We picked up a tidy N80 HiLux through Slattery Auctions after a hands-on inspection in Dandenong confirmed it was a clean, straight example. A successful bid later, it was ours, fleet-spec, lightly accessorised and ready for its first major stop: ARB.

We left Slattery with a big old smile and hightailed it 10 hours up the Hume to Sydney for our date with the team at ARB Moorebank. We had teed up a front bar (↗), 12,000lb Bushranger winch (↗) and some Bushranger Night Hawk LED driving lights (↗), which were our first real items on the to-do list and gained us a heap of functionality in one hit without over-capitalising.

Yeah, we know, ARB bars may not be a new product, or even terribly exciting, but they flat-out work and offer a huge amount of protection without looking like we drove through a farm gate at high speed. As for the winch, it has a remote control and rope instead of wire cable to keep the weight down, and is a no-brainer given this rig will likely be taken on several solo trips.

We don’t need to tell you why we went for the Night Hawk LED spotties, do we? Not only are driving lights a safety concern, they also make after-dark track navigation a pleasure, not to mention significantly reducing the likelihood of animal impacts. Finally, we had the guys install a set of rated recovery points while they were there. We’re professionals, so of course we never get stuck, but it’s nice to have the ability to be snatched or winched out of a predicament if we were to lend our HiLux to someone who’s less responsible than us.

You might be wondering why add all these things first, instead of fitting them down the track. Well, as we mentioned, having a winch onboard is essential for solo travel, and the bar, recovery points and lights give healthy boosts to our looks and safety points too. Also, you have to start somewhere and we reckon this is a great jumping-off point for our build.

1

Installing the bull bar, winch and lights

Upon arriving at ARB, the guys hooked straight in and assembled our bar and winch, along with mounting the control box and fairlead on the bench, before plucking off the stock front bumper to expose the rails.

From there, the bumper was trimmed to suit the new lines of our bull bar before the bolts were all installed by hand and torqued up. The winch was wired to an underbody cut-off switch and the lights were expertly hooked up to the high-beam circuit, with a switch run into the cab within easy reach of the driver. All up, the job took around four hours and would have taken us at least double that if we were to give it a crack ourselves in the driveway. Sometimes it pays to use the people who do this sort of thing for a living, eh?

By the next morning we were out exploring the local tracks before sunrise to test the lights’ bush-readiness and spool the winch line in under load. As you can imagine, the Night Hawks turned the track from pitch darkness into the inside of a convenience store, and the winch operation was fast, smooth and, thanks to the remote operation, super convenient.

Got to say we’re pretty stoked with this first round of mods. Stay tuned for round two, as we turn our second-hand Luxy into something we reckon is better than new for similar money.

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What we installed

With thanks

Big thanks to the team at ARB Moorebank (↗) for getting us in on short notice and doing a super-neat job on the installation of the bar and wiring of the winch and lights.

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