Offroading - getting the right tools for the job

The world of off-roading is a long and winding path of adventures, filled with adrenaline fueled fun and complex strategies of overcoming the obstacles ahead. With the ever changing barriers and hindrances of offroading, these strategies need to adapt throughout the many trails you take and within these trails themselves. If you've found yourself on a particularily hard trail with many obstacles, you weren't heavily prepared for, you might have experienced that your strategies don't always work out as planned and that you're lacking the right tools for the job. Whether you failed and rolled over or miraculously made it past, you've made a memory lasting for a lifetime and and hopefully adapted through the experience and prepared with better tools for the next trail. 

Preparing for failure 

Whether you like it or not, failure is always going to be around the corner. However experienced you might be, sometimes experience just isn't enough and limiting your mistakes is never a fail safe. Even the most experienced offroaders have failed simple tasks that newcomers could easily have handled and sometimes luck just isn't with you on a trail. Preparing for failure is one of the most important aspect of off-roading, as it could be life saving. Clothes fit for the climate you're in and a couple of days rations should always be packed away for those extreme failures that might occur and you might have to trek back. On that note, another extremely important thing is to bring a friend. As well as making the journey more fun and to have someone to share the experience with, bringing a friend could make a failure go from a life changing experience to a memorable one. If you somehow manage to get stuck somewhere or accidentally flip over, a friend ready with a car and a winch will be there to help you get out, and vice-versa.It's especially important to bring a winch if you are travelling alone as the winch will be able to help you get out from tough places, easier than you could ever imagine. Do your research at Winch Mania to get the best one and the most suitable for you. Now, even if you bring a friend, clothes rations and a winch, never forget to tell someone not joining you on your adventure where you are going so that if something goes horribly wrong they can tell someone to come and get you. 

Limiting failure

Even though we can't fully erase the possibility of failure, you should always think to limit the chances. Having your car outfitted with the correct gear pertaining to the tracks you usually take, is an important part of offroading. Different cars are built for different types of terrain and to get the most out of your car, it should be outfitted with machinery that works well in the most diverse off road terrain as possible. 

Think about what gearbox fit both your car and the terrain you're planning to use it in and then research which type of gearbox is suitable. If you’re planning to go through muddy water or travel uphill, or on steep hills, you might need different gearboxes for each one and if you're going to do both, yet a third one might do better. The same saying goes for your suspension, wheels, battery,  engine, car tools and even the car as a whole itself, so it's important to do your research before you go out into the wild. 

Practice makes perfect

While trying to limit failure and upgrading your car can take a while and cost a bit of money, the most important aspect and tool in off-roading is of course yourself. Upgrading your car is a tricky process and getting the perfect car for you is going to take a while.The same goes for you, only you will upgrade yourself automatically little by little. Practice makes perfect and failures are as important as victories (if not more fundamental), every obstacle faced when off-roading will give you something new to think about and to take away from and every obstacle will get easier over time. Soon enough you will get so comfortable with your car you will get a feel for every stone and gravel on the underside of your wheel and be able to tell where your engine is in its cycle from the vibrations on your seat alone. However comfortable you'll get just always remember to bring the essentials, clothes rations and winches as you'll never know what's going to happen.