Hilux Overland Build, Part 1: Series Intro & Choosing a Vehicle

[Music] so so so so [Applause] it is time for us to start a new adventure over the next few weeks and um the story is going to be about this vehicle behind me it's a toyota harlax that i've kitted out and i've kitted out for the purpose of uh heading out into the middle of nowhere and going on adventures um when i meet adventures i mean um hitting the road to do some hunting we're going to be going out to different farms and packing whole stuff with and possibly camping out on those farms when we shoot a lot of places i film for my main channel are quite a long way off from where i live and so the ability to actually take my house with me and actually stay out there and not have to worry about bothering the farmer and saying hey you know do you have a spare room for me to stay in or having them organize a like a little flat to stain or something it's it's a huge load of my mind obviously the actual hanson stuff will be on my other channel but i also want to do some stuff on this channel i want to be able to go out on 4x4 trails into the mountains you know places where you can't normally go and actually enjoy those places particularly now that we have a pandemic that's pretty much ruined the past year in terms of international travel and i decided you know what um i'm getting married in just over a month um nicole and i want to be able to go and actually do stuff and not just sit in the house and and rot you know so i'm gonna run through in a series of videos starting with this video which is all about the vehicle itself we're going to be discussing what i've done to this vehicle um just some of the stuff i've learnt along the way um been a lot of interest on instagram and facebook and youtube about this vehicle so without further ado let's get to it so first few questions i know you're going to have are why a pickup truck why wire double cab wire harlax and there's so many reasons for going for this vehicle let's start off with this the first question and why that is why a pickup truck well plain and simple a pickup truck is versatile i owned a different pickup truck prior to this one um it was a 2006 ford ranger montana and i did a lot in it and it was extremely versatile and i can't see i couldn't see myself owning anything other than a pickup truck um and i ended up selling the ranger because it was the most unreliable piece of rubbish i'd ever had and it just brought me endless trouble um so that's you know when we talk about why the hilux in particular we're gonna talk about you know reliability and those things but i really wanted a pickup truck of course like you know like a proper station wagon um with off-road 4x4 capabilities could have also worked especially now that i've put a canopy on it it kind of takes away some of the versatility of a of a standard pickup truck with a with an open bin but the pickup truck with the canopy just has so much space and because it's a canopy it gave me the freedom to do whatever i want so i'm really glad i went to the truck why a double cab well because this is not just an off-road vehicle this is a a human transporter so i wanted to be able to use this as a family vehicle um you know when i've got kids one day if i still own this vehicle i want to be able to put them in the back seat safely um and comfortably you know the extra roof seats allows me to put stuff like cameras and rifles when i don't have space in the canopy and actually lock them up and keep them safe and access them easily from the driver seat my previous track was a super cab which means it had like those suicide doors the back that kind of worked well for keeping raffles there but there's no ways you would want to transport people in the back so this was the logical choice also i do a lot of long trips on the road where i'm not doing any off-road cam off-road driving and that's one of the reasons i went for like a harlux as opposed to like let's say a land cruiser 79 series truck the extra comfort of having something like this where it feels like a road car when you're on the road and has a pretty decent fuel efficiency that was also something that i wanted to take into consideration wire harlux as opposed to a different brand well i had a few options the toyota hilux was obviously one of them uh ford ranger um vw amarok and there are a number of others isuzu d-max mitsubishi triton we don't get stuff like the the tacoma the tundra the f-250 we don't get those here so um i was coming kind of limited to these mid mid-sized tracks but to be honest i wouldn't want anything bigger your fuel efficiency goes out the door um so a midsize truck was perfect for me ranger i had such a bad experience with my previous ranger and with ford in general when it came to just customer service servicing finding parts and even just unknown from speaking to many people who've owned them and had issues with for example the 10-speed auto on a ranger it's known for having many many issues all the plastic bits and pieces inside this just seemed a lot more solid to me so it was it was just a peace of mind thing where it came to reliability i want some i want this vehicle to be to not let me down when it matters for most and that's where toyota really has all japanese manufacturers in general have a head start over the rest vw amarok i was very tempted to look at the amarok and it would have been fitting considering this property that we're on now it's my family's farm back in the 80s there was a very well-known uh volkswagen ad that was filmed here i'll put a little snippet in here but it's pretty cool um piece of history there but the amarok maybe not quite as rugged as the harlax and doesn't have that you know low range gearing as a as an serious off-road vehicle it's not quite there if you're towing heavy loads if you're driving around the city it's awesome and probably better than this but harlax was a bit more versatile in terms of being able to do serious off-road stuff and then isuzu d-max and mitsubishi triton is just maybe not as much support for the brands here in south africa and not as many aftermarket parts available if it was now in in 2021 with a new variance i may very well have gone with the new d-max over this because the new hilux is over the top expensive and the new dmx is really good and to be able to save some money and put it into off the aftermarket stuff would have been great so if it was now probably the d-max but as of last year 2020 i think this was a pretty good choice okay next question why the 2.8 diesel engine over the four liter petrol engine i i just pro i prefer diesel um i kind