WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW! 3.5+ YEARS ON THE ROAD OUR TRUCK & CARAVAN MODIFICATIONS & ALTERATIONS #mods

[Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] I hope you're well today we've got a little bit of a different video we've had a few requests to go through what we've changed in our travels so what's broken what we've changed or upgraded for some reason and generally what hasn't performed well because we've been traveling for three and a half years nearly four now nearly four years so we kind of yeah we've got the gist of what goes wrong so it's in no particular order but we will break it up into Caravan and truck but within those categories we're just going to go through it we've got a list here on the computer and we're just going to go through each item that we've either altered changed broken or upgraded and we'll go from there we just thought it will help you guys out because you'll probably come up to some sort of similar issues in your travels and if there's a particular video we've created toward that thing I'll put it in the description of the top for you to access the link I'll also put those into a playlist okay first thing on the list on the Caravan we upgraded our battery capacity from 300 ampere lithium batteries to 600. when we originally built the fan we went for the option of as much solar panels as we could put on the roof and we'd see how the 300 ampere hour of lithium went well we know for sure it's not really enough for us no when you get those longer overcast um times like one week of rain with 300 amps we were struggling by the end and we sometimes had to use our generator alternatively if you've camped under trees because you've got no other choice you only get a few days out of 300 amps worth of lithium or we did anyway so the 600 amps of lithium is great we actually sold our generator got rid of that and we haven't had that for a year now nearly and we've had no no need to use it so we can handle 600 amps of lithium just fine and it suits us to a t we do have about 800 amps of solar next on our list our pull out kitchen outside has got large access hatches so you open them obviously to pull your kitchen out to cook on we found that if it rained and you happen to be cooking or you're doing a roast and you couldn't pack it away because our awning does not cover our pull out kitchen our external kitchen that rain would go into the hatch or alternatively midges and mozzies and they'll get under our bed sand yeah sand fries no sand would blow in same wood blowing too and um they'd obviously get their way through into the van so what we made up or had made up was a cover that attached on the inside of the door with zippers and that has worked really well so that stopped Ryan sand midges dust and all that sort of crap when you're at Camp along with the uh when we had our our flatmate up for our pull out kitchen we also had another little mod done so the awning flap is like a little V that Carl had made we put it on the soundtrack on the awning and it just helps tension everything down to our our poles and it's been great in the wind because we had a an electric awning on our van we really used to struggle with wind it was terrible in Wind as soon as it was a bit of wind we'd have to pack it back in but now with this awning flap with our poles under it it is great in the Wind one of the best things that we've done is install a fan into our fridge yeah so we had big problems with our fridge Cooling and we went to Carl's cool which we've done a video on this and installed external fans so it helps circulate the fan past the air past the back of the fridge and an internal fan in the fridge and it has it changed that fridge completely it saved the fridge's life yeah it saved my life too because the fridge was going out and we would have to spend a few more Grand to replace it and so this is done incredibly well and it has never ever and it's never warmed up it's never even come close no no no no so it's perfectly fine perfect it only stops working when I accidentally shove something in the fan yeah and stop the fan on the inside my bad yeah bad our water in our van is all controlled by valves and the type of valve it's called a John guest uh inline valve it's a little blue valve you'll see and all of our water control and tank selection is done by these valves they're quite a common valve in Caravans we found after about three years of use they started to not leak but not function correctly like the valve wouldn't turn all the way on and off anymore it become less and less and stiffer and less and less in the end one of them broke because I was just turning it off so we've gone ahead and replaced all of those valves they're about 20 bucks each and we've got about I don't know 15 of them in the van so it's not a huge expense but now they're back to all nicely operating with no more issues I didn't think that they would wear out that quick but bear in mind we do live in our van full time we use it every single day and so on so for a lot of people that just use their Caravan you know a few times a year they'll probably never ever wear out in the life of the van but in our case they were wearing out we've replaced them they're all good now it's an easy job they're just push in and out essentially and we now have a couple of spares yeah we've got a few spares for breakfast we had some alterations done on our pantry cupboard because I like to have lots of food and it was a bit of a disaster stuff stacked on each other and all sorts so we