The Alu-Cab THOR Conversion Walkthrough

[Music] in terms of over landing and off-roading in africa the 76 has been a phenomenal choice and i'm really really excited about the thor conversion on top of that because first up the 76 land cruiser is possibly one of the best overland vehicles you could choose in in terms of heading in off into africa land cruiser is always a good product they're strong they're reliable and when going into the bush that's exactly what you're looking for and the fact that we managed to successfully fit the roof conversion to this vehicle has made me even more excited because it's always been somewhat of a challenge whether or not we'd be able to work within the space restraints that you have on this vehicle and in actual fact now that we've used the product we're even more excited the fact that it seems to be working really really well so so i think if we can just take you through the product and show you exactly what we've done here and we can just show you how we've laid this out and help you better understand just exactly what comes with the thor roof conversion in terms of the conversion itself it's similar to most of our conversion it's quite a simple process you mark out the area that needs to be removed and in this instance you basically cut back from the rear end to about the front of the a-pillar which is also where the top hat runs through the lining or ceiling area which retains a lot of its rigidity and strength the roof conversion itself is it's quite a simple process and those that have seen it or done it know that once you've cut out you literally apply the glues drop the new conversion on and you glue it in place it's as simple as that uh obviously there's a little bit of wiring to add the new areas to it but but once that's done glue sets and literally your your camper is fitted the the the roof conversion itself runs a double extrusion down the sides and the double extrusion is very useful because it allows us to be able to bolt on all the alu cab accessories down either side so whether it be that you're strapping on an awning or as you'll see on the other side a shower cube and we've gone so far as to now add jerry cans and the likes or you could be putting a high lift jack into that space and it works extremely well and obviously on top of that then it's the normal procedure where you can pop up tent jump inside go to bed beds flip up and we'll walk you through that stage next so if you're looking in the back here you can obviously see that we have carried the roller forming that we are now introducing into a lot more of our products into the roof conversion itself some of it's for uh giving it a really nice look and feel and oth of us obviously some of it is for structural and then the roof itself is a lot of structural just like you'd find in a car roof when you run large portions of metal flat metal you need to try and strengthen and rigidize that as much as possible and the roller forming does just that it helps to rigidize and firm up the metal itself similar processes to all our other roof conversions and rooftop tents and the likes the stainless steel lock down catches those obviously just keep the roof locked down in place and then you would ultimately pop the roof up um bear in mind that up here if you have a look you see that we've actually fitted our table under the roof uh under the load bars itself above that we've actually got a solar panel and we'll give you another angle perspective perspective of the roof so that you can see what all is going on with the roof itself because bear in mind obviously that when you start to load a tent or anything onto the roof itself you are generally losing a vitally important space of your vehicle still working with small spaces trying to maximize what all you can utilize so we've tried to create the roof conversion in such a fashion that you can still utilize the space as best as possible while obviously not creating too much of a high area and too much wind drag and the like so this is nice nice and sleek basically lower than a tent would generally be or a tent and a roof rack and all of that but still trying to offer as much as you would be able to get but pops up in seconds jump inside go to bed all your bedding's in place easy easy so let me just show you quickly how this how we would normally go about this now i'm just going to let you on a little trick that we normally use when you're over landing especially when we're working with particularly high vehicles we go down to our local building shop or supermarket and we pick up what we call a little ladder or in our colloquialism south african terms a stupi and it's just a little plastic step ladder which offers a little bit of added height it makes it easier for getting in and out of the vehicle and also while you're sitting in camp you can use it as a secondary seat or a secondary table so super useful so i use this just to get up and down easily gives me a little bit more height and force to be able to open up release the catches and then you can step on the back of the bumper and give it a good punt to get it going bear in mind just like any other roof conversions you want to get it started because ultimately that's where most of the strength or pressure is required just getting that initial lift pull your elastic down and pretty much it's job done so think about it this way guys you just pulled into camp you want to set up your tent you've already done the job beds ready for going to bed you can just go in there crash go straight off to sleep it's as simple and as easy as that right so let me take you on the