615

[darinz]

I've been talking about doing this for a while so since it is pretty much done I thought I'd show you a bit of what I've done. I should have taken more photo's but getting the job done was more important at the time. Also as it has been basically finished feel free to ask questions or make suggestions but it's going to be pretty hard for me to change things now!

But first some back ground.
My old truck was a GQ that ended it's life (with me) with a turboed VH45, MWB, manual shift auto, twin motor electric winch and a fair bit of other stuff. I started with a shock standard TD42 and slowly modified it to this stage, learning as I went.

Once i got it completed and learnt to drive it I basically realised it wasn't safe. It had a full 6 point cage but it really wasn't up to the performance of the truck. Let's face it when the truck has about 530hp shit happens fast whether good or bad. So this lead me down the track of deciding whether I should rebuild a truck that was pretty much just been built or sell it and start from scratch. I decided on the later.



During the 2010 Norwest WC the motor rang a big end so that basically made the decision for me. I stripped out what I wanted and sold the certified rolling chassis plus the winch.

The winch plus batteries.


I had this sitting in the carpark so a plan was born.


Within not to long I had it looking like this.


To get to that stage it took a lot of work with the plasma cutter and a 9" grinder. The chassis was stripped back to bare rails. eg every mount was removed and only the front chassis rail was kept unmodified. i then found some rust at the back of the right chassis rail right in the middle of the arch. The easiest way to fix this was to cut the rail off and replace it. Luckily it was 100x50 so box section was used for the straight and I fabricated the curved section. The new rails (did both sides) are exactly the same as the factory ones just much stronger. At this point the rear was also narrowed to allow room for the coil-overs on the outside of the rail.

[darinz]

[stinky]

Looks good waiting for the rest of the pics

[Batfastard]

There is a good pic off your truck in nov nzfwd mag .you got those coiloverssorted yet mate

[meatc]

Best thing about this truck was I got drive it at over 200kph in the taupo bush and managed to give it back for long enough so darinz couldn't blame me for blowing the alternator on saturday or coilover on Sunday.

Oh an considering the rear shock valving was shall we say not right it handled pretty dam well.

[darinz]

yeah it looks like the shocks are sorted. Appears to have been a spring problem that was causing problems with the shocks. Shocks are now revalved and just waiting on springs to fully test it all. Was hoping to have it together in the next couple of weeks but think it'll be December now.

The only reason Meatc was doing 220kph is because the speedo was reading in mph so he thought he was only doing 137! But that's another story.

[darinz]

The rear end is a triangulated 4 link with the coilovers mounted on the lower trailing arms. Theoretically it has 29"of travel but have limited it to 24". The plan was to have 12" of up travel at the rear and 8" at the front but still have a low ride height. To achieve this I sat the chassis hard on the axles and worked out mounting point from there. At full bull there is 6mm of clearance between the chassis and the diffs.


Here you can see how I bent the chassis rails in to make room for the coilovers.
You can also see the sump in the fuel tank. By doing that it eliminated the need for a surge tank and a second fuel pump. The second outlet from the tank is currently only connected to a reserve tank that was temporarily installed for Taupo.



The top link brackets were made as high as possible to keep the roll centre high. The effect of this is to reduce the need for a swaybar and based on how it handled at Taupo this has worked.


The lower link mounts are on the axles centre line to keep them as high as possible. This puts more load onto the top links but with 1.25" rodends on the lower links and 7/8" rodends on the top, strength isn't really an issue.


The lower links have been engineered to handle 4g loads (based on 500kg upsprung weight) with 1.5 million cycles. There is about 6 hours on welding in each arm. I stitched it together but with that amount of welding basically knew there was no way to stop some movement so tried to ensure they stayed straight and both arms moved the same. Whether it was good luck or good management I'm not sure but both arms ended up within a couple of mm of each other and considering the size, I was pretty dam happy with that!


