Building Te-Rino

[stovanovich]

Thought whilst my truck is off the road I'd start my build thread / story that's been on the back burner for ages.
4 wheeling has been in my family since I was only a little fella (although more often the co-driver than the driver)


I essentially grew up in Pureora, wheeling there with Dad in a whole range of different vehicles from a Datsun / suzuki hybrid, a FJ70 tough shiney & the FJ40 Trials style truck running a 12HT.

Now as an adult and my career underway I decided it was time to purchase my own vehicle. Enter a 1992 Nissan Terrano, TD27T.
It was a little bashed up around the edges (thanks to a bus & a fence) but as it was to become a offroad vehicle, I wasn't too concerned:



Now (nicknamed "Te Rino" she looks like this:


I will update this thread with the progress (in the order it happened) followed by the current work that is all going on.

[stovanovich]

First mod was simple. Some bigger MT rubber. Decided 31s were a good place to start and these Kumho's looked like a nice fit for a nice price combined with some steel rims left over from Dad's FJ70.


Next up came a custom snorkel, which was copied from the one designed from the old man's safari, kept it simple: combination of aluminum pipe & PVC. Entire snorkel was primarily inside the guard itself.




Isuzu Bighorn Intercooler & scoop which I landed a sweet deal on followed this very soon after


Fabbed up a custom flange for Intake side (threw away all the old butterfly cold start C**p) which allowed the intercooler to sit square above the engine.


A simple turn of the exhaust manifold side & a custom flange on the intercooler itself allowed us to join this side using only a single 90deg silicon bend

[fh2014]

Watching this intercooler mod closely, am about to do the exact same thing. Please provide lots of detail
Picked up bighorn cooler, scoop and air duct for 30 on weekend.

Your trucks looking good - love build threads, lots of inspiration. Will start my own soon.

[stovanovich]

Intercooler was easy, flange for intake manifold was just a short piece of 3 inch pipe welded to a flat square piece with 90deg silicon pipe going straight onto the intercooler itself.

Other side I turned the standard exhaust manifold flange around to it was pointing toward the back of the engine back then a 90deg silcon pipe from there up to the intercooler. Easy as.

Worst bit was building up the courage to cut the hole in the bonnet haha, came out alright in the end


Next mod after the intercooler was the beginning of my bar work, picked up a steel bullbar from a 2wd Navara for $100 so that was a sweet pickup!
Had to change the mounts around a bit in order to fit it to the old girl but once it was on, it was both sturdy & looked great. (saved the front end from a few trees over the last year)


Ran the truck like this for a few months but started to notice a couple of little niggles that were slightly annoying me, namely, getting diffed out, so began the hunt & research on bigger rubber.

[stovanovich]

One excellent mod that needed to be made before making the change to bigger rubber though was an idler arm brace
(cheers to TomsOffRoad) this bad boy is still one of the best mods I have done to date, after bending 2 arms it was a must have! And for less than the price of a single new arm, you can't complain!


Whilst I braced the arm, I also managed to source a nice, tight LSD for the rear to replace my open diff. This has been a great help getting out of some "sticky" situations.


Finally in this set of mods, I sold my 31s to my cousin for his 410 Suzuki and upgraded the rubber. Despite everyone saying "You have to lift your truck to fit tyres" I can vouch for the fact that this is simply not true. Through my research I found you can fit up to 33 x 10.5" tyres under a Terrano with no body lift. I however decided to go with 32 x 11.5, all that was needed here was a little trim / fold of the guards to handle the extra width when turning (still plenty of room for the height) End result after all these and we had a pretty swell looking & performing truck

[Jerry]

:D

[fh2014]

What did you do with the three hoses going to the butterfly on the intake bend? Just plug them? Two appear to control the butterfly and the other i have no idea, it dissapears down under the intake manifold. Have got my cooler in but do not know what to do with these lines.

P.s awesome photo

[stovanovich]

Plug em up, There all associated with the EGR (which I have since removed completely too)
Next mod was easy, just a simple smaller diameter aftermarket steering wheel. Made some cosmetic modifcations too by replacing the vents (which had long since broken) with a mesh grille available from supercheap & a little figurine of the Rhino from Spider man which was attached between the center vent acting as a sort of Mascot for the truck.



Following this it was back to more barwork, namely my custom Rock Sliders (built by an aircraft engineer & good mate of mine under the name of Kapoor Customs in Hamilton)




These were fitted to the truck using High tensile bolts & 2 plates bolted either side of the Chassis (in a U shape) they have served me very well over the last little while. Nice & sturdy.

