Shamil

For me it was when i bought a VW tiguan almost 10 yrs ago. Biggest financial blunder of my life!!

A year after using it, the transmission fails on me and I had to spend an arm and a leg getting it sorted. After that, I wanted to sell it but i barely got any buyers and after almost 6 months, i let it go for a throw away price. I mean no offense to any one, as everyone has their own opinions, but after that, I personally decided to never ever go for European cars ever again. I swear by Japanese makes as I feel they stand the test of time and yet they are not as expensive to maintain(or buy) as their European counterparts. Sure their cars are not as teched out as say - german makes for example but I would rather drive a no-frills noisy truck that will last longer than a fancy european car with numerous sensors, features and what not, which probably wont last very long.

9 minutes ago, Srikumar said:

I thought that once you come to Intermediate level in offroading this would be standard recovery procedure

you are right, but sometimes while recovering SUVs in the desert, we could perhaps skip a few of these points and still get the recovery done as opposed to a car with low ground clearance stuck in sand without tow points whereby a step by step procedure in a note format could help incase if you have forgotten something.

4 hours ago, Frederic said:

we were trying to spot something like this but his car didnt have any such provision and this is maybe because hes changed his bumper, see this image below which i got from google which closely resembles the kind of bumper he had and it has no such point

5 hours ago, Gaurav said:

As DD mentioned most cars (if not all) has front and/or back screw in tow point covered in bumper color plastic to conceal the hole. Use the key or flat head screw driver to open the hole.

Like below:

If you still couldnt find it or owner didnt had that screw-in hook, then you can clear such situation in less than 10 minutes.

1. Ask all by standers to clear sand under the chassis with hand, feet, or wooden pieces.
2. Go back to your car, bring your shovel, reach under body and wiggle the sand away.
3. Sit on driver seat and turn steering 5 times FULL left and 5 times FULL right.
4. Step out to check if all 4 tires are touching ground and chassis is free.
5. If no, go back to step 2&3. If yes give gentle gas (1500 rpm) in D and in reverse to see if car is moving in any direction.
6. Even if car moves an inch, keep on moving the car front and back at 1500 rpm to make a flat path. Every time you move back and forth you will gain few inches and that's what we want.
7. If further down there is more sand, use bystander to walk on it to flatten that track.
8. Once car is moving 10-12 feet in one direction of its own, pull back completely, start gently to move the car, once car is in motion and crossed 7-8 feet give 3000 rpm gas with quick left and right turn to escape from sandy patch.
9. Try to escape from the side where car just entered as that path must be already flat or easier to go back.
10. You can even use bystanders to push the car, if you are too close to escape. 4-5 people is enough to push the car out completely.

thanks @Gauravbhai, this is very useful info indeed, i will save it in the notepad app for quick reference.

7 hours ago, desertdude said:

There is usually a removable square plastic piece on the bumper in which a towing eye can be screwed in, usually found in the toolkit spare tire vicinity

thanks for the info, yes we tried to locate it but couldnt find it

So i wanted to share this situation i came across this weekend and i thought some of the seniors here might be able to throw some light on the situation.

We were leaving global village when i spotted a Ford mustang stuck in the sand. He was trying to park the car in the sandy patch away from the main parking as many other cars have done but the spot he chose had more sand and keep in mind that the mustang is quite a low car. I switch on my 4wd and rushed to see if i could help him, perhaps give him a tug as i could see that the car is crested. Since the mustang is a low car, its easy to get crested and the tires were dug in as well. So i realized there is no point in removing sand using a shovel around the tires because the chassis is stuck to the ground. But here's the real head scratcher - his car had no visible tow points! We looked around everywhere and we just couldn't find any points.

Now i am sure there probably were some points that were not visible to us but his front fancy bumper that was almost touching the floor was covering it so even if we accessed it, a tug would result in some damage to his bumper. In about half an hour, at least 4-5 more people came to the scene trying to help out but no one was able to figure it out. Since i had my family with me, i eventually left and i am not sure how he recovered but i thought i would share this topic here and see if any one has come across such a situation before and how can we recover such cases.

14 hours ago, desertdude said:

But the Xterra was designed and made in the USA.

well i was designed and made(born and raised) in the UAE but im still indian 😁 so...

8 minutes ago, Emmanuel said:

@Shamil don’t be upset, Jawaher didn’t say her last word 😂

i am sure she didnt, shes got a long way to go just like my nameless Xterra 😐

6 minutes ago, Emmanuel said:

@Javier M Thank you for your excellent lead ! It was all fun.