just had some extra shelves put in so that everything wasn't stacked high on it piled up and then we also added a charging Bay that slides out and so all all everything that we charge goes in there yeah it's great it's really good probably all in there close the door shut the door and it's all neat and Tide out of eyesight all the cords living there yeah so that works really well for us another video that we created was about our hatches yep you're probably aware so our roof hatches we had just opening hatches of various designs we got rid of those suckers for sure and we've installed we've got it running right now it never stops a maxi Deluxe fan in here and it just constantly sucks air out and we love it you can just leave your windows open a little bit in say the bedroom if there's bad weather and you can turn the fan up and if it's humid it'll just suck the air over you when you're in the bed and out here super good if you burn the toast or something turn it on flat out sucks it all out so we've been very happy with that we have used it a couple of times to actually blow air in just to cool it down a bit and also be aware that if it is sucking uh when it's raining it can sometimes suck so hard it pulls water into the windows yes it does so yeah just keep an eye on that but it's it's still yeah it's Ace it's great then one downfall from it is since we run it 24 hours a day essentially all the time it gets dirty there's no two ways about it you've got to clean it every week and it gets filthy it looks filthy right now yeah but um the same with the one in the shower we put a much better fan in the shower and that is so good as well the downside to that is it's still got one of those opening hatches so last night when it rained we had it open and of course the water comes in but um the max air one it's got a rain Hood doesn't matter whether it's pouring it doesn't matter it just works great when we had the pantry altered we also had my my bedroom cupboard altered because I was finding that having hanging clothing there was no point because everything was just crinkled because there was so much just crammed in there so I got some shelves put in and now I just roll all my clothes and have all my clothes in there and it's much better and I can fit more and I just went with the hanging because I like the hanging yep and my shirts do still get crickled but anyway I just shove it years ago now when we first ordered our Caravan from bushracker I had some discussions with them about the front lifting leg now the lifting leg which is like our jockey wheel is an electric leg and it used to hang down about I don't know 150 millimeters below the A-frame and I wasn't very happy with that because I figured as soon as you drag the A-frame it's going to rip off well apparently they never have had any problems with it until we come along probably because they most people tend not to drag their A-frame but anyway in Flinders ranges a couple years ago we ripped the leg off and bent it and so on so what I've now done which works really good for us is I have spaced it up with a spacer so that that leg does not hang down when it's fully retracted it is up inside the Caravan A-frame rails so even if you go over a hump or through a riverbed or a washout and you drag that it doesn't get damaged or for instance you may get bogged it doesn't get damaged because it's up out of the way I do have to put a block of wood or I use a jacking pad underneath it to get a bit of extra height now because it's a bit higher but apart from that it works great so I just had that machined up from a machine shop somewhere in South Australia I think got some longer bolts and added it in and it's been good ever since so that might be something for you to consider if you've got an off-road van you don't want anything hanging down on your A-frame because you will drag it and it will get bent or broken off not too long ago we had an issue we didn't even know with the solar panels on the van I was up there one day I think I got up on the truck to hose them off like I normally do if I've got water and I looked across and one was all smashed it was all smashed all the glass was all broken and we don't know when it happened we have found rocks on the roof of the van before presumably from the truck if you go off-road or on you know Stony Gravelly roads they somehow get up there believe it or not so all I can think of is a rock is flicked up from the truck come back down smash the panel and can't do anything you can't replace the glass so we had it replaced when we're getting service to Bush tracker and believe it or not our solar worked a lot better so I don't know how long it had been broken for say a long time we've been missing one panel for some time so that was just wear and tear essentially but that's something to keep an eye on with your solar panels on your van get up there every now and again and have a quick look make sure they're all okay uh re-aggrave water well that goes along the lines of not having things hang down yeah wow I suppose so going along those lines of things hanging down like we're talking about before we've had issues with our gray water tank outlet from the very start it hasn't worked well for us at all the tank is a 90 liter tank and it's got a small elbow that comes out of it at right angles it's an elbow obviously and that little elbow used to get blocked all the time with hair and soap and everything so I would say over fishing around in there with a wire to unblock it and also it went right to the back of the