[stovanovich]

So, next up in the build process was something in the ways of a rear bar as I was getting sick of getting caught up on the tow bar with a good solid "thunk", managed to source a pre-made steel one from a Terrano that was being wrecked (it even matched the look of the front one )
But just when I thought I was done with bar work I go and do this at Ngaroma, might be a need for some Arches in my future.


Found this pic too which is a prime example why you shouldn't rely on Factory tow hooks (this snapped on a hidden stump, can only imagine the damage if anyone had snatched off it.


Now we're pretty much caught up to where I'm at now. Truck is currently off the road as EGT probe snapped inside the manifold and got jammed in the turbo fins (meaning I had vacuum instead of boost & black smoke). But Luckily I've sourced a spare head & turbo with less than half the Ks of my current one so that's going straight on. Figured I'd take this time to do some other bits and bob's too whilst the turbo was off (Oil filter is extremely easy to get at so perhaps an early service is in order)

My cousin, Brett (PureoraBushGuy) thinks he's an amazing Hide & Seek player

[Pureora Bush Guy]

cheers for letting me help with your build cuz, hope there will be more I can help with in the near future

[stovanovich]

Looks like the old girl is all up and running again, been scratching my head for the last week trying to find the source of a steam / smoke problem coming from around the new turbo. Found out I missed one of the washers on the oil feed banjo and it seems to have stopped (fingers crossed)

[DieselBoy]

If it hasn't fixed it, and it's a copper washer, there's a trick you can use to recycle a re use copper washers and get them to seal again like new.

If you have a propane/blow torch, gas camp stove, or even a BBQ, hold the copper washer in the flame untill the washer glows red, then pull it out and let it cool.

The washer will now be nice and soft again and ready to form to the required shape again in order to seal.

Works on any copper washer, like on your injector pump banjos, oil feed lines, sump plugs, gearbox plugs ect etc.

[stovanovich]

Thanks DieselBoy. Yeah she's behaving now but that advice is awesome so im gonna keep that in mind for in the future.

[stovanovich]

Been a few weeks since my last update but here's one of the greatest and simplest mods I've done on Rino. Got my fabricator mate to make up a rear Sway bar disconnector. We gave it a good testing in Pureora over New Years
Could feel the back end just walking everywhere off-road and needed half the skinny pedal that was usually required in many situations.



Thinking of changing the shackles (which are 1T rated, used on Diggers etc) to some sort of pin to allow even quicker disconnection.

One downside I've found over trips on the bigger tyres is the factory auto hubs jumping out in reverse which at times is a real pain, found some AVM manual hubs on a wrecked Navara and away we went. Been running them on last 3 trips and so far no worries (carry the auto hubs as trail spares just in case).

[lax2wlg]

Very cool

Loving these Terranos

[stovanovich]

Very cool

Loving these Terranos

All thanks to a lot of verbal help over the internet from you Josh!
Will have to come down Wellington one day soon to wheel with that beast of yours (once the 2wd conversion is done at least)

[smurf182]

Hey man, what do those swaybar disconnects look like when they're.. disconnected? Do you just pull those clevis pins out and the bottom of the link just hangs down?

I have been thinking about something similar for my 60 series but not quite sure what to make it out of.

[stovanovich]

You can either leave it to hang down or cable tie it to actual sway bar. Only need to undo one side technically. PM me if you want me to arrange my fabricator guy to make one for ya and we'll sort something out

[stovanovich]

Whilst raiding a Terrano at Pick A Part today for Trail spares I found a 2wd Navara that had just come in and grabbed the bits required to do the 2WD steering conversion. So getting that all sorted is my plan for next week.

[stovanovich]

So work has begun on sorting out this 2wd Steering Mod, if you've never read about it, this is what is required:

- 2wd Centrelink & Inner Tie Rods (D21 Navara, Datsun)
- 4wd Adjusters & Inner Tie Rods (WD21 Terrano / Pathfinder)

Firstly you need to remove the 4wd outer tie rods from your adjusters. These are no longer required in the new setup as your 4wd inner tie rods become the outers on the new system (if you don't know which is which, the 4wd inner tie rods are Left Hand Threaded, these are the ones you want to keep)

Now, the 2wd Inner Tie-Rods have an 18mm Right Hand thread so you will need to bore out the adjuster (right hand thread side) half way and re-tap. Thanks again to my mate at Kapoor Customs whom has all the toys to make this part easy:



I'll finish the write up on the rest of the job as I get around to doing it, but from here it should be relatively straight forward for anyone

[fh2014]

seriously watching this one!

