As a special treat we went over to the MacMillan Charity 4x4 Drive around at Slab Common. Slab Common is a military driving area where REME practice large vehicle recoverys. Therefore it is chewed up by tanks and strewn with wrecked vehicles. Some very challenging sand (they also practice Army desert maneouvres here) led to some sticky moments.

A common problem with a lifted Jimny is "Jimny Lean". This is where it appears to sag on the driver side. The original manufacturers springs are stiffer on the drivers side but most lift kits do not cater for this.

One simple answer is to put a spring spacer in on the drivers side. These are available from "Bits4Vits" in the UK. Here are some pictures of mine.

Dennis has sent in some new pictures of some extreme green laning! Looks like it might have needed a bit more than T-Cut to clean it afterwards.

Thames Valley 4x4's February event was at the club's home site of Oxley's Shaw. Following the recent rain the site was the wettest its ever been, with simple muddy tracks seeing every scrabbling for grip.

The Jimny, with its relatively light weight and fat tyres struggled for grip. Instead of cutting through the mud to the grip below it floated on the muddy surface and ground to a wheelspinning halt.

These conditions really needed tall thin tyres in order to be successful.

So in fitting the front winch I have been looking for a location for the second battery. Playing around with a battery showed that there is not really enough space under the bonnet. The problem is height rather than length. Anyway, the rear tray in the boot is an attractive location for the battery and it puts more weight over the rear wheels.

My car was converted to take a rear winch and this was fitted in the rear tray with a hole for the cable exit. This was letting water in now that the winch is not fitted so in order to fit the battery I needed to fill the hole.......