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  1. #1
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    Default The Canning takes no Prisoners

    There isn't a real section for this, but welding could probably have gotten this vehicle to a safe storage place.

    Had this emailed to me, as I was an avid 4WDer and Camper, thought that the members on here might like to see it. The narrator believes the problem came from an incident with a rock. I personally think that the vehicle was overloaded and the suspension tooo stiff.
    My thoughts come from experience dealing with 4WD suspensions and accessories.


    -You don’t have to watch the whole clip. The interesting bit starts at about the 21 minute mark.
    YouTube

    Kryn
    To grow old is mandatory, growing up is optional.

  2. #2
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    Aug 2011
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    Default

    We recently did a trip across the simpson. Part of my preparation in the lead up to the trip was to fully load my vehicle (diesel prado) and take it to a weigh bridge. To my surprise I was about 250kg over GVM!

    This is a car with no Bull Bar, No winch, single spare with no rear Bar and no drawer system. I do have a dual battery system, fridge etc. But my vehicle is not decked out to the max like some.

    I got the weight down by carrying the bare minimum of luxury camping gear. We took hiking tents and a hiking stove.

    Even then, when fully fuelled, packed and the extra water for the crossing we were still about 180kg over GVM.

    Most of the trip I would have been under but from birdsville I carried 200L fuel and 120L water as we were 10 days without supplies with 4 people.

    On my travels I saw many decked out 4x4 rigs including similar vehicles to mine with Bull Bar, winch, 2 spare tyres, rear drawer system, fully loaded roof rack etc. I came to the conclusion that most people have absolutely no idea what their vehicle weighs and the 90% would be over their GVM.

    Ignoring the safety and legal implications of this, most people get away with it and it never becomes an issue but the game changes when you go long distances on very rough and remote locations. Then things start to happen. Things fatigue and break.

    It seems to be common for utes such as Hilux, triton and navaras to get stress crack in the chassis just under the Ute tub. The last section of these utes are effectively canterlevered and overloading the ute section causes chassis failure.

    Wrt the car in the video. I can't think of any other reason for that to happen other than if it was massively over loaded. I noticed they had airbags on the rear as well. That tells me they must have had considerable weight on the rear axle and needed the airbag suspension to remove some suspension sag. To have the diff housing and axles fail like that, it must have been heavy.

    Also, for people to experience such catastrophic failure seemingly "out of the blue" indicates to me that they never do routine inspections on their vehicle when they stop for a break. Cracks would start appearing way before total failure. With cracks comes oil leaks which should have been obvious long before failure too.

    People have all the gear and often no idea. Driving around with their heads up their .

    Here's a pic of a sad looking navara that we passed in the simpson. Fully loaded and abandoned.




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  3. #3
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    Aug 2008
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    Default

    At the end of the day these little 4WD's are not designed for those sort of conditions carrying those loads.

    Need a Landcruiser/Patrol sized vehicle or small truck. But it all comes down to $$$$.

    They just needed a 12V welder.
    Gold, the colour of choice for the discerning person.

  4. #4
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    Default

    I'm hoping my next car will be a 70 series landcruiser with a GVM upgrade. That would be plenty for me.

    Also Patrols, as great as they are they are also suseptable to these issues. My mate has a GU patrol 4.2L TD beautiful rig, well looked after but it needed a stitch plate chassis repair kit to fix cracks in the chassis too.

    I agree with you though. The sales pitch gives people the impression that they are bullet proof and unbreakable which is certainly not the case.

    Simon



    Sent from my SM-G970F using Tapatalk
    Girl, I don't wanna know about your mild-mannered alter ego or anything like that." I mean, you tell me you're, uh, super-mega-ultra-lightning babe? That's all right with me. I'm good. I'm good.

  5. #5
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    Default

    Simon, I know of a Toyota DC 70 thats up for sale, pretty well stock std apart from exhaust, computer chip, Bull bar and Custom tray, if you're interested? Pretty low kms too from memory.
    I used to structually maintain a fleet of Nissan Patrol coil sprung single cab survey vehicles, as well as make the necessary bracketry.
    They were notorious for coming back from desert trips with the cabs sitting on the chassis. The passenger seat was removed so that instumentation equipment and its supplies could be situated out ot the dust and elements.
    It got to the point when they bought another (used) vehicle, the first thing to be done was plate and extra weld the mounting points with 3mm plate which seemed to solve the problem.
    When the vehicles time was up, it was driven to the wrecking yard, as nothing apart from major rebuilds, which was costly and time consuming, could be done with it.
    At that time Toyota didn't have Coil sprung utilities.
    Kryn
    To grow old is mandatory, growing up is optional.

  6. #6
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    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by KBs PensNmore View Post
    At that time Toyota didn't have Coil sprung utilities.
    Kryn
    They still do not do they? As in coils all around rather then just the front like the Landcruiser Cab Chassis's have been like for near twenty years.

    Neighbours have a coil cab Patrol. The rear spring retainer broke and nearly put the spring through the floor boards. Or something along those lines. I believe the next one they bought did the near same thing, but it was caught before it broke.

    I know leaf springs are a very old design, but they are tough when properly done.

    And if people want a crappy ride, then buy an old Landrover. They jump at shadows.
    Gold, the colour of choice for the discerning person.

  7. #7
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    Default

    Thanks for the correction RC, dam CRAFT disease. Only recently helped the boss replace the springs on his D/C Cruiser.
    Kryn
    To grow old is mandatory, growing up is optional.

