Extreme Overland Excursion - Walkaround | Ft.Chris Cordes of Overland Journal

so my name is Chris cordis I'm an editor for exhibition portal in Overland journal and I've had this truck for about three years now [Music] been through a lot of different vehicles over time for runners Land Rovers and I chose the excursion because it had a mix of everything that I thought would be ideal for over landing I kind of checked all the boxes solid axles big fuel tanks huge weight capacity gross vehicle weight rating was ninety two hundred pounds in this truck let me give you a quick tour of the rig all right so some of the first changes that I made to the truck were the bumper the winch and the lift I grew up in Texas we have a lot of deer I spend a lot of time in Arizona and press kit same issue I wanted to protect the front end in case of an animal strike so I wouldn't get stranded in the middle of nowhere I've had several animal stripes with ARB bumpers from deer to even kangaroos in Australia and haven't been left stranded yet so I've just come to trust them Warren winch obviously a vehicle this size it's gonna be difficult to recover it if it gets stuck and have someone else pull you out so I picked up a 16.5 warranty is with the synthetic line just so that self recovery was easier instead of having to rely on someone else to pull me out so I'm fortunate that the excursion has a lot of shared parts with the f250 underneath it's essentially an f-series platform so a arby's oldman emu suspension system bolted right on I was a 2.5 inch kit which actually Nets about four inches for the excursion which allowed us to clear 37 inch general grab our 80 X's on 1552 traverse HD wheels believe it or not we haven't had to do any cutting to rub or to keep the 37 s from rubbing we just moved the fender liners back a little bit and the whole thing drives perfectly the only time it'll rub is on full lock on the leaf springs but hey I'll live with that so one of the reasons that I chose the excursion was for its ability to actually toll arge trailers I towed a 27 foot Airstream for about a year and in order to do that with the larger tires I decided that a rege ear was in order I went with nitro gear we geared for 56 and even with 37 s and towing that has been an ideal combination and gives the truck plenty of power on hills and has also given me the ability to have really good fuel economy living full-time on the road out of this vehicle and in and out a lot I'm driving a lot of miles and I found two problems with the original truck once I was up on bigger tires I was actually getting sore wrists and ankles from hopping up in it all the time so I ended up doing some amp power steps which make it a lot easier to get in and out of the vehicle so hidden when you're off-road so you won't drag them but there when you need it to hop in and out live in full time on the road with my job I spend a lot of time driving a lot of time in the seat and I've had back surgery before so I ended up with a lot of pain in my original seats which is why I ended up switching to shield ins so what I like about these seats is that they have adjustable lumbar and now an adjustable bolsters and adjustable seat basis so as someone who's a little bit taller I can just a seat to my exact body type and it'll keep me from getting any kind of pain while I'm driving long hours on the road commuting between photoshoots and hopping in and out of the truck over and over again so most of the time I sleep inside of the vehicle which might make you wonder why of a rooftop tent and it's just something that happens as a editor for the magazine we have to review these different products which is why I have a rhino rack actually it's been awesome for mounting awnings tents and also using it as a photography platform and once in a while as a nice place to nap typically I have a Blue Ridge tire bag on the back it's great for trash for storage all kinds of stuff unfortunately with that Airstream I mentioned earlier I managed to crush the tire bag in the Airstream together while going through a ditch in the Mojave so I'm in the works for a new one right now okay we will we will warranty that one we'll give you one for free we have got oh man a new tire storage bag XL will never be empty again so one of the challenges that we had living on the road was that we wanted to bring mountain bikes but going on the trails going off-road there's a lot of vibrations and also we need some more clearance so what we ended up doing was going with a 1-up USA bike rack which has been phenomenal shakes rattles enough bothers it it just cruises right down the road but we still needed that additional clearance as well as some spacing between the truck and the bike rack for the tires so we actually bought a product from Texas hunting products which is this piece right here and it was meant to be a feeder extension on the UTV which means it's not rated for towing but it's lightweight and perfect for something like a bike rack so then in the back we've got my goose gear sleeping system and it's basically a deck that has all of our kitchen cooking recovery gear everything that you'd ever need but then with a flat deck on top with pop locking access as well so anything that you would get from back here you can also reach in the middle of the night if you want we do have a s bar d2 heater in here which is a diesel-powered heater it sucks fuel directly from my fuel tank and has an exhaust port on the side pumps hot air through here and we can just set our thermostat at night which is a lot nicer than being cold when you're on a photo shoot and it's negative 20 I'm gonna so this is actually made by buck stop bumpers it's a little bit of a custom spec but pretty much you can order something almost identical on their site it's developed specifically for the excursion it has hidden latches behind here adjustable braces on the swing out so that over time is it wears you can stiffen it up again I suspect mine for a 37 inch tire and custom storage box from Ali box so in addition to all of the flush storage like we have here throughout the deck I also have a 13 gallon water tank which is hidden under this section and then whale water pump all of my electronics through here charging ports and then I'll use this shoe space here as an area for a work desk so I'll put my laptop there and I have a weboost drive for GX cell phone booster antenna that hides behind the fridge and allows me to have good reception even in the field while I'm working well I hope you guys enjoyed my rig you can follow my work on expedition portal comm Overland journal or my personal Instagram at 4x4 underscore touring and I appreciate you bearing with me as I'm a little bit sick for this [Music]

Channel: Blue Ridge Overland Gear

Views: 92,410

Rating: 4.9601121 out of 5

Keywords: overland rig, overland rig walkaround, vehicle walkaround, overland excursion, overlanding customizations

Id: QXRbJMLq_B4

Length: 7min 34sec (454 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 27 2020