The title sort of says it all but if people are interested I will start a series of threads on my experience with setting up an ISUZU NPS four-wheel-drive truck as a serious off-road camper. I'll use the same title but change the end word to address each of the general areas that we have come across.
Firstly let me say that we purchased the basic unit from All Terrain Warrior on the Sunshine Coast in Australia but I am not employed by them nor do I get any commissions or other financial gain. Unfortunately we could not afford to purchase the "bells and whistles" version of the Scout so we have had to do a lot of setting up and problem solving ourselves. Having said that I can thoroughly recommend All Terrain Warrior if you are considering one of these styles of vehicles.
By far and away the biggest problem we had to solve was the issue related to suspension. If we had the money we would certainly have engaged ATW to carry out either the coil conversion they are now doing or some sort of extended leaf set up. However doing this on the cheap has given us a real insight into how the suspension on trucks works and the problems, particularly in light trucks, of the unsprung weight of the heavy front axle versus the overall weight over the front axle.
When we first took delivery of our truck it was fitted with the standard springs and shock absorbers front and rear. The NPS is a six tonne rated truck but only weighing just over 4 tonnes as delivered. The suspension was so bad that my wife cried all the way home and both of us were shaken to pieces by the horrendous ride on the trip home. I consoled her in the knowledge that we could make the suspension a lot better. However I needed the assistance of a good friend of mine who owns a truck suspension company on the Gold Coast in order to do a lot of trial and error testing.
I will cut a long story short by telling you is simply that we have tried all the traditional fixes that one would normally try in a cab over situation. In the end we found the following things dramatically improved the ride to the point now where the truck is almost car like in suspension.
Front Suspension:
1) we modified all the hinges from the standard 19mm rubber bushes to 25mm greased pins and shackles.
2) We obtained a 1300 mm x 70 mm parabolic spring pack from another truck. Unfortunately we do not know exactly what truck these springs came from as although brand-new I found them at a wreckers; but I suspect they came from the front of a 2009 Hino 500 series.
3) We fitted a set of Boundless Rider fully in cab adjustable air shock absorbers
4) although it might not seem relevant it actually made a significant difference in the front suspension by fitting a substantial rear towbar which carries the two spare wheels. The total all up and weight of the towbar and spare wheels is ~300 kg and although I'm not sure it's exact reason I theorise that by adding a static weight to the rear of the truck acted like a counterbalanced pendulum which inhibited the front of the truck from moving up and down so readily.
5) we modified the wheels from the standard 17.5 to 19.5 inch super singles with a 265/70 tyre fitted. Although when we can actually manage to obtain a set 285/70 these will be the standard tire we fit to this vehicle (someone who shall remain nameless has purchased every tire in Australia of this size!).
6) we have had both a caster and camber kit fitted to the front and which although probably hasn't had much effect on the suspension itself it has dramatically improved the handling particularly during undulations in the middle of corners.
All up this has cost us about $3000 which although not cheap is far less expensive than the $10-$12,000 for the OEM conversion by ATW.
The next step we are going to take is to remove the third leaf from the parabolic spring pack to see if this makes the front a little bit more compliant but to be honest I think it's about as good as we are going to get it for the reasons I alluded to above; the simple fact that the unsprung weight of the front axle is a significant proportion of the total weight of the front end. As a result although will we handle compression bumps quite well drop aways or decompressions are always going to be a problem. it will be interesting to see what if any difference the fitting of a 200 kg bull bar/winch combination to the front-end does. I'll update this thread sometime later in January next year to let you know what the outcome was.
Rear Suspension:
At this stage we are only just starting down the track of getting the rear suspension correct. Because our vehicle only weighs about 4.3 tonnes we found the rear end was bouncing when we went over speed humps so we had the auxiliary spring pack removed and the main springs slightly reset so they work a little bit more. Although this has dramatically improved the rear ends ability to articulate and for comfort purposes it has also detracted a little bit from the handling of the truck as it tends to roll a little bit more in corners.
We are sort of in limbo with respect to the rear end, when we add some extra weight to the front next year we'll see what happens and if the rear suspension is reasonably satisfactory I will simply purchase another set of those stunningly good shock absorbers made by Boundless Rider and fit them into the back. Failing that I will probably go back to ATW and ask them to do that really nifty coil conversion they have been working on but I might have to take out a second mortgage on the house and sell one of the children for medical research
The only other thing you need to consider is the use of some sort of detachable sway bar for off roadwork (note the rear of the NPS does not have a sway bar fitted as standard). If you take the front sway bar off on the road the truck rolls around far too much especially on high speed highway conversely the sway bar is way too stiff to allow proper articulation in off road situations. I am simply going to replace the existing nuts and bolts on the bracket with a wingnut/split pin set up so that I can quickly remove the sway bar when I go into any sort of serious off-road situation.
![IMG_20141205_100026993_HDR[1].jpg](https://expeditionportal.com/forum/data/attachments/195/195515-b41fb1db00b21dbef2ad375539d87e97.jpg "IMG_20141205_100026993_HDR[1].jpg")
![IMG_20160712_064738210[1].jpg](https://expeditionportal.com/forum/data/attachments/274/274207-372c66b6d1f9975b38729196fdd8d3ed.jpg "IMG_20160712_064738210[1].jpg")
Here are the larger inverted shackles![IMG_20160712_065628862[1].jpg](https://expeditionportal.com/forum/data/attachments/274/274208-ef9f1e7651b6401f6017c169f918b448.jpg "IMG_20160712_065628862[1].jpg")
we had to "cut and shut" the exhaust pipe to clear the shackles