Glad to hear it Marty. If you are towing and have a passenger, it’s important to school them on what to do in the event of a trailer sway situation. All they have to do is push the Redarc button. But it’s better they know before hand than trying to explain it during a sway situation. 👍

Thanks mate - much appreciated indeed. I’ll chat with the spare parts guy at my next service about the secondary battery kit. Trying hard to decide “what to do next” ie what order to do things “as I can afford them” so that it works out in the proper order. Ie no point doing a suspension lift or gvm upgrade if I haven’t got the second battery in first and roof rack etc on. Stuff like UHF radio might be later additions perhaps. Anderson plug in the back for the fridge will need to happen soon as the ciggy lighter chord on the Companion fridge barely reaches the socket in the back of the centre console etc. I takes a lot of saving and research to try and get it all “correct at the first go”. I’m trying to do it without breaking the bank by just “throwing money at it” if that makes sense.

Thanks mate, I got the inspiration to buy this vehicle from your vids. 👍👍👍

Thanks Jack, much appreciated. I couldn’t even get Lightforce themselves to tell me how to wire them with the Canbus system, despite 3 attempts. Ended up letting Toyota do it. Hope it helps you out. 👍

That’s a damned good idea, thanks for that, they got placed there temporarily & that’s as far as I ever got with them. I have several gear bags they could go into. Can never be too safe hey. 👍👍👍

It’s not easy but definitely worth the effort. I’ve also seen one installed in the centre console just in front of the storage compartment, but it was in a GXL - the blanking plate is where the heat / cold selectors for the seats are on the VX, which the GXL doesn’t have unless you ordered upgrade interior, so there was no blanking plate available to me in that spot.

Thanks Robin. I don’t need to do a suspension lift or GVM upgrade just yet. I’m building this vehicle to eventually tow a boat. Any weight carrying capacity I gained in the Prado from a GVM upgrade, would just mean less weight I could tow in the boat because the GCM (Gross Combined Mass), remains the same, so increasing car load reduces the towed load. The MY21 150 Prados with upgraded 150kw & 500Nm engines (produced late 2020 onwards) can only legally tow 3000 kilos - so increasing GVM in vehicle by say 500 kegs effectively reduces towing capacity back to 2500kgs which is only what the older earlier Prados could tow. I’ve not yet come across anything thus far that has affected the stock functionality, so I’ve not lost use of any of the standard equipment features of the VX. I say that with just one caveat at this point that I’ve not yet tested but have heard rumours about, in relation to particularly strong spotlights & the auto high low beam dipping functionality & large reflectorized road side signage. I’ve heard rumours that when travelling at night in rural areas with full high beam spotlights on, and you approach road side advisory signs, that are designed to reflect light, that it’s possible the camera on the windscreen behind the rear view mirror which detects speed signs etc - also controls the auto high beam dip & raise function by sensing oncoming vehicles headlights, can be “fooled / confused” by your own reflected spotlights glare, off the road side advisory sign, into thinking there’s an approaching vehicle and automatically dipping your headlights which then in turn switches your spotlights off as well. I’ve not yet tested this rumour, you have the option of not using the auto headlights dimming feature, you can select manual headlight dimming feature on the indicator stalk & dash selection switch, - such that you have to manually use the indicator stalk to dim headlights and restore high beams (& thus spotlights), which is the setting I had selected last time I drove it at night in a rural area, so it wasn’t an issue, but I will make an effort to work out how the auto dim feature copes with spotlights and road side advisory signs that are reflectorized & the camera - next time I get an opportunity. What’s been suggested to me (but at this stage is still just a rumour) is that if there’s sufficient light from the spotlights & high beams to reflect off the white guide posts every few hundred meters on the side of the road that all have small white & red reflectors - to fool the camera auto headlight dipping feature - that on auto dip setting you might drive down the highway at night with your headlights and spotlights going high low and spotlights on & off like a disco ball at a night club. I’ve yet to test this theory rumour but it’s just a matter of time. As stated you can manually over ride this as the driver with your lights setting, BUT if true then that POSSIBLY could be one standard functionality loss thus far, but again I’ve yet to test this out. So far I’ve only driven twice at night in rural areas since fitting the spotlights - once to see how they worked and the second time to adjust and tighten where exactly they pointed on the road ahead of me. On both occasions I wasn’t set on Auto headlights dip setting tho so at the moment it remains just a rumour in my experience. I will report back - perhaps in an upcoming video - on how that functionality works at night in a rural area. I have other mods planned for the vehicle yet, like roof rack & 270 awning. I’ve also got plans to mount a 2nd spare wheel on the roof rack along with Max Trax and long handled recovery shovel etc so that will all feature in the next video. I’ve bought an extra 3 Prado rims as spares and a set of 5 extra tyres with only 4000kms travelled on them to mount up as spares - maybe as matching wheels on the boat trailer so that everything matches and is interchangeable between vehicle and trailer. I’ve bought a near new wheel cover and backing plate so will probably bolt the spare to the roof rack the exact same way as the factory spare bolts to the rear barn door as a matched set if that makes sense. Might not be everyone’s cup of tea but I’m not trying to copy everyone else. Because I’m not setting up as a rock crawler but more as a towing tourer, I’ve thus far avoided the suspension lift and GVM upgrade. I’d still like to add a second lithium battery system to help run the companion lithium fridge, with its own solar panel on the roof rack. The way it is going I might well get to the point I have to do a gvm upgrade once towball down load gets added to the vehicle gvm. I’ll have to wait & see until I test it all out once it’s all done. 👍

