Shifting into 4WD: The SUV Owner's 4WD Handbook

Rick Russell, Sidekick Off Road, December 2001
From basics to advanced, this 4WD handbook provides a witty, informative look at leaving the pavement for a backcountry experience.


Jimmy Nylund, FOUR WHEELER magazine, December 2001
This book contains all the basic things you really should know before going four wheeling, and then some.


Jim Walczak, About, Inc., 4-Wheel Drive/SUVs, February 28, 2002
...it's definitely a Handbook...you will find at least one great tip that you haven't tried before.


Book Description
This handbook is designed to be a constant trailside companion regardless of your experience level. It presents field-tested, experience-based methods and techniques for using your 4WD SUV, truck or Jeep off highway. With safety in mind, and Mother Nature never forgotten, SHIFTING INTO 4WD covers how 4WD works, driving different terrain, making field repairs and getting unstuck. It offers numerous lists and, with an incredible index that conforms to your style of thinking, it steers you to the exact concept you're looking for. And if all else fails, it offers basic survival hints that will help you enjoy waiting for help to arrive.


From the Publisher
Harry Lewellyn, dubbed by the 4WD industry as the "Professor of Off-Road," is a quantitative, analytical engineer by training and a teacher to the core. He thoroughly investigates before presenting only fact-based information and strives to share his 4WD experience. Better known as the "Silver Coyote," Harry uses his canine cunning to separate fact from fiction and exposes untested hype and myths. He dispels what he calls, "Old Husbands' Tales:" Old regime techniques and methods that are potentially damaging to modern SUVs.


From the Author
I want to offer safe and environmentally responsible information that is valuable to all who choose to venture off the interstates. I further want to convince those with a latent sense of adventure that the 4WD war stories that so often keep us home are created, not randomly encountered. This handbook confronts off-road bogeymen head on! Bogeymen can't survive my simple, performance-, results-oriented information.


About the Author
In 1952, my family homesteaded remote desert property in California. I was irreversibly introduced to the wonders and awe of Mother Nature. In 1984, I offered my first college 4WD tour and things have never been the same. Since then, I've led tours, taught 4WD classes, published books and a newsletter, been an expert witness for the federal government, appeared on TV and radio, and more. I've observed countless 4WD-driving situations that have encompassed a full spectrum of drivers in a vast variety of vehicles on an unbelievable mix of roads and trails. This handbook is the result of that experience.


Excerpted from Shifting into 4WD: The SUV Owner's 4WD Handbook by Harry Lewellyn. Copyright © 2002. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
From Chapter 6: DEEP VEES, Cross Diagonally If a significant dip is across the road, approach slowly and cross it at an angle. By placing one tire at a time into the ditch, you are less likely to drag the frame and benefit by less "coming out" resistance. Place two wheels in the ditch, at the same time, and you literally have to lift the entire 4X up and out at a steep angle. In addition, with head on, the front tires have less traction because they are both gnawing away at the steeper deep vee slope. The diagonal approach typically will go something like left front, right front, then left rear and right rear or vice versa. You also gain ground clearance with this one-wheel-at-a-time approach. The potential and severity of frame-drag is lessened. When you drop two wheels in one at a time, you may find a significant left-to-right portion of the undercarriage drags. One wheel at a time hangs up only a portion of the frame, not all of it at once. Traverse deep vees diagonally. It helps smooth out the gentler ones, too. Test this diagonal approach technique on parking lot speed bumps. Diagonal all but eliminates their annoying discomfort.


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