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Courtesy : DesertDevil
Dear Members & Friends of IJC
Once again a thrilling & enjoyable event under the cap of Islamabad Jeep Club ( IJC ) on 20 th June 2010
We all assembled at Toll Plaza Motor Way ( M 2 )
From there we went on Five 4x4's to explore Dry River Bed of Paneand River
It was an awesome event & we all enjoyed a lot
Although the weather was hot but we manged to enjoy
Our 4x4's got stucked in sand & we managed to get them out without any outside help
Special thanx to Motorway Police for helping our friends
We are grearful to all those who brought lot of Water & Refreshments
Missed all our friends who couldnot make it this time
Lot of pics & videos were taken which will be uploaded soon
Thanx
All IJC Members
For the day trip it self, well as usual, there aren’t any appropriate words to describe the true buzz of such joint trips. Great blast, adrenaline pumping, head rushing, selfless helping hands, friendliness and camaraderie all would fit in nicely. Add a lot of wowssss to it on top of that!
We started off late, almost an hour late , (now almost a typical IJC trip feature, this really needs immediate rectification!) The choice of day was right in one regard and completely wrong in other (at least for most of travellers ). 20th June, well it’s the second longest day of year if I am not wrong, so we had plenty of day light time to explore, but than it is also middle of summer and probably one of the hottest day possible. And apart from my LC occupants (dual AC and cool box on constantly), almost all were suffering due to the intense heat .
We were 5 vehicles in all,
Desert Devil and Pink Panther in Pajero 3 door 2.5 turbo Intercooler
Desert Devil’s two friend (nowayd) on 5 door 1990’s Low roof Pajero 2.5 Turbo Intercooler
Para pilot and Imran on Lazzaz
Zohaib Jadoon and gang on his FDO-1
And Finally Myself, Aamir Bhai and Redbull on my LC.
For the whole day trip return back to my home in ISB, we travelled a total of just over 200km according to the odometer reading, out of which roughly 80+ km was on motorway each way. So that leaves maybe 35+ km total run in the dry river bed. And it was great, you could just floor the throttle and at least in the LC the milder undulations in the riverbed were soaked up reasonably well, allowing pretty fast runs, hit around 120+ kmph on few stretches. Obviously we were making our own tracks so any route was an option giving good variety for added fun!!
Apart from Lazzaz n me, remaining three were diesel engine, and both Pajero 2.5 intercooler turbos and the mighty 12ht of LC 60 (FDO-1) were not enjoying the intense heat and the extra drag of soft wettish sand runs, so despite the AC being off their engine temp kept creeping up, requiring us to make several cooling down pit stops. I suppose if all went with moderate throttle, they would have been able to carry on, but then that’s was not what we had gone there for, any open stretch and each n every one floored the throttle!! Lazzaz didn’t have any heating issues in the engine bay, but obvious heating up inside the side open cabin!
Lazzaz being the lightest and most nimble footed, was the most ideally suited vehicle for the terrain. Imran and Ahsan (both driving alternately) were hardly using 4X4 and still going pretty fast. Where as I could barely go 4X2 in some of the harder areas, otherwise the rear end would start sagging almost immediately from the weight and wheel spin!
Lazzaz paid the price badly for the 4X2 attempt of river crossing, the pics of which you may have seen already. If one of our bigger vehicles had got stuck there, I can promise you we would still be there. After the previous experience from around Rohtas Fort, I was being extra careful around soggy stuff. Lazzaz obviously felt invincible and almost drowned. There were a lot of cattle / buffalo soaking in that particular river bed and Imran thought the buffalo is sitting in water and its not too deep, so he attempted it with different approach, as it turned out the water was deeper and buffaloes were standing instead .
Our recovery vehicle FDO-1 aka rescues 1122 gladly made a single handed rescue effort hoping that his brand new Dunlop 285/75-16 MT tyres would get Lazzaz free easily. The Dunlops were good, but they dug his LC rear end down to ground and he was free wheeling with half of the belly on the soft mud. My initial reaction, damnnnnnn, we are goners now. I thought with my road tyres, I can’t attempt anything in the soft mushy ground. I had got my self three tow straps after last experience. So we figured different plan and put Asad’s 3 door Pajero (lighter) in the middle with him being attached to the front of FDO-1, And than I put my LC on a longer tow strap in much dryer area further up (does somebody have a nice Pajero Sandwich pic between two LCs? ). We had to give a few strong tugs before FDO-1 came out of the bog.
Than we tried similarly with Lazzaz, we attached tow hook at rear of Lazzaz with Pajero in mid and than FDO-1 right at front and with 2-3 strong tugs, the Lazzaz was freed from the river.
Our new friends (Nowayd n partner) were less conspicuous thus far, so they decided to have attention to themselves by landing themselves in a track dug up by FDO-1 new mud digger tyres! Lazzaz felt he could pull out the 5 door Pajero by himself and nearly got himself stuck by digging in! Than FDO-1 attempted couple of pulls from the back without success, each time his own wheels would spin and he would start to sag immediately in the very soft wet sand. So we changed tact and finally a big strong tug from the front end did the job.
But even after the above episode for our new friends were not satisfied with the attention they got, so they decided to overheat their engine n all. So from then on they had plenty attentionJ, stopping several times to top up their heated radiator to cool it down.
Myself I had a relatively quieter runs till then, but while others were filling up overheated radiator of Pajero, I gave it full welly and did some tail slides and some of them became rather toooooo excessive. I would just say here that LC travelling sideways almost perpendicularly at 50-60kmph was a bit too much nerve wrecking even for my liking. I just hope somebody captured it on either vdo or pix to see what it looked like from outside. Most were busy filling water in their radiators and their own tummy at the time!!!
Overall lovely day out, fantastic experience, would love to do it again (minus the enormous power tail slides J) I am sure all of us had great fun, the snacks, donuts, cakes, drinks and the rest were enjoyed thoroughly by all. Myself I was lazy again and hence didn’t even take out the DSLR from the bag, the small pocket digi was used for few vdo’s which I will pass to Redbull_AR to upload later on. Once again many thnx to all who joined on this trip for their lovely company .
Missed all the rest of IJCians and other friends who couldn’t make it for this trip. I know Untame was aching to join later on but was too late. His Safari Cruiser would have been ideal fro the terrain and he would have thoroughly enjoyed doing fast runs here. I have just added this here to make him even more jealous
Now you can all go back to enjoying the pix and vdo’s again!