van on the frame rails and the hang down essentially super exposed every time we dragged the van through a creek bed or something the poor little tap will get bent and ripped off and I don't know it wasn't working for us so finally in the end I've moved it all back I've done it a couple times now but I've done it again better put a big and large solid valve that doesn't leak because the other ones always used to leak as well and got rid of all of that system put a bigger Outlet nice elbow and now touch wood that's been great much better hasn't been blocked since but we haven't tested it for a long time we've only had it in there for probably a few months yeah and then still staying on the water situation ow for some reason our water system works randomly doesn't it it just sets itself off the pump there must be a little internal leak where the water pressure drains out from the pump somehow there's no leak in the system but maybe it goes back through the pump or maybe all the valves out of that because there's so many valves you know maybe it's just got a tiny little internal pressure leak but what happens in the middle of the night it just goes and that that's fine you know Carl's used to it I think but when I'm asleep I'm deep asleep and then it'll go and I'll go because the pump's under our bed and wake him up so we needed a solution because otherwise Carl was going to kill me so he's put a little switch on the toilet that controls it and when we go to bed we just turn off the water system and if we need to get up in the night and go the toilet it's right there to turn back on so it just essentially turns the pump off so the pump can't run no matter what the pressure is doing because it's an automatic pump as soon as the pressure drops or the hot water service uses a little bit of water and tops up because it's been heating overnight or something it won't turn on anymore until you turn that switch on on the toilet yeah and then that's good so that works really well for us yes because we could not find I could not stop that that little leaf it takes sometimes it takes I don't know 15 minutes sometimes it takes four hours so I just couldn't find it yeah so that's my solution and it works really good yes yes going along the thing with leaking and leaks our airbags and airbag system has had some problems from the start almost it's an active system there's lots of components so it is more complex than just Springs and so on so you will get some problems if you have an airbag system we love it and I'd still get the same style of airbag and everything that's fine but you just have to live with it one of those things was we had moisture in the air system I didn't drain it often enough when we were stuck for six months up in Victoria up in the hills and there was some moisture in there and it damaged the auto load leveling valve it's a valve that just controls the height of the van when you're on the road it's just presets it so it doesn't matter how much weight you put in there or anything it's just the same height always so I had to replace that and um that was only after six months we had the van and then some time later because there's two of them one for each so I replaced the other one it was possibly damaged from the same moisture as well so they've both been replaced now and they're fine along with that we have also had to replace two airbags both under warranty so both had leaks from not our doing from new essentially um the first one had a really slow leak it took proof months to go down and I tracked it down in the end to the actual airbag itself it was leaking out of the top of the crimp around the top of the airbag so I replaced that with another airbag and guess what still going down I'm like what is going off here the replacement airbag had some weird leak out of the bottom I'm like oh my gosh what's the chances of that but anyway they were both replaced under warranty by airbag man which is good I just had to I actually had to purchase the airbag first send the other one back in so they could confirm that it was a warranty claim and then they um refunded me the money so that's all fine which worked great and they were good and easy to deal with and you know try very hard to to sort out our issue for us so good on them for doing that unfortunately I have to replace two airbags none from punches but we still would we would still have them again yeah no no no doubt about it I know lots of people get told they're bad and yeah yeah that's so much better you pull up and you just level your van like that you know what I mean or if you're in your van and if all your oil in the fry pans go on the one side you just lean over and adjust it up and everything's good yes so that is really good yeah it gives you a lot more scope where you can park your van too because with all the other caravanas around if you're in a busy area they all go to the flat spots where you can just scoot over to the hill on the side and park up there and level it up and yeah it's all good so it gives you more scope looking reason yeah I would wish that they would have doubled the travel that would be nice tell all the travel would be perfect so but anyway don't mean very good and we're very happy with it yeah even though they do require maintenance yeah the fridge the fridge when you when you stack your fridge you want to get as much as you can in there but if it all sits and rests on the back it sticks to the back and freezes up to the back into the back wall where you're cooling pipe Tower or the wall is so Carl