Beach 4x4 Driving Tips | Beginners Guide

g'day guys and welcome to beach for driving for beginners if you're wondering who the beginners are it's actually me nah just kidding so this video is really aimed at the people that have just bought their first forward Drive and they're a little bit nervous about taking their for drive on the beach for the first time so we're going to go through what you need to know how to do it some tips and some tricks all that kind of stuff in this video so first things first you're going to need a forward drive or an all drive of some description one that has a little bit of clearance would definitely help but that being said one time I was down at Warren Beach and some friends of mine their family came down in their mazda cx9 or drive just an all wheel drive vehicle with a little bit of clearance they let down the tires had no dramas at all so it's not about having crazy lifts and massive tires you don't need any of that to go down the beach it's all about tire pressures and clearance that's it now what else do you actually need well seeing as we're going down the beach solo we don't actually need a snatch strap I might just go get that actually that is 100% not true if you're going down the beach solo there's all the more reason to carry a snatch strap the reason being is if you get stuck and somebody comes along and they're willing to give you a snatch out it's kind of just the etiquette goes that if you get stuck it should be your recovery gear that you use that way forgets are damaged or snaps or breaks or anything like that it's your own gear you're not damaging somebody else's gear so a snatch strap and a couple of shackles and you generally want to make sure that you actually have somewhere you can attach these through like a research you can put the snatch strap into a research or you can use a factory recovery point as long as you're not doing anything too crazy so besides that what else do we need a tire gauge of some description this one is an analogue one it can be a digital one it doesn't really matter now some people would say that you need a tyre deflator I wouldn't really agree with that if you're going forward driving for the first time don't even worry about buying one of these try out for were driving see if you like it and if you like it all the accessories but you can be perfectly fine using your standard tire gauge now another thing that you need depending where you're going is an air compressor and you guys keep a secret there's actually no air compressor in here they used to be but now it's mounted in the car now it's just a toolbox now what I mean by that is if you're going for driving close to a town like we will be you could actually get away without an air compressor you can just go to the service station after you're done air up the tires too easy but it is generally recommended to carry an air compressor so what else do you need I was hoping for something a little bit bigger but it'll do a shovel is an absolute basic thing that you should have if you're going Beach for driving these things are so useful and it will get you out of so many different situations this one's a little bit small I was hoping for something a little bit bigger but I couldn't find a bigger one and if you have one that's a long-handled shovel as well they're awesome because it means you can get right under the car if you get stuck ok what do you need to do next now before you hit the beach it's a really good idea to just have a quick flick through of your owners manual it'll tell you how to operate your forward drive system how to enable high-range how to enable low-range how to turn on some traction aids like diff locks how to turn off stability control and things like that you might have to lock your hubs manually or you might have automatic hubs in any case your manual go through everything you need to know about enabling your forward drive system now you might be wondering what's the difference between high range for Drive and low range for Drive well a high range for Drive is like when you're on your bicycle and you've got it say in seventh gear you know and you're pedaling and you know you you're getting a fairly good speed at the rate that you're going now if you drop down to gear number one on your bike you're still pedaling at the same speed but you're just not getting anywhere you just you can't go fast and that's because you still got the same engine I mean you're peddling the same way that you were but the the gearing is just different and what that means is you've got a lot more torque so if you are in high range for Drive and you put your foot down and the car just doesn't want to get moving if you just switch down to the low range forward Drive you'll get a lot more torque and you'll probably be able to crawl out of the situation so really low range for Drive is for crawling and speeds below usually 40 Kay's an hour that's low range for drive if you want to go faster than 40 and still be in forward drive high range for drive is the way to go now every vehicle is a little bit different but normally this car high range for drive on the beach no dramas at all now I'll show you guys how to operate for driving this vehicle every vehicle is different like I mentioned but I'll just show you so to engage for drive super easy just turn the switch into 4h that enables full drive high range super easy to engage forward drive low range you just need to put it into neutral and then turn the switch into for low pretty simple height now there is other things that you need to learn as well like how to disable your dynamic Stability control if your vehicle has it this is only an issue with modern vehicles your old cars don't have all this electronic rubbish but anyway learn how to disable it so if you read your manual and