Posted: Jul 08 2006 at 6:38pm | IP Logged

Heres another tip.

Your 01 Frontier is a little heavy for driving on sand so don't stop fast or try starting out fast. Try to not skid or advoid spinning your wheels/tires. If you do you may find that it will only dig yourself into a hole and bury your truck up to its axles in soft sand. Also, sandy surfaces/terrain conditions are ever moving and can or will change fast. Meaning you may find yourself driving along on sand that is packed down fairly good while tire traction and steering control is well and fine but, without notice while you are tooling along all of a sudden you will find a soft area inwhich the truck will start to bogg down into the sand and traction with steering can become loose/difficult.

Note: A problem you may notice while driving a 2WD truck on sand is that you can only basicly push the truck by the rear drive wheels. The benefit of a 4WD system is that it can use the front wheels to help pull the truck while the rear wheels push it at the same time. In loose aggregate or sandy conditions the pulling power of the front wheels on a 4WD also help in keeping control of the steering and front traction as well.

The front end on a 2WD is heavy with the motor weight directly over the steering (front two wheels) and it can become difficult at certain speeds or even over as little as 10-15mph when driving thru/over/in soft sandy areas with only a free wheeling (rear wheel drive/non-4WD) front axle and tires.   

Posted: Jul 08 2006 at 8:18pm | IP Logged

Another thing that will help some, if you get some directional tires, change them so the tread runs the opposite direction while on the sand.  The tread will PULL sand under the tire, helping you to float. 

Make sure you rotate them back to the proper direction before you drive far on paved roads.  That same floating action it pulls with sand it will do with water, causing you to hydroplane real easily.