ChrisW

That was a really fun morning out! A small but perfectly formed convoy. @Asif Hussain - Thank you for leading a well paced drive on some exciting lines. Always a relaxed but demanding drive with you. Also thanks for the second lead position - really enjoy the chance to take an active role in the convoy. @Johannes Roux - Great work today, watching you in my rear-view, you made some great calls and dealt with everything well. This was a great drive to start your FB+ journey with! @Luke K P - Pleasure as always, and you got to use all the toys today! Shovels, ropes, shackles, jacks, boards…top work 😂

The ChrisW winching service: we’re not happy until you’re not happy!

Thank you again for the late step in, @Asif Hussain - the drive was excellent, very good fun. Really enjoyed myself, you picked some great lines and led the convoy well. Everyone drove to a really high standard as well - impressive that we kept flowing given the size of the dunes and softness of sand!

I’m late to the party here! Congrats @Luke K P, really pleased for you - looking forward to seeing your calm demeanour and colourful clothes doing more with Carnity!

Thank you, Asif! I’m in. In view of the heat I wonder if we should aim to be driving by 6am

All fixed! I think mine was Buggies Dune.

The place is such an amazing adventure, the dunes so big, it’s always tempting to push it a little further. I was wondering if this sidey is the same dune as the one @Frederic ran on - as you can see, looks super easy, tempting to push it…but those contours in the sand can throw a car out of shape so quickly. It certainly exercised the full range of my suspension!

So my biggest “oh no” moment that I caught on camera is probably this one. Left side is forward view and right side is looking backwards. Very simple…tall ridge crossing, super soft on top, @Zed managed to miraculously pop across the top of the ridge without breaking it for me (😂), and I didn’t anticipate just how quickly my front diff would plough the ridge and bring me to a stop (you can see the approach speed was fairly high…but the momentum disappeared super quick). What made this an “oh no” rather than an “oh <choose your expletive here>” is @Marek leaving enough room to also come to a stop, and the car behind him in turn having the room to turn down. Great lesson in giving yourself enough distance to watch, think and react.

This was my biggest case of “famous last words”. Luke, Zeddy and I did a short local drive by ourselves, and I mentioned before we started that I’d just had a winch fitted and wanted to try it out. Luke very kindly offered me the opportunity… 😂 Happily the winch works great and Luke was the first in a long list of happy customers!

See you out there my follow travellers.

Good work @Diego - looking forward to seeing you and the mighty Raptor out soon!

https://maps.app.goo.gl/gXy6spwyC6Wg8CmK6?g_st=com.google.maps.preview.copy

Congrats @Mike M. - well deserved! Your infectious enthusiasm will be sure to help new generations of Carnity drivers on their journey. Looking forward to seeing you out soon.

Thank you, @M.Seidam - that was a really impressive drive…finding lines that are sweeping, flowing and clean at the speed we made is truly impressive driving. I had great fun. Also some good news/bad news from my side…good news was I drove back to Al Ain with no issues, and sent the car on the truck to the garage this morning…bad news is I did manage to bend my front axle housing (a known weak spot for the Wrangler). To share for everyone’s benefit: - I think I took a slightly different line coming out of some soft sand, and crossed a ridge that was sharper than I expected. The nose of my car hit the ground somewhere around the bumper/bash plate, with the front tyres taking a lot of the force. - The initial impact winded me and took me by surprise. I turned the engine off, called on the radio that I had stopped, grabbed my head torch and radio, and hopped out to inspect the car. The car was fine to drive out. I was also fine to drive it after giving myself a few minutes to settle again! - A few learning points from my side…firstly if you have a problem get on the radio, having Luke et al come to assist was greatly reassuring. Secondly having everything strapped down and secure paid off…nothing inside the cabin moved. Last point is - and this is especially for a night drive - far better to stop and think carefully about coming back to the line (and potentially ask for help in doing so) than to press on. All in all it was a great night drive, and happily the car can always be fixed…potentially with some upgrades too! 😉😂

Thank you, @JeromeFJ - that was a fun drive with some nicely paced sections allowing both practice of tighter more technical skills along with the longer, faster, more flowing sections. Despite having driven Sweihan many, many times - some of those tracks were new to me and very fun! I was also impressed with your patience breaking into the dunes to the west - it paid off! Team FJ to the rescue!

Thanks for a fun drive today, @Davie Smooth_Operator. Everyone drove really well and kept their cool even as the temperatures came up. Plenty of variety in conditions to practice fundamental techniques…good practice for all experience levels. Also thanks @Benje_Junior, @Mark B and @Luke K P for supporting - with extra thanks to Luke for the coffee!

