09Andot's Triton on a budget!

[09andot]

Hi all,

I've been enjoying this forum for a fair while now, and it has helped me hugely throughout my ownership of the Triton so far. Whilst I haven't had a lot to contribute so far I've been slowly making small modifications to the Triton and decided it was time I put it all up here to show what I have done and hopefully help others to decide what to do and what not to do! Please note I am a uni student so the inflow of money is pretty slow, which explains why it's taken me almost 2 years to get where I am now haha!

I'll kick this off with a photo of the Triton when I bought it. It's a 2009 manual MN GLX, and was bought from Pickles Auctions with 100,000kms in May 2012.



Straight off the bat it had an ARB commercial bullbar and Canopy, which was a good start.

Next up it needed new tyres, so I went with Bf Goodrich A/T 265/75r16 with some 16x7 Sunraysia rims. With that I decided that some flairs would look good, so I purchased some aftermarket GLXR flairs off Ebay and fitted them.



Out of interest, for those of you on a tight budget like me I definitely would not recommend parallel import tyres. This is based purely on my experience with this set of tyres, but since the day I purchased them they have given me grief. They do not stay balanced for more than a week and yes I have visited several tyre shops and mechanics, and the ride is unusually harsh with heaps of feedback through the steering wheel. Based on this I would say that rather than saving $100 a corner buying imports, spend the extra and get them from a reputable dealer.

I ride dirt bikes as well so in order to be able to use the ute as a ute, I went and purchased a soft tonneau off ebay. It ended up setting me back about $400 and it came from Auburn. I run with it probably 6 months of the year and it obviously allows for a couple of bikes in the back. At a similar time I put a GME TX3500 with the 1.2m aerial. No complaints for either of these mods!

Nice and clean straight out of the car wash


I soon found the limitations of my stock suspension as pictured below. Note: About 10 seconds after this pic I bottomed the back right hand corner of the tub on the dirt and put a nice little dent in it.



After plenty of reading and research on this forum I decided that ultimate suspension was the go, so after months of waiting I bit the bullet and went with a 2 inch lift. This timed well with a trip up to Fraser Island so I got to test it out. It's miles different to the stock stuff, It used to feel like I was driving a boat, now it sits nice and flat on the road. I didn't deal with Ultimate directly, my dad works down that way so he did the talking, I did the paying. It does feel a little stiff in the rear but that's because they took into account the fact that I will eventually put a drawer system in. Now, I'm not the best person to explain this because I wast there during discussion but they also put a new bushing/bearing/bracket/something (I've forgotten what they've called it now it was 8 months ago) on the driveshaft to remove any shudder. Yes I did pay more for it but I'm stoked with it, basically it accounted for the new angle of driveshaft and helps it all work together better.

Photo of how it was sitting on Fraser Island soon!

[emjayar]

Looking good... Where abouts are you based?

[09andot]

Thanks mate, Based in Sydney!

[Cowboy Dave]

Mate just a thought on the tyre balancing issue - not saying you're necessarily wrong, but there have been quite a few people who have reported issues with balancing with the steel sunraysia style rims. One of them, a bloke called Joe, did a big long post about the virtues of something called finger balancing. If I recall the details correctly, when they use the balancing machine most alloys get secured by the centre hole whereas with the steelies they should mount them where the studs usually go instead of through the centre hub. Finger balancing is apparently a bit harder to do and from his experience you had to ask for it to get it. I bought a set of tyres on steelies once and they were awful once you hit 90kms. Rather than stuff around with finger balancing I went over to alloys and have had no issues since.

Not sure where in Sydney you are, but I can recommend spinning wheels tyres in Waterloo. I get an alignment there a couple of times a year and Borngeek another long time member swears by them too. You see a lot of porsches and mercedes and high end beemers come through there so I figure if people who are prepared to drop $1k per tyre are being sent there then they probably know what they're on about.

