Everything we HATE about our 4x4 Expedition Vehicle

well hello from headquarters in seward alaska i'm ben this is rebecca we are outliers overland and we're also in between adventures right now while we're home we thought we'd share with you guys the things we love and hate about our four-wheel drive expedition vehicle denny starting with the things we hate well first things first we are kind of in an alaska suburbia right now so you're gonna hear a little bit of a yappy dog over there and our neighbors getting their house ready over there and there might even be a car drive by but that is real life and what we are all about so the title of this video is what we hate about our expedition vehicle there really is nothing that we genuinely hate about it that is just a very descriptive word for a youtube video but the objective here is to share things that will just give you something to chew on because if you're looking at building or buying one of these things you're going to walk away from this two part video series with priceless information that you will be able to apply to your own purchase and build we're going to start with the chassis which is a mitsubishi fuso 2007 fg-140 it is a diesel manual transmission with four-wheel drive from the factory and that brings us to the first thing we hate is that fuso is leaving north america's market we are so bummed about this it's 2020 this is the last year you'll be able to buy these on this continent uh they'll provide service and parts for another 10 years and we are super bummed because we would buy another fuso in a heartbeat well the fuso is a medium duty commercial work truck which means everything is going to be a little bit more expensive and when it comes to scan tools yes we have like one of those 50 ones off of amazon it will read codes and clear codes which is a valuable resource but if you want to get that data like what this sensor is doing what the temperature here is you're going to need to pony up for if you can even get your hands on it the one from mitsubishi truck but we also hear that matco makes one for medium and heavy duty commercial trucks as well but i can guarantee you're gonna have to pony up for it this is a work truck it's meant to be used and abused and probably put away wet by really hard working employees so that means you're not gonna have super cushy seats and arm rests and really comfortable places to sit and stretch out it's a sacrifice we were willing to make for some of the other features of the truck expanding a little bit more on what rebecca was talking about this cab is very small it's a single cab there is no extra or crew although that is an option on the newer models but it does take away from the size of habitat you can put on the back and it is small i'm six foot here this right here if i want to look up like say we're driving through the mountains or going through some tree limbs or i want to see something i have like stick my head out the window it is a bit excessive and then so when the sun is shining in your eyes and drive down this thing is literally like this if i want to see the road if we're driving into the sun and since we're on the subject i'm a little embarrassed to uh show this the horn the horn is so embarrassing you think a big badass truck like this would have a nice horn from the factory me mimi come on now so that's embarrassing next on the list of things we hate the fact that we cannot tow the truck is actually capable of towing but it would affect our ability to have the departure angle that we've created with this truck and probably even more importantly than that is the fact that you would add a lot of weight to it so behind me you see this awesome trailer that we put together years ago we can put our atv our kayaks and our bikes on it but once you do that this trailer weighs about 2 500 pounds and with this already being weighed down with the cabin on the back it would be impossible we'd be like putting up the hills and mountains well the next items really have nothing to do with mitsubishi fuso they actually have to do with some of the aftermarket components that we have on so we have parabolic leaf springs and these leaf spring bushings they wore out way too quick i'm not going to touch that because it's full of grease but seriously they wore out way too quick and it's going to cost us money to get them fixed next thing we have super single wheels from the factory this vehicle has uh dualies in the rear and when you're off-roading that's not necessarily practical because rocks can get jammed between the tires so we got these super singles they were on the vehicle when we bought it and they're great because it puts the front tires right in line with the back but the dilemma here are these wheel studs they pretty much every single time we pull off tires for a rotation we discover one of these wheel studs not the threads but the splines on the back that go through the drum in the hub they strip out and that gets to be very expensive and very very frustrating we're going to transition to the camper box itself now and the first thing that we hate about this box is something that we knowingly stepped into it's the fact that it's short tiny we're talking 13 feet by six and a half feet wide and just because we bought it knowing it was small doesn't mean we don't suffer we did it with intention though so that we could drive on roads that were built before cars existed and around the world and not be limited by the size of the vehicle that's not to say that it isn't hard when five feet of the space is taken up by your bed and three feet by the dinette you do the math that leaves us five feet to walk around well you're gonna notice that most of our gripes have to do with the habitat itself so the construction of this box it's not composite composite is hands down the way to go in 2020 but this is a steel frame with aluminum siding granted there is insulation in there but you do get thermal transfer which means if it's hot or cold outside and you have that metal exposed on the inside it will transfer that energy and in the situation of like being in the winter the metal bolt heads where things are like bolted to the framework they'll turn into like little snowballs that is not good so we can like traverse wicked cold climates