CUSTOM: MATTRACKS-EQUIPPED LC79

PROVING YOU DON’T ALWAYS NEED QUALITY RUBBER TO OVERCOME TOUGH TERRAIN.

IF YOU were unfortunate enough to see the movie Fate of the Furious you may have noticed a tracked RAM pick-up in one scene. Ken Block of Hoonigan fame has even hit the ski slopes with a tracked Ford Raptor. For us, however, it was an exceedingly cool Hemipowered Fc-jeep shod with tracks – built by Daystar for SEMA 2014 – that had us contemplating a product called Mattracks. It turns out Mattracks are available in Australia, and we wanted to have a crack at these things off-road to see if they are as capable as they look.

Townsville-based Fire Express is the Australian distributor of Mattracks, and we caught up with Mark Dooley, the owner and director of Fire Express, to get the low down on converting a 4x4 to a tracked off-road weapon.

The Mattracks essentially bolt on to a vehicle’s existing stud pattern, and they can be removed any time and the wheels refitted reasonably easily. Some minor modifications are required to initially install the tracks, but then it’s up to you if you need to swap between wheels and tracks – these bolt-on mods don’t interfere with wheeled operation if you whack your wheels and tyres back on.

The main advantage of a tracked vehicle is low ground pressure and, as mud, snow and sand all pose challenges for wheeled vehicles, tracks basically provide a bigger yet lighter footprint. For example, the Land Cruiser you see here has a ground pressure of just 14kpa. To put that into perspective, while driving this set-up, I pulled up in a dry creek bed, hopped out and sank up to my ankles in sand, but the Cruiser barely broke the surface.

According to Dooley it was the