What’s FaceBook doing to us?

Posted by MadMatt - 4wd Tips on February 27, 2018
Posted in: Mad Matt - 4wd tips, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

Now I’m no Social media expert but with over 90,000 engaged followers on Facebook I have to follow what goes on as best I can. So I’m going to throw out some observations about the latest changes from Facebook. I hope they can help you with your FB pages.

When changes first came in around January 2018 I was quite ticked, because all of a sudden my posts went flat, my reach died and not much happened. Posts that in the past would easily get a reach of 20K were now only getting 2k. Everything I expected to happen, didn’t.

Now I’m fortunate that for my business there is a lot of content and it’s wanted by my audience. So I changed tack a little, based on thinking like FB thinks. Their core goal as I see it is to give the customer (viewer) the content they want to see.

So I set up a couple of photo albums with a focus on a particular area of interest. Such as “Carnage and wheel lifts.” With the invite for my audience to send me their images for placing in the album. I was inundated with pictures so much so I had to get my Niece to help moderate. Each person who sends an image gets a free MadMatt sticker sent to them as a thank you.

I feel this is important not only as a thank you but as a chance for them to be valued because I’ve engaged with them as a person who has value.

I’ve also continued to post up my normal content during this time.

In general now my numbers are screaming through the roof with people engaging with lots of my content. My reach is back where it was but my  engagement is higher than it’s ever been. My observation is that FBs new algorithm is now better able to provide more focused content to the viewer and is learning how my content works with an audience. If a post works FB then puts that post and others like it in front of more people like the first person who liked. it. And so it snowballs.

Another thought!

A conversation I often have with my customers is along the lines that if you want to play on FB you need to pay. In the early days of Social, organic content worked and worked well but today you will go nowhere if you don’t have budget to promote your content and your page. I often ask how much budget my customers are going to put behind a video I produce. At the end of the day If I produce a great piece of content but it’s not promoted FB won’t put it in front of peoples eyes. Of course there are perceived exceptions to this such as a recent video I did for Ironman 4×4 https://youtu.be/T762I3vmbG4 which got 78K views organically. My question in this case is, can’t that content then be leveraged to go viral? The audience obviously loves it. So imagine how it would have gone with $1000 of promotions put behind it.

Often I can get a view for $0.01 or less. Is that not the cheapest way to get eyeballs on your brand and content? Thus maximising the investment made into creating the content. At the end of the day FB is the cheapest marketing platform I know of so why are we afraid to use it? I feel that we begrudge FB because we got spoilt back when it was easy and free. My question to you is this then. Why are you in business, to carry grudges or to build a business with one of the cheapest and most powerful forms of marketing on the planet?

There are many places to learn about FB marketing but the one thing I feel is important with it is that you test and measure all your creatives across a number of different audiences to find out which one works. Then throw some coin on the one that gets the best results. If an ad is obviously not working stop it and try something different. You really can’t loose.

Heres a link to my page if you want to have a look at some of the numbers I get. https://www.facebook.com/madmatt4wd/

What do you think on what I’ve said above? Have you found differently? Am I wrong?

I have no affiliation with Facebook and this is just my unprofessional observations.

 

I’m MadMatt stay safe on the trails.

