Electrical

[willedoo]

I've just bought a second hand steel tray for my dual cab to replace the tub. It needs a few modifications and a good paint job before fitting. It came from the wreckers and is complete except for missing tail lights. I want to go to LEDs, so here's the question: does anybody have any experience with the cheap Chinese sets you can buy on eBay. You can get a pair for $50 or less compared to $170 each for good quality Narva lights. I know quality is usually worth paying for, but the cheap ones mean a saving of almost $300.

 

Not having dealt with them, the only problems I could see is flimsy construction and not so bright lights. I don't know any physical stores that have the el cheapo lights. Most likely if I could compare the two in person, the choice would be more obvious. I thought the Narva lights were expensive until I saw some others online at around $300 each. If the cheap ones are in any way flimsy, they wouldn't last long with my rough driveway.

 

Top photo is the Narva light from Repco, bottom is the cheapies from evilbay.

 

[willedoo]

To quote Repco re the Narva tail light: 'Virtually unbreakable polycarbonate lens'. Plus a 5 year L.E.D. warranty.

[spacesailor]

I've put three onto boat trailers , seem to go ok . plus can be immersed .

spacesailor

[onetrack]

Willie, I've got the Chinese ones on my Hilux tray that I built in May 2017. They work just fine and have given no trouble. However, I had to fit (expensive) Narva resistors into the flasher wire so the flashers blink at the right rate - and one of the Narva resistors has already crapped itself, and had to be replaced.

 

Edited November 14, 2023 by onetrack

[nomadpete]

My experience has not been good with  Chinese (locally sourced) lights.

 

Poor reliability - LEDs dropping out, or dim.

 

Use them on my trailers because they are still more reliable than dreaded festoon bulbs.

 

I now have Narva on my Ute, but bought them off gumtree for $40.

 

Resistors.

Being part Welsh, I refuse to  pay extortion for resistance.  I went down to Jaycar and bought four five watt ceramic resistors. They didn't  have ten watt ones so 2 of these in parallel go across each blinker feed. However, the pigtails are too fragile to leave exposed to weather, so they are installed someplace inside the body. And put in a cheap plastic box (also from Jaycar).

[old man emu]

Those Narva resistors are 12V, 21W, R8. If you plug the numbers into the formula, V = sqrt(W*R), you get  V = sqrt(21*8) = sqrt 168 = 12.9V, which is pretty typical for a car electrical system.

 

I'd check this with Kyle or another forumite who knows about the behaviour of variou types of resistors, BUT Jaycar sell a pack of two 150 Ohm, 1 Watt carbon film resistors for 68 cents.

Putting those numbers into the formula you get: V = sqrt( 150 * 1) = 12.25V, which might work.

 

[facthunter]

It's worth a lot to just be able to fit a part and not have to alter it. Nev

[nomadpete]

41 minutes ago, facthunter said:

It's worth a lot to just be able to fit a part and not have to alter it. Nev

Yes, the Narva part is 'plug-n-play'.

1 hour ago, old man emu said:

Jaycar sell a pack of two 150 Ohm, 1 Watt carbon film resistors for 68 cents.

These are not suitable .

I used two 18 ohm 5 watt resistors for each flasher circuit. The pic shows them fitted to a trailer plug, which I used to rest the success.

 

Regards the wattage at 14v, these resistors combined will dissipate 21 watts (same as the incandescent lamp the LEDs replaced). At a duty cycle of 50%, due to flashing, they average 10.5 watts, which is acceptable. They don't get very warm.

 

PS

It does work.

You could use 2 x 22 ohm resistors in parallel (or a single  10 ohm 10 watt resistor, or a flasher bulb in a box) but I have not proven that. I do know that a single 15 ohm resistor does not consume sufficient power to restore my standard flasher rate.

Edited November 15, 2023 by nomadpete

[willedoo]

I guess there's different ways to look at cost vs quality. Looking more carefully at the Repco site, the price is $171 each but the offer an auto club discount so the price with RACQ membership is $136, so that's almost $70 cheaper for the pair. Looking at it that way, it would be about $220 a pair more than the Chinese ones, or about $110 more per side. I don't know much about the subject, but I would assume the Narva lights would be basically plug and play.

 

6 hours ago, nomadpete said:

I now have Narva on my Ute, but bought them off gumtree for $40.

Thanks Pete, that's a good tip. I'll keep an eye out there and on FB.

 

I've got a bit of time up the sleeve to decide as the tray is not native to my vehicle and needs modifications. I'll have to crack the chassis rail welds and bring them in a bit and might have to cut off the rear mudguards and toolboxes and move them rearward a bit. There's a bit of work involved but I can do it all myself. The tray is ideal, steel with a timber floor which I prefer, solid tubing headache rack almost roll bar standard and decent sized lockable under tray toolboxes. I thought about building one but slapped myself when I found out how dear steel is these days. For the cost of this tray from the wreckers ($440) I would only be able to buy the chassis rails and cross beams and very little else. Even timber prices have gone through the roof. The tray is a dual cab tray and only 1750 long but new hardwood 80x19 T&G flooring sets you back $400. Luckily, this one has an acceptable floor. To get a tray like that made new is around 5 to 6 thousand and I probably couldn't build one for much under $3,000. Just the three dropsides wouldn't give much change out of a grand to get proper folded metal ones with latches. This one from the wreckers should get me a good tray with not too much work involved for around $1,500.

[nomadpete]

I bought my Navara with dealer fitted tray back. The tray is OK. But the lights were wired with a adaptor cable between the Nissan socket and the plights plug. Neither end of the adaptor was waterproof. Ultimately  the plugs corroded (no surprise) and when I fitted the LED lights, I cut off the old connectors and replaced the plug/socket with a waterproof pair.

