WreckDiver1321's American D40 Frontier

Tappet said:

Nice shots!

You have certainly worked out what composition is.

Thanks

Click to expand...

Thank you sir!

So, Lola has undergone a bit of a change of direction as far as mods go. For a while I had been considering selling my RTT in favor of a slightly different system that I felt would be more practical. The RTT limits my cargo space quite a bit, and the tent itself can occasionally be a bit of a pain if I'm deciding to remain at one campsite and explore from there. I have to close it up every single time, take some of the bedding out, and put the cover on. And then at the end of the day I need to set it up again. Then there's the issue of a canoe. I've been planning on getting a canoe, and I feel like it would be more difficult to put the canoe on top of the truck with the RTT in the back. The last thing I'd want is the canoe rubbing on the tent cover. Plus I don't know how much I trust the stock roof rack to hold a large canoe, so I'd have to come up with a good aftermarket solution (which I was thinking about doing anyway, but I've been reconsidering it for a couple reasons).

In the place of the RTT would be a fiberglass canopy. I could install my Yakima racks which were holding my tent on the top, which would be a great place to set a canoe, as well as mount a 2-2.5 meter awning and Road Shower type shower. With the bed as a sealed up cargo space, this frees me up in a few ways. It would greatly increase my usable cargo space, meaning if I had company come with I could throw the bags in the back instead of at their feet. The other, more important thing to consider in this situation is I could put my dogs in a kennel in the back instead of having them taking up passenger space. This also applies to when I have kids in the future. It would also help in camp, because having hard sided storage means I wouldn't have to move my cooler/fridge and kitchen boxes into the back seat at night for fear of bears (which are a huge deal out here). The canopy would keep it all secure. Because I'd be attaching the Yakima racks to the canopy, I'd also have some convenient bolts coming through to attach an overhead cargo net to. We could easily store lighter stuff up and out of the way where it wouldn't take up any of the lower cargo area.

This was my line of thinking. I finally decided to bite the bullet and sold my rooftop tent to a friend of mine. I then started watching the local classifieds like a hawk. I found an ad for someone selling a Frontier cap a few hours away. Good price, good cap, but it was silver. I called up every paint shop in town and got quotes. I did the math and found out I could save some money. So I spent a whole Tuesday driving and came home with this:



It's an ARE CX series (I don't think they are down is OZ, are they?), pretty much bare bones. It was made for a 2006 Frontier, has two sliding windows, the single latch rear door, and a VanTech roof rack. I'm pretty impressed with the build quality, and it goes right along with the lines of the truck. I paid much less than a new canopy, so to me it was worth the 7 hours worth of driving to bring it home.

It definitely needs to be painted, but otherwise I'm pretty pleased.

I just love the amount of space this thing gains me. Plenty of dry, covered storage. Really nice.



The cap is held on by regular clamps, which is great for me because I occasionally need to use the truck to haul stuff, so being able to remove it quickly and easily it a plus.

Here's some shots of the roof rack, which as you can see really needs to be sanded and painted. It's very stout and very well assembled, but the coating was a bit lacking. Just need to fix that and I'll be all set!





You can really see the corrosion on these plates inside the cap. I'm fairly sure these were never coated at all.

Anyway, I do have a couple of plans to customize the canopy.

- Primarily, it needs to be black. I've got a shop that is going to be doing it in about a week or so.
- I'd like to cover the inside somehow, because right now it's bare fiberglass. Either with a carpet headliner from ARE, or maybe a roll-on bedliner. I feel the bedliner would be a really good choice for durability and it would probably add a bit of strength to the fiberglass. What do you guys think?
- I'll be installing a stretchy cargo net on the ceiling to keep softer, lighter items. I figure most of my sleeping gear can stay up there.
- I'll be adding an LED light strip or two to give me some illumination.
- Eventually, I'd like to replace the windows with windoors that have a built-in sliding window:

I want these because it would make accessing the cargo area much nicer, but I also have dogs who I might need to keep in the back, so they need ventilation too.

I'm pretty excited about it!

Look what was delivered to my house at 8:30 one morning!



These babies came in a 73kg box. The box survived the trip fairly well, only taking a slight beating in a few spots. There were a few small scuffs in the coating, but nothing major really. I've just gotta say, these are ridiculously well made. The bends are prefect and the welding is beautiful. The coating is strong and even. I'm very happy with them all told. They look fantastic, and are tougher than hell.

I immediately went to installing them. They use many factory holes, but you have to drill 12 holes and use thread cutting bolts for the full install. I got mine mostly mounted up, then tightened a bunch of the hardware down. I had to mark a bunch of holes and then remove the slider again so I could drill them properly. It takes time but is a fairly simple process. It's pretty straightforward, and I only ran into a couple little problems, which were more my fault than theirs.



Anyway, once they were on, they looked amazing!

I cannot stress enough how well made these things are.

And I have to say, opening the door and looking down to see this is a very comforting feeling

Super impressed with these things and super excited about them.

I can't believe this is my truck.