MadMatts 4wd adventure through Africa: Part-5

Posted by MadMatt - 4wd Tips on February 26, 2018
Posted in: Adventures in Africa, Mad Matt - 4wd tips, Mad Matt 4wd Trips. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment
The Rescue!
Shaun and I bid the rest of the team goodby and headed back out to the beach for the run North. The last fuel stop was on the outskirts of town so this is where we’d fill the tanks and the 200 liter drum of fuel jammed inside the back of the Land Rover. It was during the filling process as the fuel pump numbers rolled past 200 litres that the attendant came out waving, yelling and fuming at us. I looked at him and smiled which is what you do when you have no idea what another person is saying. Shaun seemed to work out that he thought we were about to do a runner or not be able to pay for the fuel. Being Westerners we could have afforded to buy him out but he’d obviously been burnt a few times in the past.
Driving up the beach in the afternoon was actually a rest from the hectic week we had had getting all the parts together. Shaun and I just chilled out and let the Ks roll on by. The sea was rising towards a high tide as we again approached the National Park check point but this time we were prepared and with a left turn we headed of into the Sahara desert once again. For me this has to be some of the most fun in a 4wd. Ducking weaving searching out a trail where it’s non exist. Once we were a few kilometres inland we ran parallel the the beach for another few kilometres. Then we headed back out the the beach to continue our way north having bypassed the check point. As far as I know there is some fella still sitting there waiting for those white suckers to come back and pay him.
With night just about on us we pulled up behind a dune with the sound of the ocean in the distance we crashed for the night. I chose to sleep under the stars on the roof rack. I know where the term “chandelier of stars” comes from.
The next morning it took us till lunch time to find our abandoned team. As the GPS way point got closer the tension for Shaun and I increased with the fear of what we might find. Would they still be there? Would they be dead? When we came around a small dune to see the Land Rover and two people sitting in the shade of it we let out a cheer and hugs all around.
After we had some lunch and shared all the stories about the preceding week we got stuck into the engine rebuilding. Because Peter had prepared a lot of the motor it only took around 2 hours to have the girl running like a Swiss watch. No one was interested in playing in this sandpit any longer so we turned tail to do the drive to Nouakchott. I drove the repaired 4wd so I could keep an eye on how she was running. Early on she was running perfectly but problems were on their way.
We had decided we would just drive all the way to Nouakchott without a camp over. We made our way back around the the check point without incident. It was during this process where I needed full power to get up some of the dunes I started to feel I was down on power. To be honest at this point in time I really didn’t care to much as long as I could keep driving I wasn’t stopping to investigate. As the long night wore on I was slowly loosing power to the point I was selecting lower gears and revving the engine harder to try and make enough power to get the job done.
By the time the lights of Nouakchott were on the horizon I was really having a tough time keeping the old girl running. She was back firing and had so little power, I was in 1st gear at times. I finally managed to crawl of the beach and onto the road into town. I think the motor died as we rolled to a stop out front of the accomodation. The rest of the crew were sitting out front when we pulled up and we all excitedly reconnected.
To round the story out the next morning upon investigation I found that despite our best efforts sand dust had built up on the pushrods and cam shaft lobes so that when I adjusted the valves, the sand gave me incorrect adjustments. This meant that once the sand got filtered out in the oil filter and the motor settled down the valve gear wasn’t opening the valves enough to let the motor run. I readjusted the vales and she ran sweet again.
In part 6 we head to Senegal for more of this crazy African adventure.
I’m MadMatt stay safe on the trails.

MadMatts 4wd adventure through Africa: Part-4

Posted by MadMatt - 4wd Tips on February 23, 2018
Posted in: Adventures in Africa, Mad Matt - 4wd tips, Mad Matt 4wd Trips. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

It’s Broke and I can’t fix it here.

After the adventures of the day, discussion around the camp that night was all about the “what ifs”. What if they didn’t let us go? What if they pulled the trigger and shot one or all of us? Sleeping under the clear desert stars and waking the next morning ready for whatever was next in our adventure. We didn’t have to wait long! The desert in this area was mainly small low lying hills and dunes that were covered in clumps of sunburnt and windswept bush. So for me leading the way it was great fun picking creative driving lines in and out of gullies and troughs and up and over the various rises we could climb. 

 
We traveled along like this for a few hours when I noticed the Yellow Landrover was no longer in my rearview mirror. We didn’t have radio communications of any sort so I waited for them to catch up. There was no sign of them after 10 minutes so we started backtracking the way we had come. As we came up a rise and onto a small flat area there they were with the bonnet up. They tell me how it just stopped and now it won’t start (their a helpful lot). I start to investigate and sure enough the motor won’t start in fact it won’t even turn over although I can get a little bit of back and forth on the crankshaft with a spanner. I’m starting to think we have a real problem and would need to go deeper into the motor. 
 
Seeing as how we would be a while I suggested we get some shade set up and get lunch happening while some of the guys and I start spinning the spanners. We pulled the rocker cover of and all looks normal so off comes the sump to have a looksy looksy in there and oh dear. The insides look like scrambled eggs. I can see a bent connecting rod. Now it’s “off with it’s head” which reveals the complete picture. An exhaust valve head has broken off the valve stem and very quickly smashed a hole in the piston, bent a connecting rod, and bent and cracked the cylinder head. It had even caused the spark plug to break away and fall into the head forming a perfect hole in the top of the piston shaped like a spark plug.
 
Surely it must be time for a cup of tea:) What to do, what to do, what to do. I had a decent range of spares but not a new cylinder head or Con rod. After a fair bit of deliberations as a team it was decided that we would head to the city of Nouakchott the capital of Mauritania for the parts. For security, 2 of the team would stay behind and wait with the 4wd till we returned with the spares required. Once the plan was made everyone repacked and jammed ourselves into the 2 remaining landrovers. Yes Bill and Bob the flower pot men were still with us. I had carefully collected all the parts that needed to be replaced and tried to think through every possibility of what could go wrong and how I could solve it if need be. There was no coming back to grab something I had forgotten. 
 
The thought of leaving friends in the desert without any way of getting out was very scary and we were determined to get back to them one way or another. As we headed off we had a real sense of excited fear in the vehicles. As we continued picking our way across the desert there wasn’t much talking as we tried to get our heads around what had just happened. 
 