you it might tell you how to disable most of it in this particular car here it doesn't actually tell you how to disable it fully anywhere that I have ever read so all you actually need to do on this car fully disabled the system is to hold down the button for 10 seconds until the light flashes and then it will completely disable because what will happen otherwise is you'll be powering around a corner or something and it'll kill your power exactly when you need it the most now some vehicles these stability systems actually help you when you're forward driving like the d-max is for instance I'm pretty sure they have a good traction control system that actually helps you in this vehicle it doesn't so the best idea with the BG 50s is just to completely disable it when you're offroad I think we're ready to hit the beach let's go [Music] what a beautiful day to go for driving for the first time as a beginner if you can crack a day like this you're winning thirty degrees very minimal wind perfect day and we're out a beautiful location this is Sandy Point no sandy Cape let me get that right sandy Cape just a little bit north of jurien bay in western australia all right first things first tire pressures so why do we drop our tire pressures well the key to beach for driving is dropping your tire pressures it improves the vehicles performance insanely your car will go anywhere if you have the right tire pressures now what do you actually do by dropping the tire pressures or you extend the footprint of the tire normally with a fully inflated tire you only have about that much tread touching the ground something like that now when you deflate the tires you can actually almost double the amount of tread that you have touching the ground at any given time so you just have so much more traction as a result also if you have tires that have some really nice aggressive side tread that's gonna come down and also touch the ground as well like my mud tires they have really aggressive treads so when you let them down they actually bag out and you actually have more traction a result because of the side lugs side tread as well now the second reason is it actually protects the tracks and it stops the tracks getting so cut out because you don't have to rev the engine so hard you're not spinning your tires the tracks also gets aged so there's another good reason so let's drop the tires I actually forgot my tire pressure gauge give me a minute now having a tighter flatter is faster I mentioned that before but if you're just starting out one of these will do the trick so it'll just take you a little bit longer than normal what are we actually going to go down through that's a tough question every vehicle is different every loads different every tire reacts differently if you've got a ten inch rims I wouldn't recommend going too low because you actually don't have much sidewall so then if you hit a rock with something it could actually damage you're in so be careful if you're owning a 10 inch wheels with this tire here I actually did a test with these tires how low you can go before the tire came off the rim and it I went down all the way to 6 psi before the tire actually popped off the rim so that is the danger if you go too low if you come across a rock or a root and it pushes the sidewall in you can actually pop the tire off the rim that's why you don't want to go too low but for tires like this you can quite safely go to 12 psi no dramas at all personally with my mud terrain tires I usually run 10 psi they have a really stiff sidewall so they don't actually bag out until about 10 psi it's pretty insane when you look at that actually but anyway so we're going to drop the ties to 12 psi really good pressure for most tires and we'll be able to go anywhere with 12 psi let's do it that looks just about right one down it's ready to go a lot of people have the attitude of I'll drop the tires if I get stuck if I have to that's all well and good but then if you end up getting stuck and the waters lapping up at your wheels not really the best time to deflate your tires so at least if you deflate them before you hit the beach you know you're going to be all good so I've gone for 12 psi in the front and because I got a fair bit of weight in the back lots of camping gear in there I've gone to 15 psi in the back so if you got a lot of load in the back it might be worth just having those tires a little bit higher alright let's hit the beach all right so I'm just about to drop down onto the beach so hopefully you've read your manual and you know how to engage your forward drive system so I'm just going to put it into four high and I'm just going to disable my electronic stability control that way it won't kill my power when I need it most like it always does all right and we're good to go Ezio's [Music] alright guys we're just about to drop down to the beach now if you're not sure what you're doing the best thing to do is just stay in the ruts at the very top side of the beach close to the sand dunes and when you're staying in them if the beach is on an angle like it is a little bit of an angle here what you want to do is actually just counteract it a little bit we're just a little bit of left hand steering in this case just to make sure that you stay in those ruts if you hold the wheel to stray you can actually quite easily jump out of those ruts and if the sands really soft down there then you're going to get yourself into a world of hurt so if you're starting off just follow the ruts because if somebody else has managed to get through before chances are you'll be able to get through as well [Music] I just want to talk about forward driving and the ocean in general if you're just starting for driving stay well away from the ocean the reason being the one saltwater and your car is not a good