4WD Canopy Setups, How to NOT MESS IT UP

4WD canopies are easy to get wrong especially if its the 1st or 2nd one you are building or fitting out. Before you fit them out follow these tips and use it to find out what you really need and want to do before investing time and money into it.

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[BobJones]

Less is king. Less weight, less restrictions, less fuel, less damage, less time at work to pay for stuff destined to become landfil

[thedownwardmachine]

Great video! I think given all that you've covered, an upright fridge will be the best choice for my motorcycle.

[nicknick]

A well done "no commercial" tutorial. Good job!

[Green__one]

Plastic bins in metal or wood dividers make excellent light weight drawers. Easy to build, light weight, and come out easily for packing. Big win all around!

[DSKlauckProductions]

I asked all kinds of questions about the 4 thousand pound towing difference of 2003 silverado and 2015 silverado. Salesperson, service persons, no clue.
It's the boxed frame. Don't remember how I found that out. Probably asked the right person the right question. That's you. Amazing and thoughtful. Thanks for bring it. Good job.

[red_rocket.]

I have been watching people set up utes and canopies for many years and have been laughing at many set ups. Now your talking about what I have been laughing about. My canopy has no heavy draws, no drop fridge slide, no steel fridge slid, no oven, no microwave, no big inverter, no induction hot plate, no kitchen slide, no false floor, no false wall to hang all the high tech 12v bells and whistles and only one spare wheel and my wheels are alloys not heavy steel. Another thing to think about is the spare weight carrying over the front axle. I have air compressor and other gear under the bonnet or to the front rather than in the canopy. Glad to see you have come around and are now promoting weight consciousness. Love your channel.

[justinkatipa]

5:16 engineer here. Weight up top can be offset by adding weight as low as you can. If you have 90kgs on the roof if you add around 1.5x the weight just below the tray (ie; 135L of water) you will potentially lower the centre of gravity back to where it was prior to adding the tent.

[TristanWhiting]

Ive had a compact canopy with duels spares. Things I’d change if I had my time over: mounting the awning on the opposite side to the fridge, maybe getting a quarter length canopy, going with the old style fold out RTT (lighter, you should have time to set up when you are camping), getting a track correction to prevent dual spares. One thing I would recommend though is to pull the canopy off for a few months a year so you can service/detail it and drive with just a tray and going over the weigh bridge before a big trip. Another thing if you are starting from scratch is do you even need a tray body when you can get roof conversions for wagons and troopies.

[MarkLaskyDavison]

Great video Ronny! I would love to see a video on your thoughts on open tray set ups, different options for mounting water, gas, compressors, 12v under the tray - pros and cons to a battery being exposed under the tray etc.

[shanedwyer]

Great educational video. A large number of people have no idea about GVM for their vehicle and that everything they attach or remove from the vehicle alters the GVM. Ball weight is a big issue when it’s forgotten about.

[kirajarm]

Well put together. The GVM always held me back from even starting such a build. Then I found a 6X4 Ford Ranger Supercab with GVM and GCM upgrade secondhand at a steal of a price. I absolutely love this car, not my daily driver but a fit for purpose vehicle. I'm still in the throws of changing the tray and including the tray 120L water tank, twin, twin ARB compressors (one each side) and various tie down options. My next step will be the canopy and given I have 2700mm of tray to play with and an extra 700kgs over OEM GVM in the mix, I'm attending YouTube University now to make sure I don't make too many mistakes. My canopy manufacture of choice is Concept Canopies as they do custom, too many manufactures have their set size, take it or leave it. Thank you for the time and effort to put this blog together. 👍

[stevesmith]

Another 4WD channel just did one on canopies. We won't mention the name😊
Yours is much better🎉❤

[taralealife]

Best video on canopies on YouTube! Thanks!

[troy]

Well done mate, so many guys out there with 'all the gear and no idea'.

[robhart]

Through building out my canopy, my biggest learning is weight is killer. A really cool idea to help reduce this amount of stuff you take. Place a smaller dot sticker on all the big items you take. after a few trips, start removing the dot stickers of each thing and you'll be surprised what you take and what you actually use.

The age old saying, less is more 😉

[fattrav]

Great vid Ronny. Some helpful concepts. I find a simple weight saving solution to having to carry a funnel for filling water tanks, is to borrow the Mrs' shewee and use that.

[tingbase]

Instead of too many hard boxes or drawers I've opted to go with arb soft cases for recovery gear and north face gear bags for camping gear/living gear. I'm also thinking steps for the fridge

[hanserikharper]

This is interesting to me. I live in the states in a town where the power goes out often. I designed my setup around the idea of a portable power generator (powered by solar on the RTT), that I can pull out to power the house, or whatever I need as needed. It keeps the fridge always on when in the truck but can easily be pulled to power whatever I need in a power outage, be it power tools, home fridge/freezer if needed, and power home lighting. Everything had to be modular to make it work, but if a friend loses power I'm the one they call. Also relatively light and was completely DIY. But being able to remove the power source as needed was the key.

[Jdmorris]

Great video. With all of the talk about power, I did not recall the mention of solar panel weight.

[CustomcrowdMitroc]

I know people that have the "full package" canopy set up with everything including the kitchen sink installed and they end up toruing more uncomfortably than what I do with a very basic set up, I just have a little 1000mm canopy with a fridge and some draws I don't even have a fridge slide and I can tour more easily based off the fact that I'm light. And having that small of a canopy leaves empty space in the tray for carrying things like wood rubbish all sorts of messy items you won't want to have in your nice canopy set up, and at the end of the day it's simple but it achieves the same purpose, it's a lockable place that keeps your Camp gear out of the weather and that's it.

The guys I go with that have massive set ups are so nervous off road due the the amount of weight over the back axle and there's been multiple times where cars have almost rolled on tough tracks. All those guys are opting out of their massive set ups and going back to small set ups