Overland 4x4 Truck 2 Year Review + Isuzu NPS 75/155 + All Terrain Warrior Mods + Full Time traveller
welcome back to nowhere bound touring we're here at my family's avocado farm as it's avocado picking time and it's a lockdown so we're stuck yeah so i'm gonna give him a hand and help our picking while we're here the reason why we're here is obviously not avocado picking but we're gonna do a review on our truck we've had the truck for two years one year full time on the road so i think that we're well and truly qualified now so we're going to break it up into three parts the first part i'm just going to review all the standard isuzu stuff the good things are bad things problems were found and so on second part we're going to have a look at the all-terrain warrior modifications the third part is we're going to look at the modifications that we did that we thought suited us at the time and we'll let you know how they're gone what we've had to change and what we think of him so let's get on with it okay first thing we're going to look at and this is in no particular order so i hope i don't bore you to death but first thing is the caster and camber on the truck when the truck comes to australia standard it's not really believe it or not i don't know why it's not really set up for australia roads with the camber off to the left so the truck naturally will pull to the left all terrain warrior did a cast and camber correction i'll show you that in a second when we got it but i wasn't happy with it i wasn't really that happy with how the truck handled so i've changed that a couple times since then and it's almost good so needs a little bit more tweaking but we're getting there i'll show you what i mean for those of you who might not be aware the caster on camber affects how the vehicle drives and handles on the road so the the camber is how much the wheels tip in from the top when you look at them along the side and the caster is what they call the kingpin angle it's the angle of the front axle relevant to i suppose vertical if you like and that affects how it steers and how the truck centers or they both do so you should be able to see just under the springs are some caster correction wedges that have been slotted in on top of the axle tube beneath the springs so i've added an extra wedge to increase the cast on the truck and help it self-center more when you're driving so it's not so fidgety on the road and that's helped the camber correction was done via a shim on the outside of the hub originally and i found that it was not really right as well i went to a specialist and it had excessive camber which promotes wear on the tyres so we've gone ahead and removed that and in the where the kingpin bearings sit on the top and on the bottom of the hub there is bearings so we've gone and put an adjustable bearing locator in it so you can adjust that camber and it also affects the caster bit as well and it's adjustable you have to take it all apart to adjust it but you can adjust it to suit what you want so it is much much better with that kit the camber issue on the truck is known to isuzu and we approached them because i heard it was a warranty issue which it is so when we approached them they denied our warranty because we had the super single wheel conversion on the truck so i suppose you could say it is a modification it does enhance the problem so that's why they said bad luck we're not giving you a warranty but we went ahead and had it fixed anyway because i wasn't having it the way it was and it cost about 700 to do the complete job and it is much better like i said so that's that done the next little issue is that we had was a broken front cv we're not sure when it actually broke we weren't doing anything bad whatsoever so theoretically it shouldn't have broken i don't know why it broke probably broke one more four driving you could say we had bigger wheels which puts more stress on it but regardless isuzu replaced it under warranty and we've had no more problems with that since so that's good we're happy with that although i'm not that happy with i don't know why it broke in the first place so hopefully we don't have any more problems with the cv nobody else has heard of one breaking or problems with it so we don't really know why it occurred the amt and the auto we get lots of questions about the automatic manual transmission we've had no problems with it besides when we first got the vehicle and started towing the van with the truck at full weight we had overheating issues an alarm comes up for overheating on some very hot days it was about 40 something degrees and it just kept on overheating so to solve that issue we made our auto cooler since we've put that in the truck does have an auto cooler by the way it's it goes into the radiator but since we've added our own auto cooler we've had no problems whatsoever with the auto and it hasn't overheated once and we've driven in temperatures up to 49 in the shade with the van and it still hasn't overheated so that has solved the overheating problem completely and we're happy with that while i'm here the fuel caps we have had no end of problems with these fuel caps leaking i went and spoke to isuzu about it and they gave us two brand new fuel caps under warranty and i've put them on and they still leak so i've got no idea why they're leaking we've we've spoken to all terrain warriors about it and they've checked tanks and some leak and some don't so they have got a set of tanks with caps that don't leak and they've offered to replace our tanks for us which i greatly appreciate with tanks and caps that don't leak so a big thank you to all terrain warriors for that because i really don't want to be driving around australia with leaking fuel caps because that means dirt and water can get into the fuel more importantly for me than fuel leaking out so when we can get up to all terrain warriors in queensland we'll replace the tanks and the caps and that