journey through the back end of the 76 this is kind of where you would lay out and set up how you'd best want to equip it now currently there's a lot of our own customizing going on in the back here but we are in the in the process of building a kit which will be made available for you to fit into the back your own vehicle so so don't be concerned that you won't be able to get your hands on this we are making something that will ultimately be able to go straight into the back of the 76. we've added a couple of extra things with it as well and those are all getting in going into the process of being developed for the 76 so ultimately the thaw conversion will come with certain definite products first being obviously the roof conversion and then there's the cupboards and the window window doors the cupboards then we're doing molly plates for the back windows we can see here that we've done some molle plate for the back of the cupboards so the thinking behind that is that obviously you can attach little bags that could possibly be carrying things like headlights useful equipments extra batteries medical kits all these things can be attached to the molle plates i don't have to explain to everybody how multi-plate works but but it is a very convenient space and even here being inside the camper itself you can sit inside this vehicle and and pop the beds up and you're able to sit inside so you've got seating left and right it allows you to escape the bad weather sit inside change in here do your thing and if you look up top here or if you look into it here the the bed itself will pop up so these little bed sections can both pop up so we've done the split bed section and the reason and the thinking behind the split bed is obviously there is nothing more frightening than waking my wife while she sleeps so by splitting the bed section i'm able to allow her to continue sleeping in bed while i pop up the one side of the bed and i can climb out of that hatch or alternatively somebody can be sleeping inside and you can sit or stand to the one side of the bed which is vitally important because obviously we are more restricted or limited in length for the bed section so in other conversions where the roof is longer you can flip the entire back section up whereas because you're working with a slightly shorter length you still want a good length bed but you want to be able to get in and out of it while your partner is sleeping in there and the double split the two hatches works really nicely and will give you a better camera angle angle shortly to just show you exactly how that that split bed section works on the back side i think i told you there's some molle plates we've got cushions as you said as i said here you can see over here i've left a bit of a gap because what i put here is we've got a little a little ice maker that fits perfectly into the space and you can strap it down plug it in i get into camp i pop my ice machine on and well guess what i've got ice for whichever beverage i may choose to pop my ice into and that is first prize great great opportunity left and right we've put well actually first up let me just get into it you can see we've we've fabricated a frame here to carry the ammo boxes now ammo boxes allows us to be able to put our gear into specific ammo boxes and some of the the tip little trick that i can teach you is that we number our ammo boxes and then we put into each ammo box a certain certain gear and what i actually do is on my phone as i normally just keep some notes so in box number five we're keeping let's call it the washing up gear because i can assure you that you easily get confused amongst the boxes so having notes and just making the notes to the boxes is super useful left and right to that we just added the little chairs from frontrunner and as you know they're useful little chairs and they take up very little space you can put them on either side and generally now once you're in camp those can go under the awning and stay out and camp when you go to sleep at night so even if they aren't and if you put them away they're not in the way they're out of the out of the way you can still climb in and out and makes it nice and easy so four ammo boxes on left or right and uh you basically sorry four four either side and then you you can actually pack another two up front so you go up to six ammo boxes into this build and then you can still put bags up top on the bed sections while you travel or you still have the center aisle down the middle which allows you to store extra gear obviously you want to try and keep it as minimal as possible but there is actually remarkably large amount of space for such a small vehicle left and right we have 40 liters of water so we've got 40 litre 40 liter water tanks one under here one under there that's 80 liters of water in the vehicle which is a huge amount of water first priors would be able to put the water tanks underneath but the 76 has very little storage space underneath so unfortunately you have to put the water tanks inside the vehicle and they can be a little bit noisy off-road but what you vest i generally invest in first and foremost when going off-road is a really good sound system so you can a get rid of the rattles and b drown out the water noises because you have to consider that this is a vitally important thing to know is that in a station wagon when traveling off-road you hear everything whereas when i'm used to a pickup and then a pickup it's all sitting in the back and you have no idea what's rattling and banging but you can have two teaspoons knocking yourself knocking against each other in