but we can't really sustain it for long periods of time because all that moisture will lead to bigger problems the next thing on our list of gripes is the fact that we don't have a pass-through between the cab of the truck and the cabin of the habitat honestly this was like a huge thing that we sacrificed on when we bought this truck and now i think we both have mixed feelings about it we definitely want to have the capability for safety and convenience to be able to crawl between the two but on the flip side of safety if we ever do put a crawl through here it's going to have to have a locking door on the cabin because we don't want to leave our stuff exposed when we travel overseas so it's a mixed basket on this one and kind of hard to decide like should we do it or not the other factor is that when you put a pass-through then you're exposing the back of your truck to all of the noise of the engine and that is something we're not sure if we really want to have all that racket when we're up front driving whether you are building or buying one of these things there's always going to be compromises and no air conditioning was one of the big compromises on this and we have suffered greatly over the past two years of avoiding just downright avoiding hot climate because if it does not get below 80 degrees at night outside it sure as hell isn't going to be below 80 degrees inside the camper now this can all be rectified all it takes is money so there are air conditioning unit options such as a mini split or low profile ones that go up on the roof but we do have like this really cool solar setup and battery system and there's no generator so air conditionings if you want to run them for long periods of time they do require ac power for an air conditioner but you know what i mean overall we're really happy with the plumbing system on this truck but our one gripe about it is the gray water hose that we have to deal with not only is it exposed to the elements which is a real challenge for us being from alaska and dealing with super cold winter temperatures but also it's a very small diameter and things kind of get gunked up in there mucked up in there and we have to actually do cpr with a plastic ziploc bag sometimes to get it to open up and drain that's a lot of fun well more windows the better is what you might think but location is everything and that one it sucks it really sucks so you open that window and what happens you open your door boom oh gosh and we have actually broken parts on this window and knocked it off its track so we have gotten to the point where we absolutely do not use this window so keep that in mind when you're building or buying that this door swings and you do not want it hitting your window all the time next up on the list for the outside part of the habitat the exhaust for our diesel stove which we love but the exhaust is put in such a location that if we park where the wind is blowing against this side of the truck we get exhaust fumes inside and literally like the the diesel stove has to get turned off or we have to move then so if we had this to do over again we would go down and vent it out the bottom of the truck there's lots of different solutions and options just don't make it so that if wind blows into it you're going to have a problem well some rain drops are falling and it's a good time to go inside the camper and now is also when you're going to hear us talk about some pretty petty items i'm going to refrain from complaining about superficial things like the color of the countertops or the walls or the shower or the cushions which if you've met me in person you've probably heard me whine about it they aren't my favorite colors everybody's entitled to their color palette preferences and it doesn't take away from the fact that this is a very well built and very well thought out habitat it is a do it yourself though and it's obvious it doesn't have some of the high-end finishes that you see with global expedition vehicles or earth cruiser and it is made basically of two by four construction on a positive note that means it's really easy for us to fix it ourselves but it might not have that high quality finish that you'd like to see in your eevee we'll do our best to work our way around the camper unit in a cohesive manner so next up has to be the refrigerator what do you think this is our refrigerator oh wait it's the dinette oh wait i forgot we need ranch dressing or something oh can you get up honey once we've already sat down for dinner yes it is an amazing use of space and we got a really cool refrigerator down here but it is a pain in the hind quarter what did help is when we got some hydraulic struts that definitely was a game changer to make it a little bit easier because before you had to push this up and i still have it here in case the struts give out but it's screwed into the 2x4 wood construction this little hinge and we'd have to block it but the struts have been a game changer so just keep in mind your appliances have to go somewhere and look at them from all different angles we're going to talk about the freezer now and i'm going to tell you that the fact that we have a huge freezer in here relatively speaking makes up for the fact that it is inconveniently located on the only part of the countertop that you have to cut so you're cutting cutting cutting and you need something out of the freezer like oh let me fill the ice up for dinner in our cups then we have to open it like this and get into it it is nice and deep it has a reasonable amount of storage for the size of this rig the one downside to it is the fact that it doesn't keep things super cold it won't freeze meat from a thawed state and at first we thought maybe it just didn't have the capacity to but in more recent months we've discovered that maybe we should be suspect of the bottom half of the unit not having proper air flow and maybe being choked out a little bit if we can fix that then we might have a real rock star on our hands moving down the counter you have our kitchen and bathroom sink the location it had to go somewhere but it is right next to the mattress so when we're doing dishes we'll literally fold this up and put like a tea towel here to keep splashes from getting on the mattress and getting it dirty faster than it