First trip: Transsylvania Off Road Challenge

After the car was finished, I headed up to the Baisoara Mountain resort, as I was one of the organizers of the yearly off road challenge held by our club. The car was functioning very nicely. On the first day of the event I realised my 4WD wasn't working. The fancy electric wheel hubs were to blame for that. The system consists of a small electric motor which turns a gear, thus pushing the clutch of the locking hub onto the shaft. The power supply to these is through small brushes that were worn out (common problem with these hubs). Other than that everything was flawless. On the second day not so much. I managed to damage one of the front shocks (leaked oil), than the other one gave away too (from the mounting point). They proved to be just too short for the new suspension setup.

Solutions:
The wheel hubs are the weak link of the transmission in my case. even if I would repair these, they would wear out quickly again, most likely. I managed to get hold of a pair of manual locking hubs (simple, virtually indestructible). Didn't have time to change them yet, but I did lock the old ones permanently a while back so that thing's sorted out. The front suspension was the tricky bit. I have searched an awful lot either to change in the broken shocks (under warranty) or to find other ones that would work. I just couldn't get anything. In a final effort to solve this problem I took the car to the Land Cruiser expert of our town and he advised me to change the springs too (and dump the spacers). As a result I bought an Old Man Emu suspension kit for the front. It's very nice.