AJ120s 2009 D4D and DIY camper trailer

[AJ120 Out of control poster! Find all posts View Profile Close AJ120]

Andrew, how much do you pay AJ Junior to keep the bus so clean?! Its sparkle would put a lot of the "Urban Mums SUV Group" to shame.....you'd never know it had been where it has been!

AJ junior, or DJ I am pretty sure has never cleaned the Prado, pretty sure Mrs AJ has never cleaned it either.

Anyway the secret to getting it to look schmick after getting dirty like this
















Is to rinse it often using lots of water.








Cheers Andrew

[spike69 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close spike69]

Nice! BTW where is the last of the "dirty" pictures? Amazing view.....

[AJ120 Out of control poster! Find all posts View Profile Close AJ120]

Nice! BTW where is the last of the "dirty" pictures? Amazing view.....

Its a lookout along the Nullarbor, just out of Eucla I think.

Cheers Andrew

[getspeed69 Lurker Find all posts View Profile Close getspeed69]

Hi Andrew Great workmanship on the rig build up along with the posts and pic,s it looks awesome

[AJ120 Out of control poster! Find all posts View Profile Close AJ120]

Tasmania and the 2015 GTG

Just back from Tassie and the 2015 GTG, just sharing a few pictures from the trip, getting the old girl nice and dirty once again






















Like all good trips this one will lead to a few new mods, so updates on those soon.

Cheers Andrew

[AJ120 Out of control poster! Find all posts View Profile Close AJ120]

Clean up time

Just giving it a quick clean up after the Tassie trip, you know the usual sort of stuff, quick hose off and wipe out the interior with a wet cloth and its all done




Well maybe just a touch more than that That'll teach me to park in a big muddy $*#T hole................... maybe

Cheers Andrew

[Borec Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Borec]

Hi Andrew
Seem like you have plenty of time on your hands :-), last time I did this trick took me 2 weeks to put it back together :-).
How were those new tires behaving? I still cannot make up my mind between the BFG All terrains or mud, it will be the terrains in the end I think. Great to see you had an excellent trip.

[AJ120 Out of control poster! Find all posts View Profile Close AJ120]

Hi Andrew
Seem like you have plenty of time on your hands :-), last time I did this trick took me 2 weeks to put it back together :-).
How were those new tires behaving? I still cannot make up my mind between the BFG All terrains or mud, it will be the terrains in the end I think. Great to see you had an excellent trip.

Hi David, not sure about having plenty of time on my hands, but I sure do have a lot of work I had planned on a full weekend to get it all cleaned, but that mud puddle put pay to that plan.

As it turns out stripping everything out has a revealed a few items that need a bit of attention, so it will be quite some time before I have it all back together, a lot more than 2 weeks unfortunately. On the bright side its not my daily drive so no real issue having it in parts for an extended period.

Pretty happy with the new BFG's, not a mark on them after this trip, but having said that it wasn't the toughest trip on tyres. Aside from that they performed well, I seem to feel like they need a couple of extra PSI in them compared to the old tyres, that might just be my imagination but they seem to bag out a bit easier.

I spent a lot of the time in Tassie travelling with Bushbasher who has the BFG MT's on his rig, the only time we had a bit of a tough spot was a short jump up out of a muddy puddle that we both took a couple of goes at, anecdotally it didn't seem like the muddies gave bushie any real advantage, but it was only the one spot so not a very comprehensive comparison. I am pretty happy having opted for the AT's again, no regrets here.

And yes, had a great trip, just not long enough

Cheers Andrew

[Fred63 Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close Fred63]

.

And yes, had a great trip, just not long enough

Cheers Andrew

I think we all feel that way Andrew

[AJ120 Out of control poster! Find all posts View Profile Close AJ120]

Dynamat fitted

So as I mentioned, stripping it out revealed a few things that needed some attention. One was the fact that the sound deadening on the floor was flaking, which meant the muddy water had gotten underneath and no amount of compressed air or vacuuming was ever going to have it clean again. So the obvious answer was to strip it all out and replace it with Dynamat.

Flaking sound deadening




All removed and cleaned up




Dynamat fitted, all 4 foot wells done!




Not the most fun job in the world doing all that, well not really any fun at all

On the bright side though more goodies are arriving in the mail today and another box of goodies sitting on the work bench should be getting fitted in the next week or so as I start the long process of putting it all back together.

Cheers Andrew

[AJ120 Out of control poster! Find all posts View Profile Close AJ120]

Dual Battery meter

The rig is slowly going back together, whilst I had the centre console out one of the things I did was to add a dual battery monitor, purchased from solid kit http://www.solidkit.com.au/product/p...it-volt-meter/ The fact that it is vehicle specific and a perfectly neat fit, not to mention super compact was the clincher for me.




Also whilst apart I found that there are a few parts under the console that were never painted or coated from the factory, I guess they figure most people will never get them wet! Anyway a couple of these were showing signs of rust, mostly minor but the transfer case lever surround pictured below was the worst of them and most likely caused by its first dunking up Cape Cork 5 years ago. Nothing that a quick buff with the die grinder and a wire wheel, followed by a coat of paint couldn't fix.








And just a before and after comparison of some of the cleaning work going on, and on and on..............




One more mod to install whilst it’s all going back together, details to come once the install is complete

Cheers Andrew

[chewy7 Junior Member Find all posts View Profile Close chewy7]

Great thread Andrew! Went through the whole thing! Some cracking ideas! Keep it up!

[AJ120 Out of control poster! Find all posts View Profile Close AJ120]

ARB Reversing Camera

So I have the latest mod in and running, not to mention the Prado is pretty much all back together after our little "incident" in Tassie

Since I ditched the Dodgy Options head unit I have missed having the reverse camera, so after going through all the options I ended up back at the local ARB store and bought one of their reverse camera units that has the screen in the rear view mirror.

It ticked a lot of boxes for me

1. It was very neat and didn't require an extra screen to be mounted somewhere.
2. You can add a forward facing camera if you like
3. You can run either camera while driving, so you can keep an eye on the trailer whilst on the move.
4. They also have a camera that can go on the trailer and the unit will auto sense which camera to select when reversing.
5. It also has a microphone to pick up sounds, so you could give the driver instructions while reversing in to hook up a trailer, that's a minor one for us as we already have a very good method with just hand signals that works exceptionally well for us.

Anyway at this stage I only have the rear facing reverse camera, I will see how that goes and maybe add a forward camera if all goes well, and a camera on the new camper (if I ever get it finished )

Early days yet but it seems like it works well enough, very handy the other day reversing out of an angled park up the main street of town, it gave a very good view of traffic coming down the road.






Cheers Andrew

[spike69 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close spike69]

Hi AJ,

I’m shopping for one of these reverse cameras at the moment, and its hard to find one that will service two rear cameras (back of car and back of trailer) with minimum fuss changing between the two. Yours sounds like it does that? Do you mind my asking what brand it is, and how much?

Cheers
Spike

[AJ120 Out of control poster! Find all posts View Profile Close AJ120]

It's ARB's own brand.

RRP for the base unit I have is $399, I think a similar amount again for the trailer camera and another $110 for a forward facing camera.

I don't pay RRP though as I am on a first name basis with the owners of the local ARB store and they look after me pretty well, they have a good customer discount but I think I get the fantastic customer discount

Cheers Andrew