Naks

some Friday light entertainment 😁

that's quite the off-road test...

Picked up the Puma yesterday with the new shocks fitted, what a massive difference, especially on the rear (where the TFs were): the workshop also had a 110 come in last week with both rear TFs broken, same failure.

video highlights:

Video highlights from our stay at Londolozi Game Reserve

My friend with the same failure just messaged me now, and thinks he's found a solution: "The chromede rod diameter is 16mm , but the thread diameter holding the rod in the top mounting is 12mm. There is a sharp change from the rod diam to the thread, and this transition is the point of failure because of the combined bending and tensile load when the axle is hanging off the shockabsorber. I am going to rethread the rod to 16mm. The load bearing area goes from 12 squared (144 mm2) to 16sq (256 mm2) .....almost 2 x."

First time going off-road with plenty of cross-axles/articulation. Friend of mine in a D1 comes on the radio and says he's dislocated a spring and needs a hi-lift jack, so we drop one for him and keep going. A few minutes later I start hearing a knocking sound, and the two vehicles closest to me stop to ask me if I've broken something. We drive back to the rest camp, and whadayaknoe. This is a 6-month old damper, fitted at the beginning of Nov 2020: So the friend in the D1 who needed the hi-lift? Yeah, same TF shock, broken in exactly the same place, also on the left rear wheel. He also fitted these around the same time, also bought from the same distributor. ditching these TF p.o.s and just ordered a full set of Bilstein B6s.

After Thornybush and Londolozi, the final stop on our recent safari trip was Marataba Mountain Lodge: https://www.more.co.za/marataba/ After the plentiful game we saw at the first two reserves, Marataba was a bit of a let down except for the many, many rhinos we saw (I don't post photos of rhinos online for obvious reasons), but the scenic view and the one night under the stars in their treehouse made up for it. One of the highlights was spotting & managing to photograph the elusive African Wild cat.

rest of the photos: https://photos.app.goo.gl/EzdzCiaNXj4ev8WC9

way too many photos to post all of them, but here's a link to my Google Album: https://photos.app.goo.gl/yS1Bprq8Rs6koecH8

the next leg of our safari trip was Londolozi, one of the oldest game lodges in ZA - since 1926

yes, we went on safari. again 😁

https://carbuzz.com/news/land-rover-defender-stars-in-new-overlanding-documentary "The A&E network and Land Rover North America are partnering on a new documentary called "All You Need To Know: Overlanding." The 60-minute doc premieres on Sunday, April 18 at 10 p.m. We're guessing LR loves this project as its cars, particularly the Defender, have been historically known for the practice. Though they haven't been the only ones. ..."

There is a caveat to this: some endangered species are constantly monitored and there is even active conservation/veterinary intervention. A good example are wild dogs, cheetahs, and rhinos: they are all DNA-catalogued, tagged, etc. We got to see a vet darting wild dogs for rabies & distemper at Madikwe, a sad situation due to encroachment by humans and domesticated dogs.