Hi mate. Bar added about 50 kilos plus about ~ 5kgs for the lights. (The AFN shipping weight is 50kgs so maybe some packaging weight in that 50kg). Driving dynamics for me personally improved slightly. I just find that I prefer a slightly lower front stance for “tracking” while on road. I’ve since added quite a bit of weight in the rear with a stainless flat pack fire pit, 75 litre Conpanion Lithium fridge & a heap of recovery gear, so it’s gone back to being basically level now, and to be honest it kind of “wallows” now when cornering. That’s more about the weight in the back than the weight of the bar up front if that makes sense. I suspect that a set of air bags in rear is all it would take to solve that, however I’m aiming to set up to tow a boat eventually - so it’s likely I might upgrade suspension at some point down the track which again would stiffen up the handling somewhat. I did take the Prado up to Shark Bay with the AFN bar on and went Offroad all through the Francois Peron National park, on Sandy tracks, with lots of corrugations and toward the top end some really soft sand. Stock factory tyres at 20psi handled it all really comfortably without any issues at all. If I were to have gone into any of the soft beaches tho I’d likely have dropped to 12psi. I’ve not noticed any impact at all on wind noise from the bar at all. Fuel economy has stayed the same basically at a little over 10kms/litre, but I don’t hurry anywhere - cruise control at 100kph basically covers me for long country trips. And I’ve since checked the speedo against GPS speed & on the factory tyres and rims, the 100kph dash indicated speed translates to 97kph by gps speed, so maybe that is why I always get great mileage? However I’ve noticed that EVERYONE overtakes me a lot of highways and freeways. Upside is I haven’t had a single speeding ticket in over 50 years. 😂 There’s the green “eco” light indicator on the dash when your throttle setting is optimised for fuel efficiency and mine seldom goes off. Hope that helps you out. 👍👍👍

Mine is a VX model which has the ATRAC. Best I can tell activation of rear diff lock disconnects ATRAC. I’m not sure if the lower spec Prado (GL & GXL) have ATRAC however. 👍

