It's finally here!!!

It's here!

First impressions:

• Well built - all the welds look good, the bending is done well, it looks good
• the stainless hoop is beaut - looks a million bucks, mandrel bent, and the tag they welded on for the UHF aerial is spot-on
• Weighs about 35kg
• Just fits in the back of a pathfinder with the seats down - thanks to NQX Transport not delivering to residential addresses
• No winch mounting plate? Assumed that if you were buying a steel winch bar with the cut out on the front, that it would have an integrated thick (~10mm) winch mounting plate attached to the mounting brackets (IE, on the car-side of the crush cans). I can remember asking them about this, as we plan to fit a winch in 12 months time. Was told that there's nothing else we needed. Will follow up tomorrow in case I'm missing a bit.
• No integrated recovery points? Might need to get some custom made - I don't really trust the OEM welded loops on the front of the car - would prefer something without any weld joints. But I may just be being pedantic here.
• No instructions. Fair enough, it's all pretty straight forward, but I guess I expected something. At least for the wiring (which is all colour coded and pretty self-explanatory though, it must be said).
• wiring for the fog lights includes the switch and the relay, and everything's got split-tube condute around it, so will be easy to make a professional job out of it.

So the next step for me will be to dismantle it, so I've got just the steel lower section by itself. That way I can paint it up without worrying about needing to mask off anything, and will (hopefully) get a better result that way. I thought I had ordered the grey powdercoated lower instead of the painted steel, but the paint will probably be easier for me to paint over. SportsRange knew that I was intending to paint it, so maybe they changed the order because of this? I don't know - haven't had a chance to talk to them yet. Either way, it's not really a problem for me, since I'm going to paint it white to match the car.

So far, I'm happy with it. I guess the extra you spend on a proper ARB Sahara bar gets you things like the integrated winch cradle and the recovery points, but even if I need to get them made up locally, it should still come out cheaper in the long run. The mounting points look sturdy enough, and the bar certainly looks like it will stand up well. It's not the thickest steel in the world, but the way it's folded should give it more than enough strength for what we need it for. Not that you can really tell how strong the welds are by just looking at them, but they at least look well done.

Anyway, that's all I've got to report for now. As mentioned above, I'm pretty happy with it. It'll dress up the car a bit, whilst providing a fair bit more protection than standard. More pics to follow as I get it ready and attached to the car.

Came well packaged, with no damage from it's trip around the country:


Aerial tag welded on - nice job!


Behind the bar:


Box containing the mounting brackets and the wiring harnesses:


I don't have a photo of the mounting brackets with the crush cans, but they're quite a nice design. No idea if they fit or not - will find out at some stage in the future I guess! But they're pretty to look at.

So my task list looks something like this:

• Dismantle bar
• Undercoat and paint - single-stage acrylic probably to match the car
• Wire up the new lights
• Mount bar to car
• Drill hole in top of bumper section for AM CB aerial
• Relocate both CB aerials (UHF & AM) down onto the bar, and rewire to suit
• Trim inner guards and figure out a way to "seal" them to the front of the bar - other Pathfinder owners with the proper ARB bar have run into trouble here when the installers didn't do this step properly. In one case, the incorrectly-cut guards acted as a funnel on a water crossing, and shot the water straight up into the air intake for the motor - dead motor.
  
• ???
• Profit!!!

If I can get in and get the paint and everything I need during this week, I may be able to look at fitting it up this weekend - we'll have to see. I'm hoping to jump up the CREB track on Saturday the 3rd, so hopefully I'll have it done by then to test it out properly! Watch this space!