SHOCKING FIND - Hardest Worked 4WD in Aus Gets an INSANE Makeover!

Just recently we've taken Sooty off the road to give it a complete new refit. Refreshen it up, put new bar work on it, give it a new lick of Raptor coating, as well as change the full touring setup including a brand new set of drawers. This vehicle is absolutely amazing. I can't wait to show you exactly how it's turned out. This vehicle here hardly needs any introduction. It's Sooty Mark II and it's about two and a half years old since I built it right here in this patch of concrete in front of my shed. And in that time it's done so many tough trips. I think we worked it out. I've done about 20 hard trips and I've just got back from another Tasmanian trip that was absolutely grueling, super tough on all the gear. I've given it a good clean out, taken all the mud out of the chassis rails, all that sort of jazz. And I'm thinking to myself, I've got a little bit of time in between the next trip. It's time to give Sooty Mark II a little bit of love. And there's a few things I've learned in the last couple of years that I want to change up a little bit to make it even a better version of itself. One of the things I want to change, one of the first things is the bar work. Now I love this bar. We've modified it a few times. It's super strong, super tough and I quite like the look of it, but it is super heavy. So it adds probably an unnecessary about 60 kilos to the front of the vehicle. So I do want to sort of look at options about replacing that. If you look at the actual body itself, now I've hit a stump here, like in the Daintree one time when we were exploring a new track. That's actually twisted the bonnet a little bit, so I wouldn't mind doing a little bit of panel beating. Now while the Raptor coating has held up, it's got a stack of scratches down it, but worse still, these flares are about to fall off. And in fact, that's the actual the best flare on the vehicle. All the other ones are pretty much off. The rear bar, I've got a couple of mini issues with this one. It just catches under full articulation, so I wouldn't mind just following the curve. So just some slight modifications to the bar work, nothing too crazy. If we get down to the back of the vehicle, this storage setup has been modified quite a few times and it does work. It's quite practical, but I don't think it's the best utilisation of this space. You can see, like, I've got my swag and stuff in the back there. It's a little bit messy in here, as I've just finished a trip, and I reckon I could do something a little bit better. We've already talked about the storage solutions that we want to do in the back there, but the inside of it's going to need a bit of loving as well, especially coming back from a trip like Tasmania. The amount of mud in this vehicle is insane. Like, look at this. We're talking about mud. There's enough topsoil underneath this vehicle to probably, you know, grow a patch of potatoes in, and that shouldn't be inside the vehicle. So what I want to do is basically strip everything out, give it a good clean, and just give it a new lease on life. Like I said, nothing's broken, nothing's not working the way it should. It's a great vehicle. I'd take this to Cape York tomorrow if I needed to, but while I've got a little bit of a break in between trips, it's time to give it a bit of loving. So I guess the plan of attack, the first thing you want to do is probably take it down a pinnacle 4x4, and then we'll go probably get the bar work off, strip the interior, and trust me when I say this, it's going to look a million bucks. The boys at Pinnacle have looked after our vehicles for years, so it only makes sense that they'd be the first ones to help me out with the Sooty makeover. The first thing to do is get all this bar work off. Looks like Sooty might have had a little bit more dirt in it than I thought. Now it's time to get Sooty's panels all fixed up. We've taken it to Brisbane to give Sooty a coat of Raptor spray. The fellas from Exclusive Customs have done a quick job on the body, and they've done their best to try and get all the dents and bruises out of the body so we can apply a fresh coat of Raptor. The boys from Raptor mask Sooty up. They put some primer on, and also mix up a bit of Toyota Grey, and lay on a couple of fresh coats of Raptor coating. After a bit of hard work from the boys, Sooty is starting to look brand new. Sooty's just come back from paint, and he's looking like an absolute gem. I mean we're going for the exact same Raptor coating. It's 20% thinned out, and it's also got that metallic look. It's actually a Toyota Hilux Grey, believe it or not. But you can see that a little bit of body work's happened. Just some real minimal stuff. We haven't gone to town on this vehicle. You know what it's built for. It's going to be back on the hard track soon as it's done, so we're not going crazy with the body work. But that's the good thing about the Raptor coating. It actually hides a lot of the imperfections. And it looks like a