[3M W018]

Mate just a thought on the tyre balancing issue - not saying you're necessarily wrong, but there have been quite a few people who have reported issues with balancing with the steel sunraysia style rims. One of them, a bloke called Joe, did a big long post about the virtues of something called finger balancing. If I recall the details correctly, when they use the balancing machine most alloys get secured by the centre hole whereas with the steelies they should mount them where the studs usually go instead of through the centre hub. Finger balancing is apparently a bit harder to do and from his experience you had to ask for it to get it. I bought a set of tyres on steelies once and they were awful once you hit 90kms. Rather than stuff around with finger balancing I went over to alloys and have had no issues since.

Not sure where in Sydney you are, but I can recommend spinning wheels tyres in Waterloo. I get an alignment there a couple of times a year and Borngeek another long time member swears by them too. You see a lot of porsches and mercedes and high end beemers come through there so I figure if people who are prepared to drop $1k per tyre are being sent there then they probably know what they're on about.

Yeah Cowboy is right on it.
The steel sunny type wheel have bigger centre hub hole. Meaning the only thing that holds the wheel in place are the nuts. The wheels don't even sit on the studs. Only the nuts hold the wheel in place. Whereas alloys centre hub sit on the hub it self. Giving a better hold of the wheel.
I hope that is understandable!

[09andot]

Thanks for the reply Dave! I could definitely be wrong haha. I have thought that the rims might be involved but never heard of finger balancing. I had a read of one of Joe's post's (Not sure if it was the long one) and it sounds like a good system. Not 100% sure if it will fix it in my instance as they seem to stay balanced for a week or 2 then go out, like 100 grams out. Definitely worth a shot tho for the short term! I'm out in the hills district so I might give a local shop a go but if they're no good waterloo isn't too far. To be honest I don't know whether its the rims or the tyres or both playing up, but something's drastically wrong somewhere haha. Even my mechanic remarks it feels the bumps on the road a lot more than other tritons he works on, he's not sure whats doing it though.When my pockets get deep enough I think I will go down the same path you did and get some alloy rims and fresh tyres and start again.

[09andot]

Yeh that makes sense 3m. I see there's a bit of discussion on some of the threads about whether the size of the centre hole effects it or not and there seem to be a few differing opinions about that. Alloy definitely seems the way to go in terms of weight, comfort and braking regardless

[09andot]

So my Fraser photo's are missing, but here's a quick photo to show how it sits with its 2 inch.



I also decided it needed a Dual Battery System for the trip. So, after plenty of research on here again I decided to put the second battery behind the rear seats. I went with a fully sealed 100ah AGM battery which set me back a few more dollars than I was hoping but it works a treat and is possibly the safer option inside the cab. I also went with the 100amp Projecta dual battery kit from Repco. This combination has worked as well as I could hope, it managed to run a Waeco 55l fridge for 4 30degree days without starting the car once. I ended up putting a cigarette lighter 12v port in the front of the cab, next to the pre existing one, and another in the tub along with an anderson plug for the fridge.







So that's basically where I'm at for the minute. I installed a light bar on the front last week and am currently in the process of fabricating a rear bar. It's my first attempt at a home made fab so it's taking a while, photo's to come soon.

[3M W018]

Do you know any cc machine shops? Could just get some spacers made up.

[09andot]

Hey 3m,
Not off the top of my head but I'm sure there's one around. Definitely worth looking into, thanks for your input!

[har05l]

Welcome mate

On the spacers, they're illegal so don't bother

I've seen plenty swap from alloy to steelies and go back to alloy again.

Other than the reasons above the weight saving is better on braking also. I'd be saving a bit of coin and pick up a set of ML /MN 16's when the time is right. Not that costly and you always see them for sale on the net

[3M W018]

Not the type spacers I was refering to. I mean hub spacers. the same tyres fitters use when they put after market wheels on cars. They should be legal. As every tyre fitter uses them.

But yeah If you can find second hand 16" of an ML would be worth it.

[Cowboy Dave]

As above on the spacers. The other big issue was the wheel nuts, and the order of tightening them etc apparently made a big difference. What sort of pressures are you running?

