Nissan Patrol Y62 4x4 review, Modified Episode 50

Hey, Ronnie Dale, 4WheelingWestAustralia.com and welcome to another episode of Modified. This time a Y62 Patrol. So let's get the owner in. Daniel, step in mate. How are you mate? G'day Ronnie, how are you? Yeah good mate. Excellent. You've been on a few tagalongs with us. I have. I know Daniel. So Daniel do you want to tell us about this vehicle, make, model and what it's set up for? Sure. It's a 2013 build Y62 Nissan Patrol and I purchased it brand new in 2015 and I've set it up primarily for touring. I'm not as interested in the hardcore off-roading but I've got a young family and we prefer to tour. Okay, so you understand you tow caravans? Yeah, I've got a custom built motorcycle trailer, a caravan and a dinghy on a trailer and so I do a fair bit of towing with that depending on what sort of holiday we're on. Yeah, awesome. It sounds like you get into a lot of different aspects of outdoors then. Time permitting as much as possible, yeah. Awesome. Well, I reckon we waste no time and get into it but there's one thing I just want to know. Is this a manual or an automatic? This is an automatic. It's got a seven-speed auto. Seven-speed auto and the size of the motor? It's a 5.6 litre Nissan V8 Patrol and it's a direct-injected model. Bar work, bash plates, side rails, all that stuff and a roof rack. We'll start with the bar work. What have we got here, mate? It's an opposite lock steel bar, something that I fitted myself. My dad gave me a hand. We did it over a weekend. It was an upgrade a long time coming but I'm glad it's on now. I was having a bit of a look online and didn't like the look of a lot of bars for this model of vehicle. When I came across the opposite lock bar, I thought it looked kind of the best in my opinion so I went for that eventually. Winch compatible, I see. Yep, it's got a winch. It's a run for a 13,000 pound winch. It's yet to be actually used off road. I've had a play with it at home. It's more of an insurance policy than anything else. Being a Nissan, those with a sharp eye, I like to have the old Datsun badge on there. Just if people notice and comment, it's a start a point of conversation. I like the style of connection rather than the Kelvin hook. This is the unit that came with the winch. Oh, this came with the winch? Came with the winch. Oh, cool. Bash plates underneath? There's just a mild bash plate that comes with the bull bar. Otherwise, the vehicle is about 90% complete. There's a few things I want to finish off with it. Underbody protection is one of those and I've recently found something online that I'm interested in but for now, I haven't needed to use any underbody protection. I noticed there's no recovery points, so you're still using the factory one. Have you found any? I haven't, no. That's another project to come for the vehicle as well, recovery points, but touchwood so far, I haven't needed to use any anyway. That's a bit of a challenge with the newer model vehicles, especially the Y62. There's not a lot of stuff for them. Was it limited to find stuff as well? It has been a little bit limited. I bought the vehicle brand new in 2015 and it's taken two or three years since then to get everything together slow and steady. Like you say, availability is not always as much as other Toyota's and other comparables. Yeah, okay. I guess the advantage there is you actually then think about a lot more what you're going to put on it. I see you kept the sensors as well. That's pretty cool. Yep. Yeah, there's factory sensors that are in the bumper bar and this bull bar has the facility to keep those. They still work all right being in a bull bar? They work perfectly fine. Yeah, you can park right up within an inch of the garage door. They're the factory side steps that come with the car. Is that something you're going to look at or? It's something I'm interested in upgrading. For now, I'm happy to bash these up as I do. It's quite a wide vehicle so I have opted not to get the brush bars yet either. You haven't got a rear bay, you carried a spare on the roof. Is there a reason for that? The main reason is that I'm a bit conscious about the weight of the vehicle. Like you said earlier, I tow a caravan and it's quite a heavy tow ball weight. I didn't really want yet the added weight of all the extra bar work on the back and for that reason I keep the spare on the roof rack and there's also a second spare in the factory position underneath the rear bumper. I'm glad you brought that fact up because a lot of people just bolt heaps of stuff to the car or the vehicle and then all of a sudden they're super heavy. Yeah. And it's pretty easy to do to a wagon because there's not many places you can put things. Space is a priority in a wagon. Yeah. One of the reasons I bought this vehicle over a ute was that we wanted to have at least six seats and so this has got eight seats. Roof rack, an essential thing for a wagon, right? Space being a premium, you've got to put the extra stuff somewhere and yeah, roof rack is more or less the only option in my point of view. This is an open-ended rack? I just like the look of the tradied style of rack. I'm not really that keen on the full wraparound so I went for a RhinoRack tradie rack. It's aluminium so it's relatively light, again being a bit weight conscious. For people that are watching, if you're looking at roof racks, get a roof rack that's like a tradie rack that's open-ended because you've got space to put stuff front and back, overhang. Yes. And you can tie it to the rails on the side because if a closed rack, you can't put long stuff on it and a flat rack, I don't see the point of a flat rack. A lot of people don't mount enough stuff on a flat rack because there's nothing to stop it. Yeah. I