new car again. Once you start fitting it up with all the bits and pieces, brand new flares, it's going to look like a brand new Sooty, which is... I'm really digging how it's looking right now. With the front end, we're going to go for a different bar. Now, I've decided I'm going to go for an off-road animal bar. Now, the reason why it looks really good, there's no doubt about that. It gives you a slightly better approach angle, and it's a heck of a lot lighter as well. So, the whole thing with this vehicle, I'm trying to just basically make really subtle improvements that's going to help it off-road. We even got, believe it or not, these going to come off. These are an eBay special. I was never happy about them. We've actually got some genuine decals and strips to go on this. It's going to look like, well, like I say, a brand new 80 Series. Now, here's something I want to show you. Now, keep in mind, I've cleaned this vehicle. I had it on the hoist. I probably spent close to two to three hours trying to get all the mud out of the chassis. Now, if you have a look down that rail, it's absolutely chock-a-block. No different from this one here. Look at this. The amount of mud and dirt down the bottom of that is insane. Now, we're going to clean this out a little bit better, but it goes to show, when you do a fair bit of mud stuff, even when you think you've cleaned the vehicle, chances are, yeah, it won't be any good. While I'm at the back of the vehicle, I want to show you the cargo area, because we're going to do a fair bit of changes in here. Look at those brand new flares. Look at them. They're so pretty. Now, this is the old setup I've had for a long, long time. I plan to change it out. I was just speaking with Steve at Pinnacle, actually. He's developed a new draw system, which is going to give me more storage, but also save me a lot of weight. So, I was all ears when I heard about that, and he's got some really clever ideas. I'll show you a lot more on that later, but basically changing the whole rear setup of Old Sooty. So, pretty excited about that. You know, the Zenit system of drawers is going to be a lot lighter, give me a lot more storage. So, at the end of the day, I'm going to have a more practical touring setup, but it's going to be more capable off-road. So, those tiny little things that's going to make this even better than it was. So now, all that's really left to do is, the guys at Pinnacle, they've put some big hours on this vehicle recently, and before and after every trip, realistically. We're going to go through all the mechanicals. There's a fair bit to do there. Plus, of course, just refitting everything back up. Once it gets the new bar work, the new drawer system, I mean, this thing is going to be absolutely looking at a million bucks, and I'm very excited. I can't wait. Now, let's sort out this rear setup. I can't believe it, but we're still finding mud in every bit of Sooty. Now, have a go at this. This is the brand new Zenith 4x4 drawer system. Now, first thing I want to point out is, I've got about twice as much storage, but get this right, it's actually a kilo lighter than the other setup I had in here. So, I've got four different drawers, and they're nice and shallow drawers. And one thing Steve pointed out to me, what's so good about a shallow drawer is you don't need to sift through the drawer to find everything here. Also, the fridge side is also encompassed inside the drawer system. Got a little table as well, that just folds out, and I can cook out the back of Sooty nice and easily. But if you ask me, I just love the whole setup here. I'm going to put my tools in here, so I get weight from other places in the vehicle, get it nice and low in these drawers, and I'll have enough or more than enough room for all my camping gear as well. And on the topic of weight reduction, it's not just a lighter weight drawer system I have in the back of old Sooty here. The boys at Pinnacle, when they started taking the old drawer system out, they got 15 kilos of mud out of the side of old Sooty here. So, that's a heck of a lot. It's going to help me, I'm going to probably gain another 50 horsepower because of that. And now the rest of Sooty is starting to come together. Sooty's had a complete makeover down here at Pinnacle 4x4. It's been completely re-sprayed, it's got brand new bar work, there's a whole stack of brand new features. But there's one thing we retained from the old build. Now, if I show you down here in this new bar, it's the Runda 13 Expedition. We used this for one trip down in Tasmania. It's their brand new winch. Now, what I like about this one is just notice how easily it fits into this off-road animal bar. It's because it's actually quite short and they've done it on purpose so it fits a lot more applications. If you take a closer look, you'll notice it's a completely new design. And one of the reasons is because they've made it a and a lot stronger than the old one. So overall, you've got a lot stronger winch that's going to fit into more