RJ70 Build Thread.

[Paddler Ed]

Oh well; I got my bits from him as it was easiest when we did the extractors (he was cheapest for them), and then the cat back was via him as well and he custom bent it for me without even having the car there.

 

[Ben]

All good mate.

I priced all the bits up in stainless off ebay and it came to about $500, for a 2.5" system to the first silencer, then 3" from there back with one more small rear silencer.

Then I did some more searching and found these guys:

http://www.performanceexhaust.com.au/

Their even cheaper and they have much more range in terms of mandrel bends, I can get 30, 40, 60, 90 and 180 degree bends from them as well as the tube and rear muffler.

Only thing they dont seem to have is stainless steel flanges so I will get those from ebay as I want to keep it all stainless and rust free.

As soon as the alluminium tube I've ordered has been delivered I can finish modifying the oil filter housing and get an update up.

 

[StarCruiser]

Might be more expensive Ben but have a quick look on RS Components at their stainless mandrel bends. I think they come under Milk Tube or something. My local fabricators use them and have said they are cheap but we may be talking apples and oranges as I think they may be a bit thick on the wall compared to what you are looking at.

 

[Paddler Ed]

So what are running from each bank to the union?

On the 4Runner we have 2" from each bank into 2.5" at the cat and through from there to a large silencer (muffler) - we got one that is about 10" x 6" x 20" in dimension

 

[Ben]

Might be more expensive Ben but have a quick look on RS Components at their stainless mandrel bends. I think they come under Milk Tube or something. My local fabricators use them and have said they are cheap but we may be talking apples and oranges as I think they may be a bit thick on the wall compared to what you are looking at.

Thanks mate.

Yeah bit too thick and postage might be expensive.

So what are running from each bank to the union?

On the 4Runner we have 2" from each bank into 2.5" at the cat and through from there to a large silencer (muffler) - we got one that is about 10" x 6" x 20" in dimension

The manifold exit pipes are 2.5" so I will keep it 2.5" for the front section.

Plan is 2 x flexi pipes after the manifolds, then some mandrel bends to my stainless steel silencer, which I already have left over from LJ when I realised diesels dont really need silencers.

From there it will be a 3" system. I'm going to build the front section first and see how loud it is and then decide whether to fit a rear silencer or not.

Just need to invest a few hundred dollars in 3x 2.5" mandrel bends, 2 x flexi's, a pair of flanges and a meter of tube.

 

[StarCruiser]

If I'm not mistaken, I think RS covers Oz. Not sure about delivery though but in the U.K. It's free next day. Useful for other bits perhaps but I suspected they would be too heavy.

 

[Ben]

Airbox.

I've been looking at what I can do airbox wise. Whether I could use the Lexus one, the Lj70 one RJ came with, or a combination of the 2.

This is the standard Lexus one.



It wouldnt fit and it didnt look like I could get the LJ one to work either, thankfully the Lexus airbox easily unbolts from the sensor, leaving a nice flat mounting surface to mount to a custom airbox.











So I'm going to design and build a custom alluminium air box to fit in this space.





Power Steering Pipes.

I needed to connect my power steering pipes to the new engine mounted pump. Only issue was that the 1UZ has the pump mounted on the opposite side as the 2lt.



The 2lt reservoir was mounted on the passenger side.



Where as the 1UZ is on the engine on the drivers side.



I wanted to avoid the expense and unsightliness of getting custom pipes made and fitted to swap back over to the other side.

So I managed to re-bend the standard pipes and re-plumb it all to work. Hopefully it will still have enough cooling capacity. The other option was to use the cooler built into the bottom of the rad but I'm not keen on that design encase the rad fails.



Bolted back on and plumbed in.

















Gearbox Cross-member.

I tack welded the thick washers in position on the gearbox cross-member then removed it and fully welded them.







Painted it.





Re-fitted it.



Mirrors.

