PRODUCTS
ARB unveils wide range of off-road equipment for new Isuzu D-Max – with more to come
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s we reported last month, the new Isuzu D-Max is proving so popular that there’s already a hefty waiting list building up. If you’re planning on buying one to use as the base for a modified off-roader (inspired, perhaps, by our GO2 project), what this means is that by the time it arrives, you can have an strong inventory of parts ready and waiting to bolt on to it. That’s because famed Australian off-road specialist ARB has wasted no time in bringing out a range of kit for the vehicle. This includes not one but two bull bars, as well
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as a choice of options for fitting uprated suspension. Starting with the latter, ARB’s Old Man Emu division has developed suspension lifts for the vehicle which it says also increase its load-carrying ability and ‘improve comfort, control and ride quality on all surfaces.’ Quite a boast, that – but this is a brand with rather a lot of previous when it comes to this kind of stuff, so you tend to think they’ve got it in them. The lift you get is in the region of 40mm (a touch shy of two inches). It’s available with a range of rear springs, with matching shocks and
greasable shackles and pins, to suit whatever load-carrying needs you expect the vehicle to have. Old Man Emu also uses an XL leaf to assist with fine-tuning the vehicle’s carrying capacity. Up front, once again there’s a range of spring and shock combos to cater for your own particular setup. No small matter when a pick-up built as an off-road toy might be expected to carry fairly light weights in the back – while toting a winch and heavy-duty bumper up front. On that subject, the basic design of ARB’s Summit and Commercial
bars has already been adapted for the new D-Max. The former is available for a range of models, providing massively enhanced protection up front as well as giving you somewhere solid to mount a winch. It doesn’t come with recovery points (ARB sells those separately), but it does have mounting holes for LED bars and CB whips. The Commercial bar is a simpler unit which aims to provide all the strength for less money by doing away with some of the Summit’s cosmetic additions. Given that a good proportion of the price of
4x4 01/06/2021 09:33
