The design brief:
We wanted a comfortable, reliable vehicle for a family of four for overland travel around the hot climates of Southern Europe and Southern / Eastern Africa. We need good spare parts availability in Africa, and widely available aftermarket goodies in the UK to accessorise it with.
The Toyota Hilux was the obvious choice for a base vehicle. I looked at Landrover Defenders, but the interiors are basic and they are uncomfortable and unreliable.
Next came the camper conversion part. It needed to accommodate four of us and be very quick to set up and take down. We wanted easy, quick access to our gear. The kitchen needed to be quick to set up and pack away, so we could easily stop and make a picnic or get a brew on. It needed a fridge to keep the essentials cold (eg beer). We also needed a split-charge system to power the fridge and charge all of our 12V devices, primarily off-grid. Plenty of water and a shower onboard were also on the list. We wanted to be able to be completely self-sufficient for 2-3 days at a time before having to restock fuel and food.
Heading to hot climates we also needed a good shade awning to hide from the sun, and also rain should we see any.
Speed and simplicity was an essential part of the design of our mobile camp setup. If I have to spend ages packing and unpacking camp I could save many thousands of ££’s and use my ground tent set-up.
Decisions decisions…
I looked very closely at the amazing Trayon Camper and the Four Wheel Camper flatbed models. We made a trip to Germany to look at both. I loved both of them, and they both have their pros and cons. The Trayon is lightweight and basic. The FWC is heavy and luxurious, with a shorter setup time. Both require the removal of the rear tub and the fitment of a tray. If money was no object, I would have gone for a Four Wheel Camper Hawk UTE, like this awesome setup the Russos have on their YouTube channel
The budget simply wouldn’t stretch for this setup – it would have cost well over £100k, and coming out of Covid lockdown craziness FWC had an 18-month waiting list.
The second-hand Hilux we purchased was 2 years old and had 16k miles on the clock, so was almost brand new. The previous owner had already done a lot of expensive modifications to the truck: Bushtech canopy, canopy roof rack, ARB rock sliders, suspension upgrade, basic dual battery system and a SnoMaster fridge.
Roofnest Condor XL Rooftop tent
Since there were 4 of us, we needed a large rooftop tent. For ease of use, I wanted a hard shell tent, which also has the advantage of being able to have a roof-mounted solar panel. After watching loads of YouTube videos I narrowed down the choice to the iKamper and the Roofnest. I opted for the Roofnest Condor XL due to it being slightly larger and being a bit cheaper. It works great for 4 of us: 2 adults and 2 kids, with plenty of room left for them to grow into. If this was a hiking tent, it would be too small because you have to bring your rucksacks and other kit inside at night. But because it is a roof tent, the size works well – all the gear is stowed in the canopy below, so inside the tent, you only have yourself and the clothes you are wearing.
PROs & CONs of the Rooftop Tent:
What we like:
- Faster to set up & take down than a ground tent.
- Doesn’t cook you shortly after sunrise in the summer like a nylon tent. We were able to sleep in until around 9 am, then it got too hot.
- More comfortable so you get a good night’s sleep.
- Has good ventilation: sweltering summer nights in Spain are no problem if you open the roof hatch and unzip the flysheet. It was still pretty hot without air conditioning though!
What we don’t like:
- You have to pack it up if you want to move campsites or use the vehicle.
- Adds a lot of weight to the top of your vehicle, affecting handling & fuel consumption.
- You can’t get too drunk because it will hurt if you lose your balance and fall off the ladder.
- You have to climb down a ladder to go for a pee in the middle of the night.
- Cannot fit much bedding inside the tent – a trade-off of having a 4-person tent.
List of equipment fitted:
Vehicle modifications:
- Rival aluminium front bumper
- Rival Aluminium engine skid plate
- Winch
- New plastic front grill
- Spotlights – Lightforce Stryker
- ARB rock sliders
- ARB 140 litre long-range tank
- Adblue delete
- ARB rear bumper
- ARB compressor with outlet in the filler cap
- Kut Snake flares
- 17″ Fuel Warp alloy wheels with Cooper A/T tyres
- Old Man Emu suspension upgrade
- Safari Snorkel
- Direct 4×4 roof rack
- 2 x sand tracks
- Full satin charcoal vinyl wrap
Camper modifications:
- Bushtech aluminium canopy.
- Canopy accessories: Table rack slider, Kitchen cupboard.
- Bushtech drawer system, modified with slide-outs.
- Roofnest Condor XL.
- Tailgate checker plate cover.