actually put some Corner strip stuff yeah he's gonna have a technical name for it I'm sure AVC Aging for plastering walls yeah so he's put that across the back of each shelf and it just helps prevent containers and things pushing against the back wall and freezing and that works really well it has worked super simple except for lettuce because somehow it always finds its way to the back yeah just stick it on with silicon along the edge of your shelf we had glass shelves so they're quite slippery so we have a anti-slip mat and a lip on the back now and it works great it does yes so just a quick little tip that you probably need if you don't have that on your back of your Caravan shelf you definitely want it ah the pump we had a a minor issue I think it was a defect from um the factory from the start some here but anyway our water pump where it mounts on the on the wall sits in a rubber plastic bracket and it's screwed to the wall it screws to its bracket to absorb the vibration and all that sort of thing and for a long time I'm thinking why is the water pump so loose it was sort of quite floppy and I thought oh well maybe it come out like that well on the um old Air Highway the corrugations and the Rocks we opened up the barbecue one day to pull it out to cook and I'm like what's happened to the water pump it's all hanging off lucky it didn't break the hoses yes but anyway it was hanging off there so we we sorted it out for time being did a temporary fix and then replaced that rubber mounting bracket and there's never been a problem again no so and I asked lots of people and they've never heard of one failing so I think it might have been damaged or something maybe somebody dropped it and it broke yeah it was broken behind the pump you couldn't really see it and yeah just failed in the end along with the water is our Wastewater you may have heard us at the start when we picked up the van complaining about the bad Gray the snow that we used to get every time we opened the door and we couldn't understand why really but we did work it out the water was or the the air and the smell was traveling back along the pipe and up out of the shower vent or not vent out of the shower drain and um even sometimes the water come out if we had some in the tank and we went down a hill or up a hill whichever way it was up a hill and the water sloshed forward we'd find great water in the shower Basin and then in their towels and Earth so what we did is we just put a backflow preventer in it's just a little valve um that stops IT flowing the wrong way and since we did that we're very very I don't think we ever have had really gray water smell no no and we haven't had any water come back up into the shower it'll never come out up into our sinks and that because they're way higher obviously but the shower since it's so low it could slosh back and we had a problem with that so since we put that in it's been good and also part of my pack down is to I put the but the plugs in in the sinks so there's just no smell can come so we always do that as well yeah the only downside that you probably need to consider with one if you put it in your shower since the shower has got very low height difference between the the water Outlet of the shower and the top of the tank that backflow valve does slow the water flow down a little bit so it doesn't quite drain out of the shower with the same speed that it used to no it's not a problem but it's just something to be aware of and consider when you put it in because it does restrict the flow a little bit when you open when you're draining the shower but apart from that that's great yes we like it in the early days of being in the van we were as Carl said stuck up in the wet weather up in the hills yeah and being so damp we ended up with mold underneath our mattress we made a video on it and our simple solution for that was was the arrow mesh we'll put a link in the description so that if you'd like to purchase some it's easy enough to get yep and it works great all it does is it creates a little air barrier underneath your mattress we've got full wood under our mattress if you all got slats or something you won't have a problem because you can get airflow and all of that around but if you've got a solid surface the heat from your body and the moisture sits down there it condensates a little bit and you just get mold we also put the same thing in our Rooftop tent because it had exactly the same problem and since we've put that in there no problem perfect I'd recommend it for any Rooftop tent yeah for sure 100 and every bed that's got a solid surface underneath my suggestion is that you definitely need the Aero mesh or something similar yeah let's move on to truck stuff yeah working up a switch track stuff we know you're here for this stuff yeah so no particular order again um you're probably well aware that we have had two broken CVS on our truck um it was I believe it's a bit of a design issue I didn't do anything wrong um I Susan might argue against that they replace one under warranty and the other one I just replaced because it was stuck on Morton Island and I couldn't be bothered stuffing around with them so had that replaced um to help prevent the CV issue hopefully we've done two things the first thing is we put I shouldn't say two things because the other one oh yeah the yeah I can say that hotel to help prevent the CV issue reoccurring we've done well two things plus another we now carry spare CVS which is a pain because they're big heavy and cost a lot of money but we've got