new fuso on the way ; )

[lehel1]

thanks for the notes

hello all

thanks for the notes, i will try again as soon as i get alittle time. supposed to pick up my truck from sacramento mid week and my new wheels hopefully next form stockton wheel, then have the tires mounted.
i'll look trhu my previous e-mails as some of you have offered to help get some pic's on here as well. we'll see how it goes

thanks again for the positive words cheers lehel and laura

 

[lehel1]

pick up !!

hello all

i'll keep this abit short so i don't lose anything this time.

we picked up our truck from pioneer in sacramento friday with the new gas tank and suspension. with the new spring pack the truck is lifted about a 1 1/2". the ride seems to varie, generally smoothed out on the highway but on bigger bumps at slow speed we get a good jolt now. not much worst than stock but noticeable. overall a nice change in ride comfort.
the new tank is just whaqt i was hoping for, we live abit remote and the extra fuel is terrific. i got 550 mile on the tanks now and still beleive i'll easily make it to medford tommorro which is another 125 miles.

so, extremely happy with the changes so far. next week our new 19.5 wheels will be done and our new tires will be in too. i hope all will fit well and we are expecting a nice change in ride comfort from those too.

well, thats it for now cheers lehel and laura

 

[whatcharterboat]

Hi Lehel, are you able to post something on 19.5" tyre selections / options in the US? Just interested to know at this point. I heard the 285/70R/19.5 is unavailable. These are one of the best I've seen here for that size rim. 36"diameter.

What about the Hankook AM02?? Are they available?

Keen to see some pics.

Regards John.

 

[kerry]

Keen to see some pics.
.

X2. Curious as to the exact changes in the suspension with what purpose in mind. How much weight were you carrying when you did the comparison and how much air in the tires? I drove my FG to Colorado from NC when I first bought it. It was empty with 80+ psi in the tires. A very rough ride. Once I lowered the air pressure to the correct level and installed my camper, the ride was much smoother.

 

[lehel1]

tires and suspension ?

hello all

the tires we are going to run are yokohama ty303's 285/70 19.5, they are 35.4 x 11.1 and have a rating of 6345 lb's per tire. with all the travels we've done with our unimog we beleive in running heavy duty tires. this also plays well for our planned duel purpose use of our fuso as a store truck and expedition camper. the weight and ride being very similar to our unimog determined our chioce.

the suspension work was kept simple, we added some leaf springs to the spring pack and lengthened them just alittle. this gave us about an 1 1/2 lift (we we'rent looking for this in itself) but this will give us that little bit of clearance room needed for the new tires also.
we found the fuso leans abit with a load in turns and was a pretty rough ride(tested empty), the change is planned to soften the ride on the open road as well as increase our load carrying capacity (not overall load capacity, but with a load on such as a camper be a better all around spring setting)
we're happy so far with the results

will try and get some pic's sent to someone to post soon

we're off to check out some airstream trailers today, still thinking of the idea of mounting one on the flatbed instead of a custom style box. we havn't had much luck in getting responces back from box builders so far.

alaskian campers responded quickly, but we are hesitant due to them only being 88 in wide and they only do a rear door. this means a custom swing rack for our motorbike (not something i'm wanting to deal with again) not discounting them but checking out our options.

i heard form the aussy's also, but the price to buy and import a custom box is alittle out our range at this time, well see. anyone else have or knows of other camper box builders out there we'd love to hear of them.

cheers lehel

 

[Capt Eddie]

There is a popup company that makes a side door with a tent option. It really looks nice. Same set up as an ER. They might do a custom build for you.

 

[lehel1]

more suspension notes

hello all

well, after loading a pallet of concrete (4900 lbs) yesterday i got to see alittle more of the affects of the suspension changes.

first, the big change is the noticable larger gap between the front bumper stops and frame. even without a load before the change there was only a 1/2 in or less gap allowing what would seem a tiny bit of travel for the suspension and articulation. similar thing at the rear which had not hit the overload springs yet.
the ride was better than we anticipated for this weight, which is similar to what we believe a camper might weight in at.
taking this down to the gravel quarry with this load also seems to show a greater degree of articulation in the suspension with less twist in the frame.

one thing we also noticed when loading the pallet is that when the weight was on the edge of the bed the truck tilted much less, then we slid the pallet toward the center of the bed. with that said though, the truck does seem to lean more while driving around curves loaded.

overall, we're very happy with the results so far

i didn't get the brand of popup camper the previous post was talking about ?? i am familiar with fourwheel popups and traveled in one on my dodge truck for many years.

cheers lehel and laura

p.s. a few of you e-mailed me about possibly posting some pics for me, if the offer still stands please let me know, thanks

 

[whatcharterboat]

if the offer still stands please let me know, thanks
06-15-2009 05:07 AM

PM sent.

 

[Terrainist]

www.outfittermfg.com is a pop up truck camper company that is making a pop up with a side entry door and a tent out the back.

