Troopy Front Bullbar, Winch And Rear Dual Wheel carrier

Front Bullbar for Landcruiser 70s and Winch

I was in love with one of the south Africans designs all the time, lots of contact and back and forward with them! but I realized that first, that company does not want to take care of the customers tidy and on-time and personally I don’t like to do business with the ones who do not care about their own businesses at all, so how they might care for your order then! they told me they will supply to NZ, blub blub blub, but after months of communication and waiting for them for their next lot of their fabrication they suddenly didn’t inform me as they promised to me, and I decided to not chase them again, secondly the cost after importing to NZ and paying taxes etc… pushed me to give away totally, I liked their design which they formed the front bar around the front head lights to the corners so neat and I think it was very good looking bar with respect to to not destroying the beautiful front look of the Landcruiser 70s after adding the bar work, but anyway, let see what I finally decided to get in NZ locally,

Front image is showing you the genuine Toyota front winch bull bar and its the fully Aluminum version, you can get the steel bar almost same style too, but will be much heavier on the front, this one listed to be 43kg overall on their spec, when I got it in their store I truly surprised how light is the bar plus strong and is so much lighter than my expectation! you can see only by one hand you can lift it easy, off course there is lots of other parts to be considered and added during your install but I think this one is one of the lightest and strongest front bars you can get for this weight plus the bar is air bag rated and is a genuine Toyota part !!

After full installation I will try to get accurate weighting to let you know how much weight this kit will add on the vehicle, but I assume is much lighter than what they already mentioned to be !

This bull bar comes with some boxes and other required items for mounting, including all the wiring and chassis mount and installation guide, also if you want a winch on it then extra winch cradle should be ordered too, first I had no idea how heavy would be and was thinking to install it at Toyota hassle free but they would charge you around 1,600NZD just for their labor to install it with a winch installation cost, after seeing the installation guide and how light is the bull bar I decided to do it at home and save the money for rother stuff, and at the end I have to install the rear bar myself too so why not this one which is lighter for sure and a good paper guide to follow.

Here you see you download a full installation guide of the Alloy bulbar and seems is really easy to follow, I placed it in below link for you to download, as its almost impossible to find it on the web, I wont repeat the progress of my installation here but after getting it from powder coating will share you some images after my installation.

The Bull bar sent for Zinc coating and the Satin black powder coated, Im very happy with the result as this new coating will make it so durable and chip resistance plus Aluminum when is aged under the harsh condition usually will look faded, so better to be powder coated properly, and for sure when you do a custom coating, result is so better than the product you might get from the market shelves,

The instruction was very good and easy to follow step by step, I did it at home and very happy that I saved around 1,600NZD installation coast!! the funny thing is the instruction is showing approximate time for 70min and Toyota will charge you for about 12 hours labor! it will take more than 70 min for the first timers but I don’t know why NZ Ebbed Toyota charge customer much higher than their own suggested manual rate,

Another thing to consider, the alloy bull bar got two front lamps cut outs, they sent me the one with smaller cut to only fit the combination light part and no any fog lamp, despite you can get this alloy bars in Australia to be able to fit the fog lamp mount on it too, I asked them for the fog lamp mount plastic part, they charged me more for it and supplied, but it didn’t fit on the provided bull bar as the location hole was smaller, so at the end sent it back, but they could easy supply the front bar with a foglamp mount option for this price which unfortunately they didn’t at early stage and the bar was already powder coated when I found it! Im not very happy about it that they provide the bars to clients with less option but they charge you more as much as they can, by the way not a big deal as I’m happy to have the alloy bar for its less weight on my rig and I like its overall design, specially this bar got some good design points, first the bar got impact absorbent design which you install on the chassis, other brands they don’t have such design and also Winch is mounting directly on the chassis before the bar is mounted on the vehicle, winch not installed on the bulbar same as other brands which to me is a good design strategy to not fit the winch on the floating bull bars and it should be totally separated from it.

The provided shims from Toyota in the bull bar fitting kit not coated and is good idea that before using these shims you zinc coat all the bare metals for future rust pretension.

Winch, the famous WARN 12-s

The famous well used all round the world Warn winch is fitting well on the genuine Toyota winch cradle, also Toyota will install the same brand winches if you buy winch from them, but with much higher than price! NZ Ebbet Toyota quoted me for about 1,000NZD more than the market price for a synthetic Warn winch, they call it “Light Weight Winch” which it will be even lower pull rate than my below12000lb warn winch (they sell 10 or 9 I guess), they don’t mention you which winch they install but they work with Warn, because once I asked them to give me the winch installation manual suddenly in the Toyota manual I found that their winch is the Warn brand too, I put the installation manual in below for you to download.

Relocation 78″ Warn controller kit shown above should be purchased extra to be able to remove and relocate the top mounted controller.

For installing the winch controller you need to remove the controller from top of the winch and by a simple L bracket as shown front of the radiator is a perfect spot for it and could be fully sealed by proper sealant too.

Troopy Rear Dual Wheel Carrier

Options for a good reliable Troopy real wheel carrier is little limited specially if you want to run a separate tow bar, (from Toyota or Hayman reese)

I have a genuine Toyota tow bar and I wanted to install something without any needs to remove my tow bar, Thorburn rear bar is what you want, specially if you are looking to get something durable and strong and vibration free seems this rear dual wheel carrier got heaps of good reviews from all its Australian users,

Seems Throburn not answering their emails on time and initially I had little struggle to sort it out though their main website email contact, I was going to give up and find another product, finally I contacted Troopy Gear and they helped me to purchase it smoothly, I sorted the sea freight through my own arrangement which they did my water tank too, and everything was very smooth.

