Trip to Carnegie and First Offroad Impressions
On August 5th, my friends and I decided we would head out to Carnegie for some fun in the dirt.
Carnegie is a SVRA in the foothills of Livermore, CA.
I hadn't tried out my 4R offroad yet, so I was excited to get out there. My friends brought their dirt bikes along as well.
Our convoy rolled out in the morning to enjoy the earlier part of the day.
Only $5 dollars to get in, which is awesome!
We set up camp in our own little area and we were ready to kick up some dirt, rocks and anything else on the ground.
I hadn't ridden a dirt bike before, so I thought I would give it a try before testing out the 4R. It was pretty awesome riding the dirt bike, but I think I'll stick to cars.
After screwing around with the dirt bike, I set out to the little 4x4 play area they have.
They have a mudpit(that was dry), a sandpit(that wasn't too thick), hills that are just dirt, hills that have big rocks on them, hills that have steps on them, a gravel pit, and other obstacles that are more for rock crawlers. The first thing that stuck out to me was the steep dirt hills. I wanted to see how well this old girl was gonna do with only 2WD so I hit the hill in that.
I was so impressed the whole day, but powering up this hill with just a little wheel spin in 2WD was amazing. There was never a question in my mind that I would even come close to not making it. Now I wanted to test out the 4x4. I threw it into 4 Hi and powered up the same hill with no wheel spin at all. I was so stoked. Lastly, I wanted to test out the 4 Lo. I went to the same hill and slowly powered up it with ZERO wheel spin again.
Some of you may know how amazing these things are offroad, but I had never driven one offroad before today and I am so happy I made the decision to purchase a T4R.
The rest of the day I just drove around on the obstacles that weren't for rock crawlers and I did everything easily without 4WD. It was a great experience and it made me that much more excited to do some more offroading.
Impression on Carnegie:
For dirtbikes, this place is pretty great. Lots of hill climbs, a couple tracks and a lot of area to chill and relax. You can practically go all day without seeing more than a handful of people.
For 4x4s, it was okay. There are no trails you can drive on. The only thing they have is the play area which is fairly small and not too challenging. That being said, they have obstacles I could definitely not attempt with my stock 4R, but they had stuff where I could really see how great this baby was offroad.
First Offroad Impressions:
My 4runner is all stock with 265/70/16 Cooper Discovery LSX tires. These tires did really great. They gripped onto everything I needed to and even when they were slipping, they kept grabbing. My 4runner just mobbed up everything I wanted to do in 2WD and when I threw it in 4WD it didn't even break a sweat. I was very impressed with this. That being said, I know I want to make some modifications to make it even more worthy. A 3in. suspension lift would definitely add some more clearance and make the ride better. The tires I have are pretty great, but I know I want to go a size up when I get new ones. My running boards caused me no issues, but they definitely could in the future. Overall, my 4R did great and I feel very confident in it's ability to conquer what you put in front of it.
