Build Thread: Pachyderm, or "Pac", a 2017 GMC Canyon

[ChasingOurTrunks]

Looks great! One thing I may have missed: What was the finished weight of your rack and how does that weight compare to a Leitner or similar steel rack?

Glad you asked! I forgot to include that detail. My estimate for the rack is about 90 lbs, but I hope to take it off this weekend and measure that to get that 100% accurate. I have no problem lifting the whole thing on my own despite being blessed with the body and raw, animalistic strength of a soft-handed office worker. The Leitner system is 70 lbs, also aluminum, so I'm a bit heavier than that, but our rack will serve as the base for a full cap in due time and thus is made a bit heavier to support our anticipated weights. If we went down to two ribs (which we probably could), we'd be lighter than the Leitner.

That being said, once we get a final weight, if my estimates are off by too much I am very willing to re-do the rack to be lighter. I wanted to err on the "too strong" side of the weight scale given I lack the engineering resources to dial it in on the button to exact tolerances, and I can't do things like X-ray my welds. Our overall goal is 80% of GVWR, so if we can hit that with all our kit and the rack as-is, we'll leave it alone.

I wasn't able to find weights for the 589 Fab option (which also looks to me to be aluminum, but is too low for our needs). The CBI off-road option is listed as 120 lbs so I'm well ahead of that.

 

[vargsmetal]

It's great to see people showing the learning process. A lot of people are too shy/proud to show the mistakes they made along the way and skip ahead to the fully developed final version. Keep up the great work and enjoy your adventures!

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

It's great to see people showing the learning process. A lot of people are too shy/proud to show the mistakes they made along the way and skip ahead to the fully developed final version. Keep up the great work and enjoy your adventures!

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

Thanks Vargsmetal! I really appreciate your kind words. Our goal is authenticity in this stuff - that includes the blemishes and foul-ups. My attitude towards vehicle modifications is the only permanent mistake is the one you give up on fixing. As a wise man on another forum told me once: "It's only metal -- it'll yield".

 

[AbleGuy]

“Modification list:
…Suspension upgrades to better handle loaded weight.”

Could you please share what suspension mods you had done?
Thx.

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

“Modification list:
…Suspension upgrades to better handle loaded weight.”

Could you please share what suspension mods you had done?
Thx.

I have not done any yet — the plan is to finish building it out first so I can know for sure about weights and such.

Based on my research so far I do plan on going with ARB old man emu with a small lift (less than 2”). They currently offer 3 kits for the Colorado but they depend on typical weight configurations like winch, bumper and winch, or stock — but since I plan to run aluminum bumpers I’ll have to get some advice from the experts in Australia.

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

Hello folks,

Not a major update but I figured I'd share it anyway. I mentioned this in my first post of this thread, but beyond overlanding, my wife and I like to document our adventures and I enjoy working with video as a hobby. We are not and have no plans of doing the overland youtube thing as a way of making money — we make these for three reasons:

1) it’s a way of bringing two hobbies together.
2) it’s a way of making a record so that future generations of our family can see what we got up to first-hand
3) it’s a way of letting those we have a meaningful connection with (friends, family, and overland communities like this) know what our latest adventures are in a medium that’s a bit more interesting than text.

Basically if you remember being subjected to your family friend’s vacation slide shows or handycam movies as a kid, this is the same thing except we won’t be inviting you over for dinner first, and you aren’t going to be a captive in our living room so you can shut it off anytime! Jokes aside, we aren’t full timers and we have no desire to be asking for Patreon contributions or anything of the sort. There is nothing wrong with folks who do that, more power to them, but if my video hobby ever came to that it would feel more like a job, and I have a few of those already so I don’t want more! We also always self-fund our adventures and appreciate the freedom that gives us.

With the caveat that you are not going to be getting professional level videos out of the way, we put together a little tribute to our beloved Jeep. It more or less says the same stuff as the first post in terms of our history with our JK and our switch to Pac, and it’s below if you want to watch it. I’ll be adding more videos of our build if and when I feel like it in the future. I’m particularly excited about our new tent plan which we will finish this winter.

Anyway here you go:




Edit: The video may not embed or load properly, but you can Click here for the direct YouTube Link.

