Tips and 4WD accessories for driving on sand

Beach driving is one of the best experiences, but before you venture onto the sand, you need the right 4WD accessories (recovery gear) and you need to know what you are doing. For the uninitiated, driving on sand can be disastrous, particularly if you are on your own and you don’t have the right 4×4 accessories to help dig yourself out of the sand.

Two of the most important things you need to know about sand driving concerns the pressure of your tyres and your momentum. It doesn’t matter if you have all the whiz-bang 4WD accessories in the world – if you drive like a maniac on the sand, you will get bogged!

You can’t just drive on sand as you would on a sealed road or even a dirt track, instead you need to drop your tyre pressure to about half and move into low range, but keep your speed up so that you float over the sand, not dig yourself into it.

What happens if you get bogged in the sand?

The most basic 4WD accessories you will need for sand driving are off road recovery tracks that need to be placed under the wheels to give your tyres traction and a shovel to dig yourself out. Obviously a winch it also helpful, but if you are on your own and there is nothing to wrap it around, the basic 4×4 accessories should get you out of trouble.

The first thing to remember is not to panic and don’t keep spinning your wheels, because you will only dig yourself deeper into the sand. Drop your tyre pressure a few more PSI and try to reverse out backwards. You can also go backwards and forwards slowly to try and compact the sand, but if that doesn’t work then grab your trusty 4WD accessories and start digging!

You will need to clear the sand from under your axles and diffs and make sure that your undercarriage is also clear of the sand. Make a platform for your wheels using your recovery tracks (this is where those basic 4×4 accessories come in handy again) and drive yourself out of the rut. If that doesn’t work, you will need to dig deeper to give yourself better leverage, but you will eventually get free!