  8. #8
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    Feb 2012
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    Sydney
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    I’m another keen 4WDriver, have a 95 series Prado and will eventually upgrade to a Toyota 70 series. Because we had weighbridges at work, I used to constantly check my Prado’s weight with all sorts of combinations and additions. As a result, I now calculate the weight of whatever I design, build or add to it, and investigate how I can reduce it. I’ve been in transport & logistics for 40+ years and in some companies, have beefed up trucks and equipment for remote area work. At one stage I was buying Mack trucks and Mack told me of the vast amount of changes that really remote operators made to their brand new vehicles.


    I’m certainly no expert but I make two observations: most modern 4WD vehicles aren’t built to endure really harsh country. Manufacturers have consistently reduced vehicle design to mostly highway operation. At one company our engineers used to work on a safety design factor of 4, i.e. the build was 4 times the minimum strength required. We also used Finite Element Analysis to find weak points in the design through stress. Perhaps that’s what these dual cab ute drivers are doing


    My second perception is that many 4wDrivers lack “Mechanical Sympathy” i.e. constantly checking the vehicle for anything adverse and being aware of how the environmental conditions are affecting it & then driving accordingly. At 19 I was a typical no-patience kid whenever my boss’s M.A.N. Diesel truck broke down. We joked that M.A.N. stood for “Mechanics Always Needed”; it really means Manufactured (in) Augsburg Nuremberg. However through my elderly boss I learnt mechanical sympathy (and patience), then in a later job, acquired a reputation for always getting “sick” trucks home. (Hey, give me a good one sometimes). I also learnt to find mechanical solutions in ways that I never would have imagined but I fear that capability has largely disappeared (but not entirely). Interesting that three of us contributors to this post recognise 70 series Toyotas as built for the task.

  9. #9
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    Quote Originally Posted by peterbilt View Post
    Interesting that three of us contributors to this post recognise 70 series Toyotas as built for the task.
    I wouldn't say that they're built for the task, but they're probably the strongest of what's available.
    It would be interesting to find out from Mike what has been done to his 6 X 4WD strengthening wise?
    I used to be a 4WD instructor in one of the Clubs I was a member of, and one of the things I used to regularly do was to get members to go over their vehicles when we'd stop to camp.
    Even if it was a soft 4WD trip, we'd still do it, the reason being that we had the evening to make any repairs needed. They got into the habit and I believe still do.
    I even got the ladies backing camper trailers, when asked why, my reply was if the other half fell and broke an arm it would be a bit much to expect them to drive. A couple of years later, it actually happened, and she was so thankfull for being taught to back a trailer.
    To grow old is mandatory, growing up is optional.

  10. #10
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    Definitely agree KB, although I rate the 4.2L Patrol as a far more sturdy contraption than the 70 series when playing rough.
    Unfortunately the 70 series is about the only one left to choose from unless you count the Dodge Ram or F 250 which suffer from dimensional and weight issues. A friend of mine has an F250 and they were most surprised to learn that they had been driving it illegally due to it requiring a light rigid truck licence as its GVM was 4580 KG.
    The 70 series has their own achilles heels which I would argue are harder to fix than simple chassis gusseting. Weak CV's and transmission come to mind along with their V8 engine. When working in the underground mining industry I had the opportunity to compare several variants of the Patrol and Landcruiser and I would rate them as follows, 1st place goes to the TD42 engined coil cab Patrol hands down as they only entered the workshop for basic servicing and the transmission and diffs were bulletproof. 2nd place goes to the 6cyl Landcruiser although CV's, transmissions and handbrakes were their undoing usually, 3rd place goes to the 3L 4cylinder Patrol, once the ZD30 engine issues were worked out and last of all, the V8 Landcruiser, their first home was the workshop and occasionally they visited the workings. Compared to the 6 cylinder Cruiser, they were a disaster. Cv's, electrical issues, oil leaks, starter motor failures (allow plenty of time to replace one of them too), variable geometry turbos seizing and becoming a fixed geometry turbo as well as engine management issues caused by being so far below sea level that the computer had fits (can't really blame Toyota for that though).
    Interestingly when Toyota were approached about some issues we were having, their simple response was that their vehicles were not designed for such heavy usage and they didn't want to know. Nissan sent their engineers to our workshop to examine the chassis modifications we were doing and I believe that our chassis plating and gusseting regime made it into the Nissan reference materials for severe service. We only experienced chassis cracking on the initial vehicles that had 500mm removed from their rear chassis in order to fit in the cage, once the portal went in and vehicle remained full length the issue resolved.
    That's my perspective based on my experiences for what it's worth.

  11. #11
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    We travelled the Canning last year and saw a Dmax with exactly the same issue, snapped diff housing. Obviously a weak point with that model. The Canning is a very demanding track and those without mechanical sympathy often pay the price. Hope to go again next year if I finish the rebuild on my 70 series

    Cheers Andrew

  12. #12
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    Quote Originally Posted by Karl Robbers View Post
    starter motor failures (allow plenty of time to replace one of them too)
    My mechanic told me some ungodly amount if time to replace one. Six hours or something. Because they positioned it between the V then put all the common rail stuff on top.

    I see in Africa at least they still off the 70 series with the 1HZ motor.
    Gold, the colour of choice for the discerning person.

  13. #13
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    Quote Originally Posted by Karl Robbers View Post
    The 70 series has their own achilles heels which I would argue are harder to fix than simple chassis gusseting. Weak CV's and transmission come to mind along with their V8 engine. When working in the underground mining industry
    I've a friend whose Daughter and SIL work in the mines at Roxby. He's told me that they have 2 new 70 series that's electric powered. Apparently they ripped the motor and gearbox out, then fitted the motor and batteries, somehow connecting the transfer case into the system.
    Apparently it's awesome to drive, like an automatic without the gear changes, FWD/REV is done by something like a switch. No noise, no pollution and still pulls well.
    All done in house up there. Will try to get more details if you like?
    Kryn
    To grow old is mandatory, growing up is optional.

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