 

[Mekcanix]

Subscribed and I actually really enjoyed the Video

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

Thanks for the kind words Mekcanix! I'm glad you liked it!

Regards
Craig

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

Well it’s been an eventful couple of years and I’ve not had the bandwidth and time to continue this build but today that changed.

I’ve posted elsewhere on Expo my reasons for going the route I did but the short version: I pulled all the plastics off my truck with the intention of building a winch-capable bumper out of aluminum. However the price of aluminum meant this was a rather expensive proposition — Plus, COVID has made everything that much harder to do for a hobbyist like myself, and so I abandoned the idea of building my own.

I looked to the aftermarket but the only bumpers available for my rig were steel —and frankly, not exactly changing the world in terms of good design. The difference between most of the bumpers I saw out there and one that I would build myself was negligible. The only exception that I found to this rule was the Australian bars, specifically ARB.

Of course ARB don’t make their summit bar for the GMC Canyon, but they do make it for the Chevy Colorado. The trouble is I’ve been unable to find anyone whose fitted an ARB bumper to a Canyon — they SHOULD fit given they are the same platform, but it seemed nobody wanted to gamble the $2500 to see if the ARB would fit.

Well, I gambled.


It fits super well, with minimal trimming of the plastics — in fact there’s less trimming on the Canyon then the instructions call forin the Colorado. It’s not 100% done yet — the above was just the dry fit. I’m currently working on mounting lights and my winch so I can put it back on.

I’ll do a fuller write up on the process but for now — if anyone is wondering if the Colorado summit bar fits the Canyon, the answer is 100% yes.

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

A bit more done on the front bumper, mounted up the winch and the lights. Tomorrow I’ll wire everything in and bolt on the skids.



Here’s a few notes in case anyone else is wondering about the process:

ARB Instructions:

I read them over a dozen times or so until I could understand all the steps. But honestly the instructions aren’t the best. My goal was to trim as little as possible so I kind of went a bit slowly. I only removed enough plastic to access what I needed to/provide clearance for the mounts. Once I got the mounts on, I started adding back plastics piece by piece and trimming as I went along. I had to trim very little. I then dry-fit the bumper to see if it would fit (the instructions call for you to mount the winch and everything first). That’s when I posted that photo above. Once I mounted the winch, I did need to trim off a bit more plastic from the bottom of the grill.

Install Time:

I just started at around 11 am today, and called it quits at about 10:30 PM. I already had the front plastics off my truck (just the grill was left on). I did that to measure everything for my own bumper but when I decided to go a different route, I decided not to put it back on....7 months ago! There are plenty of YouTube videos on how to do this and if I remember correctly it was less than 4 hours on that part. So, this is definitely a two day job. I still need to wire everything up and bolt on the skids but otherwise it’s done.

A transmission jack makes this job much easier. I was able to adjust the height and the angles of the bar very easily so it was fairly simple to slot it in.

I don’t think the manual calls for it but for final fitment I put blue loctite on everything. I also sprayed down all the surfaces with steel on steel with Fluid Film as a rust preventative.

A few other notes:

For the air vents on the gassers, there is an “upper” set of vents and a “lower” set of vents. You will have to cut off the lower set of vents. I think the same is true on the Colorado but I’m not sure. The instructions don’t say anything about this other than to call ARB and they just say “remove them” but that approach will apparently throw codes so you have to trim them. For Canyons, the only things I found on mine to be careful of were the air temp sensor and the wiring going to the servo that controls the air flaps; cut or damage any of those systems and you’ll throw a code, but it’s easy to trim around it and leave most of it intact. On the canyon, I had to take off the entire lower flaps. It was an easy cut, but the entire upper flaps still function which is good.



It fits VERY close to the grill. I have a VR8000 Warn, and it fits, but it’s very tight. But it fits nonetheless!





The mounts fit fine but I did need to enlarge a couple of holes by a millimeter to get bolts through. That and a mallet that won’t mar the powder coat was enough to get it on there. I suspect this manual labour would be the same one either of the Twins; it’s more to do with manufacturing inconsistency than anything else.




