Dennis has sent in some new pictures of some extreme green laning! Looks like it might have needed a bit more than T-Cut to clean it afterwards.

Thames Valley 4x4's February event was at the club's home site of Oxley's Shaw. Following the recent rain the site was the wettest its ever been, with simple muddy tracks seeing every scrabbling for grip.

The Jimny, with its relatively light weight and fat tyres struggled for grip. Instead of cutting through the mud to the grip below it floated on the muddy surface and ground to a wheelspinning halt.

These conditions really needed tall thin tyres in order to be successful.

So in fitting the front winch I have been looking for a location for the second battery. Playing around with a battery showed that there is not really enough space under the bonnet. The problem is height rather than length. Anyway, the rear tray in the boot is an attractive location for the battery and it puts more weight over the rear wheels.

My car was converted to take a rear winch and this was fitted in the rear tray with a hole for the cable exit. This was letting water in now that the winch is not fitted so in order to fit the battery I needed to fill the hole.......

We had abandoned our trip to the TV4x4 Club day at Speen due to a horrible grinding noise that could be heard and felt through the brake pedal. The usual reason for this is the front pads are worn. So here is a simple guide to this straight forward job.

January 2008 took TV4x4 club back to Speen. This small site to the north of High Wycombe provides muddy trails through woodland with a few hidden bombholes.

Just getting to the site was an exciting trip, early morning frost coated the approach road with ice which caught me out and saw the Jimny travelling sideways down the raod before I managed to the recover the skid.

Yet again the Jimny performed well, showing up a couple of heavier Landrovers (and heavy footed drivers!) with its much lighter approach. The muddy surface was very slippery which saw vehicles sliding off the track in all directions.

However the day was not without problems, by the end of our outing the brakes were making a terrible grating noise from the front which could be felt through the pedal, I suspect the front pads are worn down to the metal. Also the handbrake was jammed in the down position, perhaps something such as a branch is caught under car. Therefore we called it a day just after lunch and returned home to clean down the car ready for repairs!