- Modified canopy doors.
- Quick-pitch awning.
- Sidewall kit for the awning.
- Quick pitch shower cubicle.
- 50l water tank with gravity-fed tap.
- Water filter, shower, and pump.
- Snomaster fridge.
- Quick-pitch shower cubicle.
- Renogy 170Ah lithium battery.
- Victron smart shunt & 30A MPPT.
- Victron AC-DC charger.
- C-Tec DC-DC charger.
- 120W permanently roof mounted solar panel.
- 100W Bluetti removable solar panel.
On-board overlanding equipment:
- Tool kit, including ARB tyre plug kit.
- Recovery gear: shovel, straps etc.
- Tyre inflation & deflation kit – easy access.
- 4 x Wolf boxes for clothes storage.
- 4 x pillows.
- Sleeping bags.
- ARB chairs x 2.
- Helinox chairs x 2.
- Nigor Wickiup backup tent.
- Gas stove (Europe), Optimus Nova petrol stove (Africa).
- Spare gas cylinders or fuel containers for stove.
- Pots, pans & cutlery – easily accessible and well organised.
- Garmin Overlander GPS navigation.
All of the above items were sourced from UK suppliers/importers.
As time permits I’ll add more detail to this page, detailing the following: plumbing and electrical work, customisations of installed off-the-shelf items, links to suppliers, and some of the superb overlanding YouTube channels I have been watching. None of this would be possible without the inspiration and technical knowledge gained from watching those channels.
Were there any problems with the modifications?
ARB long-range Fuel tank
The only real issue was with the ARB fuel tank. The supplier (Ian @4×4 Works) was told by ARB Europe that it fits my vehicle, so I ordered it. When trying to fit the fuel tank, the AdBlue tank was in the way. The ARB tank is not suitable for a Hilux with AdBlue. The solution was to get an AdBlue delete software remap so I could remove the AdBlue tank. As the vehicle was so new, the maps & software were not available, and this isn’t something that your Toyota dealer will help you with. Ian put me in touch with Elite Performance Services near Sheffield. He sorted the problem for me. Fantastic. I now have a long-range tank and don’t have to worry about getting AdBlue from African countries that don’t sell it. Plus, one less system to go wrong.
Wheel spacers
I wanted to keep the steel wheels but widen the stance. I tried using some 1.5″ spacers to achieve this. However, the bolts were too short, so the nuts were held on by only 10mm of thread. I sent them back to the supplier and opted for the more expensive but safer option or getting alloy wheels with a lower offset.
The wrap
The KutSnake wheel arches caused the vinyl wrap to wrinkle in places. When tightening up the fixing bolts it caused the rubber seals to grip and push the wrap up. It is a minor issue, I think more careful positioning of the riv-nuts would have prevented this from happening.
Why all the exterior mods?
Many of the exterior mechanical vehicle modifications were expensive and a bit unnecessary. They just add weight. But then I’m a right tart and I like things to look nice. There’s a difference between needing something and wanting something. As we proved on previous trips to Africa, you can overland using a stock Hilux, the only modification you need to do is to fit decent tyres.
The long-range fuel tank and suspension upgrade were I think the most important of the exterior upgrades I did. They are needed to carry the extra weight and to allow us to go long distances between fuel stops.
Although not strictly necessary, the other modifications do serve a purpose other than looking good. I reversed into several trees and a lamp-post, the rear steel bumper protected the rear end fine. A reversing camera is on the list of future mods. The winch may well help me out of a tight spot in the future, the snorkel helps keep dust out of the airbox. The vinyl wrap protects the paintwork from scratches.
How well does it work as a camper?
Very well indeed. I’m so pleased with it. We built it primarily as a spring/summer/autumn camper. I haven’t tried it in the winter yet, but it would work fine, although nowhere near as good as an insulated motorhome!
Arriving at camp is a leisurely affair. The time from parking up to cracking a cold one is less than 2 minutes and the process goes something like this:
1. Park somewhere level, in the correct orientation to get the best shade when the shade awning is deployed.
2. Open the awning (30 seconds).
3. Open the rear tub/canopy doors, get the chairs out, and set them up (<1 minute).
4. Open the fridge, get a cold beer out, and relax in the chair (seconds).
This time is halved if the kids set the chairs up for me.
All the other minor camp set-up jobs, like unfolding the kitchen table, getting the clothes boxes out, plugging in the additional solar panel, and opening the roof tent can all be done at a relaxed pace. The tent goes up very easily. I find waiting until the sun starts to go down is a good time to set it up as the temperature has dropped a bit.