[mIwoo]

gotta love a triton on a budget... exactly where I am at, lol!

[iamsimon]

Are you happy with quality of the flairs mate? I'll be in the market for some soon!

[09andot]

Yeh second hand alloys isn't a bad idea! Thanks mate. I've tried all tyre pressures between 32 and 40. Generally 32 when its empty and I put some more in based on what I've got in the back. Doesn't seem to have much impact for me! Definitely happy with the quality of the flairs iamsimon. They were pretty easy to fit and have held up well- no issues there whatsoever! I forget what I paid but I think it was $240 odd off eBay.

[09andot]

So it's been a while since I last did anything to the trite, but I finally got around to finishing the build of my rear bar! I'm new to this whole fabrication scene, so excuse my crap welds etc haha. After probably 12 months of deliberation I decided to build this rear bar rather than purchase one for two reasons. 1.) I couldn't afford to purchase one, 2.) I didn't want to worsen the already horrible departure angle of the MN. So I started with a general idea of what I wanted, bought some steel and made it up as I went.

First up I made up 2 plates to come off either side of the standard GLX tow bar and out past the rear of the car. These are made of 6mm steel and are bolted to the tow bar and chassis using High tensile bolts.



I then welded a piece of 50mm OD pipe between them and already it started to look like something!



After knocking theses up I figured I'd move on to the next brackets, these would also go on either side of the tow bar again, however further towards the front of the car in order for the bar to run down the side and tuck back in. I figured these brackets had to be designed to be able to take impact from the side and underneath, so this is what I came up with.



Next up it was time to make the corners, for this I used 90 degree angles welded between straight pipe. After measuring a ridiculous amount of times they came up like this:



Once I had all these separate parts ready, It was time to put it all together and start to neaten up the welds. Thank god for flap discs hahaha!



Just as I was ready to paint I had a mate over who suggested welding some angle along the bottom of the bar to increase the strength when it gets hung up on the corner. After he said it I couldn't not do it at the risk of the bar bending later, so out came the welder and on went a piece of angle



Finally it was time to paint, I sprayed it myself with a compressor gun and White Knight Epoxy Enamel paint, I figured there wasn't much point getting it powder coated if it's going to be rubbing up on rocks a lot, also this was way cheaper and I can touch it up with a spray can when it does get scratched.






All up this project cost me approx $250 including consumables such as grinding blades, welding wire and paint (Which I have heaps left over of). It took about 3-4 full days and a lot of beers to get it together, as I said this is my first time welding and fabricating so if you knew what you were doing it would take far less. Any questions feel free to ask, I spent hours on this forum searching for a similar build and only found one after I'd almost finished this haha. Not sure if there's a better/easier place to put this so people looking to do a similar thing could find it?

Photos of it on the car to come later today!

[sydneymark]

Awesome job.

[09andot]

Thanks Mark! As promised here are a couple of photos of it on the car. Also mounted a 6 inch LED bar on there with a switch in the cab for reversing or to be used as a camp light.

[trouble]

Good work mate, looks great!

[09andot]

Cheers guys! I used a little 155amp Gasless Mig that I bought on eBay. I think Rossi is the brand! Seems to go okay, overheated it once but other than that all good!

[09andot]

So after saving a bit of coin on that job, I figured it warranted spending a bit more elsewhere. So off to JAX tyres and on with some new CSA Raptor 16x8 0 offset alloys.



This pic to show how they sit compared to the flares



And here's everything a bit dirty after a track from Ben Bullen to Wolgan rd



Time to start saving again for the next rush haha!

[crispy]

Hi mate doing well on a tight budget just out of curiosity if you dont mind what sort of coin did you pay for your triton ?

[09andot]

Hey crispy, paid $23k for it almost 2 years ago. I imagine with the price of brand new ones now though you could pick one up a bit cheaper

[trumpy955]

Nice build mate. Great to see people soon their own thing especially when it works as well as yours has. Can't wait to see it grow.