the back of here and you will hear it so so a good sound system is actually not a bad way to just round that out while you travel some other little tricks and accessories is obviously the molle plate here gives you the convenience of being able to just touch gear anything that you might use to the back end and we're still working on a full molle plate configuration for the back end and the reason why i want to do that is that standing at the back here this is a very convenient place that should you be stopping somewhere and you want to quickly make a cup of coffee i'm going to make my bags able to carry a little jetboil so a gas stove or the likes to be able to stop and we pop in a drop down table so they're various makes or drop down tables on the market guys so i'm not going to get into who's building what but having a little drop down table at the back here is super convenient i would put one at the back of my vehicle any day of the week because it's just the perfect spot to either when you're unpacking or unloading or doing something you can work right here we've added a little light on our vehicle so you can see so a little led work light that allows us to work at the back we've even gone so far as far as to add some cigarette lighter jacks and usb port charging points so we can put phones and camera gear and everything at the back here to charge at the same time we also run an inverter up front and then we've got a full pack of plugs here so so we use this at quite a useful space for us to just charge and pack in and and so the little table at the back for me is super convenient so in terms of the bed section it's pretty straightforward you enter from the rear as per normal but now as i've explained or try to explain we're running a double hatch system here so it's either one little hatch pops in and i would then obviously try and enter in from just the single hatch uh and it could be either left or right right just depending on which way around the you're lying or you do both so in terms of opening them both it obviously is more convenient bear in mind now that this can also be a changing living space um you can sit around down here but the whole bed also folds up so you can actually physically fold up the whole bed so then that gives us a whole heap more space and so we could both sit in here as in partners and likes access your fridge some of your gear can be positioned here or bags can open up here or you can leave bags on top of the fridge itself so super convenient you can sit inside but should you be wishing to go to bed then you just lean reach up grab your bed section your your bedding's all in place you fold it down and you jump up by stepping on here and if you go into the bed section so in terms of tent uh we have the dual air canvas rip stop canvas obviously waterproof with the midgenet and of course they work combined so you can obviously separate the canvas door from from the the actual midgee netting or you can also open the media lining which is nice because sometimes when you're in a really warm climate and you haven't got bugs around it's midday you're having an afternoon sleep in your tent you want to be able to actually drop the media because the because it's so fine has the tendency that it may buffer the airflow through here so you want to be able to open both midge or or and canvas so it's very convenient that you have the ability to to do both in terms of the roof lining we have a new automotive lining that's fitted to these these units and they they have they then insulated again with a polyethylene layer behind that and that works very conveniently each our roof bags are now fixed with automotive clips so they can actually be they're not riveted anymore so you don't have the same condensation issues and also can be clipped in and out so much much better more efficient way to fit that and easier to work with another important factor to understand is that on the 76 the windows themselves are bolt in bolt out windows so you can actually bolt the window out of the vehicle and bolt the cupboards back in place now if you look at the cupboard itself you'll see that the cupboard itself it actually expands outside of the vehicle a little bit but it also goes inside so it gives you a deeper coverage but it doesn't necessarily then take away a whole heap of space on the inside so you still have the ability to sit inside and you also have a lot more storage space in the cupboards and i'll show you that shortly but it is useful because obviously the 76 is somewhat limited in space being a slightly shorter vehicle you want the ability to be able to store as much gear as you can and to have it as easily accessible as possible because obviously making it easily accessible makes life easy and that's what it's all about you want to be able to get at your gear whenever you need it as quickly as you can all right so in terms of cupboards you have obviously the choice of whether you'd like to be getting them out in as a recovery or a kitchen cupboard being right-hand drive vehicle vehicle we generally choose to put the kitchen onto the left side because pulling over on the side of the road makes it easier to have your kitchen easily accessible on the left and obviously we put the awning in the same space so you've got covered kitchen on the left side easy easy to do you can also switch that around if you want and you can also just choose to have a blank cupboard if you want and you can kit it any which way you like obviously we offered it offered kitted because it just makes it a little bit easier than trying to kit it out yourself and here we have a