Went off roading in my 13 plate ranger yesterday. Very impressed with the ability, but I have to say it wasn't the most enjoyable day ever, as I spent a lot of time worrying I was going to break my relatively new car when I have only done 10K miles. Every deep river, rut, clunk off a rock and diff dragging moment took the edge of the enjoyment.

What I wanted to ask is, in reality how tough are these pick-ups? I got it up on the ramps this afternoon to have a look underneath and all seems to be completely intact, (if a little of the black paint scraped off the diff, spring pans etc). Should I worry about taking it offroad now and again, or is it best left to my £500 sportrak which I don't really care too much about?

Surely if you're going to worry, then it's not worth it?

At least with the Sportrak you don't care, which will be much more fun

It all depends what you want to do with it, a bit field plodding and water runs fine, anything with deep ruts or big stones can cause havoc with the running gear and oem suspension.

heres a couple of pics of my old ones, the frontera had all shocks and rear springs upgraded, and the front torsion bars cranked up, the landrover was completly rebuilt and beefed up, including heavy duty diff guards custom stainless steering arms and lifted.

Taking them offroad and keeping them in good order costs money after a while, in end built a toy that got slamed all over, the pic below shows it on top of a tree as it got in my way so I knocked it over and nearly rolled it, was a good laugh. so my advice unless its quite gentle use your sport track, ;)

I've got a 13 reg Ranger as a company vehicle but it is loaded up with work stuff and weights 2.9 tons as I work for what used to be called the Electricity Board. As well as the usual landrover 110's we've had rangers on the fleet since 2003 and these new "not a re-badged Mazda" Rangers are a country mile better off road (and on) than the old ones.

I had the road bias continentals replaced by Hankook All terrains ( wasn't allowed BFG's) and so far the truck has been across some really wet stubble fields and down some really muddy tracks and not caused me any concern. Even got it running down a deep rutted track with the underside hitting in places and did no harm.

OK, I didn't spend 20K of my own money on it but I do have a lot of pride in my work vans, my 57 plate transit this ranger replaced looked more 30K than 120K miles when it went, but I wouldn't want to bend it.