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Mitsubishi Canter 4WD Motorhome

Want the best combination of ability, comfort and style? Check out a Warrior Offroad Motorhome

WORDS BY BRENDAN SEYMOUR
PHOTOGRAPHY BY ROBB COX

What do you do when you want to buy a tough-as-nails fourby to tour around Australia in, but the other half had their mind set on a caravan? Or maybe you’ve done your time in a swag or tent and you're just after a few more of the creature comforts for your next extended journey. You'd pretty much have to choose between a tray-back camper (which means selling the wagon to buy a ute), or a camper trailer, which means the added burden of towing a dead-weight wherever you go, right?

Well, not quite. There is one other option, and it requires no setting up or packing up of tents, poles or the like. It's a 4WD campervan, like the ones that Warrior Offroad Vehicles build. The vehicles are based on the six tonne 4WD Mitsubishi Canter, which is a respectable 4WD in it's own right. Boasting a 3.9L inline four-cylinder turbo-diesel donk, solid axles with semi-elliptic leaf springs front and rear, 5.714:1 diff ratios (try finding those for your Patrol or 'Cruiser) and a rear difflock, the Canter is a perfect starting block for creating the ultimate offroad luxury tourer.

Not that Warrior Offroad stop there, however. The suspension is ditched for uprated springs and shocks, allowing for both greater load-carrying capacity and better ride-comfort. Heavy-duty offroad-oriented tyres are fitted for maximum traction, and a fully-customised camper body is fitted to the vehicle. Any accessories that you want (or don't want) in the vehicle is up you – it's only limited by your imagination, and your wallet! This camper is a perfect example of their range, and includes options such as a generator to power all the 240V gear without running the vehicle's batteries down, on-board battery charger, front and rear winches, and all of the usual safety and communications equipment a long-range touring vehicle requires.

So what do you think? Is this bush warrior your ideal travel companion, or do you still prefer a $2000 truck and a swag to get you bush? I've started saving my dollars, but let us know your opinion by logging onto www.4wdmonthly.com.au and having 'Your Say'!

Mechanicals and electricals

Now, adding all this luxury touring fruit to a vehicle comes at a price, and that price is the laden weight. There's particularly a lot of gear over the rear axle, which is why quad shock absorbers (two at each side of the diff, one in front and one behind) are employed to keep the Canter's bum from sagging. The front utilizes a quad shock setup also, but the difference is that these bolt together onto a bracket welded to the top of the diff housing. In this way the steering is not affected.

There is a massive amount of electrical gear, both 12V DC and 240V AC, in the vehicle, and that means a massive amount of electrical power is needed to run it all. At the heart of the system is a triple-battery setup, comprising of dual heavy-duty 4WD batteries wired through a Rotronics dual-battery controller, which powers all of the accessories, and a massive truck crank-battery for kicking the high-compression four-cylinder diesel into life. Whilst stationary, power is fed to the 240V gear via a Honda EU30is generator, which also has the ability to recharge the batteries through a Betacharge battery charger. There's also a Latronics pure sine-wave invertor to run all of the gear in a pure 240V environment. And let's not even consider going into the amount of wiring, solenoids, switches and fuses running everywhere!

Now, a vehicle this size might have trouble getting through some tougher sections of track, even though it's fitted with some serious rubber (see ACCESSORIES breakout). That's why it's been fitted with electrical winches front and rear. The front unit is a 12,000lb pound model, and the rear's the same size, meaning that regardless of the situation the Canter might end up in, extraction is a relatively simple process.