Ironman - Rear Step Bar for D40

I picked up an Ironman rear step tow bar from my supplier on Monday, and last night i took the Nissan supplied tow bar off, and Fitted the Ironman one.

Makes 100mm difference in height of the tow hitch, greatly increasing the departure angle.

Had to take of the number plate and the painted panel it is affixed to below the tub, as the Ironman bar fixes to Chasis very differently than the standard tow bar.

I did not have any hassles at all, once you sort out the packet of nuts/bolts/washers and work out where they all go. Only issue was the supplied cable and 7pin plug, you have to do the hard work and wire it all yourself. Luckily, the nissan supplied plug it in type plug is all i need, so i did not need to change the plug over - and i have a spare in case i ever need it.


Any-one want a Genuiune Nissan tow bar for a Thai built D40 - prepared to let it go to first person with a reasonable offer. (all bolts, nuts and electric cable with 7 pin large plug)


Ohh, by the way - it only took 1.5 hours to take the old bar off and then fit the new bar, with a mate helping me out.

It never happened unless ya got pics!! lol

i'm planning to take piccy's on the weekend - daylight and good weather predicted ... LOL ... not bad forcast for Melbourne

FINALLY some photos

This is the Step Tow Bar fitted as supplied by Ironman



I was not happy with the resultant gap between the step and the rear of the tub, so i managed to get hold of some Aluminium Checkerplate, and took it to a mates workshop. He worked out some appropriate folds on this piece of off-cut to see what it would look like.



After he was finally happy with the result, he folded up the main piece of Aluminium for me, drilled the fixing holes, painted the whole thing black and sent me on my way.

I have ordered some LED lights to put in place before i take the final photo (including replacement number plate light) and i should have the lights by tomorrow. I'll try to get them installed by weekend and have the final photo up.

FINALLY the finished results are in.

I picked up some LED brand lights, one for the number plate, and two tail/stop strip lights.

I have the replacement Aluminium Checkerplate Step fitted and aligned (seemed to be sitting low on the left hand side initially).

I fitted the Number plate light on Saturday arvo when i had some spare time, and then fitted the strip tail/stop light on sunday arvo to complete the job.

On Sunday i have my 4.5 yr old son sitting in the garage with me, handing me tools as i needed them. I'm trying to train him while he is young to enjoy helping dad. Only problem was, while i was stuck under the car he decided he was going to find ALL my tools lying around and stack them at my feet (in case i needed them). The problem was he could not find the specific tool i was asking for, because there were too many tools to choose from. I was a bit frustrated by this, but i could still see the funny side to his enthusiasm to 'want' to help dad.

Enough yakking ... here are the photo's.





and a close up

This coming weekend, i'll probably take off the raw Aluminium plate that the trailer plug and number plate light is fixed onto, round off the corners a bit, then paint it BLACK and re-install it.

Not sure if the law still exists but there used to be a law in Victoria banning the addition of extra brake and indicator lights to a vehicle without disabling the originals. From what I remember it was brought in because there was an influx of those cheap imported window lights that people sat on their back parcel shelf and the powers that be decided that adding more lights could be a distraction more than a help. The ruling also covered something along the lines of adding more than one brake light was not on because many of the window kits came with multiple brake lights to mount on either side of the rear window.

Even if that rule is still around I doubt you'll get nabbed for it because half the coppers probably don't know about it. Still a decent looking job though.

Thanks Krafty for the heads up, i'll look into it via the VicRoad web site

WoodyD40 said:

Thanks Krafty for the heads up, i'll look into it via the VicRoad web site

Click to expand...

There's a full days work, good luck with that task!

hmmn. A quick look at the web site, there are PDFs there about Stop Lights, but could not find anything about additional tail lights.

Oh well, if i get pulled over for any reason - all i need to do is cut the earth wire and then they are disconnected.