And thank you @Rahimdad for passing by at meeting point to say hi and to bring us Parhatas. This is exactly the kind of move you will only see in Carnity ! 

oh i totally forgot to mention about the parathas. @Rahimdad bhai, prior to having breakfast, my drive level was not at its best, but once i had the parathas, i was on fire! thanks @Rahimdad bhai for the parathas once again 😎

5 minutes ago, Srikumar said:

its a hard pill to swallow for some 

its the age old jeeps vs japs war that will never end 😁

36 minutes ago, Javier M said:

the Xterras were no match to the Jeep

 

🤣🤣 both me and @Emmanuel had our tires at higher PSI and we were too lazy to further deflate just before exiting. Next time!

29 minutes ago, Gaurav said:

 

@Shamil love your video and editing skills, you are getting better and better with these drive videos. keep it up.

thank you @Gauravbhai, im using a cheap action cam and a free app so their watermarks are all over the video which i am not too happy about. My aim is to have a clean 'watermark free' video eventually for which I will have to upgrade to a gopro.

it was an action packed fun drive. Thanks for the lead @Javier M and thanks for the sweep support @Emmanuel. Heres a link to the drive video:

On 12/31/2019 at 1:21 PM, Gaurav said:

Im in for a star gazing night, if anyone wanna join, lets post an event.

al qudra maybe?

3 hours ago, Per A said:

Any thoughts about this?

https://www.amazon.ae/dp/B07NYZCHJ8?ref_=pfb_97a5l5a3d4acgb3dmc22g1b92k4i&tag=fbcmapper-ae-21&ascsubtag=pfb-P01-V01-O3-T1-HI-WUZ8ZI&fbclid=IwAR38t0_srMuVmCnIUptq3trv13hxZOiuTSkF0Ew7YFsgW6upMZp76cLvRwk

And getting it permanent installed it wont be hanging cables and crap....

wow this looks good. i would look up a few youtube reviews of this before confirming the purchase just to be sure

What went wrong in this incident?

3 hours ago, Per A said:

looks good but im thinking about something that has both front and rear.

Do you have your camera permanently mounted? Do you have to turn it on or off or is it automatic? 

I have it permanently mounted and it automatically switches on and shuts off with the ignition.

10 minutes ago, Fuad said:

I would like to know the details of the same. Price,Spec and all

check this link - https://www.amazon.ae/70mai-Control-Dashboard-Recorder-G-Sensor/dp/B07MMW4LPQ/ref=sr_1_1?crid=EIAWO72YHOAR&keywords=xiaomi+70mai+pro+dash+cam&qid=1577627134&sprefix=xiaomi+70%2Caps%2C262&sr=8-1

i use the xiaomi 70mai dashcam which is quite reasonably priced and it works on a capacitor as opposed to lithium batteries (which is what most action cams such as gopro use). The advantage of capacitor powered dashcams is that they only work when the car is switched on and they can withstand higher temperatures as opposed to lithium battery powered action cams. 

congrats @Fuad

congrats @Jeepie

2 minutes ago, Emmanuel said:

Congrats @Shamil for your passing! 
So they didn’t say anything about your front metallic bumper ? 

Since I stuck the rubber pads, it was fine. They did mention in the test results however that the front bumper is modified.

thanks @Gaurav bhai, I literally stuck this just minutes before i got to the passing center and removed it after the passing because it looks quite odd on the roads 😂

did someone say karaoke? no extra points for guessing which song im gonna sing.

The real logic behind shape of teslas cybertruck 😂

im not blown away by it but yes its a good change.

14 hours ago, Rahimdad said:

Thanks @Roshan Abraham for your kind words.

@Wrangeld you always leave me falling to the floor laughing and totally impressed with your writing skills as much as I enjoy you driving up the dunes.

Trip Report - So it was a chilly morning, I wore my jacket to the meeting point declaring winter has started in UAE. Even Superman feels cold, hahaha. The best part was even though @Shamil's son was not feeling well, he messaged me that he was going to be delayed, but reached in good time along with @Srikumar who also got slightly delayed. Unfortunately @AKR was going to bring his father to the drive, but since he was about 25 minutes delayed beyond the start point he volunteered to stay back and join us next time. This meant we had 6 cars only but 8 drivers as couple of our cars carry a spare driver. On the way to the deflation point we decided to enter Khatim instead of Mahafiz. Once we reached there was a sign that read "Do not approach", with some small print saying "Sharjah Police Headquarters" so taking it as Do not approach Sharjah Police headquarters I was under pressure from the word go to have no incidents on the way as we were not allowed to approach Sharjah Police HQ.

