turns left or right while driving the tire might rub the fender.

If this happened with OEM shocks as well, then your bumpstops are the culprit. Measure the distance and get them replaced to a longer bumpstop.

Actually i was getting this issue with the OEM shocks and that was the reason i got all the shocks and bushes changed. Today, i had a look to Vanessa's car and Yousef's car, both had the trace of the tyre touching the fender but not as bad as mine. Yes, thats a great idea to measure the gap between the bump stop and gap between the tyre and fender...i will check this out in the morning.

But if the tyres are of stock size, it's strange that after replacing the bumpstop with OEM it's still hitting the fender. If you can try to measure the distance from the bump stop end to where it's supposed to touch, and compare it with the distance of the tyre to the fender that would give you more accurate results. I am not sure where the location of bumpstops are in Pajero, but in Jeeps one of the most common method to decrease the gap between bumpstop and the point of bumpstops imapct (axle) axle is by adding hockey pucks via a bolt.

Hi Fred. It is great to see now you have an analog camera. Which model of Canon is it and what type of lens it has? There is an amazing analog community in Dubai. We are on facebook and group name is Analog Photography in UAE. You can join there. We are making photo walks and sharing lots of good information. Places you need to know are GPP Gulf Photo Plus; They are selling variety of films and equipment. You can find a Trix or Tmax from here. https://gulfphotoplus.com/products/category/10/Film/ For developing and scanning film. He is a friend of mine and does this as secondary job, he is very good at it. https://filmoticon-spacelab.com/contact If you are in to printing your photos to the paper yourself via enlarger you can use Tashkeel. They have an amazing dark room with all the equipments you may need. https://tashkeel.org/artists/analog-photography-uae Some other links below https://www.thenationalnews.com/arts-culture/is-analogue-photography-making-a-comeback-in-the-digital-age-1.56348 https://www.thephoblographer.com/2021/05/29/dubais-analog-photographers-dont-mind-spending-on-their-love-for-film/ https://gulfnews.com/entertainment/arts-culture/glimpses-of-life-in-the-uae-1.63607835 https://gulfnews.com/entertainment/arts-culture/mindful-photography-1.2249848