of feel sorry for you guys in the us that don't have where diesel is not really as available of an option um but the diesels just that that talk low down um in your low down the revs for just just creeping up a hill or going slowly over stuff that's um that's really helpful and then also just the engines last much longer a lot more reliable um it's more fuel efficient there's a whole lot of reasons nothing wrong with petrol and um petrol has its strengths as well but i definitely wanted to go with the diesel while the 2.8 over the 2.4 really there wasn't that much of a difference i just knew i was going to be adding a lot of weight so having that extra engine capacity was something that i thought was probably worth it and then why the legend 50 variant which is like the top end harlux over like the standard srx which is the lower version we get in south africa basically it came down to the fact that what the the extra features that it offered i thought were were worthwhile for for the extra i was paying so for example there are airbag like airbags and all kinds of different positions on the sides in the in the back and as a as a person carrier i know i might have kids in the back one day or just carrying friends or you know if there's ever an a case where the vehicle rolls having air bags on the sides i didn't want to compromise on safety so that was important the leather interior is really nice now for when i go on serious off-road trips i might well probably will put some seat covers on but for driving around in the city and doing long-distance trips to the patriot shop in cape town and visiting nicole's family in durban which is very far it's like a full day's drive um either way uh comfort is important to me as well so that was that was a big thing and then obviously the legend 50 includes things like you know the tow bar is included with that so as a package that was the one i wanted to go for and then this is a manual and the whole manual versus automatic thing they really do both have their strength and weaknesses and in hindsight i would have been totally happy to go with auto it just came down to the fact that i'm used to the manual so it's not a big deal for me to change gears all the time um it's great for doing like steep downhills and stuff because you can use your engine compression and if i'd gone with an auto i probably would have had to um upgrade my brakes so that that's a good reason for me to have a manual um and also it's just it's cheaper that's basically it came down to that but maybe next time i'll get the auto now over the next few weeks we're going to be talking about everything inside here um let me quickly give you a breakdown of how i'm going to structure these videos there'll probably be like six or seven videos so this video we're just talking about the vehicle and why i chose the harlux um next we're going to talk about the actual the canopy on the back and why i chose the alu cab um canopy and just some of the things that the canopy offers third video internal fittings inside the canopy and showing you exactly what i've done inside to make it super accessible and easy to use number four electrical i'll run you through all the electrical installations and how i've set that up because i've done some things that are quite unique there's not many people doing some of the things i've done at least in south africa and then number five suspension and tires i learned some things the hard way and realized that it ended up being a lot more expensive than i wanted it and i wish i'd known how important this was before i started with the build so we'll run through that and then number six bar work and roof racks and we'll talk about the front the bull bar on the front we'll talk about what i want to do with rock sliders and a rear bumper and we'll talk about the frontrunner roof racks on top because there's more than one and while i've gone with two of them and number seven we're going to be talking about the awning and the tent um so you know just giving you my input on why i chose the specific awning intent to have on top and running through that if i have one piece of advice for you when it comes to your vehicle as in the vehicle overall not speaking about specific parts because we'll i have a lot of advice when it comes to the specific parts which i'll leave for the other videos don't do anything to it until you have driven it quite a lot because you will learn what you like about it you'll learn what you don't like about it you'll learn its strengths and weaknesses and you will you'll figure out what you want to do with it and thankfully i put about 20 000 kilometers on the clock before i added anything and those twenty thousand kilometers i was doing long road trips on the tar road i was doing long trips on dirt road just detours where i was just driving on a nice gravel road for long amounts of time i was driving in thick snow like snow that you're probably not supposed to drive on i probably should have had like chains on my tires like you guys up in the far north do um i've done driving over big rocks we have pretty much destroyed a lot of the parts and actually ended up having to change them and i've done some riding on sand as well and just you know learned how to use my own vehicle in the sand and learning about tire pressure stuff like that so i feel like by the time i got to 20 000 case i've done everything and i had the background knowledge and experience that are needed to make some of those decisions so that is the piece of advice that you can take from this video but obviously your situation will be totally different to mine so don't just copy and paste what i've done here go out and watch videos spend time looking at what other people have done speak to people you'll get different contradicting pieces of advice but at the end of the day at least you can make an informed decision rather than a blind decision and that's where we're going to end this one make sure you subscribe to this channel if you have not done so already so you can see the follow-up videos and i really look forward to sharing with you and of course sharing the many adventures that um i'll be going on probably with nicole over the next few months and years exploring the heck out of south africa and the surrounding countries thanks for watching and i'll see you next time

Channel: Matt Dubber

Views: 42,113

Keywords: Truck, hilux, toyota, Overlanding, 4xoverland, 4runner, Tacoma, Africa, Safari, Bakkie, Ute, Alu-cab, Frontrunner, 4x4, 4 wheeling, Ronny Dahl

Id: Y9_y-cuBuLw

Length: 15min 49sec (949 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 24 2021