We all wanted to go on an adventure when we had left London but this was hectic and felt like it was well and truly on the edge of reality with danger around us all the time. Maybe thats what adventure is, the excitement before hand the fear during it and the fantastic stories afterwards.
 
It was well into the afternoon by now and we were getting close to the beach which we could use as a road all the way down to Nouakchott. Once we got onto the beach Shaun informed us that there was a National Park that we had to pass through and that they would want to see that all who had entered the National Park we’re leaving it as well. Of course we had a problem not only had we left a vehicle in the park but we planned to come back into the park and rescue them. As we’re heading down the beach we’re trying to come up with plans of how we could miss the National Park check point when suddenly we were at it and had to stop. 
 
Shaun once again begins negotiations and tries to explain why we’re one Landrover short and missing 2 bodies. After an hour Shaun decides the African way is best and just pays a bribe so we can get on our way. The conditions being that we MUST stop in there on our way back so they can record that we have got our other vehicle out. (read so they can get more bribe money from us) We were all over that one now so we just plotted the location into the GPS to be used later.
 
A few Kilometers down the beach it was almost dark and the tide was rising chewing away at the beach so we decided to head into the dunes again and make camp for the night. Once again as we sat on the top of a sand dune with a peaceful breeze in our faces watching the moon rise above the Atlantic we discussed the adventures of another day in Africa.
 
The next morning we make our way along the beach arriving in Nouakchott soon after lunch. When travelling a book written by the Lonely planet is a must have and the girls had been reading up on where we should stay in town and had settled on a modest Cafe’ with lodging rooms out back. I was mad keen to get our parts and head back out to get our friends but by the time we had settled into our digs and sorted out a few other details like getting some black market currency everything was closed for the day. 
 
Now I’m not sure how the African system works but most Africans seem to know someone who can get things done for you and all you have to do is ask a few questions of people and most of your requirements can be arranged and this was the case for us. We needed someone who knew where to go to get the parts we needed and as it turned out we were in luck. The Cafe’ owner knew a guy who had a car and for a small fee would take us around town collecting all the parts we would need. Now it seemed to me that the spare parts trade was a generally a mix of specialists where one guy would sell reconditioned pistons another the conrods and another the bearings. This made the job of buying our parts ridiculously time consuming. 
 
Our Chauffeurs car was a 1970ish Peugeo that would have had it’s last service in 1970 and by the time we all piled into it it certainly made many noises of complaint but hey thats Africa. You just go with the flow and it was better than walking. We thought the best place to start would be the Landrover dealer who had most of the parts in stock and even showed us a brand new cylinder head but we didn’t own an oil company so couldn’t afford any of his parts so off we go to the black market side of town.
 
I won’t bore you with the details but it took 5 days of scrounging around the back blocks to find all the parts we needed. The piston from our motor was one size oversize and all I could find was a std size piston. The cylinder head we got our hands on had been serviced that many times without new parts that the valves had almost receded to the bottom of the valve seats. But as best I could tell it was flat and would work. 
 
Around about day 4 in town and Shaun and I start to think through and plan our rescue mission when we realised that we wouldn’t have enough fuel in the tanks to drive out into the desert and return let alone have enough fuel to drive the stranded Landrover in so we needed to find a clean drum to hold at least 100 liters of petrol. We set our chauffeur who had proved his worth onto the task and within the day returned with a drum strapped to the roof of the Peugeo. Upon inspection it was actually clean inside and would work well for us.
I’m MadMatt Stay safe on the trails.

MadMatts 4wd adventure through Africa: Part-3

Posted by MadMatt - 4wd Tips on April 1, 2014
Posted in: Mad Matt 4wd Trips. Tagged: , , , , , , . 2 Comments

Eyelids dusted off, camp packed and of we go into the desert proper, heading for the capital of Mauritania the city of Nouakchott. The plan was to head along the border area towards the west coast and travel along the beach to Nouakchott. By the time we got our gear together we were the last to leave the border post and head out into the desert. We had secured an old army GPS system before we left London. Back in 1994 these units were not a small unit stuck onto your windscreen. This GPS was huge and didn’t give much more information than a heading that you could follow. I had never heard of a GPS until I was shown this unit so it was all rather exciting. Shaun was in charge of this incredible device while my job was to find a way safely through the desert in the direction Shaun pointed.

Wesern Sahara desert scape

An interesting observation was that over a few kilometers I had a tendency to drift to the right which meant that every so often I would have to cut to the left and get back onto to the correct heading. Shaun had us following an old road that had been built by one of the armies in the years gone by, but had been unmaintained for years. Therefore there were massive half moon sand dunes creeping around the place blocking the road. I had to navigate over, around and amongst these dunes while trying to head in the right direction. We traveled like this for 2 days stopping every so often to check out old ruins from what would have once been a military outpost defending that bit of the sandpit.

