ISUZU D-MAX Rig Rundown | Setup for Weekend Touring | The Ultimate 4x4 Tourer
- Hey guys, Craig from Accelerate Off-Grid Touring here. Come check out this insane D-MAX build we've just completed. It's got the works.
We've got electrical, we've got bar work, we've got UHF, we've got suspension, canopy. Come check it out, it's awesome. All right guys, so now we are at the front of the car. So what we've got here. Well, the customer's opted for Offroad Animal Predator bar with the optional top hoop and two light bars.
So a few reasons you'd go the Offroad Animal bar work. They're Australian made, owned, and designed. So you know they're a really good quality Australian product, and they look great, obviously. So these are a full bumper replacement these ones. So there's no hacking up of your old bumper. If that's something you're not keen on, bumper comes off, grill splits in half, and then this fully replaces that section.
It follows the lines of the car really nicely, and just works really well. These particular bars are winch-compatible as well. So if you do decide you wanna put a winch in yours, you absolutely can.
Goes in here, nice little flip up number plate bracket is standard. Makes it nice and simple. The light bars here are Offroad Animal's own light bar. They do mount there really nicely. They are super bright, probably brighter than your kid's future.
But yeah, in all seriousness, they are a really wonderful light bar. Offroad Animal light bars too. So they do retain the original D-MAX indicators. They don't have any special indicators there. The original D-MAX ones pull outta the bumper go straight in here, along with the fog lights as well. So it all keeps it the D-MAX computer nice and happy 'cause you're not altering the lights, the indicators, or anything like that.
That all stays the same. Also, the original parking sensors out of the D-MAX's bumper get integrated into here as well. So that all works perfectly. These bull bars are obviously crash test rated, all of that guys.
So it's not going to affect your airbags, or any of your safety ratings or anything like that. The Isuzus don't have their radar in the grill. It's up in the windscreen so it's not gonna have any effect on your adaptive radar cruise, or your auto braking, anything like that. Antenna we've chosen to mount it on the bull bar here. You could also go for like, a GMF Bonnet mount bracket as well. This case custom monitor there.
It's nice down low out of the way. It's not gonna cause any hassles at all. Sometimes to see the best part of a bull bar, you have to get up close and personal.
Underneath, we've got these bash plates. They come standard with the Offroad Animal range of bull bars. So the Predator and the Toro. Painted grey because they look really cool, but the most important part is they're nice and thick.
They cover all these vulnerable parts like your radiator, your aircon condenser, your inter cooler. Make sure they're not gonna get smashed by sticks and stones and everything else that's gonna break them. They do stop short here where that joins onto the factory Isuzu bash plate, mean you can still run like a custom off-road bash plates.
The ARB bash plates, et cetera. But it covers all this vulnerable stuff that's left open when you take the bumper off. Another best part about this is the built-in recovery points.
These are rated recovery points. They're not gonna come flying off when you get stuck. Although it's a D-MAX, you're probably never gonna get stuck anyway. But if you do, they're integrated, the part here the broughton red, you're not gonna miss them.
You get bogged, you're gonna be able to dig it out, find them, and get yourself out, and life's gonna be great. GMEs AE4704 short antenna is a perfect all-rounder for areas around here like the sunny coast where it's got lots of hills, lots of forestry country, and lots of area where there are disruptions. So essentially, UHF antennas are normally obviously different heights.
So this is a 2.1 dBi. You also get 6.6 when you go even higher. The reason why we go with these short ones is because they do perform better in your hillier, bushy type country. They don't get as far line of sight. However, they do perform all round just much better here. And also in a city area, you're also not gonna have to take the whip off.
You can just leave it on there to your undercover car parks. It's not gonna be a problem for you at all. The taller ones, if you're going out west, they're a good idea where it's long and flat and you want a bit further distance, you can actually unscrew the whips of the base here, interchange 'em so you don't have to rewire anything or put a second antenna on. You can just carry a spare width, and change 'em out as you go. All you'll do is I do a little grub screw, and just unwind easy as that.