I stripped the canopy of the windows, roof rack, and stickers yesterday to take it to the paint shop.



As you can see, it's totally stripped... except for the back door. Unfortunately, that is held on by a couple of rivets that are fiberglassed in on either side. So I couldn't take that out. But, when I took it to the shop the guy said it would be no problem, he'd just mask it and it'd turn out just fine. He's sticking to the price quote he gave me, so I'm pretty happy about it all told. If you're ever looking to save some cash by finding and repainting a used canopy, I highly recommend doing this part yourself. It should save you a little bit of money by making life easier on the guys at the paint shop, and it is actually really easy to do. Just remove the bolts from the inside, making sure to keep each side's bolts in their own little baggie, pull the inside frames out, then use a rubber mallet to gently break the seal against the outside and pull the windows out. Just be sure not to leave any of the gasket behind and you'll be just fine. I'm very excited to see this come together in the right color. Should be done by the end of the week!

Also, I plan on getting the roof rack parts stripped and painted tomorrow. I also received a cargo net I ordered for the canopy. Should work well to keep light items up high. And, I've already sold my Yakima roof racks to a friend of mine. The whole canopy project seems to be well on track!

See you are drilling holes in your chassis is that allowed over there? In Oz it is a big no no as you can technically weaken the structure of the chassis and it may fail in areas it isnt supposed to during a crash or some other high impact event.

Shorty4655 said:

See you are drilling holes in your chassis is that allowed over there? In Oz it is a big no no as you can technically weaken the structure of the chassis and it may fail in areas it isnt supposed to during a crash or some other high impact event.

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Really? That's interesting to me, because even in the most stringent and strict states, it's completely legal. Where I live, just about anything is legal. You're not even required to have a windscreen here (though you are required to have at least one windscreen wiper...). Most states don't have safety testing, and the ones that do don't get that deep into it.

In the case of rock sliders, I really think it's a non issue to be honest. You are creating a few small holes to attach what is in essence a giant support girder to the outside of the vehicle. If anything, I think they make it stronger. Maybe not as strong as weld-on sliders, but still stronger.

In Oz the attachment of sliders is done by a big U clamp which is open at the top and then usually two high tensile bolts are at the top of the clamp so that when tightened they clamp the slider metal to the chassis.

Shorty4655 said:

In Oz the attachment of sliders is done by a big U clamp which is open at the top and then usually two high tensile bolts are at the top of the clamp so that when tightened they clamp the slider metal to the chassis.

Click to expand...

Ahh, I've seen this method a few times. Not very common here in the US. Here it's mainly bolt-on, some companies have a weld-on version.

Got the canopy roof rack stripped and painted today. Should look pretty good once dried and assembled. I chose satin black. Now I need to run to the hardware store tomorrow so I can collect 16 stainless 5/16 carriage bolts, nuts, and washers to assemble it. Plus a tube of silicone to seal it.

I also got a Hi-Lift mount worked out on the factory utilitrack.



All in all a very productive day!

Shorty4655 said:

In Oz the attachment of sliders is done by a big U clamp which is open at the top and then usually two high tensile bolts are at the top of the clamp so that when tightened they clamp the slider metal to the chassis.

Click to expand...

Think the d40 guys have to weld them on mate. I know scotty bobcats were like that

Right. The canopy is back on the truck, nicely matching now. I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out. Looks like a real tourer now! As you can see, I wasted no time getting it dirty.





My fiancee and I both had the day off, so we decided to go on a little fishing trip and do some exploring! We started out in Red Lodge, but unfortunately the first fishing spot was impossible to get to thanks to snow, and the second was frozen over. So we stopped at a nearby campsite for lunch and made personal pizzas over the fire. We then hopped back in the truck and made the hour drive to the unbelievably picturesque East Rosebud Lake. East Rosebud has a small summer home community that has been in the area since the late 1800s, and it's pretty easy to see why.

Everything was still boarded up though, and we were the only people for miles around.



Even after seeing it several times throughout my life, it never gets old. I had recently looked through a photo book from Ansel Adams, and I was trying to channel him a bit today.

The lake itself is home to many, many rainbow trout. Or so I've been told. They didn't want anything to do with our lures today. I didn't mind too much though, since I got to watch the sun paint the mountains on it's way down.







Despite not catching anything, it was still a pretty good day. We meandered back to the tiny town of Roscoe, MT, where we had dinner at the Grizzly Bar. The Grizzly has some seriously awesome food, but they are famous around here for selling T-shirts that have "Where the hell is Roscoe?" scrawled on the back. Where indeed. This part of Montana is small townsville USA. Roscoe is surrounded by the world famous towns of Nye, Fishtail, Columbus, and Absarokee (Pronounced ab-zore-kee. Seriously.) Anyway, I got myself a shirt after a delicious salmon fillet sandwich and a locally brewed Bent Nail IPA and headed for home. Not a bad way to spend a Monday I think.

Ordered a snorkel off eBay, should be here within the next few weeks.