them second thing is we've extended our steering bump stops so the truck can't steer so sharp which will stop the stress on that drivetrain component hopefully so that's reduced it was very very good it was fantastic it was incredible it was great it was like a little fist either you could turn like wherever you wanted to with the truck it was really good but it come at a cost and the cost was damaging CVS some sand and stuff I'm not even looking so we'll just live with a slightly less turning Circle it's still okay it's like about as bad as a Nissan Patrol or a Land Cruiser which are not great but it's about the same now so it's not terribly bad so hopefully that'll help we haven't had any broken ones since and the third thing we did was we replaced our Auto biasing front differential it's an all-terrain Warrior one with a locking diff which is just a complete diff lock that locks or unlocks so I can control exactly when that diff is locked and I Know It And when it's unlocked so I think that also helps because otherwise it's essentially almost locked all the time when you're in four-wheel drive and you've got torque and so on which will put more stress on the components so I'm helping all of those things combined together hopefully no more broken suit piece probably will be but hopefully no more so that's the first uh on the on the truck um another thing that we have done to help um make us feel safer it's both in the truck in the van that probably where is that we put GPS tracking on them so that least we can keep track of what's happened if it gets stolen or if we're separated Truck and Van we can keep an eye on where the other one is and we like that that works really good we've got a video on that and we're very happy with that we always look at it if we go somewhere and leave the van we keep an eye on what's Happening and we have the alarm set so that if it moves or whatever it'll send us messages all the time and we can track it so and our children have access so they can check where we are know what's happening along with the alarm system we also recently have been rust proofing on the truck underneath underbody protection we've done a video on that also but um the truck essentially I didn't think it was up to standard as my actual opinion you know our truck's three and a half years old or four years and it was starting to rust the chassis was starting to rust some some of the underbody was starting to rust and so on even though we have used it near the beach um it still should be able to withstand that bike seriously it's done a lot more Outback work than Beach work so yeah so yeah we've we did that to try and help um prevent that in the future if I knew about it before I would have just got that straight away is my advice to any new vehicle purchaser that's for off-road or near the beach I'd just get it done brand new put it into your initial yeah yeah it's like you know a couple Grand and you're done and it's going to save that a lot right yeah so um do you want to talk about tires oh my gosh we've had lots of problems with tires that you're probably aware of but the bottom line is now that we are running uh truck style tires um we've had no more problems whatsoever and we've also got that aluminum or Alloy rims from ultramaris and I believe that that is a really good combination for us I would definitely where possible not have steel rims again I think the alloy ones are much better they run straighter they're more in balance and they're just less prone to issues I believe won't rust and so on we've had no problems with rocks damaging them but anyway that's my choice there's lots of cons and and Pros for it people will argue all day long about Ollie versus steel but they work well for us and they're lighter yeah yeah so we get bogged easier oh because of it yeah there is more uh mud pattern tires now available yeah when we purchased them there was nothing really available except for what we've got yeah which we will be moving to different ones obviously yeah when we replace yep definitely get back to my toys yeah that'll be great along with the tire issues we also had lots of compressory trees the ARB compressors that we originally had which I thought was the best thing that I researched and could find you can throw them away I can tell you that right now they did not work for us we had failed twice rebuilt twice failed replaced with a brand new one and still couldn't performed they were just not up to the task not even close not even remote controls so we got rid of them and we got a Oasis compressor from jet air and that Saka has been magnificent yeah it is for I would just put it in your budget from the start if you're looking for a truck it'll blow your pants away it is so good so fast so everything it's just in a different League we run air tools you can blow it oh I'll just blow out the cab with it I don't sweep the truck out anymore I blow out the canopy it's just and I don't know about anybody else but when we used to go four-wheel driving even back with our Nissan at the end of the day you just want to get home and you've got a bloody air up and it takes an hour and so now it's like yeah 15 minutes less than 15 minutes yeah for the truck yeah and trucking the van our records both is 15 minutes as well there's no difference because we've got two inflation gauges into everything 15 minutes for eight tires yeah wow it's incredible defeats my pet hate area that's so good nice now that instead of going uh we won't air down because we're not going far on the beach and