should be the end of that a big thanks to all the viewers who helped us try to solve the problem they had numerous ideas about the tanks pressurizing and all sorts of things like that that we looked at to try and work out what the problem was so thank you very much there's an example of the leaking fuel cap leaks forever both sides runs down the tank drips onto the ground another known problem with this isuzu truck that isuzu are aware of is the front doors they're not adjustable so since they've put larger mirrors on it for australian regulations the top of the door flexes and bends in and out in the wind as the wind's on the mirror and so on and normally with a normal car you just adjust the door and that'll be fixed but unfortunately with the truck the doors are not adjustable so to get around the non-adjustable door issue isuzu simply gives you four new bolts per door these bolts don't have a little shoulder on them to locate the door so you put them in and you can adjust the door in and out which solves the problem so that's a super easy fix and it works just fine we've had no more wind noise issues since we replaced the bolts the air intake on the truck it looks like a snorkel but it really isn't a snorkel at all it has got holes all through it like swiss cheese so if you intend on doing any water crossings the minimum thing you need to do is seal up the air intake i'll show you what i've done and the reasons why obviously to stop water and dirt some people may disagree with some of the things i've done but that's up to you first of all this flexible boot on the single cab models it's there and on the dual cab so if and when you tilt the cab um it comes off the obviously the fixed part of the air thing so that it can tilt it doesn't seal at all around the rim so i've gone ahead and stuck it all up with sicker flex and so on and i'm fairly confident that no water can get in there at the same time there's drain holes on this side and around the other side of the air intake that would let water in if you did a deep river crossing so the seal around the base of the air cleaner here is not waterproof so i've sealed that up and i've sealed all the air intake all the way back to the turbo with sealant just to make 100 sure that there's no possible leaks and water to enter i always use a high temperature grease around the seal of the air box just to make 100 sure that no water gets in and on the bottom of the air box there is a drain plug the idea of this is when you uh driving along and you take your foot off the accelerator that the back pressure in the air system will blow out any dirt water or debris through the bottom of this valve it's a one-way sort of valve but as soon as you get any dirt or debris in that valve it will not seal correctly and it would allow water in to the air box so i always seal that up completely so that there is no valve the disadvantage with that is if it's pouring rain and you've got more of a conventional type snorkel head and water gets in you will get water in your air box so if you have a hundred mil of rain and you get 50 ml of water you know what i mean in the bottom of your air box it could cause or it would cause issues so you do need to be aware of it and it's something that you need to check if it has rained heavily so that's what i do the other suggestion would be is to replace this whole thing with a watertight real snorkel if you like which maybe one day we'll look at the ics is standard seats in the truck we had the driver's side one replaced for a suspension seat when we purchase the truck it is not standard in a dual cab but it is standard in a single cab both the seats do a okay job at the best so they're not the most comfortable seat in the world if you're sitting in here for six hours or more when you're driving you feel like it is absolutely enough my recommendation is if you can would be to get replacement seats the reason why we didn't get replacement seats is that unfortunately because of the design of the floor and the height here the only seat that you can fit in is the lowest profile suspension seat that you can get which was about 50 millimeters higher than this one and catherine's legs couldn't reach the pedals with an extra 50 millimeters high if you're a shorter statute person a replacement seat might not be an option for you but if you're a little bit taller i would definitely get replacement seats i believe they also make one for the passenger side in the dual cab now i'll get them if you can afford it definitely while we're looking in the cab the dash i've never had a dash map before but in this vehicle the dash constantly reflects straight on the windscreen and it always makes it more difficult to view gone ahead and bought a dash mat and unbelievably it's great you get no refraction from it at all it's one of the cheapest and best things that we've found you can do good bang for buck get a dash mat next up the all-terrain warrior mods to the truck most important one of course is the suspension am i happy with it yep for sure would i have it without it no way standard these are rough as guts and you definitely want to get the suspension upgraded if you're looking to have it for an overland truck we've got the airbags in the front which i think are a good idea but they do have some little problems those airbags are not airbags like you might think as a spring but they're just a airbag bump stop since the suspension travel on the front is not that high they put the airbag in there so you don't have a bump stop and when you hit it you get the harsh jarring through your body it's more of a softer bump stop the only problem is there's such a small capacity airbag if you have any leaks they go flat really quickly and we're constantly pumping them up but they must have a leak somehow and they just constantly go flat but anyway are they worth it i think so just need to sort out the leaks next is the we've got the radiator splash guard