4x4 play

It’s early on a Sunday morning and Gurgaon’s glitzy skyline is now in our rear view mirrors. Metalled roads have given way to rock strewn mud paths and it’s only getting worse every couple of hundred metres. Our destination is a place many of Delhi’s off-road junkies like to call home. So, without further ado, let me introduce you to the ‘Monster’. It’s a 1995 Gypsy that was picked up by Delhi-based Sumeer Tandon in 2010. Sumeer’s visiting card says he runs a textile business but just seeing the sheer amount of work he’s put into his Gypsy, you’d be fooled in to thinking modifying off-roaders was his vocation. Continued..

To be honest, many won’t even identify it as a Gypsy. It sits a lot higher, wears massive 33-inch diameter Yokohama mud tyres on 15-inch rims and features massively flared fenders. The front bumper is gone and the body at the rear is 10 inches shorter (though the basic ladder frame underneath is untouched). It certainly looks the business. I bend down to find that the axles are different too. They are Dana 44s, which have been drafted in from an old Mahindra to deal with the additional stress of the larger tyres. But before I can take a more detailed visual inspection, Sumeer is already buckled up in the driver’s seat raring to take the Monster to where few Gypsy’s dare to tread. Front wheel hubs locked, we’re good to go. Continued..

The secret? Articulation. Off-roaders generally roll over when there is too much weight transfer to one side, causing the outside tyres to lose contact with the ground. But with all four wheels grounded, weight transfer is reduced and you also get that much-needed traction at all four corners. To this end, Sumeer has replaced the Gypsy’s stock leaf springs (37 inches) with longer 48-inch ones from the Mahindra Thar’s rear assembly. Generally, the longer the springs and longer the travel of the shocks (14-inch Bilsteins in this case), the better the articulation. The front springs also get missing link shackles that open under extreme articulation to further increase droop or the amount the wheel can drop. As a result of the revised suspension, maximum wheel travel in the front has increased from about 11 inches stock to approximately 25 inches! It’s possible to increase that even further with a spring-over-axle setup (as opposed to the standard spring-under-axle the Gypsy comes with) or a radically different coil-over setup but those mods impact steering geometry, disturb the driveshaft angle and could lead to an axle wrap. Higher lifts also impact the centre of gravity, which limit on-road safety and are best suited for specialist rock crawlers. Continued..

In case you are wondering, all the mods have added about 300kg to the Monster’s weight. To counter some of the increment, Sumeer has replaced the standard 1.3-litre engine with the block and injectors from the Baleno 1.6, though the head is from the Gypsy. Interestingly, as Sumeer tells me, modifying the transverse engine for the longitudinal layout on the Gypsy is not all that complex, if done carefully. But that’s another story. Other mods include a free flow exhaust, performance air filter and of course, a heavy duty clutch to deal with the torque increase.  Continued..

On the journey back to civilisation, I take the wheel and get a feel of the big, red Monster. Obviously, I take it easy. But even then, on the hillocks, through the ruts and past the gullys, it’s easy to tell this is something special. The fact that the Toyota Land Cruiser 80 (our support car for the day) was not pressed into service to winch us out from tricky scenarios says a lot. Unwanted attention apart, it’s not all that bad to drive on the road either which was one of the key considerations of the build. But today, I saw the Monster in its natural habitat. Doing things you wouldn’t imagine a Gypsy could, would or should do. I’m certainly gobsmacked, but I still can’t wait to see the Monster in action when the heavens open up!