Kobie from Troopy gear is extremally helpful, answering all questions on time, follow up the requests for you hassle free and I’m totally happy from their customer service, I dealt with some other crowed in the past who do not follow up your requests on time and passionate enough for clients and their business really, so from my hand no money for the time wasters at all, but Troopy gear totally is in my list for any future suggestions to others.

Here is their website : https://www.troopygear.com.au/

Rear bar came pretty quick and Liam from Thorburn contacted me unexpectedly quick that your bar is ready to ship despite I was not expecting it to be ready for more 4 weeks of fabrication! so extremally quick they informed that its ready for shipping also I asked them to powder coat the foot step diamond plate black same as the bar and they did it quickly just with little extra for powder coating which aesthetically was worth it.

Bar arrived with all the fittings, but I have to say fitting instruction on their paper is not really useful but the good thing is that they made a good installation guide video and Kobie from Troopy gear sent it to me which is more helpful to watch,

Link Below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBJEqW2joAA

I had no any drama installing the bar except seems Toyota for installing their genuine bar they remove the chassis captive nuts and they use loose nuts instead, this makes it is very hard to access and tight the bolts during the rear bar installation,

Here I’m showing the necessary angle joint which is absolutely crucial for the rear bar installation, basically without it you cannot access rear nuts and tight your bar in place at all.

Make sure you will have this angle joint and the typical sliding socket adaptor with extention, also you need 13/16″ imperials socket and spanner which they are 21mm Mertic

You need sliding part on an extension arm to squeeze it in place and set it for just the top bolt, then spanner from outside to tight the bolts. angle joint for both top and lower nut.

Another issue for me was that my new modified muffler was on the way of installing angle bracket of the rear bar, so I endued up to remove the muffler first to be able to install my rear bar angle bracket on the chassis/body pre existed bolt, (Please refer to my muffler and water tank installation post)

I have found that Thorburn shipping their bar and also arms without putting any grease on the bare metal parts, when you receive the product you might notice a good surface rust around the bare metal parts and you need to spend time to clean up all the rust first, basically this rust eventually will contaminate your bearing grease and it will reduce the quality of movements and will ruin its working performance on the bearings, so be sure you clean up this rust completely, If they only use very thin layer of grease on the bare metal parts this will save client’s time to clean up the rust really and it could be easy done after their fabrication.

Another part needed to be sanded very well was the bearing hub which I’m showing here, powder coat spray got into this step surface which is the tapered seating surface for the bearings, you need to remove and clean any layer of powder coating residue from the bearing seating surface, as much as this surface is clean then grease and bearing will work smoother and cleaner plus durable for future.

It’s little time consuming to do a good cleaning before applying the grease there and place the bearing on cleaned locations, but this could be easily be avoided by the fabricator if they use Aluminum tape on such areas which not supposed to be painted, it could be done very easy before sending it for powder coating, not a biggy but If I was the fabricator of the product for sure would think about client’s installation time and cleaning these extra areas.

Design of the bar is very good except one point to loose from my point of view which is related to their grease caps, basically they considered for this bara very basic common trailers grease cap, these push-on grease caps on top of a vertical bearing hub are designed to be placed horizontally on the axle axis and will be no any issue for horizontal usage, issue I’m referring is for penetrating water into the hub from edge of the push on caps if seating horizontal no issue, but for this arm which its bearing hub is seating vertical and not horizontal, water could seat around the cap for long time and there is possibility of getting water into the bearing case after while, If I was the designer of this bar definitely would design something more appropriate as the covering cap and it could be easily done by a proper designed cap over the arm joint, anyway I ended up to seal all around the two caps by proper Sika 552AT sealant then spray black zinc over them, this way no way water could get into the bearings, some might don’t care much about this tiny matters and argue, but I’m in the engineering field for about 20 years and this is relaxing my fussy mind much better.

I really like the look of the bar but aesthetically I guess the indicator/tail lights are little bit so close to the end edges of the bar and it was better to move the side lights for a little more (about 10 to 15mm) away from the end edges of the rear bar towards Centre point, that’s only my personal suggestion for their future product look as a designer.

Hope nothing happened to the rear bar lights as its little hard to get access to them from rear to replace the lights in place and is good if they list this light items to buy separately if in the future lights got any fault or damage, then easy to replace,

All into the consideration the Thorburn bar totally worth it and I’m happy of my purchase sofar, regarding its durability and vibration resistance is too soon to review or judge it now, but will see after couple of off-roading and long-term usage.

Weights info

After these modifications here total added weights by considering removed items from factory setup,

TOTAL ADDED WEIGHT ON FRONT: 66KG

TOTAL ADDED WEIGHT ON REAR AXLE: —

Front OE removed weights: 26Kg

Rear OE removed weights: 14.5Kg

Front Bulbar added weight with winch cradle~ 54Kg

Front Winch Added weight~ 38Kg

Rear Dual wheel carrier added weight about 50kg to consider with two arms

Extra spare wheel added weight 30kg, stock rim and tire