Outer Limits 4x4 Board

Can anyone who has done it tell me what's involved in changing to nissan axles for my 2 door rangie. I heard that they are bomb proof.
As we all know 10 splines make for short lived wheeling.
(which patrol should i be looking under ?)

Adrian Cauchi at Rangie Automotive has done it recently to his comp truck. used complete gu front and rear diff assemblies. Due to the conversion needed to also use the gear box (not sure on transfer case) and fabricated his own bell housing to mate the gearbox to the engine.

I beleive he also used the nissan tcase

Thanks, anyone know if they can be mated to the stock gear box using of the shelf tailshafts or do they need to be made up? I was lead to believe it might be an easy swap. I can see that a mount for the a frame ball joint would need to be made up but what about any other fabrication do the radius arms and spring mounts line up? how does the steering work out and how do the gear ratios compare?

dirtyrover wrote:Thanks, anyone know if they can be mated to the stock gear box using of the shelf tailshafts or do they need to be made up? I was lead to believe it might be an easy swap. I can see that a mount for the a frame ball joint would need to be made up but what about any other fabrication do the radius arms and spring mounts line up? how does the steering work out and how do the gear ratios compare?

Ok, stock rangie tail shafts can be used without modification. You will need to make an adapter to the flange depending on year model of GQ diff, and also redrill the bolt holes.(I have an LT85 with LT230 so may differ)

A frame ball joint mount needs to be fabb'd.

Spring mounts need to be brought in approx 100mm. and swapped from the old housing to the GQ one if you want to retain rangie springs.

Rear trailing arm mounts need to be brought in about the same (Diff end)

Front control arm mounts need to be brought in at the diff end but bolt up to the rangie chassis

Custom made panhard and steering arm need to be made with rangie at the chassis end and GQ at the diff end unless you want to change the mounts at the diff or change the chassis mount and steering box.

GQ's only have 1 brake line so you need to disable the second brake line on the rangie.

That's about it. Benefits of an increase in track width, better range of wheels, bigger brakes, much stronger centres and axel's far out way the slight loss in ground clearance.

Rangie final drive is 3.5*, GQ comes in 3.9,4.1,4.3,4.6,4.8. So if you run bigger tyres you are better off straight away.

Keep it simple and run as much standard gear as possible, the only non "Off the Shelf" parts on mine are the panhard and steering arm.

Here are some pics of mine.

HTH

Maggot4x4 wrote:Front control arm mounts need to be brought in at the diff end but bolt up to the rangie chassis

No you don't, There is 10mm a side in it, not worth changing. Use Nissan GQ or 80 series front springs and you don't have to do anything for the front diff but make a steering rod and panhard rod like maggot4x4 said, rest of front end plugs straight in.

GURU wrote:

Maggot4x4 wrote:Front control arm mounts need to be brought in at the diff end but bolt up to the rangie chassis

No you don't, There is 10mm a side in it, not worth changing. Use Nissan GQ or 80 series front springs and you don't have to do anything for the front diff but make a steering rod and panhard rod like maggot4x4 said, rest of front end plugs straight in.

The front diff I had, the mounts were bent, so it was done as they had to be cut off anyway, but you could get away with it.

Thanks guys That's what I was looking for.