OP here. Thanks to those people trying to get the thread back on track
Given there has been unprecedented interest in this thread, and not a single suggestion for an alternate forum, I'm going to provide a bit more detail and hope it encourages a couple more posts like the last few.
Mate currently has a ~10yo Navara space cab with a Fleet Trades setup – dual 3/4 length twin latch, aluminium checkerplate boxes (with a gap down the middle) and a fairly serious roof rack on a tray with drop down sides, and the sliding drawer underneath. Looks vaguely like this (from the
Fleet Trades website), …
… except it's a space cab so the boxes are 3/4 length with a bit of space at the back, and the full-length side trays are still on. He's DIYed it so that the setup is alarmed and hooked up to his central locking.
It's served him well as a predominantly work vehicle that and he can also use with his family (wife and two young teenagers) pretty well. He even DIYed a 5-bike shuttle rack that hangs off the back of the roof rack.
He's just bought a Isuzu D-Max dual cab – kids need more leg room, and he reckons battery operated tools and slightly different sort of jobs he's now doing means he can get away with reduced tray area. He's bought the LS-U because he wants a bit of luxury, so it comes with a tub that will need to be removed.
(To quickly address some of the tangentially related stuff that has come up in this thread in my opinion a dual cab ute is the right choice for his circumstances. He had a van in the distant past, he works in the inner suburbs so a trailer isn't practical, it has to be able to transport filthy crap at times, and it needs to serve double duty as a family car.)
Stuff I was hoping to read more about / get advice on include:
- General configuration alternatives.
- Tray and boxes versus service bodies.
- Separate roll bars (for roof rack mounting) versus integrated rack mounts on boxes.
- Practicality of lift off canopies (are they too much effort, are there other drawbacks?)
- Handles (as addressed already above). It drives me nuts watching him have to undo four separate latches (two on the tray, two on the door, spaced far enough apart that he has to step between them to reach them) to get to his tools.
- Security suggestions generally
- (there's no doubt other things I haven't even thought of…)
- Isuzu D-Max specific considerations, eg
- I saw a Norweld Facebook post in which they felt it necessary in the comments to refute suggestions that it wasn't possible to keep all the electronic safety aids in a conversion
- A Cars Guide review of the sibling Mazda in which they reported the driver aids stopped working one it was loaded with 750kg of sandbags
- I note in the specs that the base model SX dual cab comes as cab chassis and has "Heavy duty rear leaf suspension" versus "Standard rear leaf suspension" on all the other dual cab variants
- Manufacturer/fitter recommendations.
- He's in Melbourne.
- I don't think his budget stretches to Norweld, Boss Aluminium, etc.