full kitchen set up so that you've got everything that you generally will need in terms of basic kitchen utensils we choose to do this in this configuration and not the foam filled out cupboards because we find that the phone full full cupboards tend to be a little bit limiting so in other words should you have this all squashed up with foam and you can only squeeze that container there and there and there it's nice so that you know if you're missing something but should you have an extra container or you want to show up something else and you are limited to not being able to do that so i like it like this because i often shove in extra things and and extra gear all around and for example i've thrown in some chutneys and other couple so so i like to have it mine done this way so this is a choice of how alicab tends to do their cupboards and as i say it's up to others as to how they may choose to do theirs so i think it's quite important that i point out a couple of things inside the cupboard as well while i'm here first up as per normal our lights are dual colors so you can switch to a light brightness intensity or obviously if you hold down you can switch over to the red colors and the red colors have the advantage of attracting a lot less bugs and also they also limit the the night vision blindness and that can be super important when you're in the bush especially in some of the remote areas that we go into we can have hyena or line in the camp so if you turn around from a bright light and look back you can suddenly be there can be animal right there and you wouldn't know it so it's useful to have the red but most importantly it works very well in terms of of the bugs and again if you are night blind you'll walk into your chair or into a tree or a log the tops of the cupboards we do the centerflex hinges like we do on our canopy doors and we like these because should water be falling onto the door itself it runs down the door and then it's pushed left and right and not straight down into your cupboard which is obviously very important otherwise everything in the cupboard ends up getting wet so let me just turn that down and yeah so i think that then obviously you've got lightweight doors and you can actually see that we've done some roller forming in the door so the roller forming is just some shaping in the metal and the shaping in the metal as you can see here just it gives a bit of rigidity to the door but it doesn't add any weight so you can still keep the doors nice and light but you've added a little bit more strength to the door itself so here are some of the cool features in terms of the roof conversion itself the double the double extrusion along the side the nut slot extrusion the double nut slot extrusion obviously gives the ability to attach equipment as i mentioned before and i'm not sure if you picked up on it but the the roller forming in the roof a gives it really nice features and lines but of course also adds to the strength top side of the roof conversion itself we had the roof tray and the roof tray gives you a another area to pack gear so as i mentioned already the it's very important that we have the ability to add some of our gear to the roof itself because bear in mind that by putting the roof conversion on you all evening losing the ability to put a full-on roof rack onto the roof but by putting the roof tray on it gives you to pack some gear onto the roof tray and things like firewood and the likes you need to have some space to add you can put them on there or alternatively you could add some more ammo boxes to that behind that you've got the solar panel and that fires up energy into the battery and keeps that going as you can see along here we've got the molle plates molly plates that allows us to possibly attach things like spades axes little useful pieces of gear that you take into the bush as i've mentioned before more areas you have to attach things and put fit gear to the better because of the double extrusions we've also been able to add a couple of jerry cans and as you know i love to carry an extra bit of fuel it's obviously some of the areas that we go into africa you have to have a bit of extra fuel and a jerry can is vitally important because you never know when you may need to fetch fuel carry fuel and the likes of somebody else so two jerry can strap onto the side of the roof convey conversion or alternatively you may have an awning if you don't carry the awning you can have two jerry cans on that side as well but we've gone shower cube two jerry cans works well cupboard on this side this side of the cupboard we've used it as our recovery side so we put in some recovery gear or off-road gear or bush gear or straps or tools or anything that you may need so this is just our general purpose cupboard for equipment and that goes into the side here also again super convenient and nice and easy to access right so let me just uh close up so again you just pop those elastics to the outer side lift those hands up a little bit on the strap and as you come down tuck the tuck the sides in remember you can just use your arms to bring the tents in and make sure just that you've packed your bedding in nice and neatly out the way and as you get down to the bottom here just tuck the last bit of the camper in and catches over pins back in and that's job done [Music] so [Music] [Music] and that folks is a wrap on the thaw conversion i'm going camping hmm

Channel: Alu-Cab

Views: 59,380

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Id: MAwha2lKNkk

Length: 22min 43sec (1363 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 21 2021