About 30 years ago, I drove a “standard” production model of 4x4 that has the seating capacity of a bus, the power of a truck, the grip of a tractor, the luxury of a limousine and the speed of a sportscar. Plus some extra characteristics all its own.
The result is extraordinary. And so is the price.
The vehicle was the Toyota Mega Cruiser – a civvy-street version of a military design which, in its day, added a whole new dimension to the terms "4WD Estate" and “fully-loaded".
In technospeak this is a 4.1 litre turbocharged (equivalent to 7 litres), portal-axled, intercooled, automatic transmission, triple-diff-locked, 4-wheel steered, power-everything, air-conditioned thundermobile that can even pump up its own tyres while hurtling 10 passengers along at 130 kph and/or while pulling a four-tonne trailer over a mountain.
So much more power, space, clearance, grip, strength, manoeuvrability, more agility that comparisons would be not only odious but also fatuous.
It is both literally and figuratively, another dimension. To fit in 10 seats without making the vehicle unduly long and to ensure superb traversing and ditch-straddling ability, the Mega Cruiser is wide. It has three windscreen wipers to swipe from one side to the other. Plenty of room for seating four abreast.
There are two such passenger rows – one central, and another (removable) at the rear. There are only two seats at the front, because of a huge console in between them which houses the gearbox tunnel, a quad sound system, and an air conditioner of hotel-room proportions.
With this table mountain and so much distance between them, the driver and front-seat passenger are thoughtfully provided with a cigarette lighter each - because they are too far apart to share the same one!
The Mega Cruiser’s bonnet lid is higher than the roof of most saloon cars. Thanks to the wheel track (width) this height can be enjoyed without undue loss of stability. By the same token, the length is also in proportion - though actually slightly longer than a minibus. So the overall width:height:length proportions are conventional. Just big.
The lowest part of the underbody is about four times the clearance of the average car and double the clearance of most 4WDs. Those massive wheels have equally huge suspension travel, both above and below the centre, to keep the body level and all four wheels in contact with the ground even when one wheel is going over the Himalayas while another is in the Grand Canyon.
The main floor platform is more than half a metre off the ground, and by the time you have tiered the rows of seats in amphitheatre style (so every occupant has plenty of leg room, headroom and clear vision forwards) the roof is definitely at stepladder level.
Yet it has a better turning circle than virtually any other 4WD on the market (including the little ones) thanks to a four-wheel steering system that automatically turns the back wheels in the opposite direction to the front ones, though by a lesser degree.
With this, automatic gears, power steering, enough engine muscle to turn tyre-and-tarmac into blue smoke, plus a sublime indifference to any obstacle which might be in the way, the Mega Cruiser is as easy to manoeuvre as a Mini. Okay, okay, so the Mini might fit between two parked cars while the Mega Cruiser might have to park on top of them, but the convenience is much the same.
There are bigger trucks, roomier buses and faster cars (though nothing that does all three jobs so well). But there is nothing on the open market quite like the Mega Cruiser when the road stops. Brilliant off-road performance requires a number of qualities:
Big wheels: to round out bumps, to fill in holes, to float on sand, to transmit power, to shrink obstacles, to lift the whole caboodle. The Mega Cruiser's tyre diameter and width are the biggest in the 4WD Estate business.
Big ground clearance: to hurdle the rocks and keep the belly out of the mud. Here it is the lowest part of the undercarriage, not the highest, that matters. The Mega Cruiser's floor sills are 45 cms off the ground and everything is above that thanks to independent suspension (no axle beams or differential banjos). It even has inboard disc brakes. The entire underside of the vehicle could be enclosed with a single flat metal sheet.
Good in-out-and-over angles: Good clearance and a high body help you drive over some lumps and bumps, but don't help you drive at really big obstacles – if the front bumper hits the bank before the wheels do, or the back bumper snags as you leave a ditch, or the middle bellies as you straddle a mound.
The Mega Cruiser has virtually zero overhang fore or aft. Its long wheelbase compromises the break-over angle, but clean clearance is a major compensator, and there's something else...
Good grip: On loose or steep surfaces, excellent traction is crucial. And this is where the whole concept of FOUR-wheel drive is usually a misnomer. Most vehicles transmit power to either the front or back wheels, and the differential (to allow steerage) can divert all that power to only one wheel on that axle. Hence the average car is often only ONE wheel drive.
