Talked about hard and soft shackles for 4WD recovery yesterday, and it struck me that I was probably doing humanity a disservice overall by not first establishing some general guidelines for recovery.  

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The worst designed, least reliable and most dangerous component in off-road recovery is of course the human being.   People die during recovery. They get hit by projectiles. They get sliced open by cables. They get crushed by vehicles which drive over them when they run away under gravity after being freed, and nobody thought that far ahead. So there is quite a serious dimension to this off-road F-U-N.  TRAINING It’s a dud idea to figure out recovery for yourself. Like, lesson one, teach yourself recovery the first time you get the vehicle stuck in some preposterously precarious position. Just look confident and make it up, right? You’re kidding - that might work in a job interview; not here.   Instead, do a course with a bunch of like-minded individuals.  [SUPER: BYSTANDERS] Do I really need to say it? Recovery is not a spectator sport. Anyone not actually un-sticking a stuck vehicle - minimum safe lateral separation: 30 metres. A winch cable cannot attempt to amputate your arm or your leg if you are further away from it, than it is long.   If you’re not actively recovering, get out of the way - especially kids, whom a responsible adult should mind. And don’t go downhill from the problem, because that’s generally where a runaway vehicle will go.  Don’t rush Like, as soon as you get stuck, anywhere, wind it back to 50 per cent on the playback speed. Rushing is generally counterproductive and dangerous. You’re bogged in a 4WD near Dingo Piss Creek. You have not been engaged by a Taliban sniper. If you rush, you will only open the door to disaster.  BIN IT While we’re at it, throw away any damaged gear. Winch cable with a busted strand - just bin it. Snatch strap, tree strap - any sling with a gouge out of it, or substantially abraded - time for a new one, dude.   We’re gunna assume for the rest of this chat that your gear is in good order. If it’s not, then the risks are potentially through the roof.  MINIMISE LOADS Keep the loads low. Recovery is a ballad best played in the lowest of low keys. Low key. Low tempo. Do a bit of shovelling. Free up that chassis rail. Break out the jack - put some packing under that low-hanging wheel (whatever). Lift things up first, to (literally) take a load off. Let’s not be letting the winch or the snatch strap do all the work.  Speaking of which, on the snatch strap front. Low key, dude. Low key. It’s not a drag race. It’s a gentle pull. Snatch straps are not ballistic devices.  You do not want that. You really are trying to minimise the opportunity for the creation of a potentially dangerous situation.   THINK AHEAD What are you going to do when the vehicle gets free? Can it run away? If so, best get in it, or get someone reliable in it so they can stop it safely … before, perhaps, it rolls into you and crushes you against a 100-year-old gum tree.  Like, we’re all gunna die. I get that. But I vote heavily for not like that.

Leading Australian automotive website CarAdvice is to be boned - by its adoptive parents, Channel Nine. CarAdvice will go under the bus directly, but a phoenix will rise.   

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Nine has owned CarAdvice outright for a couple of years. The acquisition cost them sixty-something million dollars. In the meantime, Fairfax and Nine merged, essentially because the Federal Government wouldn’t acknowledge a bad idea if it jumped up and bit them.  The merger - and, let’s face it, Nine is on top - the merger meant Nine inherited the red-haired bastard stepchild of motoring, Drive.com.au   Nobody wanted that kid, but somebody had to take care of it. And by ‘take care of it’ I mean lock it in the basement and get the kids at CarAdvice to pretend that they’re also Drive, by hastily re-purposing CarAdvice content.  Not to say ‘I told you so’. But: I told you so. Back when the founders walked out, about a year ago. I think there was a disagreement of sorts. That’s the sense I got of it. They thought the new management were dicks - something of that nature, anyway. So the big cocks - Alborz and Tony - and the comparatively little cock (vis-a-vis CarAdvice founder-hood relativity) Paul, just walked out the door.  Like that - bye. It’s been emotional.  That hammering you heard back then, which you thought was the neighbours erecting an unauthorised deck in the backyard? It was really the coffin nails going in, at CarAdvice.  Hilariously, this is taking place even though CarAdvice has nine times more web traffic than Drive. A bold - some would say ‘contrarian’ - move.  Drive’s mission, of course, is to get you to engage with its online chat centre in the Philippines, so that you give them your contact details and they can slut you out to the nearest new car dealer for $60 a pop, under the table. Like, that’s the business model…  ...which would be arbitrage, of sorts, except they’re not paying you for your details. You’re giving it away, free, and getting nothing back (except a call from a red hot car sales dude whose objective is to gut you and fillet you after convincing you to attend the abattoir in which he works), with Nine copping a reach-around in the process. Does that seem like a good deal for you?  I love this industry. Always so entertaining. Except if your neck is on the block at CarAdvice, of course.   Requiescat in pace, CarAdvice, your formerly un-fuckable licence to print money has been Nined.

Soft shackle versus hard (steel) shackle for 4x4 recovery operations: Which shackle do you use, and where to you use them to maximise safety and reliability? The definitive guide.  

14.7 tonne Saber soft shackle from Sparesbox: http://bit.ly/14softshackle

17 tonne Saber soft shackle from Sparesbox: http://bit.ly/17softshackle

4.75 steel bow shackle from Sparesbox: http://bit.ly/bowshackle

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There’s two parts to this, right? First - the part about relative positives and negatives. Second - the part about myth-busting the bullshit of 4WD recovery. There’s a lot of that. See, shackles and other items - wire rope in winches, slings … things of that nature - are generally adapted from the hoisting industry (you know, cranes and such)...  ...and the parts have been cobbled together to form a system for off-road recovery, which (kinda) works. If you take a shackle and a sling and a wire rope hoist and a hook, maybe a snatch block, you’re essentially looking at the load-bearing parts of a winch recovery.  And the way the numbers work, the way they are presented to you, and the bullshit claims made about some of the parts in particular - especially winches - the former Soviet Union bureaucracy couldn't do a worse job, frankly.   This is compounded by never really knowing what the actual loads are. See, if you want to put a tank under a giant crane, one generally knows exactly how much it weighs, and one can then put a hoisting package together so that the working load limit of each component is not exceeded. Recovery is not like that - there’s generally no way of knowing the loads.  It’s all quite confusing, frankly, if you don’t have engineering training or work in industry. So I’m gunna unpack some of that right now - the beer-garden physics of recovery.  For this report I got my Saber soft shackle from Sparesbox. About $60 - link in the description. I had a bunch of steel shackles lying around already. Who doesn’t? Steel shackles last (statistically) for eternity, which is almost as long as it’s been since I’ve had ‘it’ thrown at me with at least vestigial enthusiasm.   Links to the hard and soft shackles from Sparesbox, in the description. Full disclosure there: I’ll get a small commission if you purchase using those links. Sparesbox is a good, reliable operation based in Sydney - but they’re not sponsoring this episode. I bought the soft shackle myself, and this report is my honest personal opinion.

In a parallel universe there’s a Defender designed by Land Rover but R&D-ed and sold by Toyota - and it is the perfect off-roader.  

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The new Defender is certainly not the old one - it’s lost the whole ‘hose out’ utilitarian thing. Ergonomics and safety - vastly improved. Obviously. But - just look at the specs - it remains a proper weapon off road: The angles. The wading depth - 900mm #respect. Terrain response - yesssss! Awesome system.  You can put 168 kilos on the roof - #FFS - and it’s a monocoque. There’s like 900 kilos of payload, and an 85-litre fuel tank. So, a potentially compelling tourer also. It’s bloody expensive though. Like, if you want to throw $170 grand at a Defender in 2021, step right up, dude.  The range-topping 3.0-litre turbo petrol straight six … I think they call it a P400 X is about $148k drive-away - but if you want to add third row seating ($3400) a front jump seat ($1900), the cold climate pack ($1500) orange painted recovery points ($800), satin protective film ($6500), tow pack with the eye cover ($2500), three-zone climate air ($2400), solar-shield windscreen and privacy glass ($1400), roof rails ($900 - they couldn’t even throw them in, the cheap bastards), and maybe you want to go the ‘full pimp’ and add 22-inch alloys - that'll be $3600 (they’ll be shit off-road though, and good luck getting a replacement 22-inch tyre in Dingo Piss Creek).  So - we just spent hypothetically $25,000 in options, and (ladies and gentlemen) there’s your $170,000 Land Rover Defender. [SIGHS] And a complimentary divorce from reality. They throw that in, free, if you tick every box. It’s literally the least they could do.  $170 grand is a fully-loaded 200 Series LandCruiser Sahara - and no need to tow an acoustically transparent aluminium shitter from this busted-arse salt-pan to the next one, because you’ve got $35,000 left over to spend on four- and five-star accommodation inclusive of a water-closet more than two feet from the dining table. Yesssssss!  You caravaners and your 3.5-tonne porta-potties. Just saying.  Defender is kinda big, too - like, it’s just over an inch longer than a 200 Series, meaning it’s only 10cm shorter than a Kia Carnival - but 21 centimetres taller (than the Carnival) .It’s about an inch taller than ‘Cruiser, and it craps all over the ‘Cruiser’s approach and departure angles, and offers 200mm more wading depth.   Three and a half tonne tow capacity (but only 150 kilos on the towball - that’s a joke). They’re suggesting you can tow 3500 kilos and carry 900 kilos of payload - of which 168 kilos could go on the roof. That’s insane - like, properly insane. As in, worst idea ever.  To me, new Defender is nothing like old Defender. Except perhaps in turning circle, which remains atrocious. They’ve recycled the badge to get more people across the line - Defender tragics, basically. But new Defender is really what Discovery used to be. And Discovery today is what Range Rover was. And Range Rover today is what Maybach would be - if Land Rover had a brand specifically devoted to even richer, more enthusiastic wankers. Like Daimler does.

This new Mitsubishi 10-year warranty … let’s just say, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, good thing we didn’t step in it. Worst new car warranty ever.   

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Here’s my biggest problem with the Bits-o-shitty 10-year bullshit warranty proposal:  Let’s say your transmission just crapped out at 120,000 kilometres, eight years in. And it’s not on you. You go back to Mitsubishi. They say: ‘Well, three years ago you had your car serviced independently - so you’re not covered. That’ll be $14,000.’  This proposed warranty will inevitably be used like this in the service department as a trigger to brush you, and profiteer from it. It’ll seem legitimate, too - like, it’s there in black and white. Warranty is completely separate from the legislated Consumer Guarantees, about which there is absolutely nothing optional. Your warranty might be burned, but the requirements of consumer law compliance - the obligation upon Bits-o-shitty to provide you with a remedy - absolutely still exists.   But consumers have to be informed enough to know that, and not all consumers are. So, in the future, I have no doubt that this warranty will be used as a device to deny legitimate consumer law claims.   Tragically, not all consumers will know that they can push back - legitimately - and make a claim under Australian Consumer Law. Some of them will cop it on the chin, and (call me an old cynic) but I think this is Mitsubishi’s real objective here. Look like warranty heroes, while acting like warranty bastards. Disgraceful.  It’s a huge pity Mitsubishi didn’t just bite the bullet and align the new warranty with the requirements of consumer law, thus ascending uninjured to the summit of Warranty Mountain here in ‘Straya, and spruik the crap out of it - Shitsville’s best warranty - because that would have been a real good news story.  If they want to get more owners servicing their cars at the dealer, then just make that a commercially compelling proposition instead of the hateful, expensive and borderline bullying experience it often is in dealerships today.  If Mitsubishi wants to shift more genuine parts - price them competitively. After all, they’re buying them in bulk. The extortionate pricing of genuine parts - industry-wide - is simply indefensible. So, they come up with these cartel-like strategies to coerce consumers into bending over, while the ACCC sleeps.  Unfortunately, as things stand, this 10-year warranty is just a grubby grab for more business and an attempt to dilute consumer law claims in the 5-10-year term. That’s how it seems to me.   I don’t think there’s any guarantee the ACCC will wake up to quash this, but I certainly hope they veto the genuine servicing requirement. Dangerous, anti-consumer precedent. You might choose to put your objection in writing on the ACCC’s online contact form. (Link above).  If the ACCC gets sufficient informed blow-back from you, it might help turn this anti-consumer tide and force Bits-o-shitty back to the boardroom, where they might choose to un-arsehole themselves and offer you a 10-year warranty without the free handcuffs.

The truth about carbon deposits in modern engines. Details next.  

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With direct injection, a fuel injector sits inside the combustion chamber. It injects fuel directly into the chamber, at exactly the right time, with the valves closed, hence the name. Injection directly into the chamber.   Fuel is thus completely separate from the inlet air system.   In the older, port-style fuel injection system, a far less hi-tech injector was located in the inlet port, right on top of the inlet valve. (This tended to wash the valve - by spraying the valve more or less continuously with fuel, which is a powerful solvent. But it was a fairly wasteful and imprecise way of delivering fuel.)  So, with direct injection, only air goes into the inlet system. Crankcase vapours are also sucked in (via the PCV system - for ‘positive crankcase ventilation’), and some exhaust gas is recirculated (that’s called ‘EGR’ - exhaust gas recirculation).  Although they are coarsely filtered, crankcase vapours tend to be a bit oily, and recirculated exhaust gas can be a bit hot (even though it’s water-cooled). So, if you mix the oily vapours and the hot EGR, you can burn the oily vapours to carbon and give the inlet manifold and ports the equivalent of atherosclerosis.  This happens a lot if the EGR or PCV systems are defective or badly designed - so premature profound carbonisation is often symptomatic of a problem with PCV or EGR.  If you don’t drive on the open road much (for about an hour a fortnight, ballpark) your engine oil gets pretty contaminated. This is due to the hi-tech miracle of blow-by.  The PCV vapours get a bit filthier than usual when the oil is contaminated, and this can lead to the formation of significant oily, sooty deposits in the inlet tract, which is a good idea to clean up before it gets serious and impacts engine performance. It’s a problem mainly for engines that do only short trips and lots of cold starts.  The EGR tends to bake it on - but, frankly, this tends to be more profound on a diesel, which does a lot more volume of EGR as a proportion of total operational flow.  Going for a long drive every few months is insufficient to purify the oil. The open-road driving has to be reasonably regular.  To be clear - the highway driving doesn’t clean up any contamination already in the inlet plumbing. Once it’s there, it’s there. If it’s there and serious enough, you need to get it cleaned away mechanically - if the degree of contamination is likely to affect engine operation.   The purpose of the highway driving is: it purifies the engine oil and thus prevents the deposits from forming. That highway-style lean burning and sustained full operating temperature evaporates off all the water and the volatile components of unburned fuel, which exit via the PCV.   If you’re not going to do regular highway driving, get your oil changed more often - say twice a year - but still try to get out on the highway as often as you can. 30-60 minutes routinely is a good target.

How much is your silence worth? Could Mercedes-Benz buy yours for $500? Or would you leak evidence of their frankly grubby behaviour to someone such as me? In this report, let’s see what’s behind door number two.  

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Philip Lakic made a mistake in 2017. He bought a Mercedes-Benz A-Class. No - I don’t know why either. It’s kinda like getting hitched on the spur of the moment, in Las Vegas.   This story is like a fling with Tiffany from the office. Everything was new and exciting for a little while, and then Three-pronged suppository Death Star management turned off their outdated Windows-based connectivity tech, which they had talked up heavily in the brochure, calling it COMMAND Online.   “I thought you might be interested in an update from  Mercedes-Benz Australia Pacific RE COMAND Online MB Apps failures. I submitted a letter of demand for a fix or a refund, which was not met (surprise), but did get back this pitiful letter of offer from MBAuP, which I rejected.” - Philip Lakic  I cannot be the only person here seeing the massive disconnect between the company’s position publicly, and the one taking place under the table, metaphorically. And let’s not forget that Mr Lakic’s A-Class is only three years old. It’s hardly a relic.  I am also - frankly - gobsmacked that Daimler and Microsoft (two of the world’s biggest corporations) were unwilling to get together and come up with a wireless browsing system that would endure for - I dunno - 10 years of operation.   I’m further gobsmacked that their disregard for current owners is so profound that they simply couldn’t be arsed coming up with a patch for this problem.  Last word here to Mr Lakic:  "I will now start pursuing a course of action through the ACCC and if that fails, I'll have to start lining some lawyer's pockets. I truly expected more from Mercedes-Benz as our family bought three AMG vehicles which were collectively worth approximately $300k when bought new."  "I had to experience that Mercedes-Benz customer service feeling for myself, before I truly realised how shit Mercedes-Benz really are. In the end you were right. I wish you weren't, but you are. I should have bought a BMW.  I hope that your YouTube channel serves to educate more people on the practices of brands within the Australian Car industry."   I did not elicit that commentary from Mr Lakic - it just lobbed without warning in my inbox, as these things often do. I did not go trawling for endorsement, nor did I seek brand-trashing experiences upon which to get my rocks off.   I do not recommend Mercedes-Benz, and Mr Lakic’s unsolicited experience is emblematic of why.  Buying  Mercedes-Benz is like entering into a dysfunctional relationship with a profound power imbalance. It seems to me that Mercedes-Benz customers - at least in Australia - care somewhat more about the brand than the brand fundamentally cares about them.