After a brief brief and convoy numbering we were off. Within the first 200 meters we had a couple of refusals and a pop-out. I was very pleased to see @Shamil taking the lead to prepare to fix the pop-out, it is great to see on his first attempt he got 99% things correct and needed just a 1% change of jack angle to lift the car and start something that was just not supposed to be sorted on the day. Everybody was patient and we continuously tied different angles and approach to fix the pop-out with @Shamil on the forefront to help out in anyway he could. With one last attempt from @Srikumar and myself it was decided to change the tire. The spare was not that big an issue, however removing the tire meant we needed an allen key to get to the nuts, however with the stock lug wrench would not reach the nuts due to its thickness. At this point I had to look at my overly loaded truck bed to eventually find something that would fit. From here it took almost no time to remove the tire and replace it with the spare. The spare was a bit smaller, but that would not bother us in the desert and worked out well, except it kept leaking air, so after every half an hour it would go from 15 PSI to 12 PSI and we would have to refill it.

The drive from this point seemed like a breeze as we quickly reached the top of Fossil Rocks with another team of off-roaders waiting around for some reason. We accessed the area and decided the best way was to go straight down. With a quick brief we had 3 cars take on the wild stuff, while the other 3 decided to go around the Fossil Rocks. After I came down half way to access the ever changing slip face of Fossil Rocks, @Shamil was next to go all the way down to be sure all was clear for @Wrangeld. @Emmanuel, @Roshan Abraham and @Srikumar in the meantime came around the corner to meet us up o our way to Faya. Upon checking with @Jeepie she was like that was not scary at all. Earlier in the day I learned that she was into Enfield bikes and got to meet a group at the meeting point while she was wearing the T-Shirt. Having been in off-road situations on a heavy bike must have hardened her not to feel scared coming down the Fossil Rock slip face the fist time.

It was now play time and we started to move to Faya. There were excellent opportunities to play around and we quickly reached Faya with very little delays in form of a couple of refusals, but everyone was absolutely amazing at reaching on top of Faya from the back side. The distant tree giving shade was going to be our resting point to have a quick bite and discussion before we were off for our final session. So as we sat around and feasted on some well deserved breakfast, the thought of the last part occupied our minds. For the first time in Carnity history it took us lesser time to pack up the stuff than it took us for the setup. Before I could even get into my car all were ready with their engines roaring and ready to go. With another inflation for @Roshan Abraham with the help of @Shamil bhai we were off to the base of Faya. Everybody had their turns and enjoyed it a lot, but unfortunately none of us were able to conquer Faya from the front face, I think mainly due to some nasty bumps just where you are supposed to gain momentum.

With Friday Prayer time close at hand I decided to quickly head to the Masjid in Mahafiz with a fast paced off-road section close to the road just in case we got held up. As we headed closer to teh Mahafiz area I was tempted by one lovely large dune and decided to go over it instead of around it as I knew the Masjid was about 2 minuted ride from the other side. However as everybody manged well and to a certain point, on the top I found the hard way that it was all large rocks on the other side, which meant I had to self recover by reversing with the utmost precision to make it back with the group. Once down we headed back to the track around the dune and heard the Azaan go off. What a time to end the drive and get the Muslims to prayers in the nick of time. The drive ended with our usual warm hugs with a promise to meet again in the ever challenging dunes.

All in all I was very happy to have a bunch a wonderful people around me full of energy, smiles and the will to keep going. Above all it gave me great pleasure to see the growth in @Shamil who is now taking on the role of a reliable help at hand when you need him. until we meet again it farewell and take care.

Right from the get go, the drive was exciting as @Rahimdadbhai had told us during the briefing. And just a few minutes into the drive, i was surprised to see @Roshan Abrahams tire had popped out - prior to this, i always came across pop outs, once the car has been driven for a considerable amount of time.

Thank you so much for your kind words @Rahimdadbhai. I am so grateful for having learned so much in a limited time (less than a year) under the tutelage of the carnity seniors - @Rahimdad bhai, @Gaurav bhai, @Srikumar, @Emmanuel and @Frederic. You have all been very patient with me whilst imparting your knowledge and the learning process is still on going and will continue as we always learn something new from every situation in the desert. Even though, I have come across several pop out situations, this one was different as @Roshan Abrahams tire was not popping back in completely and that was something new.

But once, we were all sorted, we then proceeded to play on some technical dunes and this is when I realized that i was having a wee bit too much fun, as my son asked me to pull over since he was feeling a bit queasy. I had to request the convoy to stop for this and I would like thank every member of the convoy for coming towards us and checking up on us. All in all, yet another fun filled drive - great club, great people, great weather, I couldnt ask for more.