This is something I ended up messing around with recently. Basically on the Wrangler the auxiliary battery is connected in parallel to the main battery almost all of the time, with the two being separated briefly during the engine start (where the voltages can be checked separately) and during an Engine-Start-Stop event (where the aux battery is used to power the cabin load, eg items like the air blower fan, radio/onboard entertainment etc) such that the main battery is preserved for cranking the engine. If the auxiliary battery or main battery goes bad (happens reasonably often), because they sit in parallel most of the time, they’ll tend to kill the other battery fairly quickly. That’s how you often end up having to change both at the same time. As an FYI, if anyone should wish to change the aux battery themselves, it’s easier to remove the fender (four bolts, one push pin, and replace a few clips on the reinstall) and drop the battery tray…looks extreme but it’s a fairly easy job and can be done in under an hour: The access from below is much easier than pulling out the fusebox. You could also isolate the aux battery and disable it… There’s an argument to be made that the incorporation of a second battery in this way (dissimilar sized batteries running in parallel) is a really bad piece of design that was rushed into place to meet restrictive US automotive emissions regulations. There’s a negative cable that runs from the aux battery to the main. If you disconnect and isolate that, remove fuse F42, and persistently disable ESS (using eg a Tazer JL Mini), then your car will happily run on the main battery only - and probably have much longer battery life in that setup. However there’s also a good argument to be made to just leave it as it is and lean on the warranty!

So I’ll promise to stop spamming the air compressor threads soon! 😬😂 I recently upgraded my onboard air, and as part of that, installed the ARB Pressure Control and an air tank. The air tank does not make anything appreciably faster. But there is a logic which I’ll explain… ARB Brushless Compressor, pressure controller, manifold and valves (going up to a reel air hose mounted on the roll cage). This setup will be made tidier once the line adaptive arrives and I can remove the manifold and connect the line directly to the solenoid valve block. Air tank mounted to the underside of the car, roughly placed under the driver’s side passenger footwell. The ARB pressure control is a nice-to-have in that you can hook up a four-hose line, preset the desired pressure and leave it running automatically while you go and do other stuff (…take down flag, pack gear away, swat flies, send the other half increasingly fictitious reasons as to why you’re running late to the afternoon event that you totally forgot about). However the controlling algorithm is really dumb! Most auto inflation systems would do something like this: 1.) Measure the pressure 2.) Apply pressure for a short period of time (say 10 seconds) 3.) Measure the pressure again and guesstimate the time required to reach the target pressure (based on measured pressure now, target pressure, and pressure gained during the short fill) 4.) Do a long fill for half the time you expect to need 5.) Stop, measure (should be roughly halfway to target pressure), recalculate, go again. 6.) Stop, measure, fine tune to target pressure - done The ARB controller instead stops every 15-20 seconds and measures the pressure. This stop-start is short, but if you have the compressor directly connected to the line, you’re cycling the pump on and off repeatedly (solenoid valve closes, pump runs until it quickly hits the 150 PSI cut-off, turns off until solenoid valve opens again). If however you have an air tank in the mix, when the ARB controller closes the valve to measure the pressure, the pump can keep going and top up the air tank. When the valve opens you get a quick extra burst of pressure, and the pump runs continuously. Testing on a like-for-like basis, the time to inflate my 4 x KN02’s from 7.5 PSI to 35 PSI did not change without (manual method, by hand) and with an air tank (with ARB controller); however with an air tank, the pump ran continuously and did not pressure cycle repeatedly. There are some secondary benefits - using air tools and having a quick burst of pressure for a stubborn pop-out…but this would be a rare use case I expect.

Agreed - when you run the numbers, most pumps can supply volumes well in excess of what one Schrader valve will admit given the surface area of the value and the pressures the pumps works out. The heating effect then comes up in a few ways: as described above the air line chucks will heat up (most pressure at the tightest constrictions), you will also find the pump will work harder against a higher pressure head due to the constriction. This can be measured indirectly by the number of popped fuses people get when turning the pump on against already pressurised lines! All things being equal, for most dedicated air compressors, a multi-hose setup will be a much better match of flow rates (in terms of time, lessening the work done by the pump, and heat). From memory the twin ARB compressor is a total waste of performance for single hose inflation, and mostly only makes sense once you start filling four tyres at once.

Thank you, @nithish468! I really enjoyed the winter fit this year! I think for me some honourable mentions must go to @J-P L (love seeing the Jimny’s and it gave me great faith driving alongside someone else with a manual transmission when I had the old JK), and@Mark B and @Zed for their unstoppable tinkering with their cars! My vote however will be going to @Marek…love seeing that beast out on the sand, and if I wasn’t already setup with the JL I’d definitely have designs on chasing a similar setup!

A wonderful drive last night, thank you @M.Seidam - a great area to drive in the dark, and you hosted a very generous desert suhoor! A couple of videos of our convoy… Qudra Night Drive 1 Qudra Night Drive 2 A nice night with new friends and old: Ramadan Kareem!

Amazing drive today @Looper - thrills and happily no spills on some great lines today in Sweihan. Thank you! A few videos off the 360… Looping off the ridge… Ridge Climbing… High Ridge Cross…

Just had a quick look… The single compressor is rated for 50% duty cycle, 30 minutes on followed by 30 minutes cooling. The cut-off kicks in at 115 degC. If the compressor was left in the direct sunlight today and sat on the floor, there’s a good likelihood it would hit 115 degC after running for a while. There’s a few things you can do: - Sit the compressor in the shade (less heat due to sun) - Make sure the air filter is clear and the air chuck at the end of the hose is also clear (good flow, motor works less hard against any resistance) - Ensure good contacts with battery (running motor at lower voltage can result in higher heat) - Use a two hose or four hose setup to fill multiple tyres simultaneously (more efficient)

Hey Mike - it was buried a bit further down in the write-up but I did a back-to-back comparison between the brushed twin and brushless twin: