jah

pickup, trailer and a dirt bike an you will always get home.

ya i know it is a long learning curve but consider where the bike will take you vs anything 4wheels. the bikes are alot easyer to work on after a good thrashing and initial costs are lo for the most fierce bikey.

North Star

Thanks everyone. I think I'm leaning towards an early 90's Toyota, and most likely one that has some mods on it, like a lift and tires or so. Just gotta start saving $$ now! I can't wait for my first off-road "adventure"!

Mistman

It really depends on how "into" it your going to get. If you're going to end up going "hardcore",ie. rock crawling, you probably want to start out with a platform that will easily morph into the next phase of the addiction, oh yes, just like sports cars it can quickly become an obsession and drain your bank account as quickly as modifying a car, maybe (probably) more so.

To that end I would look for the "holy grail" (my opinion only of course) of off-road platforms, that would be an '85 Toyota 4x of any kind. Reason being it was the first year of fuel injection and the last year of the straight axle. If you ever get twisted up at 30-40% off camber, or at 45-60% climb or decent then EFI will be your best friend, carbs will often stumble and be very hard to keep running at extreme angles. The straight axles will give you the best flexiblity and highest strength compared to an IFS set-up. Depending on your budget you could go newer and swap in a stright front axle, there are many companies offering kits to do this (as a matter of fact a friend is doing a '94 right now). One of the very BEST resources on line is pirate4x4.com, they have sections dedicated to all makes of vehicles and you can see what people are doing to them and the vendors available to help in your build.

I got an '85 runner that is now hacked up big time, there is no roof, cut if off at the a-pillars, the rear is bobbed to the top of the rear tires, it has an exo-cage completely surrounding it, I've swapped in custom Dana axles, it has a completly custom suspension, leafs up front coils in the rear, 2 transfer cases, detroit lockers in both axles, disc brake conversion in the rear yada yada yada, if you go to Pirate you'll see mine really isn't all that modded compared to other guys. Mines set-up to rock crawl but will do anything.

When I was looking to get into it I wasn't sure where I was going to end up and ended up spending a lot of $$ doing things over and over till I was happy, sometimes thousands of $$'s in mods would only last a few months until I tore them out to replace them with something else (like the toyota axles I started with, now they have components to make them as strong as a Dana but not when I started). I looked for the nicest '85 runner I could find to start with and would have been better off finding the most beat POS I could as nothing of the original options I wanted are left (dual heaters, a/c, sunroof, pwr window etc..., all have been removed, even the doors) and even the body has been reduced to just a couple fender and a hood. I quit counting when I had over $28k into it, decided it needed a 4.3l v6 swap, bought a '93 Sonoma as a donor rig and then bought a dirt bike. The runner has been sitting in the barn the last 4+ years as now I can't get off the dirt bikes long enough to work on it again.

Sorry so long but off-roading has been a passion of mine for a long time.

S2KBDub

If you want great off-road performance and the convertable feature you were talking about, look at old Land Rover D-90's. I had an old Defender, and it was a kick ass car. If not the D-90's, old bronco's (70's) are a blast as well.

North Star

^^^ WOW! Thanks for all that info! It looks like I'm in for another "addiction" as soon as I get started!

I've been told Toyota's are very good to start with, so I'm pretty sure I'm gonna go that route!!

North Star

I'd love to get a Defender, but those things are expensive!!!!! Even a 10+ year old Defender goes for over 30k!