On the Colorado, you have to trim the lower fascia for some filler pieces. This is a 4-6 inch gap on the Colorados. On the Canyons, that isn’t the case — it’s only an inch. I actually don’t think I will trim my factory bumper — this thing fits very close to the lights. I’m going to rivet on some black rubber trim later to tidy it all up.



Overall I’m pretty happy about this. Given these are identical vehicles mechanically, I don’t think I’ve compromised the function of the ARB design at all, and they have their reputation for a reason — this is an excellent bar. It’s very well engineered — most bars that I looked at were just plate steel welded or bent into shape, but the ARB has some very clever gusseting and reinforcement.

If anyone else is doing one on a canyon, feel free to ask me questions.

 

[Todd n Natalie]

That looks really good. It fits the body lines quite nicely.

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

That looks really good. It fits the body lines quite nicely.

Thank you - I actually like it better on the Canyons than I do on the Colorados (but I might be a bit biased). I like how the lights fill out the bar hoops as compared to the Colorado where you see the flash of red bumper at the bottom. The Colorado lights also wrap around the edge of the hood a bit, whereas the GM ones are fully forward and thus fully "inside" the hoops.

I do question my wisdom of installing this over the weekend we just had given it's been -30 C and my truck doesn't fit in my garage so I had to rig up some plastic and a heater just to keep a bit of warmth in it, but that's why they invented wool and hot drinks, and alls well that ends well.





The spotlights look like the ARB ones but they are not - they were cheap copies I got off Amazon. I will be replacing them with a better light; probably a bar instead of spots to allow better airflow. These fAkeRBs are bright but the colour temp is all wrong so it makes driving at night in the winter very fatiguing. But, I'll be setting up my auxiliary cab wiring next so I wanted to mount lights temporarily so I could run the wiring, switches, etc. even if it takes a few months to get a proper light on there.

Oh I should also mention for anyone who stumbles on this -- the fog lights are super easy to wire to the factory fog switches. I just replaced the factory connector on the loom with the ARB one. The Factory connections are a much lighter gauge wiring so I used step-down crimp connectors, some dielectric grease, and some marine-grade shrink wrap so the wiring should be better than the original.

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

We are putting a bunch more work into Pac over the next few weeks so I’ll post updates as I’m able. We have been meaning to make Pac a more dedicated overland vehicle for some time, and decided to bite the bullet this spring to get it ready.

We are going to replace the cap, get our dual battery/12v and our water system installed, as well as set up our fridge. This will be a bit more robust than what we had in our Jeep — we want this to be set up for comfortable long-range touring, so that means living out of it as if it were home.

I started with building out the back cabinet and fridge slides.

FRIDGE SLIDE (nearly done)

This was pretty simple - I used some HD lockout drawer slides and some aluminum angle iron. It’s 2 inches by 4 inches, so there’s a longer edge. These runners will bolt through the truck bed and also act as an anchor for the entire drawer unit. I wanted a bit of extra height so I could use decent bolts and washers for that part, so I flipped around the angle to (short edge to large edge). I also figure this will give more support to the fridge when it is done.



Eventually, these will be tied together at both ends to form a stable rectangle but iI am waiting on material. I wanted to build these first as I wanted to build the rest of the cabinet around where my fridge was located, so with these put together I could account for everything (bolt heads adding width, function of the slides with tailgate, etc.).

DRAWER UNIT

The drawer unit is really the major part of the build for the back. It will house our second battery and a few other things. We wanted a design that would make the space in our truck usable and accessible. We decided to do utilities on one side, drawers on the other.

The entire thing is made of plywood. I used a KREG jig and screws —that is a handy tool if you are going to do something like this. It is both strong and fast to assemble. At least, that’s what the internet told me and my experience today has born that out. I have no idea, I’ve never done this before (I did build a box in my old Jeep that probably would have gotten a failing grade in a high school wood shop class so my carpentry skills are pretty limited.)

Because I’m not big into carpentry, I don’t have a ton of good woodworking tools. I bought the jig mentioned above just for this project (about $130 for the jig and screws), but beyond that I only have a Ryobi 18v circular saw and drill, so It doesn’t require much to bring this together. I found a long 2x4 aluminum stock made an excellent fence for making straight cuts, and a small foam brush was handy for spreading the glue on the boards before squeezing them together. A couple of clamps and a sander round out the tools so far.

