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Today we want to answer the question what is it like to go overland in a honda ridgeline and behind me we have the perfect vehicle to check it out so let’s do a quick walk around and look at this thing right now you join us fairly near the grand canyon at sunset we’re in arizona on the overland trail tour and that’s the whole reason that we’re getting these
Vehicles off-road you can see a lot more stuff in the background that we’re also producing videos on but today we’re talking about the ridgeline and we have a special guest this is tasha she is a honda engineer so she can walk us through some of these specifics on what’s really going on mechanically with the ridgeline because you work primarily on the engine
Side of things right yeah i calibrate engines and then do general marketability for our cars nice so besides some of the gear that we’ll talk about that’s on the back of the truck and on the roof mechanically this is a factory ridgeline right yep mechanically this is factory so it’s got the ivtm4 all-wheel drive system which is our base real-time all-wheel
Drive which uses all of the wheel speed sensors to detect wheel slip and then it also has torque vectoring so whichever wheel is losing more slip it can send power to the other one to help chug along nice so that does a lot of the compensating for moments when you lose traction and then to give it just a little bit of extra clearance there’s also a slight
Suspension lift on this is uh is this a suspension lift from jsport so up in front it’s the one and a half inch jsport lift in the back it’s three quarters inch again jsport it gives us a little bit less than an inch of additional ground clearance so from that 8.1 inches we are probably around 8.7 just a little bit of extra certainly can’t hurt and then
There’s also some custom skid plates down here that were actually produced by honda these aren’t specific skid plates that are for sale right but definitely nice to have a little extra underbody protection oh yeah absolutely yeah skid plates were designed and fabricated in-house it’s definitely a an added bonus whenever you go over landing or off-roading you
Want to protect your oil plant engine transmission and then we have the secondary one for the fuel tank under the hood of this hotend of ridgeline you have a 3.5 liter v6 with 280 horsepower and a 9-speed automatic as well as a pretty burly all-wheel drive system that is managed to get it out here in this terrain and you can also get 18 mpg city and 24 mpg
Highway so definitely a good bit better than the average off-roader we’re doing a little bit of off-road driving in the honda ridgeline just a light trail and right now we’re coming up to a kind of v-shaped dip and the approach and departure angle are having no issues this is fairly soft sand and the all-wheel drive system is dealing with it without an issue
This kind of trail that we’re going on right now is generally the type of trail that you’re going to come across if not harder than the average trail that you’re going to come across in order to get out to the places where you want to go camp over land there’s definitely harder trails out there that would be putting us a little bit more to the test but on
This type of light off-roading the ridgeline is doing fine it’s not struggling in the slightest and now that we’re doing a little bit of high speed running one thing i like about this a lot is that it rides really well the suspension is nice and soft especially as loaded down with gear as we are and so i can carry a nice amount of speed and actually have some
Fun cruising over some of the more rutted and uneven sections of road here there’s of course an awning on the other side you’ve got a roof basket with some max tracks on the top which are all nice goodies to have not strictly necessary max tracks are definitely good to have in case you get into a situation where obviously you’re digging yourself into a hole
But there’s a pretty cool tire rack system back here so you can have a full size spare and it’s tucked in there pretty nicely where is that from and how does it work uh so that is another ga sport item it basically mounts to the factory tie-downs so there’s one up in this corner and then one on the actual bed you don’t need tons and tons of gear it leaves a
Nice amount of space in the bed for you to throw more gear we’ve got all of the folding chairs for this camping trip in the back and there’s a bunch of rigs here that are super super built out like this gladiator that’s on 37s but for everything that we’ve been doing the ridgeline has gotten everywhere that we’ve needed to go it hasn’t gotten stuck any and
Then of course if you have a rooftop tent and some basic camping gear you’re gonna have everything that you need to go out to a location like what you see right here and have a great time camping and this is one of the most beautiful spots i’ve ever been to to camp at and here we are in the ridgeline this particular ridgeline is a sport but it also has the
Hpd package so the sport starts at 36 500 and then the hpd package starts at 2 800 and that gets you a couple of cool extra goodies right it does uh so the hpd package you get this sick decal uh these unique bronze colored wheels which right now they’re badged with mud yeah they’re mud colored right now and then you also get these fender flares and then
What the the grill is different as well right yep so the grill there’s a unique basically matte black finish grille that comes with the hp package and this ridge line with the hpd package in white and yeah again you can’t really tell the color of the wheels but this whole color combo stands out really really well makes it look more rugged and then we’ve got
These firestone destination ats on here which have been having no trouble gripping everywhere that we’ve gone through mud as you can see also over some small rock features the ridgeline is a good practical all-around option for somebody who has to daily drive their pickup because sure it doesn’t have the biggest bed on the market it’s not the most dedicated
Off-roader but it can do everything as well as you need it to and there’s a lot of creative storage solutions the all-wheel drive system works effectively enough to get us out to as beautiful as a location as we were at today which is pretty impressive the bridge line starts with the sport at 36 500 and the hpd package that’s on this one which adds the really
Cool wheels the cladding the graphics and a special grille that’s 2800 and it definitely adds a lot to the look of this vehicle this is the best looking origin that you can get in my opinion so i’d say that package is worthwhile but it’s an all-around practical easy vehicle to live with you get good fuel economy it’s not a massive vehicle that’s difficult to
Park you get honda’s legendary reliability so if you need to daily drive your truck but you also want to be able to throw things in the bed do some light off-roading this is a good option and one worth checking out let us know what you think in the comments down below and we’ll catch you guys in the next video
Transcribed from video
Some People Say The Honda Ridgeline Isn't A REAL Off-Roader…Are They Wrong? By TFLoffroad