Reason why it's black is purely because with the D-MAX's onboard radar cameras. If it's white, it'll actually confuse it with the lines on the road, and it'll start throwing error codes, it'll start swerving over the road all funny. If it's black, it actually can't really pick up on it, it doesn't see it, it's not gonna set off. So sensors, it's not gonna be an issue and life's gonna be great.
Down here we have the Offroad Animal Rock Sliders. Now these double as a bit of a sidestep hence the tread plate on top, as well as a super-strong, super sturdy Rock Slider. Now, a lot of people leave side steps rock sliders 'til deadlocks. I'll tell you from personal experience, if you find yourself wanting to do anything even remotely four-wheel driving, so the old telly track, or even if you just like to go forestry bashing on your weekends, strongly, strongly strongly recommend you go some form of protection underneath. Sills are not a nice easy part to replace or to pull dents out of if you do bash them in. Even if you're not looking for trouble off-road, chances are you're gonna find it.
You're gonna come across a stump that you don't see, or a drop off you don't see. The first thing it's gonna hit is under here. It's not only gonna dent your sills, it's gonna push into your doors and break your doors and then insurance isn't gonna cover you because it's off-road. Recommend fit a set of these, especially these off-road animal ones.
Same thing like the bull bars, Australian-owned, designed, and made, and they are super duper strong. If you do find yourself bashing them up really badly, you can unbolt them quite easily to straighten 'em out if you need to. They're really just no brainer guys. Awesome, awesome product. Get on it. Just to show you how well built these are, I'm not a small guy.
These are strong side steps. Jump up and down, there's not an ounce of movement in these steps or these brackets. What's big and orange? No, it's not a big orange, it's Outback Armour suspension. Under here we have got the Outback Armour. This is the Digressive range.
So this is sort of Outback Armour's middle of the range. Probably their best value for money to be honest. Give you a really good ride without all of the adjustable stuff that a lot of people don't really wanna worry about at this point. Something that's gonna ride nice, it's gonna perform well, it's not gonna fade over corrugations. It's just gonna perform as they wanted to, as they paid for it to do with no extra gimmicks, and that's exactly what this is for here. So we've got this is a nominal 35 mil lift.
They do come with optional 10 mil little spaces under the coil seat so you can adjust the preload on the coil to adjust the ride height to suit. To try and get more of a level look, we've used those in this and so the front's actually sitting a bit closer to that 45-50 mil above standard, which gives it a really nice stance. So we've got, yep, the Outback Armour Digressive shock here. We have got obviously the coil to suit.
A little bit heavier to suit the weight of the bar and if you put a winch down the track, it'll also suit that as well. We've also got up here, which are a must if you're putting your D-MAX up around that 50 mil lift in mark in the front, is the adjustable upper control arms. Now these help keep the wheel alignment a lot more within range.
So if you don't do that, what you can find and especially with the D-MAXes, you'll find that your wheel alignment will get bad. So you'll get really bad camber wear on one side of the tyre. This fixes that, puts the wheel straight again, puts it back within an adjustable range for the wheel aligners so you don't have any tyre wear issues. In the rear too, guys, obviously we've still matched with Outback Armour shocks, the aggressive shocks for the rear, and we've gone for a constant 200 to 300 kilo leaf spring pack as well, which will suit the weight of the canopy that we've added as well. If the customer's towing a small trailer or a small caravan, will quite easily account for that weight as well.
So still provides a really nice ride, bit extra load carrying capacity which these D-MAXes seriously lack. But yeah, we'll give the customer a really nice all around capable and comfortable ute. Hey guys, so now right here at the rump of the D-MAX, the back, the booty. we have got the Maxliner venture canopy fitted to this. So the original Isuzu X-Terrain roller shutter been hoicked. They're rubbish, they leak, they're not good anyway.
Replaced it with something that actually does seal, which is the Maxliner adventure canopy. These canopies got a range of really great features. So central locking being the main one.
Something a lot of people overlook. Ah, I don't need central locking canopy. I can use a key. Yeah, you can if you really want to, but think about the application. So let's just say you've come from the shops, or you've got something in your hand, you've got some shopping in your hand, and you wanna be able to open the back with one hand, or if you've got a baby in one hand, whatever the situation is.