having issues and having to air down anyway because you're bogged you just stare down straight away because it's only minutes to pump it back up yeah so yeah it's well worth it and if you're looking to purchase a truck with something similar I would just completely allow for it at the start and don't even bother with anything else because it works so well no no we also had an issue with it was mostly my door uh right from the beginning that it seemed to have airflow through it when it was shut and it would sort of uh vibrate when we were driving top of it yeah and so Carl contacted Isuzu yeah yeah and it's a known issue but they don't seem to fix it they they just sent him the nuts to fix it himself no I I asked him they wanted me to take a truck in oh you know book it in two days later I had to replace six nuts six bolts in the doors so for all of you Isuzu people ring and get your nuts just bring them up and get them and you get your nuts and fix the problem because they're not gonna yeah just ring up and get some new bolts for the door yeah they just don't have a little shoulder to locate the door so you can adjust the door in and out and so on yeah and it works fine yeah it fixes the problem yeah they might jump up and down a bit saying you've got to bring it in to do you know what I mean it's what I'm just say no mate just send me it just send me them and fix it yourself yeah but about 12 more things 10 more things to go through um the canopy the whale tail door locks on the canopy you know the ones that you open and open your doors we've constantly had problems with them um I think because the truck's long it might flex and put stress on the doors and it just bends that little tab the tongue that locks it all the time and they get looser and looser and you have to adjust them and then the nut strips off because it's poor quality and so and we do use them a lot and we do some plants bottom no 20 times a day probably yeah so um in the end um the manufacturer has upgraded the tongue so that doesn't Bend anymore so that's great but we've found that the little nut still strips it's a poor quality nut I've changed the nuts to nice ones but they still don't last it's just the way the design is so we have had issues with our style of the whale Tower lock I did look at other ones I couldn't find anything that's a really sturdy design so if you know of some nice design whale tail style canopy locks that are super strong please let us know yeah I'll be interested in them be great yeah so it's still got issues with them yeah we added a winch for our bike which we made a video on uh uh do we need to tell him about it it was hard to lift up yeah and it was only 25 kilos but very awkward yeah I had to lift it to chest height to get it into the tray and then you know wiggle it in there so we just made a swing out winch yeah with a little if you're really interested watch the video we're not telling you it works good about it but yeah yeah that works great for us yeah the tow hitch we've had a few towel hitches and we've finally got a tow hitch that performs really well for us yeah which is the air safe one it's miles ahead of the rest in my opinion yeah and we're not sponsored by them yeah there's a bit of controversy about that we're not sponsored by them or anything like that it just works really well yeah it is much dearer than the rest but it works really well it actually is almost like we're not Towing the van when we've got the van on there it is better yeah yeah super good yeah I love it so anyway um something else that has failed was our solar panels on the rooftop tent we had a very high quality name brand flexible panel with all mounted correctly to their specs on insulation and so on and they just literally short-circuited out and burnt out internally they shut themselves yeah and they were not very happy um they weren't forthcoming that was Safari they were not forthcoming with warranty and they were not going to do it and we had to really really twist their arm to get our money back on those panels yes so in the end they gave us their money back and we put some victron solid glass panels on there and they worked the system works they're smashing it 50 better now probably not 50. but much notably better with those glass panels compared to the other flexible panels that we had on there so knowing that now I would never um use flexible panels like that again if I could ever help it we have our little Kings one that we Chuck out you know if we want extra power fine perfect I think you know everything yeah if it fails it doesn't matter in shade yeah everyone shade we can put it out that's fine but I don't think flexible from our experience flexible panels on fixed things like that don't bother just go and get the real deal and your system will work much better and really the solar on the truck has like been running two 80 liter angle fridges for three and a half nearly four years without stopping it's mad never never plugged it in no never done anything it just does its stuff yeah the only time you've got to be very careful is if you're under trees or if it goes in to be serviced yes or repaired for a couple days they park it in the workshop well it needs to be charged then obviously because there's no salt so that works super good next get in there modified the side steps on their truck the MPS trucks have the rear um dual cab steps are very low they were way too low for my liking you know I mean as soon as you go over a little bit they'll be bent pushed into the batteries and all Badness so