like the extra security of the sidebars definitely but the easier accessibility of the front to back, a tradie rack for me is ideal. Your MaxTrax are kind of underneath your solar panel. Is this pretty quick to sort of swing off? Relatively, yeah. Again, just space being a bit of a premium. I was running out of space on the rack so the MaxTrax live under the solar panel. I've made these brackets which have a wing nut for the mounting point and there's an extra hole that's drilled in the bracket. You can lift the whole solar panel up higher and then you can access the MaxTrax out the side being space conscious. How many watts is the panel? It's a 100 watt panel and I use it just to charge the vehicle as a whole. I've got four batteries in the truck and it just charges everything altogether. Wow, okay. We'll get on to your batteries a bit later. What do you carry in this cargo case up here? Cargo case is mainly for less frequently used stuff. So I carry in there a chainsaw. I've got a spare air compressor in case my main one gives up and all the other spares, fluids and bearings, that sort of stuff for the vehicle should anything go wrong. Okay, so you've got a lot of the essential things. Spare tyre on the roof like we already talked about with the rear bar. So we've pretty much covered that. Can you notice the difference if you take it off the roof? Moderate, yep. Sometimes when I'm off-road and my brothers and my dad are riding on their motorcycles, I've got to load the roof rack more with all of their riding gear and camping gear and with that extra weight then I do notice a bit of a difference. Mainly the side-to-side movement. But as it is, it's not too bad. Okay, that's good to know. Awning on the other side, how big is that awning? It's a Foxwing, it's the full 270 awning. Yep, comes right around to the back. I had to be particular about the positioning of it. The rear door in this vehicle opens up fully from the roof line and I had to make sure it was positioned okay so you could get full opening of the door. We'll start with your bar lights then. So what are these? They're just an inexpensive set of King's 7-inch spot LEDs and they're rated at 10,000 lumens but they do quite a good job. Flood or...? Spot lights. That one up there? This is a 40-inch single row steady LED light bar and it's got a combination of spot and spread. So the edges are spread, the middle's pencil beam. I don't notice a huge difference between the two lights given their positioning on the vehicle as well. They seem to do about the equivalent amount of spread in the equivalent amount of spot. You can use one or the other at a time. I've got them on separate switches but when you turn them both on all together it produces ample amount of light. Communications? Six and a half dB and it goes to an 80 channel Uniden CB radio on the inside. Tyres and lift and we're starting with tyres. Now I have had this exact set of tyres. Not the same size but... Same tread. Same tread and they were pretty good on sand. What do you think of them? Excellent. Actually all around pretty excellent. Rocks, sand, mud. I've had a good run with these set of tyres. Did you find you slipped around a bit in the mud with these? A little, not too bad. Maybe if I was a bit overzealous on the accelerator you'd get a bit slippery but otherwise they hooked up quite good. They're a very unusual size. What was it? 275 70 R18. So 18 inch rims. You find that's enough rubber? Yeah so far so good. The vehicle comes factory with an 18 inch alloy wheel. I had heard of some guys with the same vehicle going down to a 17 inch although the rim was extremely close to the brake caliper. For safety reasons I've opted to go for the same diameter rim. When I walked into the shop to get a set of tyres they had a set of six of these on the floor ready to go which is why I picked them up. You had these for a while I take because these weren't for the Holland Track last year. Yeah I've done about 30,000 k's on these tyres. Oh really? So far so good. I'm quite happy. I'm regular with rotating them and I think that that helps. That explains a lot. Yeah that explains a lot actually. And also when you've got six tyres to rotate around that obviously helps with tread wear as well. So that's a good tip there. A lot of us are a bit too lazy to do it. I'm getting a bit lazy these days. You rotate your tyres you get more out of them. So these are 33. That's kind of equates to about 33 inches right? More or less 33 inch tyre. And they fit on from a two inch lift? Yep easy. Did you have to change the offset on the rim at all? No it's all completely factory as it was. Okay but these aren't factory rims though are they? No there's an aftermarket wheel. That's the same offset? Same offset, same diameter. I just like the black wheel better than the factory ones. That's good to know. 33 fits straight on the vehicle. For reference I have seen gentlemen with the same vehicle and they run a 35 inch tyre with a factory suspension. Really? Awesome. Do they scrape at all? Don't know. Not sure? Don't know. Okay. Yep. Go on to your lift then. We'll start with the front. What are you on two inches? An inch and a half at the front is what it's worked out to be. And a two inch lift at the back. Springs and suspension at the back is one of the first modifications I did on this vehicle. Hence they've got different set of springs. They're tough dog in the back and a king spring in the front. I left the front's factory for about a year. And just with the weight carrying of the vehicle. Off the caravan? You just did the back? I just did the rear end only. The handing was perfectly fine with the front stand and suspension. But when I added the bull bar and the second battery and I needed that extra lift I went