really should be getting dirty uh also this bed we do like the fact that it's a full queen-sized bed but it's an east west bed meaning heads here feet down there now if you have the space a north south bed would be better because that would allow if you're a traveling couple each person to get off the bed independent of the other one moving so that also being said this is our living room yes the 13 foot box has a living room we call it day bed and then night bed with our heads here but we stack pillows against that wall and it ends up being our couch it is not very comfortable but it sure beats having an awning on a rooftop tent and how to lean underneath that when the elements kick up one thing ben forgot to mention about the bed is how hard it is to make if you look at the walls we have walls on more than three quarters of the edge of the bed literally like this is the only open part so making this bed should be like an olympic event i've actually subluxed my finger doing it but it is what it is again you make the most of the space you have when it's a small space moving on to the windows these are amazing windows but they have one problem they're the old style the screens are actually not bug proof they're not sealed on the right and left sides so they're great for keeping out the flies and the mosquitoes for the most part but those tiny tiny tiny little bugs they still get in and they end up on the roof of your bathroom like we have mentioned a couple times already in this video 13 feet interior length three feet dinette five feet bed five feet of counter space and workspace so that means in all reality it is extremely difficult for two people to be working in here preparing dinner because it's always excuse me pardon me and we get out of my way yeah get out of my way i need that so we've gotten to the point where kind of one person does the cooking and then the other person does the cleaning if it is the type of meal that needs a little extra assistance one person just sits at the dinette and works but literally you can't do it you're bumping into the walls or you're bumping into somebody so keep the fights down by just leaving each other alone let's move into the bathroom notice anything missing so did i this is our bathroom door we share this space together let's just say i didn't go to the bathroom in this rig for about the first three months we owned it i would wait till we stopped at a gas station to do number two well yeah number one is no big deal but we have solved this with like running the vent properly and opening a window and closing this and blah blah blah but like wouldn't you just like to sometimes close the door and have a bathroom to yourself so second thing about this bathroom is that it is a wet bath so you have the toilet in here where you step in when you're in like clothes and then you also step in here to take a shower and the shower floor then gets wet and that means that the white shower floor is always dirty we don't wear shoes in there of course and we put a rug in there to help but it is always dirty it has to be cleaned every other day at least unless we're just ignoring it and neglecting and leaving a dirty floor so i know this is about things we hate and we do actually like the cassette toilet but it gets mighty i don't know annoying and tiresome having to dump the cassette every two to three days when we are on the road traveling in this sure i would more than happy to take that over having to find a dump station which is a real you know pain in the you know what but every two to three days we're looking for an outhouse or a vault toilet well i think that is a wrap for the camper a couple points here on the outside of the truck hey can you close that door since it's raining and we live in a rain forest here but uh this truck camper it is in dire need of functional pimping and when i say functional pimping i mean accessories that have a purpose such as a really cool bumper with a winch or even going up higher we have room for a roof rack and lights up there but also in terms of accessorizing it is well let's just say like tacomas and sprinter vans they're very trendy the fuso is not trendy which i kind of like but that means there's not a lot of mass produced accessories so it's really hard to find something yeah do a one-off we've tried several times you can't just go online and order a bumper for a fuso it has to be custom-made yep exactly we found some shelter under our little spruce tree so we can get out of the rain for the last thing on our list about what we hate about this truck it is the perception that this little truck should never see pavement that we should always be hardcore off-roading driving for one thing we have to get places and that involves pavement secondly if you're far from home thousands of miles from home or if you're out in the middle of nowhere by yourself you don't want to be breaking your rig and also this is our home so if we break it we don't have somewhere else to stay uh we've done it a couple times and it's heart-wrenching have we really broken well we've broken things on the pavement yeah we broke things on the pavement yeah like not the frame of the truck but the sub frame when we hit a massive uh speed bump in mexico yeah but i think the main idea is don't do stupid stuff with your ride home that's right and over landing is ultimately about travel and international borders so is that a wrap that's a wrap that is a wrap for us thank you so much for watching make sure you watch our other video that is going to be about all the things that we love about this truck and trust me there are a lot more things that we love so we'll see you on the road

Channel: Outliers Overland

Views: 115,435

Keywords: 4x4 expedition vehicle, 4x4 truck camper, overlanding, rving, rv life, truck camping, mitsubishi fuso canter 4x4, mitsubishi fuso camper 4x4, camper van, overland truck, overland truck setup, van life build, off road camper truck, rv camping essentials, van build tour, truck camper build, overlanding truck, diy expedition vehicle build, overland build, camper van 4x4, van life, 4x4 camper, rv living tips, van life couple, van life build mistakes, diy 4x4 truck camper

Id: yR1qAwbDaoo

Length: 21min 27sec (1287 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 26 2020