for the truck because the radiator hangs down quite low under the front and you'll see it on the standard truck it's prone to sticks and stones and everything so we've got the splash guard there's been no problems with airflow or heating even towing the van fully loaded so we haven't had any problems with that some people suggested that it wasn't good and it wouldn't work i've had any problems so i'm happy with that i'll get that again same with the aircon guard you'll see where the aircon hangs right down prone to sticks and so on we've got a guard on it we've had no problems with it you can see the radiator splash guard in between the springs there stops all debris dirt and sticks from getting the radiator it would also stop a lot of spinifex grass seeds if you're in the desert although they would still get in there somehow the air conditioning condenser guard does its job definitely i would purchase that again we elected to get the atw full bar when we got the truck we've had no problems with it although we haven't run into anything so i can't say how robust it is but it's all good none of the lights have fallen off on the corrugations they've got bracing under the light brackets and so on which is great got their winch cradle the winch is a 25 000 pound sherpa or an 11 ton sherpa winch we've used them they're okay they are connected to the truck electrical system originally i thought that was a great idea because they're 24 volt then half the current so you don't have to worry about your cables as much but now i since using them i think that the truck electrical system and the batteries really can't handle a winch and i would definitely get a 12 volt winch and connect it to my house batteries or the canopy batteries instead of to the truck electrical system that way you get a lot more battery capacity and it will help your winch when using the winch just on the truck electrical system it often comes up with a low voltage alarm and the winch starts to slow down sometime in the future i have to get some larger batteries for the truck they're not the biggest batteries so we can modify and put some larger ones down there which will help the winch the truck batteries are a smaller battery they're about a 75 amp hour where we could be fitting in about a 120 amp hour if we modify the cradle a little bit so when they do for replacement we'll definitely do that also the rear winch is the same we've got a 11 ton or a 25 000 pound sherpa rear winch we've used that believe it or not not for the truck but to repair things on the caravan straighten out bent caravan legs and so on so that has been useful for that and it also operates the rear wheel carrier up and down the rear wheel carrier and the rear bar has been great it's been no problems with them we've had to modify the carrier to suit our new thinner tyres by putting a spacer here and so on but depending on what option you get with all terrain warriors how the carrier is set up when we purchase a truck we elected to also get the all-terrain warrior roof rack with solar panels and the front bar both of those have been great we've had no problems with any of the roof rack or the bar work at all they originally had a little issue with the front with wind noise they put a wind defector across the front of the bar there to stop the wind noise so if you are getting one make sure that you speak to them about a wind deflector or ensure that they've done testing with the bar if they've altered it the rear tray the all terrain warrior tray is a great tray it's suspension mounted so it's mounted on springs so that the chassis can flex independent of the rear tray which is great because even though you've got those springs it still flexes enough to bind up the doors on our rear canopy if you're in an extreme situation the doors are harder to open and they catch a bit but apart from that the tray the construction is all good it's all rhino coated or whatever you want to call it to prevent rust underneath the steel it's their mounting kit it's a good option i think the front diff on our truck has been replaced with the all-terrain warrior auto biasing front diff so essentially it's a mechanical limited slip diff on the front that locks up when it's got torque across it it definitely works you can feel it in slippery conditions but if one wheel's off the ground it will not drive the wheel that is in contact with the ground the wheel that is in the air will just spin it's one of the design compromises with this sort of diff but if both wheels have got some traction it's great you can feel it trying to core its way along the road or the track would we get the front diff again if i had a choice well we didn't have a choice when we purchased it there was no other options but i believe there's a locking front diff available now like an air locker i always love my air lockers previously and i would always get an air locker if i have the choice so it's the same with this uh would i get it again now if i could get an air locker if i couldn't get an air locker yes i'll get it again tires as you're most likely aware we have had a fair few issues with tyres i'm not going to go all into it here there's probably plenty of information that we've put out about tyres but basically my current understanding is the tyres we've got for the truck are probably the best that we can get at the moment to suit our situation we've got a heavy truck there's definitely no denying that it is within all the specifications and weight limits of the australian rule so there's no problems with that but the problem is with the tyres we've found that with 37-inch tyres if you have a heavy truck they are just not robust enough to last they will fail from my experience the tyres we've got now hopefully will not fail they are a compromise they are a truck tyre they're not going to perform as well off-road they're not going to perform as well in the sand and they have got a lower ground clearance