Photography by Brian “Murph Daddy” Murphy

Ohh, the truth can be such agony. Everybody join us, take a big ol’ breath and sigh. Hmmmmmm. Call it a gut-check, function limit or the off-road ceiling but your favorite underdog, the Honorable Trucklet, has found itself a challenge it cannot breach without a tow strap.

Making More of the Rav4

We’ve been chewing on Jeeps, FJs, Broncos and all the complete off-roaders we could for more than a year, making a point of sticking to the plan whenever the going got wrong. If there was one thing we’d had trouble with (besides mud – you need horsepower for mud, Rav4’s got none), it was the super-lumpy rocky true-crawl trail work that makes up the last five percent of the trails out there. The center locker on the five-speed Rav4 works well, and there’s a reasonable amount of articulation for keeping boots on the ground, but a stock rear LSD that had a penchant for fading when hot (and almost impossible to upgrade outside of bizarre Jap-only ‘80s rally hardware leftover from the all-wheel drive Celica’s race program) made for iffy off-roading when lots of tire-in-air time stacked up. Imagine being 100 yards into a rough spot when suddenly you’re swallowing a lot of pride while your little rig paws the air like a scared-to-piss puppy.

Getting bailed out requires a thank you. You and your Cherokee, sir, saved our pasty white ass.

Yes, there was a special sort of glee to be found chasing rigs worth five-times ours, a 160,000 mile gen-one Rav4, especially when they ran out of brass and couldn’t make things hard enough to shake it, but that was only part of the equation. We made this very simple, very hospitable little car-based wagon into a competent off-roading device. That aside, though, this trip – for all the fun we had doing 100 other absurdly offish maneuvers on the trail – was the one that showed us the reach of Rav4 functionality, its off-road ceiling. Join us, shed a tear, for our soaring mythology has found its ground, and the maximum manner of El Truckleto has been realized.

How Bad It Was to Cease Our Ingress

There’s a body of friends we occasionally find ourselves with, neighbors all, who have been doing runs with the guys from JustRuns.com. It’s a SoCal/San Diego outfit that’s made itself something of a low-profit legend in these parts. Just runs, they say, and that’s about it. Talk about bargain interface, these guys communicate at one step above telegraph, and there’s not much outside of their run schedule keeping them together. This has rendered the JustRuns crew an approachable, friendly outfit that’ll embrace everyone, including an underdog like the trucklet. At least, at the head of the trail.

] NAXJA.com even took time to make fun of the trucklet on their forums. Mondo thanko.

Some advice? These guys underrate trails a little, or they underrate themselves. We’d hooked up with them in the AM one Saturday to bonk around Corral Canyon, a little slice of off-roading heaven 40 miles east of San Diego proper. From what we’d read, and what we were led to believe by the JustRuns guys, the trucklet was up to the trails they’d planned to hit that day. Unfortunately, what seemed approachable for the trucklet on the web – limited high-camber stuff, a little offside overarticulation, and not much risk of damage – turned into a few serious sections of rock and ledge that quickly gave us slipping-locker limited-articulation fits, and 100 yards into the trail we had to confess that unless the Jeepers wanted to drag us the rest of the way, it would be better for all if we turned around and let them play their own way while we dug around the rest of Corral Canyon for slightly less arduous funsies.

Hmm, the point of no return. It was totally within our clearance and traction, but lacking a low-range ‘case the trucklet was screwed.

Easier said than done. The JustRuns crew meandered along and left us in what looked like an extractable situation, not so far into the trail that we couldn’t manage a tight little U-turn (it’s a Rav4, after all, with a turning radius fit for a pizza pan). Then the overheated diff struck again, and the stuff we motored through to get into that trail turned ugly fast. Stuck again, it was not shaping up to be a good morning until another crew came along headed the other direction, apparently having passed the JustRuns guys by driving over them, or on the side of a rock overhang like the Road Runner.

Jeepers Touch Our Special Area

On the rope, we left a little bit of our otherwise tidy 160K finish on this biter on the right.

Enter the XJs. This bunch was a function of NAXJA.com (North American XJ Association, probably), the nicest bunch of folks to ever make fun of the trucklet. These XJ guys – you can’t walk ten feet without tripping over a built XJ in San DiFreakin’Ego – next managed to drive around the hung up trucklet and drop a line on the way, pulling us out on their way to other points of interest in Corral Canyon. Upon getting us free of the one or two overachieving rocks that attempted to gore us (the Armor Craft skid plate was earning its keep), the NAXJA folks proceeded to take a break for lunch, offering us sandwiches, beer and every other sort of charming mid-trail munchie they could dream up. It was very possible they’d done a hostile takeover of a deli on the way to the trails judging by the volume of cold cuts with which they’d stocked themselves.

Serious bailout thank yous are in order for the NAXJA guys and all the denizens of NAXJA.com, who took the time to drag the overextended Rav4 out of one of the few trails that had hung it up (really, we were surprised). Once they’d ceased marveling at how dedicated we were to trailing a trucklet, they motored off in their own direction. We found ourselves an alternative of our own and went that way.

The Definition of Off-Road Ceiling Enters

Humiliation swallowed, we carry on. Corral Canyon has a LOT of terrain, 95% of which is totally truckletable.

And that was it. We crawled our first-gen Rav4 all over the rest of Corral Canyon’s backside, hitting a bunch of aggro trails that once again would have scared a lot of better equipped off-roaders, but the fact hung there like meat about to go foul: without a big investment of time and money, there was some trail work that was beyond this little off-road punk. That big-camber, extensive wheel-in-air faburock ultraoffish thin-trail torture wasn’t hapenning. Tears could fall…

There are stories yet to be written on this toy: strut spacers, we’ve got a few fixes uninstalled, and a little love is due the maintenance that came up in the process of enjoying it. On the plus side, all this means we get to build something new! If you’d like the perfect little off-road toy for your girlfriend, or an excellent dirt-ready tow-behind for your motorhome that’ll go for groceries as fast as it’ll go through the lumpy stuff, contact the author, or find him on Rav4World.com. This trucklet is rigged for play, just don’t plan on catching the Road Runner. Meep!

Top of the world, ma! On a clear day the Los Pinos Mountain lookout is so good that the brush fires hide.