4WD vehicles have the facility to transmit power to both front and rear axles (by gear or central diff lock), but the differentials can still divert that power to only one wheel on each axle. Hence most so-called 4WDs are often only TWO-wheel drive – which can be a bit frustrating if those two wheels happen to be in the air or in a super-slippery ditch. The vehicle goes no-where. A quantum leap in grip is provided if the axles themselves have limited slip diffs or, better still, diff locks. The Mega Cruiser has a central diff lock and independent diff locks front and rear, and when they're engaged the vehicle is truly FOUR-wheel drive. No matter what.
The Mega's grip with this configuration is prodigious. Add the power of a 4.1 litre turbo diesel engine with enough torque to tow a battle tank, a very low-geared transfer box, independent suspension with huge travel to keep all the wheels on the ground in far more severe conditions, and the giant footprints of those huge wheels... “go-anywhere” is not hyperbole.
Over terrain and obstacles that would probably test the most able 4WD Estates to their screaming, scrabbling, toppling, scraping, bouncing limits, the Mega Cruiser...strolls.
And like the Ferrari, if you have to ask the price you can't afford it. Production has stopped, but you can buy a 20-year-old one for around 200,000…dollars!
Apart from "How Much?", the most frequent question is about all that high-tech spec in rough conditions. The answer is that even the Mega Cruiser would need to be Kenyanised for optimum reliability, but it is almost entirely mechanical with minimal digital doo-dahs. Much of the off-road tech has been developed in the Land-Cruiser family, including 10 years of rigorous testing in the standard classes of the Paris-Dakar.
Can you make money from used engine oil?
Your recent piece on the ratio between fuel/ oil consumption (DN2 July 24) noted that Kenya generates many thousands of tons of used engine oil per year, presenting a huge logistical and environmental challenge for disposal. If this stuff can be recycled in some way, isn’t that a huge business opportunity? Ahmed.
Yes. Technically, it is a no-brainer. Even the filthiest old engine oil can be recycled to produce a good-as-new base oil for lubricants. There are many recycling plants all over the world doing just that. The business challenges are logistical and economic, because so-called “waste-oil” is collected in relatively tiny quantities from a huge number of scattered locations. Crude oil can be extracted in vast volumes from a single oilfield.
The economies of scale are incomparable for sourcing, transporting, storing, refining, packaging and distribution. Also, a large investment in recycling waste oil produces a single product - base lubricating oil. Investment in refining crude oil produces LPG gas, petrol, kerosene, auto diesel, marine diesel, fuel oil, lubricating oil, and bitumen tar.
The upshot is that even if waste oil is “free” at source, recycled waste oil does not have a decisive cost advantage over oil refined from crude, and recycling plants big enough to improve scale need a whole lot more waste oil than Kenya produces.
So although the overall quantity of waste oil Kenya generates is significant, the logistical and scale handicaps don’t make local recycling the first choice.
The imperative to “get rid” of old engine oil makes it cheap or free to anyone who will take it away and use it “dirty” in industrial furnaces, as a wood preservative, insecticide or weed killer, in asphalt paints, or as a dust suppressor on roads. All of these uses (and even dumping) are additional “competitors” to local recycling. They also deprive recycled oil of the cost discount of not having to spend money to dispose of it some other way.
One option, if we can organize collection from thousands of sources and bulk storage well enough, is to export it to big plants overseas – Ukraine, USA, Turkey, Germany, China, Canada, UK, Austria and Qatar among others, would be glad to have it. If anyone in Kenya is recycling, or if NEMA or the East African Petroleum Institute would like to share their take on this issue (or correct my layman’s mistakes) this column would be glad to hear from you.
It should be stressed that waste oil is on the leaderboard of both toxic and inflammable substances, and Kenya already has elaborate “hazardous material” legislation to regulate use, treatment, storage, packaging, transport and disposal for both human and environmental safety. The requirements, and to what extent they are enforced, and what the professionals call a clear "chain of custody”, obviously have a crucial bearing on investor choices on whether recycling old engine oil – or any other alternatives - are a “business opportunity”.
Is your windscreen up to scratch?
Is there a best way to remove scratches from windscreens? Damaris
A scratched windscreen not only looks bad, it also sees badly. Even if it does not block or distort the driver's vision, it somewhat reduces visibility to some extent...
Deep scratches cannot be removed. Shallow ones (that aren't deep enough to feel if you trace a fingernail across them) can sometimes be removed with a very fine rubbing compound, such as jeweller's rouge.
Don't use coarser rubbing compounds. They may remove one big scratch, but they will create thousands of tiny ones and “grey” the glass.
To avoid windscreen scratches, never wipe, rub or touch the glass – with anything - because any dust or grit on the surface will act like sandpaper. Always ensure there is plenty of water on the glass before you use the windscreen wipers or any other material. Even then, ensure the wiper blades or other materials are soft, smooth and clean.
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