Lockers, articulation and traction

[BackBone]

My advice:
Wheel a bunch as is. You'll learn line selection. You'll learn how to stack rocks when you can't get over something. You'll appreciate getting over things open-open more than fully built.

Lockers, SAS and big tires. Any idiot can point their rig up a trail and go with that set up. If you want to learn how to be a better driver offroad, spend some time in the trenches with an open-open setup. Do 8-12 trips like that, then upgrade something.

When I was autoxing, the better drivers were the ones who spent a couple years in low powered cars with street tires. The new guys that showed up and ran race tires would get beaten by those street tire drivers after awhile.

Sounds right. But isn't one of the first shortcomings that arise - after curing the "newbie driver syndrome" - is the need for lockers? So then learning to drive better will give me a better idea as to why I need lockers and how they will help?

 

[2TimingTom]

After you've cured some of the newbie syndrome, go with bigger tires and a winch. But then bigger tires will cause you to need to regear, so might as well put lockers/LSD in while you have that open.

It's really a visous circle.

 

[bronchole]

I have the hitch adaptor that allows the use of a D ring. If you go that way make sure to tie the pin to the D ring somehow so it doesn't back out and drop off your rig going down the road.

I also just use a hitch pin in the receiver. I slide the end of the tow strap in to the receiver and then slip the hitch pin thru the loop on the end of the strap. Works good as long as your strap end will fit in the receiver.

When I bought my rig it had a front receiver mount. I removed that when I installed my winch, but I also added a receiver mount to the bottom of the winch tray.

On my wife's now dead Explorer I installed an aluminum tow point I removed from an F150 on the frame rail. I had to do a small amount of modification to the bumper, but it looked nice and worked quite well.