Critical automotive industry update, ‘Straya. October 2020. Year of the Weasel. Details next.  

In this report: 

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Mazda has announced pricing for the new BT-50. BT-50 is of course the somewhat effeminate clone of the new Isuzu D-MAX. Built in the same factory, etc. BT-50 kicks off at $42,090 for the XT dual-cab chassis base-model and extends to $59,990 for the GT, which is about $3000 less than the top-spec D-MAX.  

Hyundai - industriously taking geologic time to launch the 8-speed dual clutch version of a car for which I have enduring mad love: The Golf GTI-killing i30 N. Total weapon. The Fastback - so sexy.  I30 N is seriously popular on this channel - 550,000 views across five videos, and counting. It’s one of the most popular performance car buying enquiries I get as well. And I can tell you the most popular impediment to buying one is - manual only.  Typically the prospective owner has a partner, and said partner either can’t or won’t drive a manual - so, game over. The dual-clutch is the solution - due for local launch (finally) in the first half of 2021 here in Shitsville.  Pro tip - have fun test driving this car, obviously, when you can. (Safely.) But don’t just test-drive it like you stole it. The DCT is gunna be awesome at that - it’s a done deal. DCTs are all excellent when you’re up them for the rent.   Do as much test-driving as possible at low speeds - three-point turns, reverse-parking off a hill-start. Stuff like that.  This is typically what DCTs are bad at. But if the new 8sp DCT in Sorento is anything to go by (and I don’t know how closely they are related, but probably quite a bit) you just might be pleasantly surprised.  They’re also talking up the new lightweight seats - but I’d suggest that’s BS. They’re only 2.2 kilos lighter, and it’s a reduction in the sprung mass. So there’s that...  The forged 19-inch alloys are probably more relevant - 14 kilos less in total, and all off the unsprung mass. Bigger brakes too. Not that it really needed that - they were already fairly death-proof. I did try to kill them, and I failed.

After a lengthy search, they have just appointed a fully qualified volleyball referee. I know that sounds like a joke - the pope and a volleyball referee crash into a bar, AND… - but unfortunately, it’s not.  

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ANCAP - the Shitsvillian and Sheepshaggistani New Car Assessment Program - appears to me increasingly to be doing you, out there in Consumerville, a disservice. These are the dudes who persevere with publicising (for example) Volkswagen’s alleged five-star safety rating with Amarok.  I just went to the ANCAP website this morning and checked. Searched ‘Volkswagen Amarok - current models only’. The result: five stars. This vehicle has not been tested for nine long years. Nine. ‘Current models only’ - please. Amarok, of course, lacks airbags for row 2 occupants, among other critical safety omissions. So it would be kinda lucky to get three stars if tested today.   Basically, you might survive getting gently T-boned in your allegedly five-star Amarok, but things aren’t so certain for the kids in the back… Would it not be a great pity if a tragedy such as that occurred after you had concluded that your Argentinain Volkswagen shitheap was ‘safe enough for the fam’ after cursory interrogation of the ANCAP website, as part of your pre-purchasing research? I think that would be a real shame, not to mention a gross consumer disservice.  In 2016, four years before now, and five years after ANCAP awarded Amarok five stars, the Volkswagen Death Star launched the popular V6 Amarok. At the launch, James Ward from CarAdvice asked Dr Jan Michel - who is some wonky Volkswegian international sales dude - about the still absent Amarok row two airbags:  “We are working on it.” - Dr Jan Michel, Invernational Sales Director, VW Commercial  They’re still working on it, four years later, apparently. Because: Still absent. So, well done there, on the management of a five-star safety rating, and the community dissemination thereof.  ANCAP will retort, of course, look at the date, dude, but to understand that, a consumer would then need to understand the temporal and physical context of the evolution of the safety ratings system. And, look at the typical YouTube comments feed: Many consumers are incapable of that.   This is ANCAP’s inherent dysfunctionality, in my view. The burden of understanding not all five-star ratings are equivalent should not be imposed upon ordinary people. Because not all of them can handle the truth.  Old five-star ratings are meaningless, basically. ANCAP, or course, lacks the budget and other resources to maintain a current ratings system, and today’s hodge-podge of retrospectively irrelevant ratings is systematically vulnerable to consumer misinterpretation (personal opinion).  ANCAP is also somewhat responsible for your next new car being so profoundly annoying. All those safety systems, warning you about all those nonexistent threats, incessantly. That’s a direct consequence of carmakers humping ANCAP’s leg like the dog that’s just gotten into the Viagra, so they can get five stars (not the dog - he doesn’t want five stars - the carmaker - pro tip).