mixture a friend of mine once drove through the ocean the next day he pretty much couldn't start his car cuz its alternator died and another reason as you can see here I pulled down to the beach and the sand got really really soft now some beaches it's different some beaches the ground is really really hard close to the ocean for instance fraser island you can zip along those beaches all day long the sounds really nice and hard in this case here as i was coming down it just got really really soft so if you're just starting out best thing is to stay well away from the ocean stay in the wheel ruts up the top until you get your confidence up alright let's see if I can actually get myself out now I so in this situation here I'm probably going to put it into low range because in high ranges it's probably just going to struggle by putting into low range it's got a lot of torque means you can get wheel spin which means it'll probably get us out of this situation [Music] [Music] [Music] so that there is a classic example of why you shouldn't go too close to water now admittedly the waters normally hard right where the water is coming up so as you can see back over there best thing to do sometimes is actually go towards the water if you do get yourself in a bit of a pickle like that because there's usually hard ground so as you can see there the ground got really hard they gave me the traction I needed to get back up the top into the ruts there's just one other thing that I want to talk about while we're talking about the ocean and that's tides now tides can really get you stuck the best thing to do is to download an app I've just got this free up here all it does is show you what high tide is what low tide is what times and it's offline it doesn't need internet and you can search by it whatever location you're close to so at the moment the tides going down low tides going to be at 3 o'clock so that means I'm all good if there's a high tide coming up you've got to be a little bit careful because sometimes if there's not a whole lot of beach like here if you go past a high tide could come in and then you might not be able to get back or if you drive around some rocks that are on the high tide mark if you in two or three hours want to come back and those rocks there's water lapping up you're not going to really want to cross so it's just sign up keep in mind the further north you go the higher the tides are the more you have to keep track of it if you've ever been to Fraser Island you definitely know that you plan your travel around the tides around the low tide because on the north side of the island if you try and go through you won't be able to because there's rocks and all sorts of obstacles that you need to get around at low tide so just keep an eye on your tides try and travel at low tide if you can or just make sure there's plenty of beach so that even if there's a high tide you're going to be all good I just met a viewer of the channel when he looks a little bit stuck up there I wonder if he needs a hand I'm like go ask nice bloke but this is the classic reason of why you let your tires out before you hit the beach because if you get yourself in a little bit of a situation like this it can be really hard to get out if you haven't let your tyres down already are you gonna be alright so he's let down his tires now so we'll see how it goes you might be able to get out no dramas at all see what happens just give him some space see the trouble with this situation here is cuz you on that angle you can just keep going down until we get to the water so it's a bit of a tricky one but ah you might be able to do it you might be able to do it come on oh he's got to go into the down into the water I see the best thing to do now is just to turn right hand down and go close to the water and just get traction down there and he's out tire pressures guys it's all about tire pressures now turning around is another time when you could possibly get stuck now this Beach is very narrow there's not a lot of room to turn around so the best thing to do is usually just find somewhere that you can actually reverse in through up into the sand dunes and then go forward if you try and do it any other way you might get away with it the only other way to do it right now would just be to go for it go down to the high tide mark get to the hard ground and then turn around but that's really risky so the best thing to do is just to find somewhere that you can actually Traverse up into se just like this we found this nice little spot here to turn around to easy and onwards we go piece of cake now generally was sand driving another thing that you'll find is you really need to oversteer to make the car get out of the ruts so right then when I was reversing I really had to put it to full lock to actually get it out of the ruts so that's something that you'll notice when you start driving down the beach so we just go to this section of beach here now this may not look like much on the camera but there's actually quite a significant slope on a whole Beach and this is somewhere that you can really get yourself stuck really really fast now the key here is to staying in the ruts so you really want to make sure that you oversteer to the left in this case to make sure that you stay in the ruts now right here you can actually see the tracks of someone that actually went down and you can see they had a really hard time getting out of there you could just tell by the tracks this sand is really soft down there so you really want to stay in these ruts now don't go too crazy but just a little bit maybe I don't know a quarter of a turn of the steering wheel to the left in this case and a real good and you don't have to go through fast either if you've got your tires down nice and low you're going to be able to do