I still wasnt happy with the standard mirrors, they just look wrong!



Then going through some boxes of spare parts I found what I had been looking for, to allow me to bolt on the new mirrors I bought a few months ago.



And it even had the part number on it (something I had been unable to find on Toyodiy.com)



So now I could finally fit one of my new mirrors!











I've ordered another rubber for the other side.

Fuel Tank.

I removed the old fuel tank on RJ, complete with 30 litres of diesel still in the bottom.





Took it into the garden to clean it and sat it next to the Lexus one.



Removed the fuel pump from the Lexus one as I want to try and fit it inside the RJ one.





Removed all these bits from the Lexus one.



And these bits from the RJ tank.



This is the Lexus pump that I want to fit into my RJ tank, I've just got to work out how I am going to build a surge bowl in the bottom of the tank to prevent it stalling on hills and the pump running dry which would kill it pretty quick.





Exhaust.

I've been measuring up underneath RJ for the custom stainless steel mandrel bent system I'm going to design and build.



I found making some templates of the mandrel bends very helpful in deciding what to order.



Viscous Fan.

So this is the viscous fan I found on ebay.



Went and picked it up.





Almost identical size to the Lexus one.





The bolt spacings were different though where it mounts on the engine.



So I needed to bolt the new fan blade to my viscous fan.



A quick before and after.

Before.



After.



So I'd gained a good 15-20mm of clearance as the new fan had much less off set than the old one.

Bolted it back on to the engine.





Front panel back on.



Rad sat in place.





Much better!



The fan is quite off set to the rad though, so I will have to design and make a custom cowl.



Timing Belt Change.

I began stripping the engine down to change the timing belt and refereed to this section in the FSM:

http://lexus-doc.ru/ileaf/lex91rm/91rmsour/1991rm/91ls400r/em/timingbe.pdf

And this excellent "How To" on one of the Lexus forums:

http://www.lexls.com/tutorials/engine/timingbelt.html

All was going well.





Until it came time to undo the bottom pulley.



Torqued to 181ft-lb my 110 volt Hilti rattle gun wouldnt budge it.

The FSM says to use a special tool to stop it from turning while you undo it with a breaker bar and then another tool to pull the pulley off once the bolt has been removed.

I decided to make one tool to do both jobs.

Looking through my box of washers I found some nice big hole saw waste pieces that were 8mm thick. (I always keep the waste out of cuts I make with hole saws and chuck them in my washers box).



Got it in the pillar drill and put a 50mm hole through the center of it.





Marked, center punched and drilled the 2 x 10mm mounting holes.



Found some more scrap bits of steel in the bottom of my scrap box.



Didnt even have to cut or bend them, just welded them together.



Welded that to the other bit.



Back on to the pillar drill to put a 12mm hole through the top.



Welded a nut on and found an old piece of all thread.





Bolted my new tool to the pulley on the engine.





Ensured my bottom mark was lined up.



As were my top marks.



Held the tool in place with a big pair of stilsons.





And wound the bugger out!



Wound the M12 bolt in next to pull the pulley off.



And now the timing belt could be changed!



I need to fit the new belt, tensioner and idler pulleys and put it all back together.

I need to purchase a bigger torque wrench for that bottom pulley bolt as mine only goes up to 150 ft-lb.

So going to grab this one on Saturday:

http://www.totaltools.com.au/tti-1-2-sd-torque-wrench-ard250/i1041413/

Huge amount still to do but I am making progress.

 

[doyle61]

If your not going to be doing serious of roading in RJ, why don't you just put a performance air induction kit on it. It'll look the dogs and help get the most out of the v8 esp when you build the exhaust.
The build is coming along great btw

 

[Ben]

Thanks mate.

I hadnt really considered it TBH.

I will do some research and see what I can find.

Only issue is connecting up something that allows me to retain the MAF sensor.

 

[AndyCook]

Like the puller tool you made to get that pulley off,
Good update, still lots,of work to do, my getting there!