 

As long as your cheap LED lights are ADR approved (otherwise you risk unroadworthy and voided insurance), and bright enough, and you don't mind  replacing them when they fail,  and you double your order when you buy, they are still cheaper than Narva.

[onetrack]

I bought my Hilux without a tray because it had previously been fitted with a service body, and the seller removed the service body and fitted it to their new Hilux. So I got a good deal on it ($15,000 at 4 yrs old, with 27,000kms on the clock).

 

Then I had to knock up a tray for it. But I wanted to do that, because I wanted a heavy duty steel tray, and I wanted it 2.5M long x 1.8M wide - internally. This is so I can fit 2 pallets in the tray, and fit things on that are 1.8M wide.

All the standard trays shortchange you something chronic on size, I'm sure they get smaller with each model. Plus, they only want to sell you alloy trays, which are crap for heavy work. The floors buckle under heavy weights and the alloy scars easily.

 

So I picked up some 50x25x3 RHS for cross-bearers, and some 65x35x3 for the main bearers and the side rails. I scored 2 part sheets of new 3mm steel chequerplate from a salvage yard for $80 - more than enough for a HD floor.

I had to buy a piece of 2mm plate for the bottom of the headboard and get it guillotined to size. I set the cross bearers at 300mm centres so I had good floor support - a lot of cross-bearers are only angle iron, and set at 450mm centres!

I also had to buy a length of 15mm pipe for the rope rails. I'd previously picked up a single-cab tray from the auctions for $70 - then I found it had been on a mining vehicle, and all the bearers were rusted out!

 

So I cut the headboard and steps off the buggered tray, and also kept the tail-light protection bars. I glued the whole lot together over about a month. I was actually surprised how long it took, but I was working alone on it.

Another helper would've been good to speed things up. I had to buy a set of good used sides ($100) and then lengthen them by 100mm - because no-one makes any sides over 2.4M long, because that the width of a full sheet of steel!

If you want 2.5M sides, you need to cut a 3M sheet! - so the tray manufacturers want a fortune for 2.5M "specially-made" sides! I got a local sheet metal crowd to bend up some 100mm pieces and I added them to the 2.4M used sides.

 

I reckon all up, I spent around $500 on tray materials, but I didn't count my hours, or the cost of my time gluing it all together. It would probably frighten me if I did. The main thing is, I got my desired end product.

Overall, I'm very pleased with the tray, and how it's performed since. I didn't get any proper shots of the finished tray, I was in too much of a hurry I think - so the best I can do, is the Hilux doing heavy-haul duty.  

 

 

Edited November 15, 2023 by onetrack

[willedoo]

2 hours ago, onetrack said:

I reckon all up, I spent around $500 on tray materials, but I didn't count my hours, or the cost of my time gluing it all together. It would probably frighten me if I did. The main thing is, I got my desired end product.

Things have gone up a lot since covid and have kept going up since. Hopefully prices will stabilise some time soon. That blue painted RHS in your photo is around $700 to buy now. I'm kicking myself for giving away a lot of scrap steel two years ago. I was cleaning the place up to sell and was in get out of Dodge mode, so just dumped it all and now after a few health issues, I've decided to stay on here for a while. I probably dumped thousands of dollars worth in today's replacement value. When you're used to just picking up a bit of your own scrap steel to do a job, it suddenly comes as a shock to the system to have to go and buy it new again.

 

This is what I'm starting with (photo below). Ignore the dodgy props, that was a rush job yesterday afternoon to get it off to return the hire trailer. The rust looks bad in the photo, but it's all just light surface rust where paint has come off. It has all the dropsides in really good condition. They are the heaviest I've ever seen as far as the gauge of steel used; it would take a bit to dent them. The tray is 1900 wide at the outside. Most trays seem to be around the 1800 to 1850 mark. It's a professionally built tray from NSW originally. I've never seen that type of RHS before. Three sides are flat and one of the long section sides has a concave.

 

One problem with some single cab trays and those Chinese imported gal trailers is that they are 2400 long inside which means you can't fit sheets of ply that are usually around 2440 or 2420.

 

 

[facthunter]

I just zinc everything now like that which is left out in the elements. Just wire brush any new rust and touch up "those" bits.   Nev

[onetrack]

I've got a primer called Metalfix - it's a phosphoric acid primer, it's as dear as sin (about $100 a litre now, I think - but I didn't pay anything like that for mine, because I bought a pile of it at auction for bugger all).

With Metalfix, you just wire brush the loose rust off and paint straight over any remnant rust, the Metalfix reacts with the rust and forms an impermeable bond and a surface ready for painting.

It's great stuff, they have a photo on their website of an old Landcruiser that a fisherman used regularly to drag his boats in and out of the sea, after 10 years with Metalfix brushed all over it, there's still no rust.

What is even better, it's a local invention and locally manufactured, by a clever industrial chemist. The company is called Phoenix Paints. They sell truckloads of Metalfix to big companies.

[nomadpete]

Is it compatible with normal finish coats?

 

We once did a chassis with something like Metalfix. Great stuff. No sign of rust after ten years. It was reddish brown. But whatever we tried to paint over it with, failed to bond and fell off.

[pmccarthy]

Sounds like POR paint, which reacts and seals rust. Water sets it off.

[facthunter]

 Anodes might help stop rust. Zinc is sacrificial with steel. while the coat is maintained . Salt will get in sealed sections rivets and  spot welded laps.  It's metal cancer. .   Nev