July 2010

Since we upgraded our tires we wanted to move away from classic weights for tire balancing. The major benefit of using a dynamic balancing system such as Dyna Beads is that you should never have to have your tires re-balanced again. This is especially helpful as your tire size increases since larger amounts of rubber (especially in very aggressive tires) can harbor more ‘dense areas’ that are more difficult to balance. Also, many very large tires cannot be balanced on a traditional machine, so a dynamic solution is vital.

Since we started FJC Magazine, we’ve done a total of 10 articles for Off Road 101. These tips, tricks, and information have covered the gamut from tire options to trail armor, we’ve covered nearly everything a new FJ Cruiser owner would need to know.

That’s why I find it amazing that in all that time, with all these articles, we’ve never talked about how to best mount accessories to your roof rack. The reason we haven’t is actually pretty simple, up until now we’ve mounted our axe & shovel (the most popular accessories for your rack) with bungee cords. I know, that’s not very exciting. In the past we only mounted those items when we were going on trail runs. Also, the fact that most aftermarket mounts are rather expensive has kept us from making the jump on that mod.

New Venue. New Obstacles. New Challenges. No rain?

It was my fourth time out with the Bruisers for their annual Memorial Day weekend Mudfling event. This is their main event of the year, and every previous Mudfling has had its share of rain somewhere during the event.  This year was no exception. We encountered a few showers on the drive out to Gore, VA and the campground on Friday. Once we got to the campsite that afternoon though, the rain had stopped for the weekend.

Upon arriving at the campsite, we  pitched our tent and made our way around the campground to greet everyone. There were a fair amount of FJ Cruisers and some  relatives: FJ40s, FJ60s, FJ80s, 4 Runners, other Toyota family members, custom rock crawlers, Jeeps, and a four-wheel-steer rock crawling Suzuki. People arrived throughout the night from various locations and several hours drive away.

Our search for the best off road tire for our daily driver finally came to an end in May, with over 40,000 miles on our BFG AT tires, the time for change arrived! We decided (against the advice of everyone who voted on the poll, sorry about that) to go with the new Nitto Trail Grappler M/T tires. From what we’ve seen with these tires so far, they may be the best (but certainly not cheapest) M/T tire for daily driver FJ’s. Since we have the 16” TRD rims, the only size available so far is the 285/70/16. Without breaking down all the specifics of tire sizes, overall this tire is almost the same size as our stock 265/75/16’s: just a hair taller and quite a bit wider.