How We Designed The Alloy Canopy For The Hilux

When putting together the ideas for building the Hilux for our around Australia adventure an alloy canopy was on top of the priority list. Keeping your gear dry, clean, dust free and easily accessible goes a long way to helping you enjoy your time on the road and knowing you gear is going to be looked after, especially in our case with the camera gear in back. Strength and durability when designing a canopy is a must, corrugations, chassis flex and vibration can make a mess of your gear or equipment when touring. The guys from Dutch Engineering wanted us to put there Canopy the test. Using 3mm flat aluminium sheet for the doors and side sections and utilising 5mm sheet for the front and rear panels this canopy is built to last and handle all the conditions we hope to put it through. The underside of the tray houses a full length (1700mm) trundle draw which ended up being one of my favourite items on the tray/canopy build. We decided to keep the design very simple so I can use the canopy for both 4WD touring and day to day work as an electrician. Tray Dimensions 1785L X 1900W Canopy Dimensions 1680L X 1900W X 860H ( I have planned to eventually place a water tank between the head board and canopy for future touring) The electrical setup is very simple as well with the feed for the canopy feed from the Aux battery(check out my build video for the hilux) to the Anderson plug on the head board. From there I mounted an IP enclosure inside the canopy on 20mm aluminium uni strut and installed the switch panel for lighting and other outlets including USB, cig sockets and eventually an Anderson plug for the fridge for the boys trips in the future. An inverter was a must for our setup so we could charge batteries for camera gear etc. The REDARC 700W Pure Sine Wave Inverter worked spot on, but be sure to install RCD protection on the outgoing 240. An easy way to do this is to buy a single socket RCD outlet as you will see in the video. This way it eliminates or greatly reduce the risk of electrocution. Hope you enjoy the video and get some ideas for your build. Feel free to comment or send me an email if you have any questions. [email protected] Get Out There! Cheers, Deano