Rugged Valley have got this covered. Literally.
Stop the mud and protect your seats.
Sick of worrying about your seats? Muddy 4WD trips, dirty dog paws and spilt drinks can seriously damage your seat upholstery.
Rugged Valley knows the way Kiwis live and have specifically designed their custom fitted seat covers for the Kiwi lifestyle. Heading out adventuring can be rough on the seats, dragging mud and dirt into the cab and damaging the interior. Rugged Valley seat covers are manufactured using an extremely heavy-duty 12oz canvas. This durable, waterproof fabric protects your seats from mud, dirt, oil, and grease. They reduce daily wear and tear from jumping into your vehicle. This increases your resale value and saves you money replacing your damaged seats.
Unlike other brands, Rugged Valley’s seat covers are carefully designed and tailor-made for specific vehicles. The customfitted design prevents the covers from shuffling or sliding and ensures they fit snugly to the seats. There’s nothing worse than having to adjust the seat cover every time people hop in and out of the vehicle. Rugged Valley says ‘enough is enough’ to those cheap, stretchy covers. They don’t last, don’t stay on the seat, and end up costing you more money in the long run.
Tried and true, Rugged Valley seat covers have survived the heaviest punishment by hundreds of hardworking legends – contractors, tradies, farmers, and adventurers. Available for all utes, SUVs, vans, tractors, excavators, quads, and ATVs. Rugged Valley truly has it covered. It’s also worth having a look at Rugged Valley’s range of tough Sandgrabba Floor-mats and Sungrabba Dash-mats. These PVC moulded floormats have a unique ridge that’s designed to catch all the muck and the carpet dash-mats really cut the glare when going on long road trips.
Kiwis need waterproof seat covers that work hard and are ready for adventure. Whether it’s going fishing with the kids, 4WDing with your mates or escaping for a quick surf at sunrise, these seat covers are ready for a thrashing. Get adventureready this season and protect your 4WD. Shop online at
www.ruggedvalley.co.nz or call 0800 478 443 for a chat.
We 4WD enthusiasts are clear about how our vehicles work, aren’t we? After all, we were raised on the bicep-building pullback required to get a Land Rover into ‘low range four’, the build-from-factory sloppy ‘three on the tree’ manual shift of the old(est) Nissan Patrol, the massive effort required to loosen the equally massive wheel-nuts of a Land Cruiser ‘40’.
We’d dive under the front of a Nissan Pathfinder to pull the half shafts and replace CVs in the back yard or split a finger pulling the transfer case off the back of a Turbo 400 trans all while balancing the thing on a trolley jack and one of our knees, and never bat an eyelid.
Fingernails in those days didn’t look right without a semi-circle of ‘Essence de
Grime’ under them.
All that hands-on work gave us a clear idea of how everything worked, and it was all very mechanical and easy to work out. Engines had ‘hard connections’ via a clutch to a transmission, and through a transfer case to the front or rear.
These days it’s not so much about hard connections and more about electronics. Even working out how the engine connects with the front or rear diff is likely to make the grey matter ache horribly, involving tiny electrical flickers passed from one of the vehicle’s electronic ‘brains’ to an actuator sitting inside a centre diff unit that uses fluid to create the magic of ‘all wheels driving’.
With the enormous array of tech on board SUVs and increasingly being used to make 4WD utes more ‘car-like’, just what is the difference between AWD and 4WD? Which is better: AWD or 4WD? Is AWD the same as 4WD?
So many questions.
Without the luxury of a whole book (which most people wouldn’t buy or read!), let’s talk about that 4WD vs AWD question.
All-wheel drive, or AWD, refers to a system where all four wheels can gain traction independently of each other. They can usually apportion torque between front and rear, and do so eerily well without most drivers even noticing. The difference between AWD and 4WD is that AWD is typically ‘always on’, while
many 4WD systems allow the driver to flick between 4WD for traction and fuel-efficient 2WD.
‘Real’ 4WD is more hardcoupled front to rear and when not in 4WD is mostly driving the rear of the vehicle. Look for this more old-school 4WD on our fave weapons; AWD is of course more car-oriented and found under almost all SUVs.
But many readers will be households with both – an SUV as a daily driver and a tougher truck for weekend adventuring. So how do the drive systems work, and are the lines becoming blurred?
All-wheel drive is added to a car by giving it three differentials – front (of course), centre and rear.
That centre diff is crucial, allowing the front and rear wheel pairs to turn at different rates. That endows an SUV with a car-like turning circle that a 4WD can’t match and lets the SUV operate on wet, slimy or dry roads and with some electronic assistance to be a capable operator offroad road. It’s then possible to electronically control one or all of the diffs, locking them down automatically or when the driver selects a mode.
The flip side is that the SUV’s capable AWD is rarely able to match ‘real’ 4WD when the going gets really rough or muddy. And when a modern SUV runs out of off-road ‘go’ it’s generally a long way from help and well hung up on a gnarly rock or bellied in a mud hole.
Some of the tech crossover to 4WDs is cool though. Electronic locking diffs are a revelation for the older trucks and for those used to engaging manual front hubs to get full grip off-road. Traction control and dynamic stability control are ‘hand of God’ driver assists, especially if they are driverselectable.
In summary, neither of the two options is specifically “better” than the other; it really depends on what the owner needs AWD or 4WD for. Trips to the snow? AWD, possibly supported by a good set of chains. Trips up the Rakaia, with multiple crossings of that river’s braided beds? You’ll be best with old school 4WD.
Some ‘shiny’ touring in Woodhill Forest’s amazing 4WD park? Go for a 4WD, also for the additional ground clearance and suspension travel the tougher trucks offer. A surfcasting run up Muriwai beach? Either will do the job comfortably.
Both provide for better handling and traction, both are in our driveways and garages, both have their places in our lives.