Gaurav

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.

You can contact Jabal Tokyo for all your Mitsubishi Pajero used parts in Sharjah, amazing and helpful. https://goo.gl/maps/u8QUTionn1N2 Ahmed: 056 9675230

For 2625 or 2100 charge to the owner, they should better be good. Car switch seems running for a few years now and I have only heard a mixed review about them for their varying charges like, maybe they are still developing the product or have different pricing as per car value. Some says 5%, now hawx and sertac have diff numbers. Any idea how long the car switch process take for listing the car?

Hi @Neyaz welcome to Carnity. For a better and most effective response, you should add below background details: Which car is that? How many kms driven? From how long own this vehicle? When was the last service or scheduled maintenance done? Little reference of before and after this incident happen - driving for a long time, high speed, in traffic etc.

Well, it's a very smart move to capture that commercial pickup niche from RTA. So that people or companies doing quick moving or relocating pickup size stuff can call such fixed rate taxi pickup, then haggling on prices with private pickups. I agree TRD is a bit flashy though for such need, maybe that's the whole point to capture attention and make us talk

Al quaa desert is one of the best desert in the UAE that connects from Al Wagan to Al Quaa. We recently had an amazing crossing from Al Wagan most tempting dunes to Al Quaa desert, where we have witnessed the massive bowls, something like Liwa tall dunes of 150-200 meter in size. In one of the massive bowl in Al Quaa I went inside to do a sidey and got down to the base filled with bushes and no run-up to gain momentum faced massive difficulty to get out. It was an unforgettable memory for me and others to get my car out with 30 meters of rope + 30 meters of the winch rope from last quarter of that massive bowl. Anyone wish to repeat this, must look out for the drive to al quaa desert shortly

Bumping this old topic for knowing the possibility of "camping on shuweihat island" A lot of my friends and family have been asking about this, seems like a new great destination in UAE. @EmVarlet as you have been lately to the shuweihat island, can you please explain everything in full detail like the route, accessibility for car / 4x4, a possibility of doing camping on shuweihat island, how busy or empty it is during holiday season, nearby attractions or places to visit while going to shuweihat island etc.

Always try to recover in a straight line as much as possible. If straight isn't possible, then a slight diagonal angle would have saved this rollover; instead of recovering at this acute 90-degree angle, which was a perfect recipe for disaster. Secondly, speed of pull was too high for the first attempt, always start with soft pull first which help break the sand resistance gently. Minimum 3 soft pulls before attempting medium strength pull. Heights of people with so much lack of mere common sense to not to put basics of physics and geometry in such a simple application.

For most of the car enthusiasts here will be Carnity as a daily dose to kill time and then lurk elsewhere

That's not even a scrap price for a half cut now. I bought a half cut for 7k after tons of reference and negotiations

Imagine how much your Pajero will be valued after 5 years......?