I think they are a good bar overall. I don’t think they are as thick steel perhaps as the ORA bars, which have a similar type of look. But lighter is actually better from the point of view of not sagging the front suspension & less mass equals better fuel mileage. They are known to have issues with water getting into the LED indicator lights, however my supplier / installer was prepared & had replacements waiting and swapped them out with no further issues. There’s another issue I ran into and that is the parking sensors in the front of the bar. They are held in with a double sided tape from AFN that lets go with water, and when the sensor falls back inside the bar they trigger a dash warning (that I just turned off). Again the installer knew about it and had a replacement tape that’s water proof and solved the issue. Mine was colour matched to the car by the supplier / installer which looks awesome. I’ve had zero other issues with the bar in the 12 months since & couldn’t be happier with it 12 months down the line, including another trip away up the coast etc as well as usual urban day to day driving around the ‘burbs. Unlike some other brands the bar uprights don’t interfere with the headlights by casting a shadow down the road in front of the vehicle on left & right side. Along with the LED & HID spotlights it’s an absolute weapon for night driving, & “melts tar at 3kms” 😜😂 The bar isn’t “obtrusive” to the driver day or night. It seems to get “a lot of second looks” and a few questions from other Prado owners in traffic and car parks. I’m surprised you don’t see more of them getting about.👍 I forgot to mention if your in WA you can get one through Tony at Aspect Offroad up in Carramar (Wangara area). He has a Facebook page. 👍 Ohh I should also have mentioned that, if your in Perth WA your very welcome to pop around have at loot at it in the flesh, if it will help you decide, because they are an expensive decision at the end of the day.

@@ianmoone2359 could you tell me diameter of the tube used to make the hoops? Just wanting to fit side rails in the near future.

@@brandonsauverain4447 60mm diameter and about 0.6mm of paint on top of that.

Yes this is correct. AFN bar. It cost ~$4500 🇦🇺 fitted and colour coded to match the vehicle paint colour. Couldn’t be happier with it. 👍👍👍

Not now. When I first got it they moved the front sensors from the font bumper into the AFN bull bar. We parked the car outside for a week while at a beach house on holiday when it never stopped raining and blowing the whole week. The double sided tape used to hold the sensors into the bar got soaked and let go, the wind blew the sensor back inside the bar, and it would go off continuously because it was pointing at the inside of the bar. The supplier / installer was great about it tho, he called around and re-did the sensors with a better more permanent water proof type of double sided tape & no issues at all since. I’ve done water crossings even & no issues for eg. At the same time the LED lights for the indicators got wet and changed colour from orange to green. AFN were aware of the issue and the supplier had upgraded water proof indicator LEDs that the supplier installer fitted at the same time as fixing the parking sensors issues. Those 2 issues were well known with the AFN bars but I hear those 2 issues have been addressed with the latest batches of AFN bars. It was a minor annoyance at the time but no issues since fixed and all at no cost to me. I have heard of the issue you describe with parking sensors on ARB bars. What I heard was the holes drilled in the ARB bar are one drill size too small / tight. The plastic insert that the sensor fits into is too thin, and the sensor picks up the steel bar through the plastic insert when wet. Apparently the “fix” is to drill out the fixture holes one size larger and use a thicker plastic insert and re-fit the sensors. I think it’s a well known issue with the ARB bars. One more “issue” that the ARB bars were known for is the 2 vertical uprights interfere with the spread of the high beam lights at night, they cast two darker shadows on the road in front of your view that some owners take issue with / find annoying. Hope that helps out. 👍

Did they relocate the camera? Or do you have large spot lights which are ahead of the bullbar? The collision system uses the front camera, mirror image and radar for collision. What’s the alarm? I had an issue when TJM put the bullbar on and didn’t disconnect battery. They did relocate camera to bar. When disconnected and they removed the nose cone it put pre-alarms onto system. The collision pre-alarms kept coming up. Lucky I had a scanner and reset them. Now there is no issues and haven’t seen an alarm in 12months.

@@bushmagpie3312 No need to relocate the camera on mine at all. The radar sensor and front mount camera all work as per factory and no alarms at all. 👍

ARB they relocated my front camera very disappointed the way they did mine

Your bull bar look good