If you were looking at Airstream for a cabin, make sure you look at Oliver travel trailers. Double fiberglass hull, on paper should make a very stout cabin. And the fit and finish looks to be excellent.

 

[lehel1]

update, suspension and tires !!

hello all

well, our rig is coming along now. the new suspension spring packs seem to be working great while hauling a load or not. we have alittle more lean than stock with a load but very managable. the extra springs has lifted the truck about an 1" to an 1 1/2"
we are also pleasantly surprized with the 19.5 wheels and yokohama tires. we werent sure how much we would lose power wize with the larger tires. this fear was unwarranted. were finding the power curve of the these motors is great. we regularly pick up loads from medford oregon for our store and pull a very long 6% grade with close to max gvw, so its been easier for us to check each week as we make changes.
the yokohama tires (ty 303 285/70 19.5) are quiet and have a very nice deep aggresive tread. the outside corners of the tires are closed but for so much driving on road especially the regular curvy roads we have here the tire wear should be good. we were also surprized the tires have a new rating of 6619 lbs per. there rated at 130 psi but were starting at 100 psi as the loads will be much less and overkill for the truck.

the wheels came from stockton wheel in sacramento, they do a great job, just don't be in a rush (7 weeks delivery time, told me two) they look and fit great. 8.25 is the width we went with. no clerance problems of any kind.

so, as a work truck were done for now.

the camper, we have a company called m$m campers doing a quote for a cab over style camper to put on our flatbed. alaskian camper is still a possibilty as well as doing a airstream type trailer. wish we had the time to do our own, it has been great watching some of the other projects on here.

anyone want to build us a custom camper ??? lol

well, sorry no pics here (havn't figured that out yet) we will get some new pic's posted on our website later today and over the weekend at www.evansmercantile.com

were planning on going to the northwest modfest in oregon, i'll be taking our unimog camper and laura wants to drive the fuso there as well. should be great fun this year. were also planning to make the calico mogfest in august.

cheers lehel and laura

 

[kerry]

Good to know you have not experienced big changes in power with the larger tires. I posted a link here about a year ago with a precise chart of tire load to psi. The tires on my FG had way too much air in them when I bought it. That chart can help you improve the ride by correlating the needed psi with actual load.
What kind of difference have you noticed in cruising speeds with the larger wheels?
Looking forward to the pictures.

 

[lehel1]

speed ?

hello kerry

don't know the difference yet. changing the speedo is something i havn't found out how to do yet. the dealer doesn't seem to know either. any info on this would be great.

we will be running our other vehical against this over the weekend and i can let you know the difference that way soon

enjoy lehel

 

[whatcharterboat]

Hi Kerry do you have a link back to the tyre pressure chart? Must have missed that. Thanks.

Hi Lehel, check with the tyre technical people for what they recommend. I'm not familiar with those Yoko's. The Toyo's we use sound like a similar load rating / max air pressure, size, etc but we are going 75psi front and 80psi rear. That will be on the new complienced tyre placard anyway for the SRW conversions. So that may be a starting place for you . 100psi sounds very high. You'll really feel that back through the suspension and if you're going on dirt roads you might tear tread blocks.

As for speedo correction >>> you can do it digitally or mechanically. We may be able to help with that but try some of the instrument guys over there. Let me know. The ratio box we do as a kit is a tiny thing but you would have to accurately check the speed first and work out the correction. Our common ratio correction box is for tyres 900mm high. In Oz to be legal a speedo can read up to 13 kph under true speed but there is zero tolerance over so we have to do it.

If you want to do it digitally it's a little more difficult with the Fuso than other vehicles. Still can be done and it's adjustable and even switchable if you are swapping on big offroad tyres often.

The mechanical unit has set gear ratios for a certain percentage of correction. We can custom do these for other ratio's. The good thing though is it can be installed by you at home in about 2 minutes.

John.

BTW the reason I know all about this as I just spent all day on Friday doing our speedo accuracy testing for ADR's as well as our 100kph speed limiter testing for the buses. This was all because of the new FG84 model. I hope they don't bring out a new one next year. What a pain.

 

[whatcharterboat]

BTW Lehel. YTou will need to get a VERY accurate true speed over ground. Checking against another car is not the way to go. I've seen some cars here read more than 10k's low. We use a certified instrument but a GPS should be close enough for you. I say "should" but I have found some that aren't.

And don't try to do it mathematically working on the percentage difference between the standard tyres either. Just a tip.

 

[whatcharterboat]

A very sleepy whatcharterboat said

In Oz to be legal a speedo can read up to 13 kph under true speed but there is zero tolerance over so we have to do it.

I knew I'd stuff that up. Should have been "In Oz your true speed can be up to 13kph below your indicated speed but it can not be higher. Zero tolerance above indicated.

Yeah, sorry for the confusion.