 

[Gary820]

Coming along nicely.

Ref the air filter you could make an adapter for the maf with your skills to suit a performance filter of your choice.

 

[clivehorridge]

Nice one Ben, a good bit of SS tooling there

 

[Ben]

Thanks guys.

 

[Ben]

Timing Belt

I picked up the big torque wrench as planned.







Pulled the old timing belt and pulleys off.



And fitted the new belt and pulleys.



I found using a clamp to hold the belt in position on the top pulley while I got the rest in position was a big help.



I liked how the belt had 3 alignment marks on it, one for each cam shaft and one for the crank.

Left cam.



Right cam.



And crank.



The new torque wrench worked well to torque up the crank bolt correctly.





I put a lot of the front of the engine back together.



But couldnt finish it as I discovered the ignition rotors are knackered.





I've ordered new ones from Amayama for $10.80 each, so when they arrive I can finish putting it back together.

I refitted the viscous fan ready for mounting the rad.



But more on the rad in the next update.

Oil Filter Housing.

I needed to sort the oil filter housing out as the filter was virtually touching the chassis.





Its quite a long thing and sticks out miles.







Normally people do one of 2 things when doing this conversion.

1. They bolt an adapter to the engine then run 2 hoses from the adapter to a remote mount oil filter housing bolted to the chassis.

I didnt want to go down this route for a few reasons, the main reason was that I dont think its a very neat solution and its not cheap.

2. Fit a Toyota Soarer one which points forwards as opposed to sideways.

This would have been a neat solution but trying to find one might have proved tricky.

So I chose to modify the one I had.

Removed the oil pressure sender unit and the threaded section that the filter screws to.



The 2 oil passageways actually run off diagonally away from each other which is maybe why people dont normally modify these (I've been unable to find evidence of anyone else doing a "cut n shut" on one of these filter housings, despite ages spent searching google images).



So out with the recip saw.



And cut it in half.





Then marked and cut 20mm out of the middle.









Now I couldnt just weld the 2 halves back together as I wouldnt be able to fully weld/seal between the 2 oil galleries.

So I purchased some alluminium tube to sleeve one of the galleries with.



Drilled one of the galleries out to 16mm for the tube to fit in.







Cut some tube to length.



Pushed the tube into one half.





And welded it in position.

I didnt want to push it all the way through the housing and weld up the other end, because the other end has a rubber gasket that pushes in and seals it against the engine block and I didnt want to risk damaging that carefully machined face.





I filled down my weld slightly and countersunk the opposite hole to ensure a tighter fit when the 2 pieces were pushed together.





Pushed back together.











The next job was to carefully weld the end of the tube to the housing to fully seal it.





Then I could fully weld the 2 sections of the housing back together.









I ran a drill and file down the 2 holes to fully clean them out and to improve the alignment of the holes without the tube insert.





And that was that finished!

1 x 20mm shorter oil filter housing.



Screwed the oil pressure sender back in and the threaded filter mount.



Bolted the whole thing back on to the V8.



Picked up a new filter.



Screwed it on.



Plenty of clearance now!



Oil Cap.

I picked up a new oil cap this week.



To replace the Toyota one.



Which the top had come off.





Fuel Tank/Pump.

I made a start on mounting the Lexus pump in my standard tank.

Cut the mount off the Lexus tank and made sure I took enough to allow me to remove the surge bowl through the same hole.



I just had to drill the 4 spot welds out holding it to the bottom of the tank.



So this is what I want to try and fit to the bottom of my tank.



So that the pump always has fuel despite the angle of the vehicle (hills).





My initial thought was I might be able to just cut my tank and weld in the complete section I cut out of the Lexus one, but that wont work due to the shape of the 70 tank.

So I decided to remove the metal around the fuel pump boss.





Drilled the spot welds out and prysed off the bits I need.