Time for some long overdue uplifting, and constructively critical commentary from you. In other words, let us cross the border and enter the Nutbag City Limits - yessssssssss!  

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Now look, I’m not above criticism. And that’s how you’ve gotta be on YouTube, because the comments feed is something of a cesspit. But, frankly, I just haven’t been getting the hate I deserve lately. And I blame you. Only one video in my past 30 sits below 90 per cent likes. And it’s at 89.8 - so it’s only technically hated. Where have all the haters gone?  Now, the glace cherry on the icing of the nutty cake today, allegedly from the Grand Cherokee Owners’ Club of Shitsville Facebook page, from a dude I’ll call, simply ‘Trev’:  “The guys an absolute flog with an agenda” - Trev.  Goodness - I think he means me. My recent ‘Jeep/don’t buy’ report the other day: 97.3 per cent likes to dislikes. Trev was probably one of the 2.7 per cent.  I do enjoy ‘absolute flog’ status these days - that’s quite true. Lifetime platinum, double diamond advantage flog. It’s awesome - straight into the Chairman’s Lounge at Club Flog. And yet, for so much of my life I was only a partial flog.   And not for want of trying. But then I got ‘Dickhead Pro’ and my life changed. I went properly ‘next level’. I decided to become your next Pry Mincer and Make Australia Less Shit. It’s certainly audacious. But, together, I know we can do this.  And let’s face it, ‘absolute flog’ is the minimum accepted qualification to be Pry Mincer these days. That’s in the constitution.  You can tell I am qualified from my Linkedin profile, which I updated this morning, the better to reflect Trev’s assessment of my Pry Minsterial suitability.  Clearly I do have an agenda, which I enthusiastically prosecute: To prevent as many people as possible from buying badly supported shitheaps. And I do find Grand Cherokee in particular so disappointing  - because it looks so good and goes so well, and is so capable across a breadth of operating conditions, and the price is so right, frnkly. Pity about the reliability, the ownership cost, and (of course) the emphatically crap support.  Trev, of course, was unfinished in the domain of critical assessment. He was on a roll:  “I bet he hasn’t owned or even driven a Jeep … the only thing he drives is a b*tt plug all the way up.” - Trev.  Trev, mate … I generally prefer dinner and a few drinks before we go for the plug.  Perhaps we could pre-emptively discuss current events and have a few laughs. Get out on the dance floor. Sing some karaoke. Get to know one another first. There are social conventions here mate.  Still, I do rather look forward to hosting the annual Grand Cherokee Owners’ Club of Shitsville convention to be held this year (at my suggestion) at iconic Sydney kink dungeon, Temple 22, where I sincerely hope Grand Cherokee club members will get a different taste of pain and denial - at a somewhat lower cost, and without the public humiliation they are so used to. So that’s nice.  The late, great Chrissy Amphlett, of course, sang the haunting ballad of the Jeep owner, entitled so memorably: ‘I touch Myself’. And in Ms Amphlett’s own words, in respect of Jeep ownership, I think it’s fair to say there’s a fine, fine line between pleasure and pain.