I awoke bright and early this morning with 4 sheets of 1/2 inch plywood, and and got to work. I picked 1/2 inch because that seemed to be the most common thickness of wood that others have used for this application, and it was easy on the wallet ($230 for all of it).

For the drawer slides, I’m using 3/4 inch strips of UHMW plastic from Lee Valley. Not cheap ($75) but I wanted something that was very light weight and simple.

I didn’t take many pics of the process, but it’s basically measure, measure, measure, measure, measure, then cut, drill the pocket holes, glue and screw everything together. I watched a lot of YouTube videos in preparation and that’s a far better source than this post for a more detailed “how to”






I’ll hopefully get to building out the drawers later in the week and will update as I go.

 

[YetiX]

Love seeing all the custom work! Keep it up!

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

Thanks for the kind words, @YetiX!

More work done today, but lots more to do!

The bulk of the work this week has been coating the cabinet unit in verathane. It takes about 3 hours between coats, and since there are parts of the project I cannot get at depending on positioning, that’s 8 coats in total (4 one side, turn it over, 4 on the other). If I had spent extra on marine grade plywood, I think I could skip this step as my only desire is to give it some resistance to the elements and I plan to carpet it anyway.

I also got started on my electrical system. First, the cables. I’m using 2 AWG welding wire as my primary current carrier for the second battery, the inverter, and the DC to DC charger. It’s super rugged and above spec (but not by much - my DC to DC charger calls for 4 AWG given the length I’m using). It’s not cheap, but I had a bunch of it laying around from my old receiver mounted winch — I used to be able to move the winch from the front to the back of our old jeep, and so I fashioned an extension cord out of welding wire to plug it in, and that extension cord is no longer needed). Still though, I needed more!

I’m using a hydraulic crimping tool to put a 12-ton crimp and also solder the ring ends, followed by marine-grade heat shrink to seal everything up. Go figure, I’m two ring ends short on my last cable. Nearest ones are about 45 minutes away so I’ll get them tomorrow morning and finish.

Once the ring ends are together (colour coded heat shrink for positive and negative), I then feed them into an expanding tube loom material. This is intended for abrasion resistance. The welding cables are already super tough (one of the reasons I like it for this application) but this helps even more. I’m not sure it’s designed for this though so I will likely use additional loom material for the cabling running from the engine bay.



Each cable is made to length for the accessory. These are laid out on a board that will eventually mount to the front of the canopy. I hope - I haven’t built the canopy yet so I’m not 100% sure this will fit. If not, I can make a new board. That space of the cab is open and not really used for much so I figured this was the least obtrusive spot to put all this stuff. Plus, it allows me to route the wiring behind it into the cabinet so that I can be intentional about where my wiring is running (I.e. avoiding pinch points, having cargo dropped on it, etc.


I want to keep all these things relatively accessible — I expect my water pump to fail regularly (though it never has) as we get a lot of cold temps up here and so I expect it to freeze up each winter but it’s 6 years and going strong. Kudos to FloJet, I guess!

Here’s a better view:



The Renogy unit is the DC to DC charger I chose. It will do what I need it to do, at a price point that’s hard to beat. We got it on sale and had a coupon code so we got a good deal.

I’m using Blue Sea fuse box with 12 circuits on it. I don’t plan to use all 12 I just like having options! This one was a split positive box which I didn’t want but I’ve fashioned a cable to bridge them together. I plan to run all my secondary electrical off this box, even for some in-cab items, because my experience in the past has taught me that the absolute last thing I want to do is compromise the stock harness in any way. The inverter is a 600 watt continuous sine wave. This is mostly for charging laptops and the like when we are in camp. It will go direct to the battery since it’s switched and fused independently. It was fairly cheap from Amazon.

The switch box will control the water pump and the canopy lights for now. We may add more in the future or we may try to rig the inverter to this panel - it would be easier to see when it’s on - but we will see.

Tomorrow is upholstery for the cabinets and trimming them, and then I’m on hold till next weekend I hope - my material for my canopy is hopefully coming this week.