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Budd Stanley
An Overlanding Titan
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Budd Stanley
An Overlanding Titan
Our choice to wrap the wheels with Toyo’s Open Country C/T all-terrain tires was a good one, giving us great traction through several climates we travelled through.
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Budd Stanley
An Overlanding Titan
Editor Irons spacing out crossbars so that we could throw additional cargo up over the cab.
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Budd Stanley
An Overlanding Titan
To help as a windbreak, we mounted the TRED traction ramps to the side of the ladder rack by simply welding two strips of steel to the rack base and top bar, and drilled and tapped them to accept the ramps.
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Budd Stanley
An Overlanding Titan
To help keep the rear bed organized, we had a set of expedition drawers made up to keep the weather off select items.
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Budd Stanley
An Overlanding Titan
With the Warn Zeon winch mounted to a hitch receiver and packed away out of the elements, we had a nice clean winching option should we have needed it.
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Budd Stanley
An Overlanding Titan
Softening snow base and a steep uphill run on one of the off-road portions of the route, required the aid of the TRED traction ramps. They did their job, but we did break one.
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Budd Stanley
An Overlanding Titan
In the office. Our Delorme inReach Explorer provided a GPS signal that we could track from our iPad, while also giving us the ability to send texts, social media updates and an SOS.
Story & photos by Budd Stanley
While overlanding has a lot in common with off-roading, long-distance exploring 4WD’s are built quite differently than your average wheeler. Hard-core off-roading capabilities are often sacrificed for self-sufficiency and highway comfort. These were traits we had to account for when planning for the Titan Arctic Challenge. You really need to put a lot of thought into building an overlander, as you will often be a long way from civilization. Throw Arctic weather and terrain into the mix and you have set of unknown variables that can challenge the status quo.
Back in January, we came upon these challenges building two Nissan Titan XD’s into full-fledged overland machines. We had time limits, budget constraints and nasty weather to contend with, but we were successful in our execution. So, if you are planning to build a full-size truck into an overlander, here are six key features we built into the Titan XD’s.
Vehicle
Let’s start with the platform. There were two directions I could have taken here, I could have loaded up the Zuk and prayed to the diesel gods that the TDI wouldn’t freeze solid along the route, or source a new 4WD. When Nissan showed interest, needless to say I went for the heated seats, 900-kg payload and freshly broken-in Cummins engine.
Tires
As any off-roader will tell you, the most important part of a modified vehicle is the bits that connect you to the ground. Choosing a tire for this particular trip proved to be a lot trickier than I first thought. A dedicated ice tire makes sense for the far north and on the highways, however, we would also see a fair chunk of off-road trail and the dreaded Dempster highway. The Dempster is well known for chewing up tires with its shale base, so I needed the trucks running on a more durable tire with an aggressive tread pattern.
We fell in love with Toyo’s Open Country C/T tires a couple years back, so we decided to give them a go. This turned out to be a good decision as the tires worked great in rocky and snowy terrain. On the highway they ran relatively quietly, and gave a confident feel of the surface. While they cornered quite well on ice, their only weak point was braking on ice, but that’s to be expected with a loaded full-size truck. A bonus was nearly no tread wear once we returned from the 10,000-km expedition.
Expedition Rack
In terms of turning the Titan XD’s into credible overlanders, the biggest part of the equation would be the expedition rack. As Mr. Murphy would predict, this was the most frustrating part of the equation. As the rack would house most of our equipment, this needed to be job one. After three suppliers dropped the ball on us only a couple weeks before departure, I was forced to forgo ready-made expedition racks and ordered up a tradesman ladder rack that Editor Irons and I would modify.
We picked up a couple Paramount universal ladder racks, which were anything but “paramount”. Poor build quality, nasty welds and the structural rigidity of a wet noodle is how I will fondly remember them. To handle the extra loads, we welded several cross bars over the cab. Due to the size of the rooftop tents, we hacked off one of the side riser bars, which allowed the tents to open to the driver’s side.
In order to keep them out of the way, and double as a wind block, we decided to mount the traction ramps along one side, leaving the other side for the fuel can. The ramps were simply bolted to two steel straps we welded from the lower bases to the upper bars, then drilled and tapped.
While Rotopax are the Jerry can of choice for the average overlander, we found that at double the price and half the capacity of a standard NATO can, it would be prudent to go with the tried and true military version. We picked up four Wavian cans for each truck, mounted them to the rack with some Smittybilt Jerry can mounts bolted to two angle iron cross members welded between the two up posts.
The nights are long in the Arctic, so creating some artificial light was a must. We bolted Rigid Industries 40” SR2 combo beam LED lightbars to the leading edge of the rack to help light the way forward. Behind, we mounted Rigid Scene 2”x2” cube flood LEDs to the top bars of the rack, one behind the cab lighting the ground under the tent, the other on the back lighting the tailgate area. These worked great and threw a huge amount of light.
Shelter
Nissan’s Zero Gravity seats in the Titan XD’s were an absolutely brilliant feature – Nissan engineers, our butts applaud you. Although, as comfy as they were with the heaters cranked up, we weren’t going to sleep in them. Others have used military-style canvas tents with stoves, however these would take a long time to set up in the dark. To keep things compact and efficient, we picked up two Tamarack rooftop tents from Canadian based Treeline Outdoors.
The Tamarack is a heavy-duty rooftop tent built to handle just such conditions with a 380g Poly/Cotton Rip-stop canvas and heavy gauge aluminum tube frame with condensation sleeves.
The rack bars were too thick for the tent mounts, so we pressed the mounting areas into a vice to allow the mounts to fit. In place, the tent cleared the traction ramp mount and camp lighting to create a great refuge above the truck bed. Ideally, we would have mounted the tents lower and created a windbreak around the mounts to keep wind from blowing underneath, however we worked with what we had at the time.
Recovery
While we didn’t outfit the Titan XD’s with any real off-roading modifications, we did make sure that both trucks were well equipped with three different recovery options. If the trucks got stuck (and they did), our first option was shovels (full-size, not little aluminum avalanche shovels) and Warns very sexy Epic recovery kit. We also carried Gemstone Off-Road kinetic tow straps and synthetic shackles. These worked wonders getting the big Cummins PRO-4X Titan XD out of the ditch after being run off the road by a trucker. Seven good hard tugs from the other Titan XD and the stuck truck popped onto the road with no damage at all.
Had we gotten ourselves into a stickier situation, we carried four TRED traction ramps. While these work great in the summer, the snow and ice made things a bit tricky when we broke through some ice on a creek ford. They held up quite well after nearly an hour of abuse under a 3,300-kg monster, but we did manage to snap the front tip off one of the ramps.
Should that have failed, we had a Warn Zeon winch sitting in wait, mounted to a trailer hitch cradle that we could plug right into the rear bumper with the aid of Warns winch cable extension. Loaded with 100-ft of synthetic line, we were ready for just about anything Mother Nature was willing to throw at us.
Safety
When you are in the middle of the Northwest Territories in the middle of winter, getting help can be a slow process. For this reason, we had a Delorme inReach Explorer GPS unit in the Nissan. The Explorer is a GPS tracker, which allows users to send text messages and social media updates, but most importantly, works as an SOS beacon. Should the worst happen, a simple press of the button would alert Search and Rescue to our position and we could communicate the nature of our situation and any injuries to authorities.
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