Gday folks,
I've been looking at other member's builds and thought I'd start my own thread. I've seen some fantastic builds in this forum and as a 'do-it-yourself-to-save-cash' kind of bloke, I've been inspired to have a go a my new truck and hopefully inspire a few others who might be reluctant to modify their own pride and joy.
Firstly, I started with the typical blank canvass of a black 2012 GLR Dual Cab. From the factory floor I added an ARB Deluxe Bar, ARB Rear Bar, 125 litre Long Ranger tank and dark window tint.
From here I took to eBay to see what I could find.
After convincing my wife that these were necessary I bought front and rear 3D moulded floor mats, front and rear sheepskin seat covers, rubber tray mat from "Booter" and a bungeeless soft tonneau cover. I wasn't going to pay to have the tonneau cover installed so I very nervously and anxiously took to my truck with the cordless drill. After an hour or so and a number of holes now in my tray, my soft tonneau was on!
Next on the list was an improvement to the factory high beams. Bring in the Tigerz11 22" LED light bar. So now trying my hand at autoelectrical work, I set upon installing the light bar. After thinking to myself "how the hell am I going to get through the firewall without drilling?" I came across the removable seal on the firewall on the driver's side and thought "Yew beauty!" So a few hours later and some fiddling around with wires in behind the dash I managed to wire up my light bar without a hitch. I also love the look of the rocker switch I bought which was also installed above the internal fuse panel.
And then the most beautiful thing in the world entered my life when my wife gave birth to our first born daughter. Needless to say Black Caviar was put on hold for a number of months. I did manage to find a set of Maxxis Bighorn 764 MTs on gumtree so I picked them up cheap on a trip to Sydney.
Until recently, when while planning a Victorian High Country trip and watching youtube videos of our fellow Newtriton members and seeing the depth of some of the river crossings, I thought it best to price a snorkel. After pricing a Safari Snorkel from ARB, I decided on an eBay job and a self install. I had already done a DIY snorkel install on my old Pajero, but this was something different. After carefully studying the plans done up by Bogor and OEM water bottle retention by biggibbo, I was semi-confident in doing it correctly.
If I can pass on one piece of advice, always use the best quality tools. I bought a cheap holesaw set from Mitre10 for $25 thinking "I only need to use it once so it doesn't matter if it gets wrecked." Unfortunately for me, the first hole I started drilling completely blunted the hole saw, and only made a scratch on the surface of my guard! So back to Mitre10 and $150 later for 2 hole saws and the centre drill inclusion and I was back at it. The good Bosch quality stuff chewed through the guards like butter.
After a lot of stuffing around, sikaflex everywhere, cuts, bruises, expletives and time, my snorkel was installed. Took me all up about 11 hours but it was completely worth it.
Next on the agenda is a set of 3mm bash plates courtesy of Mitch at Prestige Offroad which should hopefully be in the mail and installed next week.
After the bash plates are done, it's savings time again with the hope to buy an ARB deluxe steel roof rack with the intention being to relocate the light bar to the roof, and putting a set of Hella Rallye spotlights on the front, just because you can't get enough light!