Getting ready for action

Sometimes plans don't work out and this year I've had two sets of flights cancelled, Australia-Denmark-Finland and most recently Adelaide-Tasmania...So, no holiday this year, the very year I could really use one!

Due to flying being on hold for a while Faith and I have decided to do a few road-trips here in Australia. We both love road trips and Australia so we're excited.

Those trips will involve off-roading in the big dog, my 200 series Landcruiser, so I need to throw a few accessories on so I can safely travel to remote and hard to reach places. Having a standard 4x4 isn't suuitable. I was going to do this late next year but decide to accelerate it due to the impending road-trips.

Southern Flinders Ranges, 2.5 hours north of where I live.

In the last couple of weeks I've been working out what I'm going to do to the vehicle and because everything is not economically viable I'm cherry-picking the basics which will keep the cost down.

Bull bar

This item is pretty-much a requirement in Australia, especially if running in remote places where animal strikes are common. Kangaroos, wombats, emu's, camels, brumbies (wild horses), feral pigs and goats, cattle and even large birds are all quite common to come across.

Clouting a kangaroo at speed will virtually ruin a vehicle and at worst render it inoperable. That's where the bull bar comes into play. There's one below on my Ranger, you can see how much frontal protection it provides. They are bolted to the chassis and so will accept massive impacts with minimal damage.

I prefer ARB Corporation off-road products, not just because I worked there for a time and still get huge discounts, but because I think they are researched, engineered and manufactured better than the others, and they fit right.

Bull bars need to comply with ADR (Australian Design Rule) regulations, be crumple-zone and airbag compatible and strong enough to withstand animal strikes, which is their exact purpose. One thing that is somewhat a fallacy though is that they will prevent cosmetic damage to the vehicle; It's very dependant upon the situation but unlikely that in any heavy impact the vehicle will avoid cosmetic damage.

Bull bars are there to protect the radiator, hoses and fluid tanks that often sit just behind the grille and underneath bumper bars.

Smacking a large animal at 130kph will mess the car up for sure, but with a good bull bar fitted it is likely to still operate and a person could limp it to the next town sometimes hundreds of kilometres away. Getting stuck in the outback with a dead vehicle is problematic, mostly as there's often no one around, it's often baking hot and there's no water out there.

The bull bar will also hold spotlights, UHF antenna and the mechanical winch of course, so it has secondary and tertiary purpose.

Here's what it will look like on my particular vehicle, the Toyota 200 Series Landcruiser VX, although I am not painting mine body-coloured as I think that looks dumb - I'm all about it being functional, not pretty. (This is a screen capture from the ARB Corporation website.)

They call it the Storm Trooper look as my vehicle is white and I'm fitting all black accessories. I think it looks much better than the all painted one you see below. The bar will accept my front park sensors and also allow the headlight washers to operate as normal. As I said, ARB do a lot of research, engineering and precise manufacturing.

Off-road suspension and lift

When off-roading, the terrain is often rough and additional ground clearance is required. Also, the standard suspension is designed for comfort, not action, so after-market suspension must be added to allow better control of the vehicle in the rough stuff.

I'll be fitting Old Man Emu suspension to my vehicle, a company owned by ARB Corporation, and I am doing a GVM upgrade also, which requires an independent engineers report.

Gross vehicle mass (GVM) is the total amount of weight a vehicle can be, loaded up to. In factory trim the big dog can weigh a total of 3350kg fully loaded and I'll be increasing it to 3650kg with the suspension upgrade.

This is critical because with accessories, fuel, people and cargo the vehicle simply doesn't have enough spare weight capacity and if it goes over the GVM becomes illegal, and ones insurance is void.

This is not an issue with pickup truck 4x4's generally as their suspension is designed around load-carrying, often up to 1000kg, but with wagons like the big dog it's an issue. So, the GVM upgrade is required.

It's interesting to note that the ball weight placed on the tow bar is included in total vehicle weight, so if that is say 200kg it removes 200kg away from the total GVM further limiting load-carrying capabilities.

The 200 Series Landcruiser has 510kg spare load capacity available in factory trim and the GVM upgrades that to 810kg, ample for most loads especially considering the down-ball-weight of my off-road camper is only 112kg. 810 - 112 = 698kg spare. Savvy?

When this is done they simply remove the factory struts, springs and associated bushes etc. throw them away and replace them with the Old Man Emu stuff. The kit looks like this, captured from the OME website. This is not the kit I am getting, but it will look exactly the same.

Once fitted the rear of the vehicle will be a little stiffer when unloaded, but off the road the suspension will cope with the punishing it will get in rough terrain. Of course, the GVM upgrade will keep my vehicle legal too and it will also be a unique selling point in the future when I move the vehicle on.

Increasing the GVM means my vehicle will be able to tow the full 3500kg specified by the factory plus the actual vehicle weight (total maximum of 3650kg,) the GVM for a total of 7150kg. This should make perfect sense, if not...I'll just move on.

Lights

The last thing I will be fitting in this initial phase of build-up on the big dog is some driving lights.

I don't always make my destination before nightfall. It could be that I got bogged, had a flat tyre, stopped to help someone or other such delay - It's a massive country with vast distances between places. Whilst I don't mind driving at night on-road or off it requires better vision and factory lighting is never sufficient.

On my Ranger above I fitted the ARB Intensity AR32 spot lights. They were awesome...Although in some circumstances were actually far too bright. So, I'm pleased to see ARB Corporation have released an updated version which is every bit as bright, but also able to be dimmed. Awesome.

Because the ones on my Ranger are so bright the light from the high-intensity LED's would bounce back off road signs, trees, cliffs, even animals and the road itself. Good lights, but not flexible. The reflected light is fatiguing to the eyes and often destroys vision rather than enhancing it.

Having the ability to dim these new ones, called Intensity Solis pictured below right, means they are more usable. They come with a total black ring also which I have ordered...Not a fan of the red.

All of this will be fitted in the middle of October as production of the bull bar has been delayed in Melbourne do to the virus. It will take two days to fit and obtain the engineering report.

I've already had an auxiliary 110Ah deep-cycle battery fitted under the bonnet (hood) which runs my fridge-freezer. It charges whilst I'm running and also takes solar input so I can set up my solar panels when I'm at camp. I have a brake controller fitted to run my electronic trailer brakes on my camper trailer and, of course, the fridge set up in the back.

With the new things going on I'll pretty much have everything I need to do my road trips. Of course there's a few other things such as under-vehicle protection plates, a front recovery point, steel side steps to replace the factory ones and a UHF radio But I'll do that in the next round.

So...We can't go to Finland, or anywhere overseas for that matter, and we can't go to Tasmania...But we can take road-trips.

We're planning to go to far north Queensland, the very north-east of the country some 3,000km away, to see my brother and his family and we've got a few other ideas also. We're planning 6 weeks away next year, but will do some shorter trips also. It will all depend on circumstances I suppose though.

We'll be able to head away confident that the big dog is good to go...It's a beast of a vehicle, with it's 4.5L twin-turbo diesel V8 engine producing 200kw of power and 650nm of torque and amazing off-road gearing and systems...Once I've added the gear above, the bull bar, suspension and lights it'll be a little more beastly though, and a little bit more ready for action.

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Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default - Tomorrow isn't promised.

Be well
Discord: galenkp#9209