because they're a 35-inch tyre but the main thing is that they're robust they last and they don't fail every day so we're going to give these tyres a good try good workout and see how they go since these tyres are not quite as aggressive and well suited to mud and clay driving as previous tyres we've had to go to a few different options a little bit out of the box thinking to improve their ability we'll cover that next week when i review all of our recovery gear so check that out if you're interested we have had a ton of questions about our tyres of course one of them being how these new tyres perform compared to the older 37 inch tyres well i'm glad to say that they perform better than i thought on the road they definitely perform better they've got better braking and cornering as you would expect they're definitely quieter as you would expect on dirt roads they're better on rough dirt roads they're better on very rough dirt roads i can't really say yet i think they're going to be a harsher tyre but saying that we had these truck type tyres previously with steel rims and they were a lot harsher from what i remember compared to these ones with the alloy rims so i think the alloy rims help a lot to do with the ride feel and comfort compared to the old heavier steel rims so from my current experience i would definitely undergo alloy rims and maybe the toyo tyres are a little bit different or they feel better compared to the previous good ride tyres that we had so in a bit of a round up or a sum up if you're going to get truck tires i'll definitely go this combination with the alloys and the toyos they seem really good at the moment but of course we'll let you know how they go okay just to sort of quickly run through the mods that we did if you're interested in the setup and actual in detail of all the modifications you'd be best to look at our previous video of the truck setup i'm just going to touch on the things that are good and bad and how we've gone with it the canopy the canopy has been really good i'm more than happy with it and i'm sure catherine is too it suits our needs to a tee it's great we've had no problems with it except it is starting to wear a little bit some of the locks on the doors are wearing a little bit you get some plain drawers now that we never had and also the locks on the going doors themselves there is rods that go into the front and they are starting to wear a bit so there is a little bit of play there i'm not sure what the solution is for that maybe we'll have to put a metal insert into the hole to take out some of that wear it must be where the door rattles and wears on the pin it's just wearing away the aluminium slightly if i did it again i would probably put some sort of like i said a steel insert in there to try and stop the wear the canopy itself if we redid it for some reason i would choose a slightly lighter construction because we are pushing our top end gvm for the truck so i would like to reduce weight wherever i could if i did it again one of those things would be to use lithium batteries instead of lead acid batteries we currently have 420 agm lead acid batteries at about 40 kilos each at least so you're looking at 160 kilos worth of batteries sitting in the back of the truck where we could replace it with a lithium and it'll be a third of the weight and half the size something like that so we could easily save 100 kilos there or more worth of weight and i think the lithium would perform better main thing would be the recharge normally with the lead acid it takes a long time to get them fully recharged so it will take all day until they're 100 topped up whereas with the lithium if you have enough solar and sun that will be topped up you know i mean by 11 o'clock like our van battery performs so that would be my choice if i need to replace it or when i need to replace them in you know six years time or so when we initially designed the electrical system and the batteries i made sure that that battery size and all the equipment was compatible with a lithium set up i'm simply going to replace those with a similar size lithium setup and alter the controllers to suit the charging requirements and then we'll have a lithium set up which will be fine we have used anadrive and victron controllers for our solar stuff and they have performed well there's been no problems with them the only thing that i would change with our setup and our layout is the fuses for the main fuses they're tucked way back in the back here and we have had a couple of those main fuses blow and they're difficult to replace i'll have to pull a fridge out to replace them i decided to put those fuses there it was a decision um i thought i wouldn't have to get to them often so i thought i'd put them up the back out of the way and that would be acceptable but really the only time you get to fuses or you need to get diffusers is when there's a problem and of course when there's a problem you see the raining you're stuck in a bog hole who knows it's never nice and you never plan for it so i would definitely move those down to the front with easy access i might even still do that and rewire it so that i've got good access to those larger fuses down the back our water tanks that we've made 300 litres worth of water stainless they're great we don't have any problems with them we love them we fill we use the tap hand washing all the time shower and so on we always fill the van from these if we go into town we'll top up these come back and fill the van water so we don't have to take the van to town if we're camping out of town we can simply take the truck and bring the water back to the van which is great we found that we needed to add insulation to the canopy doors to stop the heat and stop the cold in winter when we had the dogs in the back there would be water condensing and dripping off the doors and the roof everywhere so we went ahead and just stuck insulation on it and it's made it a lot