we cut them a lot shorter it's a lot harder to step up particularly if you've got old passengers or shortly it's a bit hard to step up back that's better than having them ripped off and bent up so yes so we did that it was a quick little mod yeah um when when we actually realized those steps were too long and they would drag in the mud yeah was when we also found that our mud guards hit our tires with the the 37s yep and it was like crunching I was recording it going oh look at that and it just crunched our guards yeah on our flares you're talking about so yeah so that was an issue with 37 inch tires the wide 37 set is they're just wide for the guards that we had from All Time Warrior they crunched up but they were replaced under warranty they work yeah also the rear plastic guard um the Isuzu one that is um they're known to fail else failed straight away it pulls through all the bolts they just vibrate and crappy and wobbly just a very poor design so they've been replaced under warranty on our truck by Isuzu but to prevent that happening again I put some braces so I've braced the back Corners back to the steps and I don't think they will break again because it takes all of that they were so flimsy they were just terrible so I think they're going to be good now um it's a super easy mod to do if you've um got that style of guard yeah and you've got a dual cab so that you can brace it back have we got a picture of that to put in there yeah yeah that's in there we'll put a picture so we'll show you that next quick quick let's go quickly our angu after after what two and a half years one angle failed and they were great they just replaced it yeah they replaced the internal coil they couldn't quite work out it didn't fail completely it had a partial blockage in the evaporator somehow somehow something has dislodged on the inside of it and caused a partial blockage of the gas so that was all replaced under warranty so they put a new everything all new internals in the fridge yeah and that's just working fine now so yeah that was so good of angle we were just out of our warranty period as well yeah the old one had I think they were two years I think the current the same model now has three years yeah so they they helped us out they yeah they were very good yeah so next solar Shades Carl's been shopping online oh really so we had um it all comes from one thing which is the truck aircon is not very good in the Dual cabs because it's the same size as the single cap you can get a rear mounted aircon unit and install it an extra one we didn't want to pay the bucks for that we should have probably should have at the start but we didn't so we've always battled when it's warm so to help that we've now got solar shades on the rear windows in the back window to help with that temperature we also added under four insulation which we already did but I've even extended it further now ride up the back wall because that's just all single metal skin so I've extended a bright up the back wall to the roof to help with all of that as well yeah and it also reduced uh a lot of noise so it worked in two functions so that was really good so you definitely need to do something in those nps's with your underfloor insulation and aircon because it's just can't handle and we've got a curtain on the way so we're just going to block that back uh cab off when we don't have anyone in it so we have the fridge gas struts and I would have so much trouble trying to put the fridge back up once I'd loaded it before we loaded it was too heavy it's 80 liter fridge yeah so we had stronger gas shots yeah so double strength ones in and replaced it so now we've actually got the opposite problem yeah now now they're so strong if the fridge is empty I have to hold it down while you're putting stuff in the top of it because when you let it go it just goes back up and don't worry we know it's a first world problem that's the truth yeah yeah so yeah um so we've we've sort of mucked around with that but it's better going back up I think than you being unable to lift it up yeah for sure yeah absolutely truck battery holder truck battery we had issue with the truck starter battery so they originally were 275 ampere hour lead acid batteries which is fine to start the truck but it's not fine for the winch and our winch comes off that battery so one of those batteries failed at two years believe it or not so we replace them instead of putting the 75 spin we put 110 ampere hour batteries into that position which means the battery holder was too short so all I did was had somebody extend the sides we put a bigger tray essentially there's enough room and now we can put the bigger size battery in the winch is much happier and the truck starts fine of course yeah so yeah so that's um what we've done there with the winch itself we have had an issue with one of those Sherpa winches where the winch solenoid box packed up so it wouldn't winch I think it was out oh anyway it wouldn't winch one way in the end it found out found out that it was actually they don't have solenoids they've got a contactor arrangement in there and one of the terminals had vibrated and broken off essentially off the coil so we got a new one of those under warranty from them and it's been fine since so we do have a spear one just in case we do have two winches remember and the spare controller as well so if you haven't worked out yet it's always really good idea to run your rig a lot in the warranty period do everything with your staff during the warranty period because yeah otherwise