Off Road write up

[bgsquad]

This week end i went camping. Yesterday, The idea was to go caving in some mountain... at first, the guide said the road is moderately off-road and just 30 minutes drive...

The guy turned out to be a liar, not only did he lie about the road, but even the cave there was closed and no one allowed to enter... so he ruined our day, but most importantly I had the opportunity to have a nice off-road drive with the X... the trip was 1.5 hours up and 1.5 hours down (from 1500m to 2100m altitude). The road turned out to be moderate to tough... very rocky, with those little rocks sticking out from between the gravel with occasionaly deeb pits that almost got the bottom hit the ground (luckily I did not hit it) and some upward crowling with a lot of mid-sized (like apples) gravels and pits...

The X drove strong, but with the SP and 18'', I was very shaky and bouncy... you feel the front suspension going apart, and the steering wheel feels like braking in your hand... It was not pleasant to drive... when things got hard, going uphill with apple sized rocks and big pits, the DSC kicked in big time and was almost 100% of the time intervening and keeping it running... I can tell you something, this machine was not built for off-roading... I drove many 4x4, pajero, pathfinder, 4 runner, etc... and they would all feel at home on such roads, but the X had hard time... I mean we had hard time inside it with all the shakes and our feel of "poor X, it should be suffering now".... but about the machine as machine, it drove like a champ: it kept surely walking and negotiated obtacles fairely good (specially the few muddy pits)... and when back on asfalt, it drove as smoothly as ever, not a single strange sound (the pathfinder would have plenty of strange sounds after an off-road... joints, heat shields, etc..)

So the car is tough, but was not built for serious offroad and is not confortable outside asfalt... wish i had some pics, but we were tight on schedule, and then mad for not entering the cave, etc...