The top coilover mount is tied into the back stay of the rollcage. In total there are 8 different pieces on tube that connect at this mount and it is part of the back wall of the cab as well.


Just anpother shot showing the triangulation that has gone into the rear suspension mounts and rollcage.

[yeti]

that's rather coolies mate .......

[shortylux]

Cool. And about time. That Magazine lacked the coverage I was hoping for.

So it's Challenge class legal? What are you running for a winch?

[darinz]

I've just finished a write-up for the magazine which will be in the December issue. (was going to be November but they ran out of space once they saw the full details of the truck)
I never planned on it being Challenge class legal as I've modified the chassis rails and the firewall construction doesn't really fit either but with how it appears things are going then yes I might be in Challenge class after all. Doesn't really worry me which class I'm in and was happy with Modified class.

At present it is setup to have a twin motor lowmount (Trailmax) fitted. The bar is built to hold anything but the intercooler is in the way of fitting an 8274. (which I have as well) It'll end up with a twin motor (etc) 8274 but I have to rear mount the radiator first.

I have the twin motor low mount and it has the right gearing etc but I'm not sure if the motors are up to competition use. The rest of the winch looks bulletproof but the windings on the motor are quite light. Time will tell as I'm going to fit it and see if I can break it first and it does have twin 6hp from the factory though.

Winch Challenges will be interesting as I know it'll handle the rough stuff but the technical will be interesting. (to say the least) The centre of gravity is pretty low and it has huge articulation so keeping traction shouldn't be an issue but there's just so much more to it!
It should be really good in the wet as with HP and only weighing 1,800kgs it literally flies but the front end travel could see a huge bulldozer effect in deep bogs. I thinking about a hold down winch to pull the front axle up in the bogs. I've seen too many dnfs caused by front axles fully drooping causing them to hang up so with the travel (16") this has that becomes a massive issue.

[darinz]

The front end is pretty standard with a GQ axle and GQ radius arms. All I did with thread the end of the arm (where the rubber bush normally sits) and extended them so that I could thread a 7/8 rod end in. The biggest reason for this was the extra travel will see the already weak rubber bushes just fall apart extremely quickly.


Also the extra length on the arms allows for better angle on the arms at full travel. The problem with big travel is the angle of the arms can end up so extreme that the forces end up travelling up the arms rather than into the springs and shocks. By extending the arms this angle is reduced and the forces go into the suspension.

The steering is standard GQ with a GQ box bolted into the factory Terrano position. On early GQ's there is a reinforcement bracket (that was fitted in a factory recall) on the steering box / panhard rod mount. I used this to position the padhard rod bracket so as to keep 100% factory alignment. The truck is actually wheel aligned as a LWB GQ as that is exactly how the diffs and steering is setup.
I reinforced the chassis at steering box mount with a 3mm plat on the inside, plus 2 x 3mm plates on the outside and a piece of 10mm. These plates tie into the bumpstop mount and the engine mount. At the Taupo 1000 in 2011 I saw Flufees truck (FJ on Hilux chassis) actually crack right through behind the steering box mount, so you could say i was alittle paranoid about this point!

I set the castor so that it sits about the same as factory GQ. However with being able to adjust ride height, it isn't always like that.



As you can the see engine bay is rather full and the coilovers mount just below the bonnet. (literally) Once the motor was mounted I dropped everything down until the diff was hitting the chassis. The limiting point was actually the diff head hitting the right hand engine mount. From there everything was set to ensure the lowest possible ride height.
The limiting factor for front end travel is actually the range of the ball joints on the draglink. These have required the travel be limited to 16". The drive shaft allowed the full 18".
Now that it has been raced and we've played with springs rates and I've actually changed to heavier springs and this has seen the travel brought back to about 14".


This ride height has about 14" of travel at the front and 22" at the rear. I can adjust the length of the limiting straps which allows for a lower ride height without increasing the preload on the springs. This means everything is basically the same with just a lower ride height and slightly less down travel.