It was during one of my little sorties to get back on track that I realised I had angels watching out for me. Some time back we had come down off a plateau onto some lower ground. Where the old road had disappeared from view under a series of massive dunes leaving me with a decision of going left or right and trying to find a way around them. There was no way we could climb them with the overloaded and underpowered Landrovers. The sand was so soft and fine that it would have been tough going just trying to walk up the dunes. I decided to stay true to form and head to the right of the dunes. Because the dunes covered a large area this decision was really a case of head into the area and weave our way through the dunes as best we could. After some hours of weaving the dunes became smaller and the desert floor started to change into a plain covered in low lying desert shrubs. By now I was quite some kilometers of course. Shaun and I consulted our maps and compass to make sure the GPS was telling the truth and agreed that we should cut across country and find the old road.

So turning hard left we headed off on a slow bumpy crawl across this shrubby dry landscape with only a way point on the GPS to look forward to. For me it was great fun picking a driving line every 10 meters before I could work out where to head next. At times there was barely enough space for the 4wd to fit between the plants and every so often I would have to drive across the top of them hoping the dry timber wouldn’t puncture a tyre, rip a vital fuel or brake line out. About half way across this area I came to just another plant where the sand had built up all around the base forming quite a mound of sand. So that I could get past I had to head straight towards the plant and allow the sand to give way under the weight of the Landrover and slide it around the plant so I could get back onto the correct heading.

Desert Landscape

Unbeknown to me this sliding motion saved my life because under the surface of the sand right where the drivers front wheel would have gone if I hadn’t slid, was a landmine. The two 4wds behind me told me later that it was clear as day sitting where my wheel track would have gone, uncovered as I slid past. When we finally made it back to the road and the others came and told us how close we came to dying it sent chills up my spine. I knew my parents prayers for safety were being answered in that moment.

As the day was getting on it was decided that camp was a good idea so that evening was spent in the peaceful lee of a sand dune under the chandelier of stars thinking about how good it was to be alive even if I was only just alive.

The next morning we headed out following this old road that slowly disappeared into history leaving us following the GPS way points plotted in by Shaun. It was late morning when we started to find lots of vehicle tracks merging into a number of well defined trails that crisscrossed each other but all headed in the same direction. As we came up a small rise we entered a small clearing amongst a few small dunes with a sentry who indicated for us to stop. It seemed we had found a military outpost in place to keep an eye on all who traveled through the area, at least that’s what we thought.

We stopped and started to climb out of the vehicles when another soldier in full uniform strode towards us with his rifle pointed towards us in a very menacing way.
Moroccansoldiersstandbehind Like a brave man that I’m not I stepped back behind Shaun whilst muttering something about not knowing how to speak french so you should talk to him. The soldier would have been barely 20 years old but it seemed he was in charge of this outpost and he very quickly had those in his charge armed and positioned around us so that we had nowhere to go. Shaun asked with crude french what was going on to be met with a very stern “PASSPORTS” to which we all jumped and produced our passports from various hidden locations on our bodies. Once they were in “young fellas” hands he wandered back to the command post without so much as a word. We were well and truly confused by this so just stood around under the watchful gaze of the perimeter guards. A short time later the ‘young fella’ returned to inform us that our documents were not in order and that we would need to resolve that problem by paying the fine, to which Shaun told him that wasn’t the case and that we wouldn’t be paying any fines. Shaun’s lack of respect for ‘young fellas’ self perceived authority was met with a fair bit of yelling and gun waving and a very dramatic storming back to the command post. By now Shaun was starting to realise that this was not an authorised confiscation of our passports but somehow we had to get them back so we could go on with our trip. We had a team meeting and it was decided that Shaun and I should go over to the command post and have a little chat with “One day I’ll be a big man”. I’m not sure why I got relegated to the roll of bouncer for Shaun but I figured I could run faster than him and I wouldn’t hesitate to run without warning.

The command post was a small dusty concrete structure with very little furnishings and what was there was simple and rough. “My gun is bigger than yours” was sitting at a table with the passports spread out before him. Without looking up he indicated we could be seated. Shaun tried to lighten things up by chatting away in his broken french, to be honest he could have been swearing for all I could tell. Bottom line was “I own you” felt he had control and wasn’t going to be railroaded out of his extortion attempt by some wanna be James Bond like Shaun. It seemed the situation wasn’t going well so Shaun told “My life sucks” that we were going to go and set up camp in his compound and have a cup of tea. Lets face it, tea fixes everything for the British.