it no dramas it's all about tire pressures Beach driving all about tire pressures so we're just going to go down onto the beach for a little bit you can just see how soft it is this is why it's a good idea to stay in the ruts if you're not sure now cuz we got the ties down so low it's not really a big deal now here's it one thing that I just want to talk about if you need to come to a stop best thing to do is just to release the accelerator and just let the car come to a stop by itself because if you brake hard you actually can dig in now in an automatic car starting off is not too hard in a manual car it's a little bit more tricky so that's why it's a good idea just let the car to roll to a stop in an automatic can get away with not doing it and if you're having trouble sometimes the best thing to do is just to reverse a little bit over the tracks that you've already made that are nice and hard just stop go back into forward and onwards you go [Music] for the purpose of the demonstration I've got the car stuck but I just want to say if you feel like you're getting stuck you're starting to get bogged you're not really moving anywhere the worst thing you can do is sit there spinning your tires you're just going to muck get yourself more bogged and it's going to be harder to get out so the second you feel like you're getting stuck just stop now the next thing to do after that is to grab your phone out open up your camera app and take a photo now this may seem like a dumb idea but getting stuck is nothing to be embarrassed about it's all a learning experience and it's all fun and if anything it's a story for later to share around the campfire that first time that you went out for driving and got yourself bogged now why do you do that because you just need to chill out for a second and figure out the best way to get out of the situation rushing into anything never helps now I just want to say this is in a situation where you don't have running water if you got yourself bogged and there's running water either the tides lapping up at your wheels or you're in a river don't take a photo just drop your tires to 6 psi and try and get yourself out as fast as you can if someone's around to give you a snatch ask them for help because whenever there's running water the second that suction gets your car under it's really hard to break the suction now in this situation here we're well away from the high tide so we're all good we've got plenty of time so we're just going to have a look at the situation oK we've done that now it looks like the cars pretty much on a bit of a hill that way so the best thing to do in this case is to go backwards there's no point defying gravity it's just not worth it I've tried to fly many times it never works and also the way we came there's hard trucks behind the car that's the second reason that we're going to go backwards in this situation now let's get our trusty shovel man I can't even say shovel sharp bull it's not really a trusty shovel it's it's really a shovel alright we've got our shovel let's get digging now because I didn't actually bury the car too much there's not too much that we actually need to dig out but all we need to do is dig away the sand from behind the tire and give it a nice ramp to come up out of so let's just go ahead and do that all right so we've got a nice ramp for that we ought to come out now let's just throw every other wheel now if you've been sitting there spinning your tires and you dug yourself really deep holes the chances are that the chassis is actually sitting on the sand which is going to be another thing that's going to stop you from getting out of the situation now our long handled shovel this is where it comes into its own because you can reach right under the car under whatever you're sitting on and pull the sand away from it unfortunately we didn't bring along handled shovel did we we just got midgets shovel with us now if you don't have a shovel that means you're just going to have to get under the car yourself and pull the sand away just using your hands I have done that before there's a video about it you can get yourself out using that method okay so I've dug away the sand from behind all four tires now we're going to try and get out the first thing that we're going to do is go into low range then we're going to turn our stability system off again because we turn the car off so it's all reset now if you've got a diff look when you're stuck that's a really good time to use it so if you got one of those maybe consider turning that on in this case I don't think we're going to need it so we're going to go without so what we're going to do now is we're just going to let the car roll backwards a little bit just like that now we're just going to stop there now what I'm gonna do here is just go forwards and backwards a couple of times just to harden up the ground underneath the wheels and then what I'm going to do after I feel like I've done that enough times and I've got a bit of a track going I'm just going to gun it in Reverse and hopefully we're going to get ourselves out so it grounds nice and firm now so I'm just going to put it into reverse and just hit it [Music] now the key is not to spin your tires when you're trying to jiggle yourself as you go is that a bad word when you're trying to rock yourself out of that situation don't spin your tires just go a little bit backwards a little bit for let's just get a nice little firm patch going and then just give it a shot to get out of there with a little bit of wheel spin and you should be right but remember guys if you start getting stuck don't spin your tires it's only going to make things worse and wear your seat belt be responsible now one other thing that's worth mentioning is if you're driving along the beach and your car's struggling like