you're going to be paying for it yourself oh yeah and the last thing on our list the lucky last was a little controversial in the end because we didn't know well you you checked and it didn't there was not one that fitted out no there wasn't there wasn't anything about but anyway it was the cab air filter that Carl made it's a reminder an air filter we've done a whole video on that to stop any air coming into the cab that's dirty or pollen and so on the trucks don't have a filter as standard and there's no real position for the filter they do have one now I think it was ryko and it bolts on the front wall exactly how we've done ours they've got exactly the same thing but just in a more cheaper version that bolts and unbolts and so on where it houses a washable more complicated system a deerer system bigger filter we're talking 300 compared to oh I think it was 25.70 75 yeah okay 70 dollar filter they've got which

is a throwaway item yeah where ours was hundreds but it's washable reusable so save the world so yeah that is over the world yeah that's the world so that that's been working fine yeah we haven't been on any super Dusty roads admittedly but to test it but um when we last uh when I last took the front off it was all dusty in on the filter itself so it has been stopping a lot of it and our events haven't become Dusty no they haven't they're all clean since I cleaned them still they just stay clean and there's no leaves in there no leaves none of that stuff so that has been working well so they are the things that we have changed in our nearly four years of travel if you've got any questions about something that we haven't covered yeah that you'd like to know about please drop us a line and leave a comment we may put another q a video together yeah also I'll put any of the videos that we have referenced into a playlist it will be displayed at the end on our end card so that all you have to do is click on that and you'll have all those videos available so you don't have to go fishing so we've covered most of those things in somehow yeah generally in some video form like the solar panels when I was ripping them off and all of that sort of thing yeah so yeah there's some good information there and it doesn't just apply to us in our exact setup it's a general thing that will apply to most people yes yeah that's right it doesn't have to be a truck no definitely not you know or or even just a caravan it's just long-term touring and that's the things that get used and wear out yep things to think about hope we've been helpful hope you enjoyed it and hope you get some good information or some thoughts out of it that can help you guys in your travels and if you'd like to help us more with our videos you know check out our patreon hell yeah for five dollars you know a month you can help us keep creating yes yep and I can tell you well actually no Carl needs to tell you we've got some great things happening so we've been a little bit busy lately but um we've got some super super adventures coming up we can't tell you exactly uh what's happening yet until it all goes through but you'll know when it happens that our adventures are just beginning and they're going to be expanded well expanded in the up and coming months to be hey yeah will be the start of lots of big things happening for us so stick around and yeah keep on giving us those thumbs up stay subscribed appreciate keep watching yeah because there's some good stuff coming and it's not the normal run-of-the-mill stuff like a lot of others you know what I mean this is oh yeah we're not trying to conure no no this is totally different completely different some of you might not like it possibly but you can't please everyone but anyway thanks for watching we'll see you around we had issues with our solar panels on our Rooftop tent they were a flexible design we're on the van oh [ __ ] scratch that we also um okay that was pretty good actually it's a particular particular particular Cup this bit okay and then when we were early days back in the van in Melbourne in the Terrible Weather we also discovered early on I already said that didn't I yeah start again uh what else along with issues bloody ARB thrilled in the bin throw away compressor so we had the ARB compressors [Music] sorry I like having sex on the cupboards like so along with the uh when we had our our flatmate up for our pull out kitchen we also had another little mod done so the awning flap is like a little V that Carl had made and we put it in the middle of the awning on the sail track yeah we put it on the sale track on the awning and it just helps tension everything down to our our poles and it's been great in the wind we've really enjoyed having it yeah we used to struggle with our electric awning oh my gosh so we're not gonna go into depth on everything going I know yeah just checking oh my gosh why does it have to be the noisiest stuff we could shut that window whale tail still sweating getting warm here got about oh and then still was saying about their angles uh the fridge has gas struts it's a sliding system that comes out and drops forward yeah and right from the beginning I couldn't pull the fridge down like no you couldn't lift it up oh that's right oh now I have trouble pulling it down so thanks for watching and don't forget to subscribe if you want a reminder hit the bell and remember we always love a thumbs up if you'd like to be more involved check out our patreon page or our website foreign

2023-06-20 01:47

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