Landrover in Sahara

As we fiddled around unloading our tents and having lunch for the next half hour or so “I wanna be King” stayed quite planning his next strategic advance upon us. When he approached us next he informed us that he needed to search our vehicles for security reasons. We agreed as long as we did the unpacking for him, so we began unloading our bags and then producing dirty socks and backpacker undies. This was going along reasonably well until “King is not enough, I wanna be god” came to a bag belonging to one of the flower pot men (see part one) and thought he might unpack the toiletries bag. Well the scream for Bill interspersed with french obscenities not heard since the 18th century was a surprise to all of us. Now I don’t know what Bill had in the bag but maybe it was toothpaste with a little extra kick but regardless there was no way “I’m god” was getting to look inside that bag. This sudden outburst caught “I’m god”” by surprise but he was thankful for his military training, that kicked in with a swift shove with his rifle butt into Bills chest pushing him to the ground then flicking the rifle around pointed it at Bills head.

There was a brief although tense standoff before James Bond (Shaun) calmly started to talk the situation down as well as a few the other soldiers started talking in a local language to “You mean I’m not god”. “Not being god suxs” was in a difficult situation where he had no authority to do anything but needed to see the back of us. We could see him trying to find a way out of this situation that wouldn’t destroy his respect in this sandpit. After a few minutes with no one moving the rifle was lowered and “I feel stupid” stormed of back to the command center followed by a number of the other soldiers obviously feeling defeated. But we still had a problem, our passports.

We were all somewhat stunned by what had just happened especially Bill. By this stage we had been in the compound for a few hours and were keen to move out. As we tried to work out how to get our passports back we heard a bunch of yelling coming from within the hut when all of a sudden our passports came flying out the front door. We raced over and grabbed them and frantically, started throwing our stuff into the 4wds keen as to get our toys and leave this stupid sandpit. Just as we were about to pull out one of the soldiers who had been quietly sitting in the background the whole time came over to my window. In perfect English he instructed us that when we left the compound we needed to stay on the main trail as this was the cleared pathway through the minefield in front of us. What the!! it turns out all that outpost was there for was to warn us about a flipping minefield and had nothing to do with passports.

As we headed out of the compound struggling to get our heads around all that had happened in the last 2 days we had no idea that the fun was only just beginning. But fun of a different kind. My kind of fun.

I’m MadMatt stay safe on the trails.



The Famous Wheeny Creek from a different view – 4wd Track outside Sydney

Posted by MadMatt - 4wd Tips on March 5, 2014
Posted in: Mad Matt 4wd Trips. Tagged: , , , , , , , . 7 Comments

We spent the day at Wheeny Creek and filmed this short clip on one of my favourite (Sydney based) 4wd tracks. If you know the track, hit the share button and then send me some photos of your truck out there.
For those who are familiar with the drive, wait for the very end of the video and see the lookout from a view that you perhaps haven’t seen before.

Wheeny Creek is located in the north-west of Sydney. A very popular destination for Sydney-siders to get off road for a day or an over-nighter.

The best thing about Wheeny Creek is the exploring that can be done. Access to the campground can be done in a 2wd along an unsealed road. Once you are at the campground, you can go exploring the 4wd tracks. There is something for everyone from the most basic through to some tough sections.
If you are familiar with the tracks at Wheeny Creek, another bit of fun is to give the tracks a go at night time. Its a whole different level of 4wdriving. Just remember to stay safe and go with another 4wd.

Wheeny Creek Campground

The camping ground at Wheeny Creek is a large grassy area suitable for groups or there are small areas you can camp that are a bit more secluded.  Tents, Camper trailers and even small caravans are all ok.
You are allowed campfires and there is a river where you camp swim on hot days.
Water isn’t available other then the river, there are also 2 flushing toilets.

Being such a popular weekend spot for camping and picnics, please take all your rubbish with you and leave the place clean and tidy for the next group.

Getting there:

Wheeny Creek campground is located in the southeast section of Wollemi National Park. To get there:

  • From South Windsor, travel north along Singleton Road (route 69)
  • Turn left into Blaxland Ridge Road
  • Turn right into Comleroy Road
  • The last 4km is unsealed road to Wheeny Creek campground

For more information on Wheeny Creek, check out the NSW National Parks and Wildlife website

Lookout

The Emergency Hill Start Procedure.

Posted by MadMatt - 4wd Tips on February 23, 2014
Posted in: Mad Matt - 4wd tips. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments

I’m excited to share the latest MadMatt video with you. “The hill start procedure” is a skill that makes a steep hill start as safe as possible by using all possible breaking methods you have available. By using the tips I teach you in the video you will be able to safely start so you can reverse down a hill or continue going up the hill. These tips are particularly relevant for Manual 4wds but the principles apply to automatic 4wds as well.

I’m MadMatt stay safe on the trails.