you just you can hear the engine working really hard chances are your tires are too hard now obviously it depends sometimes the sand is just so soft that no matter what pressure you're running the engine is going to be struggling but if you're just cruising down the beach in somebody else's wheel tracks and the engines working really really hard chances are you should drop your ties a little bit more because one thing that does happen as the tires are being used they heat up so the air pressure inside actually goes up so even if you started at 12 psi the tire pressure might be 15 psi because of the heat so just check your tires maybe drop them a little bit lower and go again see if that helps it's all about finding the right pressure for your vehicle and your tires and the best way to do that is just to try different tire pressures and see how they go now when we got stuck earlier we already had dropped our tire pressures but if you hadn't drop your tire pressures or if you hadn't gone that low with your tire pressures that would be a really good time to drop your ties a bit lower to help yourself get out of that situation because we already had the tires on 12 psi that was pretty good we managed to get out no dramas at all now as you guys can see up here there's a lot of seaweed on the beach hot tip for you guys never drive over seaweed like there can be layers and layers and layers of it and it can be really really boggy I got myself stuck so bad one time the esperance I'll put up a photo of that right now and it's just a nightmare to get out of it so avoid see you eat especially buried seaweed it's so soft it's not fun there's one more really good reason to let your tires down when you let your tires down when you're going over rocks like in this area here there's a lot of limestone rock around this area when you let your tires down the tires actually kind of mold around the rock when they're hard they don't do that so you're actually more likely to get a puncture and for drive tires they're not cheap so if you can preserve your tires it's an awesome idea just heading towards one of my favorite little bays in this whole area it's just this tiny little Bay on a calm day like today the wood is going to be flat as in there I might even go swimming the water's gonna be freezing but when it's 33 degrees outside sounds like an awesome idea to me all right guys now listen up this is the most important part of for driving it also happens to be the bit that I'm the worst at finding a beautiful Bay like this and just chilling out and taking it all in I'm just not very good at doing nothing all right I'm gonna do it and I'm gonna do it before I change my mind I'm not gonna lie that was pretty fresh that water was quite cold but very refreshing what a beautiful day to be out here exploring the coastline all right let's hit the road hit the beach you know what I mean hit the tracks [Music] now sangeun's sand dunes are a lot of fun you can have a ball in them in your full drive but you've got to be pretty careful because what happens is drop-offs form and usually that happens when there's really strong winds and it blows away all the sand so you end up with a sand dune and then suddenly it just drops off so you've got to be pretty careful because if you go over that with speed you could do some serious damage especially when you don't know what's on the other side so if you're in sangeun's best thing to do take it really easy if you can follow somebody else's tracks who was there before and just yeah be really careful of them and you'll be all good once you get your confidence up you can kind of explore a bit more but the start just be pretty careful now we're almost back in town but just before we get into town I just want to try a little experiment now normally this works sometimes it doesn't depends how bad the beaches but I just want to really illustrate how tire pressures are the key to beach driving so I'm actually going to put the car into two wheel drive and we'll see how we go see if we managed to get down the beach without getting bogged let's do it well we've managed to take off that's usually half the battle so so far so good and there you go guys I mean maybe you'd be able to do this with hard ties and forward drive maybe not but check it out driving down the beach and - or drive it really is all about tire pressures [Music] there you go guys to a drive it just really shows how tire pressures are the key all right guys all that's left to do is air up the tires now as I mentioned we are finishing up in a town so you could actually just go use a service station the only trouble with that is if it's out of order for some reason you're kind of stuck so it is a really good idea to have a tire compressor with you even if you are a beginner besides that what have you guys learnt in this video well the one thing that I want you guys to take away from this video is tire pressures beats driving is all about tire pressures 12 psi is a usually a good tire pressure for most vehicles now if you're carrying a fair bit of weight maybe 15 psi is better now in this case I learned for 12 and 15 and that got us everywhere that we wanted to go today so I hope you guys enjoyed this video hopefully you learned a thing or two and the biggest thing guys is just get out there and give it a shot if you're not too sure still maybe find somebody else that has a forward Drive that would come out with you I'm sure they can teach you a thing or two anyway guys thanks for watching and we'll catch you guys in a different video don't forget to get out there and see a bunch off

Channel: Seek Adventure

Views: 226,906

Rating: 4.942162 out of 5

Keywords: Beach 4x4, bogged 4wd, tips

Id: JWoaF3sBlE0

Length: 30min 11sec (1811 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 29 2019