That 4X4 ute you’re thinking of ‘building’ for that big adventure? Yeah, sorry to say but 80 per cent of your plans in that respect are probably really dumb ideas…

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Here’s the thing with these utes: Hiluxes, Rangers, BTs, Navaras, Tritons, D-MAXes, even Amarok: They’re light-duty vehicles. Like, keep saying this to yourself: “Light duty.”  

If you’re thinking of your ute as a truck, wake up. I strongly suggest you go look at a real truck. They’re not the same thing. Not even close.  Bolting all this stuff up, in, on, and around these vehicles, and adding the 4-5 people and all those provisions, and otherwise maxxing out the 1100kg payload - and then flogging you prized possession over (quote) ‘medium to advanced 4WD tracks’ for (quote) ’10-15’ years is at best quite a bad plan when your stated, overarching priority is (quote) ‘reliability’.  

In fact, that sound you hear is reality pounding on the door, demanding to assist you with recalibrating your frankly batshit plan. If you let ‘reality’ in, it would explain calmly that your light-duty 4X4 dual-cab pickup is about to get caught in the crossfire, because severity of operation is the enemy of reliability. And you want both, apparently.  

Reliability is compromised when operational severity is increased.  These sorts of vehicles, frankly, are not designed to be beaten endlessly at the limits of conflicting capabilities. (Limit of off-road ability + limit of payload capacity = a great way to break something expensive and/or end up parked on the roof. This happens all the time.  

People often think it’s a great idea to tow something really heavy as well. It’s not.  So if you are going to do this adventuring, I’d recommend figuring out a way to do it at well under the maximum payload capacity, or carry the maximum payload if you must, but don’t also do heavy-duty 4WD work at the same time.   

Or buy an actual truck, like an Iveco Turbo 4X4, which is kinda designed to do both things at the same time (and when you’re checking out the Iverco, have a look at how different the fundamental engineering of a vehicle such as that actually is…)  

That Iveco is not a ‘light duty’ vehicle.  

Alternatively, you could put 500kg in the ute, which is really just the family and some essentials, and maybe tow a trailer not more than 2000kg. (Like 400kg tare and with a payload of 1600kg - two axles, braked, roller-rocker suspension… It does not have to be the fanciest off-road trailer money can buy - just a decent trailer, for touring.)  

Lots of people turn their utes into the showcase of 4X4s - which is a great recipe to overload them (or on-limit load them) and thus engineer out any latent reliability the vehicle(s) possess. If you max out the payload and then max out the severity of the usage, everything will break sooner, and it’ll be a pig to drive. 

This is heresy, of course, to the ears of ARB or TJM. They want to sell you one of everything. But you don’t have to say ‘yes’.