Obviously if you've got something that's manual locked, you've gotta put your shopping down, get your key out, open the locks up, open up. It's like a a mini ordeal to open the door. These things, one handed, one finger even if you want to if you're missing some fingers.
You can just press the button on the side here, pops it up, lift it up, bam. Shopping in. Done. Makes life so much easier, just a better all around solution. So these companies are really great for that. These side windows also operate just by a touch of the button around on the side here as well. It's making it super easy.
Now a lot of people think that central locking is wizardry still. So if you don't like to rely on electronics and central locking, there is still a manual key option. So if car's dead, battery's dead for whatever reason, you can still put your key in the side, still twist it, still open up the door, and you're not gonna be stranded, you're not gonna lock Fluffy in the back. It's all gonna be okay. Righto guys, so now onto the electrical parts.
So we have got in behind the back seat here, Cangoee's own collaboration with us. So that is the Cangoee 110 amp power lithium battery. These suckers have a five year warranty. They are an extremely high quality battery.
So these are manufactured by a company called Vica, and they do a lot of work for government contracts and such. So you know that they are a really a topnotch battery. So 110 amp power lithium. So perfect for running fridges, lights, all your 12 volt stuff, travel buddies, all that sort of jazz. Inside this battery casing, there is a built-in 20 amp DC to DC charger.
We've actually got another video on this system in more detail, which we'll drop a link down below as well. But I'll give you a quick run through of it in here as well. Yep, this one here built in 20 amp DC-DC charger. If you do want to, they are capable of more charge. So if you want to add another 20 amp DC-DC, or if you wanna go wild and add another 40, you can through the external input.
But to be honest, in these D-MAXes, they don't have a massive alternator. So 20 amp is actually a really good size. It's not gonna put undue stress in the alternator, and it's still gonna charge this guy up nice and quick. So along with obviously the battery, the DC-DC, we have this array here. So obviously have the fusing, pretty straightforward.
We have the Victron SmartShunt, so obviously a lithium battery, guys. You can't really tell it's state of charge accurately based on the voltage. So you need something that measures the current coming in, and the current going...
Sorry, current coming in and current going out of the battery. So you can monitor exactly what percentage it's at. That's exactly what this guy does.
Bluetooth to your phone via the Victron Connect app, and you can really clearly see how much current flow you have in or out, and your state of charge your battery as an actual percentage. Not a silly bar raft or anything. It's actually a proper percentage on your phone. Makes it super easy to tell how full or how empty this bad boy is. Also got obviously the fuse block.
Now obviously we've already used a few of these up for our socket blocks in the back, which I'll show you. But there is still two spare ones in here. So if you wanted to run a couple of your own sockets, or lights, or whatever you want anywhere, you can just tap 'em off of here and away you go. We've also got the Victron 7515 solar controller. This guy's Bluetooth as well.
We've also got down here obviously another Anderson plug output. So if you decide you want a console fridge or something, or you wanna run something else inside the cab with the DMAX, you have that ability there along with a separate sig socket inside as well. So yeah, fridges, or travel buddies, whatever you want.
If you want one inside your car, you absolutely can. And then the solar input side here, we obviously run that to our socket box in the back, which I'll show you now. So obviously the second half of the dual battery system is where everything plugs into for the back. At the moment, back of this ute, it's a bit of a blank canvas.
So I've just gone for our socket box at number five option like on our online store. We can drop a link below so if you want to get one yourself. But yeah, essentially, we've got here we've got a Grey Anderson for output. So fridge, whatever, whatever you run off in Anderson.
Plug her into there. Red solar input. This wires back to that Victron 15 amp solar rig I was talking about before.
So any unregulated panel blanket or whatever, plug her in, away you go. We've also got here a twin USB socket. We have got a engel socket. So a lot of your Waeco, ARB, Dometic, and Engel fridges all have an adaptable sig socket. Then you can take the end off and turn it into an engle. It actually screws in so it doesn't rattle out.
Really good idea. Highly recommend it if you've got a fridge if you're not using an Anderson. We've also got another sig over here, and another sig over here. So more sockets than you know what to do with, but they're better to have too many than not enough.
