Accessories

Tyres

The first thing to consider if you are planning to travel over rough roads is your tyres. Many new vehicles come with tyres that are provided with an emphasis on best handling on city streets. While this is less the case for four wheel drives, many of the more compact designs are shod with rubber that will disintegrate quickly on dirt roads.

Your tyres are your most important active safety equipment so do your homework and ensure that your vehicle is safely equipped for the terrain you intend covering. Light truck tyres and all terrain tyres may come into consideration but you need to ensure that you remain within the parameters set by your vehicle manufacturer to retain full warranty coverage.

Guards

Do you need underbody protection? Personally I consider a sump guard an essential component for any vehicle travelling on dirt roads. Most differentials are tough enough to go unprotected unless you’re planning to get airborne. Other protection plates should be considered if you identify vulnerable components hanging under the vehicle.

Radiator

You will encounter millions of insects during your journeys so an insect screen is a must. You will find purpose built screens for some vehicles or you can make up your own from fly wire or some other kind of mesh. Choose something with a fairly open mesh so that you don’t adversely affect air flow into the cooling system.

Bull Bar

Bull bars have excited a lot of discussion in recent years, principally because of the risk to pedestrians in an urban environment. In their proper environment, they have considerable utility and may enable your vehicle to survive an impact with a large animal well enough for you to carry on to your next port of call.

The first consideration in selecting a bull bar is compatibility with your airbag system. For this reason, home made bars are not the way to go. Your bar must be certified as compatible.

A second consideration is the effect on your approach angle and ground clearance. Approach angle is the angle at which you can successfully drive over an obstacle. Some bars will improve this. Others may reduce it. Similarly some bull bars dramatically reduce the ground clearance at the front of your vehicle.

In making your final selection, you need to achieve the optimal balance between strength and weight. Most bars are made of aluminum but new plastic bars are also coming into favour.

If you need to make provision for extra lights or a winch, now is the time to ensure that the preferred bull bar is suitable. It’s much more expensive to have the bar modified later on.

Lights

Do you need extra lights? This is really a personal decision. If you look around at the vehicles that live in rural areas, most people don’t bother. If you are travelling at sensible speeds, normal lights are perfectly adequate. If they are not, the first step would be to investigate stronger globes and check headlight alignment.

In some areas, fog lights may be useful but it’s probably better to avoid driving on unfamiliar roads in the fog in the first place. A spot light that reaches a bit further than your high beam is also a consideration but you may find repeatedly switching it off early enough for oncoming traffic a bit of a nuisance.

If you can find somewhere to mount a rear facing light, it will be an asset in some circumstances. For example, when setting up camp for the night.

Racks

Roof racks are essential for some travellers but if you can avoid them, your fuel consumption will be better. The same incidentally applies to bull bars. Anything that has the potential to change your vehicle’s aerodynamics should be considered a last resort.

If you have to use a rack, look for the best balance of strength and aerodynamics and make sure you are aware of your vehicles weight limitations for racks. If you put too much weight up there, you may damage your roof or make the whole vehicle more top heavy and vulnerable to rolling over. There are several good brands of luggage pods available which we hope to review later.

There are many other kinds of rack and rack acccessories available that will allow you to carry spare fuel and water , bicycles, spare tyres, jacks shovels, pretty well whatever your heart desires. Just make sure you really need this stuff and that it will be secure if carried externally to your vehicle.