84 hardtop build

[mrRocky]

Upon swapping my last project for this rig i found it may not be as much of a gem as first thought, so i find myself having to re-do prettymuch everything on the whole car. After a bit of thought i have come up with the following mods which will be carried out over the next 3 months as time and money permit.

* scrapping the rear hilux diff, suspension and brackets for a 4runner housing moved back about 500mm, running hilux springs with a 3/4 elliptical setup

*Extending the chassie 500mm and adding a tube style tray and full cage

*Fitting a complete bundera front end with coil suspension and steering componetry

*And the basic Lockers, trans gears, 34" jt2's, ect...

Car has toyota 1.6 ltr and 33x12.5 maxxis at present
I have chopped the back of already and will extend the chassie this w/end

[nicbeer]

is that the my dodgy fuel tank i can see?

u going dovetail or comp style back? u should make it into a tub style

[dank]

Go Nuts Mr Rocky. Wish I had the guts to chop and extend my POS. gotta get mine running again though first things first.

what the reasoning in the 4runner diff? Aren't they coil rear? why not keep the coil setup in the rear as well?

[mrRocky]

The car came with a pretty cool fastback softop that iam going to try and retain to cover all the barwork, battery and keep it semi resembling a suzuki whilst being more of a comp type style rear end, i will just put retainers for the softop on the barwork following the same lines.
And that is your dodgy fueltank, i will send you a pic when its out the car so you can really appreciate it. Has about 2 fuel pumps hanging off it with another bosch 044 pump in the engine bay wtf ?

[mrRocky]

Yeah the 4runner rears are coil but the way the rear lux diff was done makes me want to throw it in the bin and start from scratch, plus i already have the 4runner diff, I want to stick with the leafs in the rear as i wont have to much time to spare and there easier for me to set up .
I also have a biggass warn winch iam debating wether or not to put on

[mrRocky]

Hmmm seems the narrow track chassie is angled outwards ???
this will slow me down a bit. Ayone got any pics of an extension on a narrowtrack ?

[nicbeer]

still got the longy chassis?

if u do maybe cut and join it onto the SWB?

[mrRocky]

yeah thought of that, the Lwb chassie is wider and angled differently to the swb narrowtrack chassie. Its ok i have a solution, will post up pics when done hopefully can do it sun arvo.

[mrRocky]

Well, extended the chassis 1/2 a meter, and removed the old spoa lux diff
and mocked up the 4runner coil rear. I think i may just whack that in and extend the 4 arms by double for some more flex. One thing that is going to be a problem is the springs, with the standard 4runner spring being stuipidly stiff, i may use different mounts and long soft springs with coil retainers.
What wheelbase should i make the car ? i have lots to play with but dont want to seesaw on obstacles. I have heard it mentioned that 100" is ideal,
at present from wheel centre to centre is about 2.65m

[money_killer]

cant wait to see some more pics...

[jimbo jones]

x2 thinking of choping mine and extending the chassie

[mrRocky]

I was a little uncertain as to which way to go with but this was the method i used to extend it, but with a bit more of a straight kink in it
http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y270/M ... nsion4.gif

[CanberraMav]

Most people aim for around 100 inch wheelbase like you mentioned. Depends on what size tyre your going to run though. If your only running 33's then 100 inch is probably to long.

My rig is 102 inch on 38's and ive never been caught up on the belly plate yet and find i can hit it up big hills with confidence that the front wont pick up.

[ofr57]

the only thing i could say about the wheel base is try make it even by pushing the front wheels out aswell

[hooki]

any updates?

[lay80n]

The problem with just stretching the rear is you do not really help with centering the mass of the rig. If you can move the front axle forward a few inches it will help out bringing the engine behing the axle line. If you are running 34's, a WB of 96 would be pretty nice to climb on, but still keep you okay for ramp over angle without requireing sky scraper ride height. A standard SWB zook is ~80inch wb. If you could push the front forward ~5 inches, and the rear back ~10 inches from standard, you should be on a nice stable platform. Extending the rear links is deffinatley good, but also pay attention the the seperation at the chassis end (assuming you are keeping the toyota diff brackets etc), as well as your pan hard angle. If you can get the chassis end seperation approx half of your diff end, and your lower links close to parallel to the ground, you should retain nice AS (at a rough guess) and have about 20 inches belly clearancedepending on link mount design and location. If you can keep the pan hard flat and raise the diff mount you will raise your roll centre and help with front to rear roll stiffness bias. That should help avoid the common problem of the rear end doing all the work while the front does nothing.

Layto....

[mrRocky]

Measured the wheelbase - 102"
I do plan to move the front forward a couple of inches and get some 38" tyres under there eventually, but 34" is what ive got at the moment.
The rear is complete except for shocks and the pnhard mount which i have been scratching my head about. It sits at about 45 degree's to the chassie when held up to it. I was planing to try and half that angle at least by making a mount that hangs down a fair way under the chassie.
I am running out of time as i only have 6 weeks till it has to be finished and may have to keep the dodgy front leaf setup till after the comp, or swap a heap of gear onto my 1ltr stockman and use that for the comp.
I dont really want to compromise the quality for the sake of it.
I will post some pics on the w/end.
cheers mick

[dank]

you should be able to raise the diff mount and lower the chassis mount to get a relatively flat angle at ride height. Check out some of the rock crawling buggies in members for some ideas.