Fuso launches ready-for-work Canters and Fighters

We announced this initiative back in May, but this week we finally managed to inspect and drive the new Fuso Built Ready lineup.

The Built Ready concept ensures correct, engineering-approved fitment to the chassis, with tested wiring routing. This process avoids nasty surprises when a new truck goes into service.

Another advantage is that a customer can view a bodied truck, making sure it’s exactly suited to the intended transport task.

Since the introduction of the Built Ready initiative it seems that many Fuso truck dealers have got behind it enthusiastically. Several we’ve visited had bodied trucks on display, ready for immediate delivery.

The Fuso Built Ready line-up includes eight different models including Canter tippers, trays, fridge trucks and pantechs, plus a Fighter tipper and three curtain-siders.

“Fuso wants to make it easier for our customers to do business, so we have developed the Built Ready range that covers a wide range of applications,” said Fuso Director, Justin Whitford.

“We have been working on this program for quite some time because we wanted to get it right,” Mr Whitford added.

As with other-brand bodied trucks, Built Ready tippers are sourced directly from Japan, but the other bodies have been developed in conjunction with leading Australian truck body builders and are made in Australia.

The Built Ready range includes two Canter tippers: a six-tonnes-GVM 615 City model with a standard cab and a 7.5-tonnes-GVM 815 Wide Cab.

The factory-built Fighter tipper has a GVM of 11 tonnes.

There are two Canter aluminium-tray models, a 515 City Cab and a 515 Wide Cab. These feature alloy trays with 290mm-high drop sides and heavy duty, four-tonnes-capacity floors.

The City Cab model has a removable rear pipe rack and the Wide Cab has removable centre and rear racks, plus centre-split drop sides.

The Canter 515 Wide Cab pantech has an aluminium roof and can be had with 20mm-thick fibreglass reinforced plastic panels or lighter honeycomb fibreglass construction. The body features a 3mm steel checker-plate floor, an interior LED light and a Dhollandia tuck-away cargo lift.

If you need your load chilled, then the Canter 515 City Cab refrigerated-body model comes with a Thermo King v500max fridge unit and styrene sandwich panel construction of the walls, front and roof. It can operate as a chiller or a freezer, down to -20 degrees C.

A non-slip fibreglass layer is laminated over a 17mm plywood floor and the kerb-side door has a fold-down step.

Fighter curtain-side models are important parts of the Built Ready range and are offered with a choice of 10, 12 or 14 pallet bodies on two- or three-axle chassis.

Each model features a nose cone, interior LED lights, sturdy chequer-plate floor, white curtains with black pelmet and lift-out hanging gates.

The Fuso Built Ready cab-chassis are covered by Fuso’s five-year/200,000km warranty and the Australian-made bodies are covered by a one-year manufacturer warranty.

We spent a day in and around Canberra, checking out the Built Ready range and came away impressed with this Fuso initiative.

We’d like to have done some loading and unloading exercises with the bodies, but OH&S issues being what they are these days that wasn’t possible.

We confined ourselves to an inspection of the bodies and all seemed well. Fit and finish was first class, as we expected. There must be considerable pressure on selected bodybuilders to keep quality at a premium, in order to maintain ongoing business from Fuso dealers.

All the trucks were loaded to GVM or nearly so and performed very well.

A mixture of manual transmissions and Fuso’s Duonic six-speed dual-clutch boxes showed that much progress has been made with shift calibration in the Canter automated models and less development on the manuals. Obviously, the future is auto and that’s where the money has been spent.

The Duonic trucks were never caught out by sudden changes in momentum, picking the right gear ratio very time. Shifts were smooth and the downshifting program provided progressive rev increases and exhaust braking when slowing down.

Given the maintenance issues with clutches and synchros in manual boxes, we’re not surprised that most fleet customers opt for the Canter Duonic transmission.

The three-axle 14-pallet Fighter we drove was also automated, with an optional Allison. How that transmission has changed, since the old days of clunky shifting AT models!

The Allison was easily manually overridden, but that proved unnecessary, given excellent matching of engine characteristics with shift modulation. It drove just like a big car.

Fuso’s Built Ready range should help greatly in improving the brand’s market share, in an age where everyone expects instant availability.

Canter 515
Engine: 3.0-litre four-cylinder, DOHC, four-valve turbo-diesel
Power: 110kW at 2840 to 3500rom
Torque: 370Nm at 1350 to 2840rpm
Transmission: six-speed dual clutch auto or five-speed manual Weights: 6.0 tonne GVM with optional 4.5-tonne GVM
Front axle and suspension: 2600kg front axle. Multi-leaf springs.
Rear axle and suspension: 4500kg front axle with LSD. Semi-elliptic leaf springs
Braking: Front and rear disc brakes with ABS and EBD. Exhaust brake. Parking brake on transmission

Fighter 2427
Engine: 7.5 litre six-cylinder OHV four-valve turbo-diesel
Power: 199kW at 2500rpm
Torque: 784Nm at 1100rpm to 2400rpm
Transmission: Eaton nine-speed manual or optional Allison auto
Weights: 23,200 to 2400kg GVM
Front axle and suspension : 6300kg front axle. Parabolic leaf spring
Rear axle and suspension: 17,200kg to 21,200kg. Tapered leaf springs with optional air suspension
Braking: Full air, dual circuit, Fuso taper roller, automatic brake adjustment, ABS with ASR (anti slip regulator)