The first wave of upgrades happened immediately after we took delivery of the truck.
The standard lights of the Daily 4x4 are rather ‘dark’. We decided to upgrade the lights to LED and added a LED-lightbar which came with a bullbar. Darc-Expo (https://darc-exp.com) in Göppingen performed those upgrades.
Outer Design
When we ordered our vehicle, the Daily chassis had already been built and came in the color Kieselgrau (which is not grey, it’s rather beige). We chose a light grey for the living cabin (too dark makes it too warm). The dilemma was that the two colors didn’t match and our vehicle looked more like a standard campervan. (edit from Jaimi: the truck was sinfully ugly and I was threatening to refuse travelling in it until it got fixed. Also partially because I already had the concept, web domain, insta handles, etc all sorted out.)
After a lengthy and cumbersome process with my wife (add from Jaimi: perhaps the closest we've come to divorce!), we decided to for a ‘light’ giraffe design. Light means that we added giraffe spots to the living cabin but not too many to ensure that we maintain a ‘masculine’ and not a toy look. We also wrapped the driver cabin in the same color that we used for the giraffe spots - a beautiful, masculine charcoal grey - successfully covering the ugly beige we'd been saddled with. And the name of Giraffe was born for our vehicle! :)
Upgrades second wave
Our Giraffe was rather difficult to drive. It was very bouncy, instable and the back hung down significantly, and to the left. My preferred option was to get an air-suspension installed. I did a ton of research and there is no such thing available for the Daily 4x4. I was in frequent exchange with https://www.i-parts-eichsfeld.de/. They provided excellent advice and suggested the solution. We exchanged all the shocks with Marquardt shocks, added a blade on each side to the back suspension and lifted up the left side of the car under the axle. As a result of this, the driving is significantly more stable, the vehicle looks balanced, and we gained about 4.5cm in height at the back of the vehicle which makes it much more off-road suitable.
To prevent that the engine breathes in too much sand during the log distance driving across dry steppes, we got a snorkel installed. There is a nice side effect, it gives our Giraffe a more serious look too. Check out https://bravosnorkel.com/de/iveco/123-bravo-snorkel-iveco-daily-2014-.html.
Adjustment for remote traveling
Before setting off on our first long journey following the silk road, we needed to do some additional adjustments for driving in high altitudes, dealing with bad diesel quality and performing error diagnostics and repairs.
To prevent issues with tires, we got a second spare tire attached to the back and installed a tire pressure monitoring solution (https://www.tiremoni.com/reifendruckkontrollsystem/produktuebersicht/).
Markus Gruse from Offroad-Motorhomes (https://www.offroad-motorhomes.services/) offered valuable consultation and made adjustments to prevent problems from driving with bad quality diesel and in altitudes above 4000m. At least as valuable is the possibility of remote maintenance and reading and resetting the error memory. They offer a remote diagnostic capability including delivery of spare parts. They also recommended several spare sparts which we should carry such as diesel, air and oil filters and a NOX-sensor, and to rather often change the oil and filters.
To be further investigated (or what I’m not satisfied with)
The original tire size is 265/70 R19.5. No question, they look small and under dimensioned on our vehicle. Our daily came standard with Michelin X Multi D Snowy Ground tires which are classical snow tires (M+S). After again more research, we upgraded the tires to Firestone FD611 which are more like an AT-tire and more suitable of offroad driving. The tires still look too small, and the driving worsened again.
I’m still looking for a better solution. There are off-road tires on the market (see DarcMono and Delta 4x4), which are bigger and wider, and come with aluminum rims. They look great. Besides the very high price, aluminum rims for offroad and worldwide tire availability stop me from getting them.
Our Daily comes with a built in Viair 450C-IG compressor with a connector under the hood. The compressor is used to engage the looks and according to Iveco can also be used exceptionally to inflate tires. I haven’t had success to inflate the rear tires to 7+ bar with that compressor. We ran out of time before our first big voyage to get a compressor permanently installed. I bought a portable ARP compressor which I connect to the car battery. Not a great solution and will be changed when we are back.
Comments