MadMatts 4wd adventure through Africa: Part-2

Posted by MadMatt - 4wd Tips on February 16, 2014
Posted in: Adventures in Africa, Mad Matt - 4wd tips, Mad Matt 4wd Trips. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

When the ferry pulled into the busy port of the city of Tangier, I was greeted with a completely new world. Having grown up in a third world country in the wilds of Papua New Guinea I was used to things being different but this was certainly different to any other place I had visited. The hustle of men in dresses coupled into the new experiences of an old civilization had me keen to hit the road and get out of the city.

Men in dresses

Men in dresses

Fortunately after a little bit of shopping that’s what we did, hit the road. Now I could go on about all the traveling bits but if you’re like me you’re more interested in the exciting stuff so lets get down to the boarder with Mauritania.

Morocco and Mauritania had been at war for quite some years and were now in a cease fire. What this meant for us is, we had to cross a section of no mans land along their boarder. This section of Africa is a gateway from Europe into the heart of Africa and as such there are numerous guys who travel into Europe and buy cars to drive down into Africa to be sold. When we arrive at the boarder post we find all these OLD Peugeot’s lined up waiting to cross the boarder. The way the crossing worked was that on a certain day both boarders would be opened into the no mans land section so that crossings could be made. So everyone had to wait until that day arrived. While we we’re waiting we meet two guys who were definitely left over french hippies on their way to set up a sowing clinic in Africa. They had an old Landrover same as ours and in the end we invited them to travel with us for safety. I can’t remember their names so I’ll call them Bill and Ben the flower pot men.

Young MadMatt with hair in the green pants. Bill and Ben to the right

Young MadMatt with hair in the green pants. Bill and Ben the flower pot men to the right. James Bond Shaun white shirt and Blue head dodad thingy. My future wife beside me. Peter in Black at front.

The day arrives, the boarder gets opened up and all of a sudden it’s like an off-road rally is on as a hundred or so cars, trucks and 4wds take of into this No Mans Land. I must admit we got caught up in the hype and hooked into the crossing at a speed that was probably a bit fast but we survived. This part of the world is mainly desert and soft sand is the norm so knowing how to drive sand was a great skill to have BUT remember the old Peugeot’s? Yeh! Well some of the guys had never driven in sand let alone in a 2wd car so within a couple of Kilometers we started seeing cars broken down, bogged and struggling. Somewhere along the way we learned that the Mauritanian boarder wouldn’t be opened until all the vehicles had made the crossing.

Watching all the vehicles struggling I realised that this was a great opportunity to have a heap of recovery fun. I let the tyres down to a much lower sand driving pressure allowing me to drive wherever I wanted without getting stuck and went back out to help those in trouble. The first guy we came to had his front wheels pointing in opposite directions because his steering had busted, after a bit of thinking I was able to strap the broken bits together so that he could have a bit of steering. Hooking our Snatch strap on we began pulling car after broken car onto some harder sand where they could drive. Then we found a short wheel base late model Nissan Patrol stuck with the driver scratching his head wondering what to do. After a bit of a chat I said mate do you mind if I drive your Rig because I believe I can drive it out of the sand without any trouble. He’s happy as for me to do it. Well to say I was having fun now would be an understatement. This Patrol had a big turbo, big fat muds (tires), factory diff-locks and was made to eat sand for breakfast. It didn’t take much to get the Patrol free, air down and just a little bit of back and forwards packing the sand and out she came. When Old Mate saw I knew what I was doing he said I should use his Patrol to go and help the others, so with one of my mates as my offsider hooking up cars and overseeing the FUN we hooked in again. I was buzzing I was made for this.

All this took a few hours and by the time we got the the Mauritanian boarder there seemed to be a few pissed off people. Pissed because we had taken too long to recover everyone??? They could have come and helped! By the time we got processed across the boarder it was nearly dark so we settled down for the night camping in the desert. A stiff breeze had come up and so we decided we would set up our canvas tarp between the 4wds as a shelter from the wind and blowing sand. Rather cozy with 12 of us in there but the funny thing was that with the wind blowing the canvas all over the place the sand was being forced through the canvas and made the whole inside of the “tent” like a calm dust storm. When I woke up in the morning my eyelids were full of sand and so before I could open my eyes I had to roll over and tip the dust out of my eye sockets. Ahh the adventures of Africa.

Next I’ll tell you about the soldiers that point guns and land mines.

 

I’m MadMatt stay safe on the trails.

MadMatts 4wd adventure through Africa: Part-1

Posted by MadMatt - 4wd Tips on February 9, 2014
Posted in: Adventures in Africa, Mad Matt - 4wd tips, Mad Matt 4wd Trips. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

How about I tell you some more of My African Adventure story? Due to the length I will do this over a few Blogs.