Ten four rubber duck, you're there, over. In this D-MAX, we've fitted a GME XRS 370C radio and antenna. So, few reasons why we use the GME. We've gone through this in a few other videos, but I'll say it again 'cause they're just that good. GME, Australian made.
What electronics are Australian made these days? Nearly nothing. These are. Get around it, support Australian. Five year warranty, not like any of the overseas manufactured units that'll die in two years as soon as warranty's over.
Five year warranty, guys. These are an awesome bit of kit by an awesome Australian company. You need to get around them. Apart from that, they have a range of really, really cool features. Probably my favourite one of which is the auto playback feature. So these have a number of programmable buttons.
The XRS button, and this button on top. So these ones you can actually programme to different things by short press, long press, et cetera. So how I normally have mine set up in my car, I have got this top one short press is for the auto playback feature. So like I was saying before, that auto playback feature essentially, the radio has a short term memory so that if you're travelling in a convoy with a group of your mates, someone's cracking a joke or being an idiot, you can't hear what someone else has said.
You can simply relive the moment by just pressing the button on top, and it will then auto play that back. Now if it's a few conversations ago, you can actually hit it a few times and it'll keep going back, and back, and back, and back and then back again, which is really, really handy if you've got bad hearing like me. Cool, another cool feature. You can programme these buttons to do.
I've got mine programmed so that the XRS button changes my squelch settings. So if you need it quickly on the fly, cycle through your squelch settings, you got one to 10 adjustable squelch. You can do that. For those of you who don't know, squelch setting essentially a bit hard to explain, but adjust how much static you're going to receive, or how many of your poor transmissions from further away you're going to receive. So if you're in an area and you're always hearing static and you're really sick of it, and you only wanna hear closer high quality transmissions, you can bump that up and it makes it a nicer experience.
We can also do too on these is set active mute. So you Bluetooth your phone to them. If the phone receives a phone call, obviously, you don't want the radio going off in the background, Joe Blow, kid in the background swearing his head off calling truckers an idiot. So what you can do is just set this feature. You're on a phone call, it actually mutes the UHF, so that whoever on the phone call too is not gonna hear what people are saying through here. Really good idea By GME.
We also have a few other cool features like location services, et cetera. I won't go into that too much detail, but they are really just the best unit on the market. They've got a few different variants.
The XRS 330, 370, 390. I've explained it before, I'll explain it again. 330 is sort of the base model, has all the same features as the 370 does. Except for it's only got the smaller plastic chassis for the main brains box, if you wanna call that, and no speaker in it. 370 has a speaker in the hand piece, a speaker in the main box, and the main box is a steel frame chassis. So they're a bit stronger, a bit more robust.
They also come, the 370 also come with a magnetic mount as standard. 390s are more of an agricultural application. They're IP rated and have GPSs. Few other different features in it as well, which sort of make it more suitable for an off-road agricultural application.
Probably the neatest part of this instal is how it plugs in. So probably the number one thing we hear from customers is that I want a UHF for my trips. But I'm burning around town chucking mainys, I don't want to have this floating around, flapping hitting my leg hitting my face, annoying the missus. It's no good. So what we can do, and it works really nicely in these D-MAXes for what we call RJ 45 pass through. Now RJ 45 refers to the type of connector on the end of this.
You've probably seen 'em before. They're like the same one on what the internet plugs to your computers. That sort of jazz. So what that means is though, there's heaps of like an aftermarket range available for them. So Lightforce make a D-MAX specific switch that these can plug into. So we've installed down here beside the gear selector, show you a better shot in a second, but down here, essentially when you wanna use a UHF, you just plug it in.
You can use it as normal. When you're done using it, you just unplug it, chuck it in your glove box, call it a day. The actual main brains is in up behind the dash so you don't see it whatsoever. So it makes it a completely clean, tidy factory look instal on the outside. As always guys, thanks for watching.
If you have any questions, drop 'em down the comments section down below. If you wanna see more of me and more of this, make sure you give us a like and a subscribe. Check out our other touring builds up here, and YouTube reckons you should watch this down here.
2023-08-27 06:20
