Car appreciation... the aesthetics, the engineering, etc

I seem to recall that Navara's weren't great with the camper addition. A friend of my Dad's is a Nissan dealer and I remember him mentioning that they'd had a customers Navara in that had had the camper module fitted and it had damaged the bed or the frame. Not sure if it was an isolated incident or whether it incorrectly fitted but he suggested it wasn't really up to the job.
I'd be more tempted to go for a LWB T4 or T5 Transporter and convert that into an overnight camper.

If it has to be a pickup, my Dad has an Isuzu Rodeo which he uses for towing a race transporter. It replaced an Isuzu Trooper and he's been nothing but impressed with it. It is pretty agricultural though and he wouldn't use it day to day. I would have thought the Amarok would be the most civilized of the bunch but that may mean it's the least 'pick-up' like of the bunch too.

We had a Civic in the family... good car overall, check the turning circle, it was the one annoying thing.

Cheers

The latest model Mitsubishi L200 is the most civilized pickup I have driven and would suggest anyone wanting a pickup should test drive one. It is still a pickup, that is what I need for my work, but 450 motorway miles in a day was no hardship. I haven't driven an Amarok, they are just too bloody expensive for a working vehicle, but the 2016 on L200 makes the rest of the market feel extremely dated.

Started at 277 cfm, got to 287- want to reach 300. Different valve seat geometry next. Maybe 1mm ok the valve diameter also.

also some d40s simply brake in half.. (corrosion issues with the frame i believe)

on another note...

agricultural or not, i also have a soft spot for pickups. drove 26k kms in a camperised d22 through most of south america and i love that machine to bits..

coversion was homemade - did it with only a drill, a few screwdriver bits, a handsaw and the help of the gf :)

i tried letting her drive once, but she’s significantly shorter than me and our d22 has a bench, so when she was driving, my knees were practically in the glovebox..

(we had a matress on top of the wooden structure, a hidden chest beneath it [only accessible by lifting the matress and front part of the wooden stuff from the cabin - was great for taking dangerous, illegal stuff across the borders, like fruit, eggs and dairy products...] and two large drawers for most of our shit)

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Interesting! Will do some googling on the Navara and campers.

I guess loading in 4 adults in the camper without using the support legs might stress the suspension too much? Apparently a camper weighs about 650kg and then you add water, batteries, people etc...

Nice!

The thing I wonder about the Ute camper or any campervan is how do you keep it ready to go and stocked up? There would have to be some element of pre planning? It's not as spontaneous in reality.

I've got a duffel in the garage that all the camping gear fits in, it's not currently in service but it'd be simple to hunt down the sleeping bags/tent/Trangia/etc and stick them in, then fling it in the boot when wanting to head out of London for the weekend.

Likewise, all of my camping gear is stored in one corner of the office ready for action. The spontaneity does diminish somewhat if you've to start fitting campers onto truck beds or even a roof tent (which I desperately wanted for a long time) I suspect.

I'll speak to my dad and see if I can get specifics of why it failed and if it was the fault of the camper, the setup or the pickup bed.

Gah seems all my injectors are gummed shut from sitting with shit CA gas in the rails. Not cycling at all. Another 200 bucks to get them serviced down the bog.

That's after spending two days chasing down a short that was stopping the motor cranking properly.

Never ending.

I bet it'll seem worth it when it fires again.

I was in California last week, if I move over there I'm definitely buying a coupe - just too hot for a convertible. The UK is much better suited to open top motoring - you can always put a scarf on, whereas getting naked just sticks you to the seat.

Yeah convertibles don't really work in the summer aside from when the sun goes down. Ace in So-Cal in winter though. That said, we've had two and haven't troubled the canvas with much regularity.

Hmm - if it works properly!

From what I remember, the 1.6 and 2.0 use pretty much the same fuel, 2.0 worse in town but on every other trip the same, the 1,6 is pretty gutless. Think they are both 6 speed though

Worth taking them out and trying to clean them with a paraffin diesel mix?

Yeah I'm going to pull them out, it will only take 5 minutes. I'll take them and get them reconditioned though rather than just giving them a soak. If the deposits are bad enough to gum them up, they most likely need it.

Idk, traffic is the real decider.

My mum permanently had the roof down on her mx5 in the summer in France. The problem comes when you're stuff in gridlocked traffic on a freeway, rarely going fast enough to get the air in and outrun the pollution.

If they are gummed up, cleaning will help. Are they old/used enough to warrant reconditioning.

Better be in the open than the pollution trapped.