Back in 1994, (I’m not too old am I?) I had the opportunity to go 4wding in Africa with eight others in two Series two Land Rovers. My role was to be the trip mechanic and the 4wd expert. We traveled from London through Spain, Morocco, Mauritania, down to Dakar in Senegal on the north west coast of Africa. At the time Australians were on the nose as far as Spain was concerned so I wasn’t allowed to travel into Spain. You may have heard of a place called the Rock of Gibraltar which is located in the bottom corner of Spain. Well Gibraltar is a British territory and so I was allowed to fly there from London.

Gibraltar has the coolest airport because they actually shut the main road so the plains can land.Gibralter Airport
So the plan was that I would fly into Gibraltar and Shaun one of the others on the trip would come pick me up and smuggle me across the Spanish boarder into Spain. I needed to get into Spain so that I could travel on the car-ferry with the rest of the team from Spain to Morocco. When the big day arrived Shaun met me at the airport and we walked across the airport to the Spanish check point. I was suitably nervous thinking I was about to get locked up in a Spanish prison to never be seen again. I asked Shaun how smuggling me across the border was going to work, thinking of the Australian Customs I had left a weeks earlier. Metal detectors, guards, cameras, dogs and guns. Shaun was one of those guys that you liked as soon as you met him, he carried himself with the confidence of an experienced traveler who knew the tricks of staying alive when you’re living on the road out of a back pack in wild Africa.

Shaun didn’t have much to say other than “you let me do the talking” and stay in the background. “We will walk in the front door and if you come in a little behind me then wander across the room and out the door on the other side of the room.” We were approaching the crossing by this stage and I’m thinking there is no way this is going to work.

Shaun asks me “you ready” and before I can say anything he’s walking in the door and I’m following him thinking I just have to wander across this room that’s all so I walk in the door to see Shaun happily chatting to a bunch of guards, creating a distraction. So I get to my meandering across the 10 or so meters of room waiting for the hand to grab me on the shoulder or the yell indicating I had been spotted but before I knew it I was out the door and into Spain without so much as a stamp in my passport. I felt like a real bad dude now I was officially an illegal immigrant into Spain.

Gibraltar Spanish Border

Once we met up with the rest of the crew at the port where the ferry would leave from we started to plan for our departure across to Morocco the next morning. In the back of my head I’m thinking how am I getting out of Spain? I was trying to think of ways I could hide in one of the 4wds without being found. Later that night I hit Shaun up for the plan and to my dismay he says your going to just walk through the customs and onto the ferry. I’m not James Bond in case you hadn’t noticed. Standing in the slowly moving line watching the customs officer clearing all the passengers ahead of me with thoughts of Spanish prisons running inside my head gave me plenty of time to get scared. I hand the officer my passport which he casually flicks through once then a second time looking for a stamp that doesn’t exist. He motions to a guy with a gun to come over and asks me why there is no stamp in my passport? I play dumb which is easy when the brain is cramped with fear. They chat about which cell I should be put into and then decide I should go and wait in the corner for a bit. Now I’m thinking that the ferry will be leaving without me when Shaun shows up and starts chatting to people with guns. One of them comes over to me and starts asking awkward questions to which I play dumb, again not to hard, then he asks me a really easy question. “If I let you onto the ferry will you ever be coming back to Spain” Yippy I can answer that one, “No flipping way,” to which he says of you go. So Morocco here I come.

Standing on the rail of the ferry with my first adventure behind me feeling like I could take on the world was a fantastic feeling. Little did I know that in the months ahead I would have guns pointed at me, nearly drive over Land mines, rebuild a motor in the Sahara desert and almost get killed by a swarm of angry locals.

Part 2 next week.

I’m MadMatt Stay safe on the trails.

A POLL for you “Is a hitch pin safe as a recovery point?”

Posted by MadMatt - 4wd Tips on February 2, 2014
Posted in: Mad Matt - 4wd tips. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 2 Comments

Last week I posted this blog  which can be seen as a hot potato. I hope that you read the full post and were able to form an educated opinion on the use of the Hitch pin during a recovery. If you want to check the blog out go to http://madmatt4wd.com.au/mad-matt-blogs/

As I mention in my blog I hear about shearing and bent hitch pins but have personally never seen one, even after a Google image search. I honestly thought I would get a fair few pictures of bent and sheared hitch pins sent my way, considering we all have cameras but alas not a single picture, once again just stories. So to learn a bit more on your thoughts i have set up a Poll at the end of this page.

Eye Candy

Eye Candy

But for now I choose to stand by my original Blog that to use a hitch pin is an acceptable, safe recovery tool although not the safest. The worst story posted on Facebook was that of 2 vehicles that ended up bogged with 2 bent pins and a taught snatch strap between them. My response to that is, whats unsafe about that situation? Nothing, yes it’s a pain for the vehicles and they may have had to cut the snatch strap, but no one got hurt which is what safety is about. If your interested in reading the responses go to my Facebook page, there’s some good thoughts posted by others for your consideration. Until I receive evidence of a sheared hitch pin feel free to continue using that method until you can afford to upgrade to a hitch receiver with rated bow shackle for your recoveries.

