Posted in Safety, Defensive Driving

Side by Side Training

If you compare the safety standards of a side by side vehicle to the quad bike, the side by side wins easily.  Firstly, the side by side has seat belts and a roll cage.  Secondly, the side by side cannt go as fast as a quad bike.  Thirdly, its allot harder to roll a side by side because the wheel base is wider.  Finnally, the side by side driver does not lose his brain and go crazy, its a pretty sedate drive.  The quad bike has the ability to bring out the dare devil, I am not a physchologist but I have seen this many times. 

Once out in the bush!  We found the 550cc side by side had a top speed over 60Km/h, which I felt was a bit fast for this vehicle.  To operate the 2WD and 4WD which was a push button selector could be operated while moving, low range was on the gear selector, and diff lock was another push button selector, the vehicle had to be stationary for low range and in neutral for the diff lock. When we tried to turn off the diff lock and take it out of 4WD we had to reverse for about 20m.

The pre-start check was a challenge very poor design.  The battery was hidden in the front compartment under a bolted-on carry rack that meant if you needed to jump start the vehicle or check the battery you needed to unbolt the rack.  To top up the coolant, again it was in the same compartment under the bolt-on carry rack as the battery. To find the dipstick we had to fold the passenger seat forward then found and removed the cover with no markings on it, where we found the black dipstick which made it very hard to see the oil level.  Learn more about side by side training

To check and clean the air filter you had to remove the centre console from between the seats then remove the lid from the air filter box once inside we found a dry foam filter that should have been lubricated with oil to trap the dust. The air intake was down behind the driver’s seat.

All the suspension arms and joints had grease nipples, very old technology. If you needed to change a spark plug you had to remove the centre console from between the seats then remove the whole air filter box to locate the spark plugs.  Side by side courses in Darwin