The Tug
Undergoing 4x4 Training at Great Divide Tours in Braidwood, NSW
Choosing a Suitable Vehicle and kitting it out for off road towing.
Selecting a Jeep Grand Cherokee was easy.
Our 2019 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited, purchased in February 2020 for AU$61 000 with 5000 kms on the clock ticked the boxes of having a car we could use daily, and yet still tow 3500 kgs. Brookvale Jeep, Sydney Northern Beaches supplied us and impressed us with their service.
Things we have changed or added since purchase are:
New tyres: Mickey Thompson All Terrain, on 18 inch alloy hubs (265/60R18), rather than the off road unfriendly 20 inch low profiles (265/50R20) that come standard with the Limited. Love these tyres. Surprise surprise, there was an 18 inch hub as a spare with a different tyre. It is now my second spare wheel with 5 identical Mickey Thomson tyres. The fatter tyres and wider alloy hub just fitted into the spare wheel space. Had to push down on the cover. Supplied by Sam from Goodspanner in Brookvale. Put in the pressure (Mopar TPMS) sensors from the original tyres. More great service.
Tow-bar, 12 point plug plus Anderson plug and Electric brake controller - a Heyman Reece tow-bar and Redark brake controller all installed by Bars and Racks, in Brookvale, Sydney. We needed to get a tongue with 150mm lift to accommodate our trailer. This rattled and shook until I replaced the locking pin with a different non-locking Hayman Reece pin.
Recovery points on the front - we chose Offroad Animal tow hooks as a nudge bar can be added in future if we really need one.
An 80 litre twin fridge freezer from National Luna, because it’s well made and sips electricity. We had a problem with the 12v plug not being the standard cigarette lighter plug and this needed changing. It’s also very tall, making it hard to open in the back of the car.
We have two hand held radios to assist with parking and we need to see if they are any use on the road with the truckies or convoys.
Other stuff we have in the car are a pair of max tracks, some tools, a bottle jack, recovery gear, first aid kit, deflator and 12v pump, tyre repair kit, rechargeable jump starter and a satellite communications solution (Zolea). We still have to see how well all this stuff works.
We have two cell phones, one on Telstra and one on Optus.