better so where possible i would fully insulate the roof and the doors on a canopy just to stop condensation and heat same with the insulation we put in the truck we put the same thing under the truck floor to stop heat and noise and that has worked well that's just from clark rubber stuck it on it stopped the noise a fair bit and a lot of the heat this floor used to get quite hot here um because obviously the air flow from the motor all comes past here and it heats up the rear floor you can see we even did it up the rear wall to help with the sound the truck steps we also modified those they originally came a lot lower right down to here and i was particularly concerned if you went in dropped into a little washout or a hole you don't have to go in very far before your step will get bent and mugged and so on which would then probably push it back into the battery or into the fuse box and then you'd have all sorts of trouble so what i did was i simply just cut the bottom off moved it up re-welded it it is a larger step particularly if you have young or elderly people hop in the back it's a big first step up but i think it's probably a worthwhile sacrifice compared to getting the steps smashed off and punched through your batteries every time you go into more difficult four-wheel drive areas so what things would we change with our setup like i mentioned i would have made a slightly lighter canopy or maybe a lighter trying canopy combination so we had more weight or cargo weight to play with the air conditioning we would have air conditioning for our dogs it's just too hot in the summer when we're going across the nullarbor and it was 49 in the shade it's probably about let's say what 54 53 54 degrees in the dog box on the other side and that is just too hot do you know what i mean it's too hot for animals to travel in australia in summer unless they've got something else unless they're super tough of course but anyway i would suggest having air con or an air con environment for any animals that you consider traveling around australia with just to reduce that stress off them because essentially we couldn't travel when it was that hot we traveled in the morning and stopped you know before lunch just for the dog's sake because it was too hot so i would look at changing that either ducting it through into their cage or something like that the rear steps on the truck they've been fine we've tried to change them a few times modify them and so on which we have done welded and so on they're not quite right i like the idea one day i'll change them and modify them a little bit differently and they'll be much better same with the stairs up to the tent they're actually a little bit too narrow to step both feet on the same rung together so you can only put one on one and it becomes difficult if they're a little bit wider you could put two feet on one rung and that would make it easier so maybe one day we'll look at changing that the last thing i'd like to alter or change is something that i haven't mentioned before but we have had a problem with it and i do want to sort it out somehow and that is the front cv boots on the front axle on this truck they're super exposed to sticks particularly they're a rubber boot they're only very thin and they're in a dangerous position so i'd love to make a guard around them or i will make a guard or find a guard around them to stop that problem on the mitsubishi trucks they come or i think they come standard with a guard around there or you can order it as an option so i definitely want to do something like that around those boots i'll show you them now and you'll understand exactly what i mean so looking under the front of the truck you can see these cv rubber boots here they're just a thin rubber boot and they're super prone to getting stick damage but to replace that boot you have to take the whole hub off every time including the brakes and everything else to replace that which is a real pain so we've had it happen once i don't want it to happen again so i need to make some sort of guard around here just to protect them because simply drive along and there's a stick poking up it'll just go through your boot and that's it you need to pull your whole wheel hub bearings everything off to replace that and then put it all back together so there goes a day or two of work and money just because they've got no protection everything else is great you know what i mean with the front end protection especially with that splash guard like i said on the radiator and intercooler there but those boots are in a terribly exposed location that i don't really think is good enough for an off-road truck so just as a wrap up about the truck and everything i'm more than happy with the isuzu truck as a whole i think it's a really good truck i think it's good value for money compared to some other vehicles that you can buy it's super robust the drivetrain's good the body's good generally it's a good thing there are some things that need to be changed like some of the things that we went through most of them are relatively minor a major one being suspension you don't buy the truck unless you do a suspension upgrade if you're going to use it for touring would i buy it again for sure would you buy it again catherine yes i would it's a good truck we like it it suits our needs perfectly it is a little bit slower it is not the most powerful truck that you can get if you want power you can might as well go and buy a seven point whatever six liter f truck and you'll have power on tap this is not that sort of vehicle even though i'd like it to be and here's our home on the avocado farm for god knows how long until lockdown lifts i guess next week we'll be doing a full video on all the recovery gear we carry for the truck so we hope to see you next week for our recovery gear episode so make sure you subscribe to get the reminder and give us a thumbs up if you think we're doing okay you
2021-08-26 15:49