. does this mod sort out the play in the steering? mine has baad play. have braced idler, new idler bushes, new upper and lower ball joints in all control arms... still play. recon it might fail a warrant ...

[stovanovich]

Yes it is supposed to help, basically what happens with the standard 4wd setup is rotational forces cause the balljoints in the centre link & tie rods to wear out really quickly. The 2wd setup reduces the bump steer & prevents the failure of tie rod / centre link balljoints.

Massive write up over at NPORA on the whole thing (but i'll be summarizing it here too as It goes onto the truck)
http://www.nissanpathfinders.net/forum/ ... onversion/

[lax2wlg]

Great work.
Mate the 2wd steering + idler brace (or dual boxes) will fix all steering problems with the WD21 platform.
Geometrically its the same as a Pajero or a Humvee.

The only potential weak spot is the curved inner tie rod. Personally I would recommend either getting some of HD adjusters made out of 4140 solid bar which delete the curved tie rod and replace it with a straight 18mm rod end. Otherwise, go for Sankei Three 5 brand (555) inner tie rod. They are made in Japan and almost as high quality as the Japanese women.

I've sold those HD adjusters to a guy running a V6 Pathy with front locker and 35s. No steering issues whatsoever.

The main benefit of the 555 product is that it is hot forged and therefore more resistant to bending in a 'heavy hit' situation.

"The main difference between hot and cold forging may be summarized as follows: The cold forging manufacturing process increases the strength of a metal through strain hardening at a room temperature. On the contrary the hot forging manufacturing process keeps materials from strain hardening at high temperature, which results in optimum yield strength, low hardness and high ductility."

Source: http://www.farinia.com/forge/cold-forgi ... -drawbacks

[stovanovich]

The only potential weak spot is the curved inner tie rod. Personally I would recommend either getting some of HD adjusters made out of 4140 solid bar which delete the curved tie rod and replace it with a straight 18mm rod end. Otherwise, go for Sankei Three 5 brand (555) inner tie rod. They are made in Japan and almost as high quality as the Japanese women.

I've sold those HD adjusters to a guy running a V6 Pathy with front locker and 35s. No steering issues whatsoever.

Yeah mate, I'd love to get some of those HD adjusters made up but I'll give the setup a run like this for awhile to get to know the feel of it

Anyway, all installed today and given an Eye-lignment. All fitted easy with no problems. Interesting to see how it goes when I take it out for a spin.

[fh2014]

Cheers - do give some feedback. And thank you too lax2wlg, oh wise steering one.

Today I have managed to bend the idler arm. - while inside an idler arm brace.

So time for this mod next me thinks. Oh and the two steering box mod.

[lax2wlg]

Yeah regarding the dual steering boxes mod - and not to crash the thread - if these cert guys really dont want to play the game, what we need is some LHD steering boxes from the US. Theoretically those puppies should bolt straight on to the idler mounts with no mods required.

Or jus t cover it up with a fender liner made from an old Tyre tube

[stovanovich]

Today I have managed to bend the idler arm. - while inside an idler arm brace.

What sort of brace was it? Must've been a big hit to bend it, also which idler arm as I've found there is a few variations.

what we need is some LHD steering boxes from the US. Theoretically those puppies should bolt straight on to the idler mounts with no mods required.

Should be able to source some of those relatively cheap from Rock-Auto one would imagine.

Anyway, just drove between Tauranga & Auckland this morning and the steering wasn't too bad, a little bit of bumpsteer remaining but It hasn't been in for a proper alignment so that's to be kinda expected. Apart from that it felt good, nice & smooth. Traversing the 42nd this weekend coming so that'll be it's first test offroad.

[hamboy]

Yeah regarding the dual steering boxes mod - and not to crash the thread - if these cert guys really dont want to play the game, what we need is some LHD steering boxes from the US. Theoretically those puppies should bolt straight on to the idler mounts with no mods required.

Or jus t cover it up with a fender liner made from an old Tyre tube

I'll let you know how I get on next week as im cert'ing on Friday, BUT the design has been approved!

[coxsy]

seen some guys make two flat plate brkts that bolt to the chassis to stop the arms flexing upward and hitting the chassis

[stovanovich]

seen some guys make two flat plate brkts that bolt to the chassis to stop the arms flexing upward and hitting the chassis

Yeah I've actually got something made up similar to that, just been too lazy to put it on as of yet. The Brace alone seems to be doing a sweet job.