I’m MadMatt stay safe on the trails.

Is a hitch pin acceptable as a snatch recovery point?

Posted by MadMatt - 4wd Tips on January 27, 2014
Posted in: Mad Matt - 4wd tips. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 8 Comments

Hitch pin recovery point

This is a subject that comes up regularly around the camp fire and it seems to me that there are 2 schools of thought.

First, “it’s safe and I have done many recoveries over the years without hassles.”

The second I hear is, “it’s safe but the pin can bend and therefore getting the snatch strap out becomes very difficult, probably requiring a grinder to cut the pin off.”

Pintle Hook

Pintle Hook

I personally have a “Pintle Hook” for my rear recovery point which mounts directly to the chassis rail with 4 x 10mm  high tensile bolts. The most common rear recovery point is a hitch receiver that takes a rated Bow shackle. It is my opinion that a hitch receiver is the safest, most cost effective, simple solution for the vast majority of 4wders.

Hitch Receiver

Hitch Receiver

I recently got a comment on the MadMatt YouTube channel about hitch pins as a recovery point and this is what prompted me to outline my thoughts on this subject.

This is the comment from, “eastcoastcam”
You should NEVER use a hitch pin as a connection for your strap. The pin is not designed for that kind of force and can be deadly. Friends of mine did that and it broke, luckily only taking out a headlight and it wasn’t even a hard tug, no worse than yours in the video.

I  thank ‘Eastcoastcam’ for taking the time to give his input which I have no doubt is based on a true story, I would love to see some pictures as I believe there would be some other contributing factors for this to happen, but I don’t have all the facts nor do I know everything and can always learn from others. So if you have stories WITH PICTURES showing pins that have bent or broken with the strap still in the hitch receiver I would love to see them so I can help educate all of us. (Not stories of your lost cousins mate who knew some guy who wanted to buy a 4wd one day who saw a bent pin while on the drink one night)

So, my  thoughts on this subject: As I talk about in my video (see below) the main issue I see as a danger is that of the strap getting cut if it comes against the edge of the receiver, so keep the strap coming straight out of the receiver by having the vehicles in line with each other so that the recovery is in a straight line. If this can’t be done then use other recovery techniques and/or equipment.

For a long time I thought using the hitch pin was a concern, so I would avoid using it. After watching numerous safe recoveries and talking to some industry experts, I felt that it was a safe technique, although not the safest.

My thoughts on why a hitch pin is safe to use for recoveries:

  • The pin diameter is similar to that of a shackle so there is no chance of the pin cutting the strap.
  • The pin is in a shear load which is by far the strongest.
  • “IF” the pin bends the worst that happens is the strap is difficult to remove.
  • “IF” the pin shears the broken pin needs to pull through into the center of the receiver which I can’t see happening because the snatch strap will not have sufficient friction on the pin to exert the force required to pull the pin into the hitch. I believe the strap would come away from the hitch without the broken bit’s of the pin. Keep in mind the pin has a bend in one end and a “R” clip in the other, both these need to pull through into the center of the receiver for them to become a projectile.
  • Pins are made of a steel that, although very strong, will bend rather than fracture if a pin was made of brittle steel.
  • If you do use a hitch pin make sure it’s a quality pin and always fit the “R” clip to the pin once the snatch strap if fitted.

When you’re doing your recoveries, please keep all the bystanders well out of the way and only have the drivers in the vehicles.

I do add some cautions to all I’m saying here and that is, that the hitch receiver and tow pack, is not a rated recovery system but it is well proven in the field as an acceptable recovery system when used within some guidelines. NEVER EVER do a recovery using a tow ball as this is well proven as a VERY dangerous recovery. Snatchbreakwindscreen

In a snatch recovery if anything must fail it should be the snatch strap because, although it is still dangerous, it would be very unlikely to seriously hurt a person if they got hit. I have seen many straps break over the years and the worst damage I’ve seen from a strap is a good dent in the leading edge of the roof above the windscreen of a Defender. So as long as the metal items are far stronger than the snatch strap a snatch recovery using a hitch pin should be seen a safe procedure.

In answer to my question “Is a hitch pin acceptable as a snatch recovery point?” my answer is, yes it is safe but it is not the safest the Hitch receiver or Pintle hook is safer again. If you need to find out the best system for your 4wd please go to your local 4wd accessory specialist for their advice. I would love pictures and the stories behind them, so either post in the comments here or send your stories in to madmatt4wd@gmail.com.

I’m MadMatt, stay safe on the trails.