It is well-adapted for hot climates. The tent stays cool in the mornings and has good ventilation at night, especially with the flysheet pulled back. I have since purchased 2 small USB-powered rechargeable fans to clip on the inside of the tent for nights when it is just too hot. The awning deploys in seconds and gives acres of shade.
Everything unpacks and packs away quite quickly. We generally get on the road within an hour and a half of waking up. That includes making coffee, cooking breakfast, having a wash, cleaning up, packing everything away, etc, all at a very leisurely pace. Why rush if you don’t need to? I find it’s best to pack the tent as soon as possible in the morning before it starts getting too hot in there. The kids are usually last out of bed so they straighten the bedsheets and pass the pillows down.
The kids also chip in and help with packing up the rest of the camping gear, and I’m sure we could break camp in under half an hour if we needed to.
Verdict from our 5-week trip to the Pyrenees
Over 5 weeks we spent 3 of them camping/glamping and 2 weeks in Airbnb accommodation. I preferred camping over a claustrophobic Airbnb, but Suma likes the luxury of a bed that she doesn’t have to climb a ladder to access. Having an AirBnb means we don’t have to keep packing everything up to explore the area every day.
Setup & take down: Pretty quick. Some improvements are needed to the kitchen setup to make packing away quicker.
Comfort: Very good. The mattress is a bit firm for me as a side sleeper, I’ll be upgrading it in the future.
Kitchen: Great. Needs to be better organised – so everything has a place. The customised slide-out kitchen is very wind-proof.
Gear stowage: Worked well, with quick access to the most regularly used items. It could be better organised, and I made a future modification note to fix items to the inside of the canopy doors, like a custom molle panel.
Electrical system: Fully off-grid worked extremely well. We were able to keep the 2 phones, iPad, a laptop, 2 Kindle e-readers, an Apple watch, a Garmin watch and a Nintendo Switch charged up while parked up for 2 days at a time.
We will not bother taking the Nintendo or iPad next time, they are unnecessary distractions for the kids.
Newer Macbook laptops come with USB-C chargers, so we didn’t need AC to charge the laptop. We purchased a high-current USB-C charger from Amazon which runs off the 12V lighter socket. It charges pretty quickly, but we only charge devices during the day when the solar is working, or while driving.
We struggled to keep the fridge cold after a couple of days in the oppressive heat of the Costa Brava, but I think this was the 90Ah AGM leisure battery reaching the end of its useful life. The fridge only worked when the sun was on the solar panels. I have since replaced the charge controller with a Victron smart controller and changed the battery to a 170Ah Renogy lithium. I have also installed a Victron AC-DC charger so we can have ‘shore power’ of sorts if we need to top up the battery. We don’t have anything that uses 240V so we don’t need an inverter or proper shore power setup. Being able to be off-grid is a bonus at European campsites – they charge 5 Euros per day for electric hook-up on top of their 60 euro per night pitch fees.
Off-road ability: It’s a tank. It is on its weight limit when fully loaded, so it is never going to perform as well as an unladen pick-up. But it did fantastically well when we did some off-roading in Andorra and Catalonia. We are using it for overlanding, not rock-hopping.
Road handling: It is a bit slow and you have to go slowly around corners. This doesn’t bother me as I drive slow anyway. It achieves 20-25 mpg on all roads, motorways or around town. Tank range: The 140-litre tank gave us a huge range. We got from Birmingham to Poitiers on one tank of fuel. This was around 600 miles, so averaged just over 20 mpg. One issue is the fuel gauge is no longer accurate – it is calibrated to the stock tank. As a result, I had to manually work out the fuel levels by topping up to full on a quarter, half, and three-quarters tank and seeing how much fuel went in.
Mechanical problems:
We had the truck serviced before leaving Andorra (oil & filter change). On the way up a mountain pass, I heard a ‘pop’ from the engine and it lost a lot of power. Fearing the worst, I pulled over to inspect. It looks like the mechanic had taken off a breather pipe to access the oil filter. She hadn’t tightened up the jubilee clip tight enough after reconnecting it. An easy fix! Apart from that, there were no issues – as you would expect on an almost new vehicle.
Useful links:
Mechanical, electrical, and wrapping:
Vehicle wrapped by: ABC Tints Wraps
Graphics by: Street Race Graphics
Mechanics: Bumper, fuel tank, skid plate, and winch were installed by Jedi Customs.
AdBlue delete (needed before you can fit the ARB 140 litre tank): Elite Performance Tuning
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