i wanna put my 2 cents in , from my experince this week.
i have the a wire mod and the cheap a trac trick.

me and some buddies went out to riverside ovr park out near spokane, washington, near where i live.

i have a 3 inch lift , 33 inch toyo mt's and had a blast playing with it. hill climbs in softer loose sandy type soil, not beach like , but more like crush rock, pretty steep stuff.

then we played around in the flats on the huge wash board stuff, like whooppy dos in motor cross racing but more spread out , i too kthem more slow then a bike would but had a blast weaving in and out of them .
then we found a water hole , well lets jsut say , i didnt follow the cardinal rule and check out the depth first, i started off slow , seemed ok, till about 2/3 of the way thru then it started getting deeper and deeper , and the nthe drivers side front tire fell into someones ruts, and the water was half way up the door on the dirvers side , i could reach out my window and touch water.
i was fairly calm , the vehicle stopped moving , i reached down and put it into 4 low , pushed the atrac button and the rear locker , and let outthe clutch, she climbed out with out a problem, didnt even seem to slip , jsut like it got another extra ummp and out she went.
i was lucky it didnt stall , and that i didnt panic, i got worried sincethere wasnt a tree or large rock with in winching distance , and i really didnt wantto have to open my door and let in all the water. but it worked perfectly.
and i continued on the rest of the day , playing happily. and avoding the same mud hole.

all and all , im very impressed, i think this is the best daily driver/ play toy for the money on the market right now. i wouldnt consider it a full on hard core offroad only beast , but it seems to have plenty of power to play , and very capable in med duty off roading fun.

i only wish i had my camera to show some of the hill climbs and the mud hole.
my digital camera is down , so no proof of all the fun i had.

airrikk17

 

Very lucky for keeping your head cool and not stalling the engine.
Glad you and the rig made it out OK.

 

Did a little trip to Anza Borrego and ran Coyote canyon with the neighbors new FJ recently.
Man this thing made the rocky climbs easy compared to the work I have had doing this in a manual trans open diff 4runner. The Atrac and rear locker worked great. It could use a little lift but it was mainly the running boards that took a beating. Also behaved really well on the sandy washboards.

I will try to post some pics once I get them loaded to gallery

 

here's some pictures from Hells revenge in Moab last weekend.

http://moontimecyclery.com/page18.html

 

 

you can click them to make em bigger