applications. Even the fairlead has been redesigned. I want to show you the control box. Now, this is the part that normally lets a lot of winches down. Now, the brand new control box has a 600 amp solenoid. It's also better waterproof and dustproof. All the terminals are a lot stronger, so you're going to get a lot more reliability out in the bush. I thought it was time to get Sooty out of the workshop and give you guys a closer look around. Now, in a word, the results are absolutely amazing. I'm stoked how old Sooty's turned out. Now, you've got to keep in mind, there has been over 300 hours, mostly by pinnacle, put into this vehicle. Bud's Customs have done a little bit of suspension work on here, and of course, it's been re-sprayed as well. The guys down at Raptor Coatings have done an amazing job. They've just basically brought it back to life. And that was done in a couple of days, nice and quickly. But as you can see, just a quick coat of Raptor brings this thing back to life and makes it look amazing. So firstly, let's start up front with the off-road animal bull bar. Now, it's a whole new look for Sooty. The old bar was a custom bar that we'd modified a few times. It had a lot of dent and bruises in it, and it still worked a treat, but it was so darn heavy. This one here is a lot lighter weight and super strong as well. It houses everything I need, including the Runva Expedition. I've got the new Steady Evo lights on the front here, which I think suit this bar really well. And of course, I've got heaps of provisions for things like my UHF aerial and stuff like that. Walking down to the back of the vehicle, first thing you'll notice, it's got some brand new clear views on here. Now, these are the brand new compact ones. A little bit smaller, and I think they suit the 80 Series a lot better. You'll see as well on the side of old Sooty here, it's got some brand new decals. Now, these are OG, original ones. You'll notice some brand new wheels. Now, these are the Dirty Life DT4s, brand new in the Dirty Life range. They're a true beadlock wheel. You can run them beadlock for off-road, of course, and you've got the non-beadlock way you can run them as well, so they're completely legal. Come down to the back of the vehicle, and you've seen this setup before in the workshop, but I've actually had a bit of an idea recently. Now, while it's about the same weight as the previous drawer system, what it allows me to do is to fit more in here, so what I can actually do is delete everything I've got going on in the middle here. So, I've got a drawer here, and believe it or not, this setup here weighs just about as much as the drawers I had in the back. So, I'll be able to take this out, because all my tools now will go in the bottom drawer, keep that weight nice and low at the back there. Just little chopping and changing things like that. Just clever storage ideas allow you to have more space, so you can muck around with your setup. Now, another thing you didn't get to see a lot of, but I mentioned before, it went to Bud's Customs to tweak some things on the suspension. Now, I'm still running the Formula F4R remote res shock absorbers all around in the vehicle. Those things have performed flawlessly, but what I've actually got Bud and the boys to do is weld in some torsion bar sway bars front and rear. Now, I'm a big fan of those style of sway bars, because they give a lot more stability off-road, especially when you start to lift wheels and things like that. The other thing I've done as well, is I've changed the location of the Panhard mount on the diff. I've actually raised that up, so I can keep the Panhard nice and flat. Now, what that does, it does a lot of things, but it will basically improve the handling of this vehicle on and off roads. Doing that mod at the rear of this vehicle will actually make it act a little bit more like a 4-link. It's not a 4-link, it's still a 5-link, still got the Panhard, but it will increase my performance off-road, but also on-road as well. So, very excited to test this one. I hope you guys have enjoyed this build episode of Sooty, let's call it Sooty Mk2 Version 2. It's been very exciting to see this vehicle come to life in so many ways, but just a bit of a refit to keep this thing nice and fresh, and also just refine on the ideas I've previously had and make it even better. Well, as far as I'm concerned, Sooty's ready for its next off-road adventure. I think when I get back from the next trip, I wouldn't mind putting some sliders on and maybe some even rear scrub bars to try and protect those flares. They're getting harder and harder to come by, and I want to try and keep Sooty in reasonable condition moving forward. But the question I ask you guys is, what would be the next mod you'd do to Sooty? Now, I know a lot of you guys are very clever, you'd have some ideas. Maybe it's along the lines of camping, maybe it's off-road modifications. Let us know in the comments below. I'm always keen to hear back from you guys. Well, cheers to a big year in Soot for 2025!