My plan is to weld the boss to the side of my 70 tank to mount the pump to and spot weld the surge bowl back in the bottom and then link up a fuel return line to empty into the surge bowl.

What a lot of people do is fit an external surge tank and have a low pressure fuel pump pump fuel into that, then have the high pressure EFI pump from that to the engine.

But it will be much neater, simpler and more reliable to just have the one tank mounted standard EFI pump, so thats why I'm going down this more difficult route as I believe it is a much better way to go!

I'm also in the middle of modifying and mounting the rad and designing and making a cowl to go on the back to suit my fan location.

I've also ordered loads more parts for the build this week.

Working on it everyday for 3-4 hours, so another update soon.

 

[Ben]

Fuel Tank.

I got a tiny bit more done on the fuel tank this week.

Marked the biggest flat section I could cut out of the top of RJ's tank and got it outside ready to wake the neighbours up at 7am angle grinding.







The standard carby motored, surge bowl is tiny.



This is where the Lexus surge bowl will be welded I think.



I need to cut a 125mm diameter hole in the side of the tank to mount the Lexus pump and I need to make and weld in a boss for the section I cut out so I can bolt an alluminium access/cover panel back on over the hole.

Cooling System.

I looked at mounting the alluminium rad next.



First job was to cut the old brackets off.





Then I could add some new mounts.

Picked up some angle from Bunnings.





Cut it in half.



Clamped in position.



Had to trim the bottoms for clearance.





Marked and drilled some mounting holes and welded the angle on.





Cut some cardboard to fit on the back of the rad.



Taped it on.



Bolted the rad on.







Marked around the fan with a pen so I can work out what shape to build the cowl to.



I needed to blank off the small hose outlet on the thermostat housing as I will be running a slightly different system to the Lexus.





On the Lexus that hose ran to the bottom of the coolant bottle.





But I dont want to use the Lexus bottle (even though it would be an easier way to go).

I want to use the standard RJ/LJ70 coolant bottle.



And my overflow hose will run from the bottle to a rad neck I'm going to weld on top of the rad, if it ever arrives from China (been waiting ages now).





Removed the thermostat housing.



Pulled the metal tube out.



Cleaned it up with a wire wheel.





And welded it up.





Ordered a new O ring from Toyota (not sure I will use Amayama again, its been a nightmare trying to do business with them )

When that arrives on Monday, I can bolt it back on.





And that was as far as I got as I decided I need a metal folder to do a proper job of the rad cowl and airbox (if I end up building one.)

So I knocked these up.

The big one, welded to the edge of the bench is for bending sheet metal and when I've added the fingers will be able to bend up boxes.







And this one is for bending up brackets.







On the subject of airboxes/induction kits the only one I can find that looks even remotely suitable is a Pipercross Venom one, which I actually had on my LJ70 for a while.

Not cheap though.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Pipercro...228783?hash=item25a2afee6f:g:7F8AAOSw7aBVCpb0

 

[Pat]

I like your metal folder,much better than doing it in the vice.How many hours sleep do you get a night as you are doing a swag of work?Cheers.

 

[Animal Mother]

Fuel Tank.

Cut some cardboard to fit on the back of the rad.

View attachment 112640

I used to live in Boronia. Went to Piranha one or two times.

 

[Ben]

I like your metal folder,much better than doing it in the vice.How many hours sleep do you get a night as you are doing a swag of work?Cheers.

Thanks mate, I'm really pleased with how it came out!



Not enough!

Lucky if I get 6-7 hours a night!

The biggest problem for me is the neighbours! Their bloody every where and as we dont have daylights saving, its light at 4;30am, I'm wide awake, raring to get a few hours work done before I have to go to work and I cant really make any noise until 7am at the earliest!

I cant wait till we can buy some land and our nearest neighbour to be a mile or 2 away so I can angle grind/hammer/play loud music/walk round my garden naked etc at anytime of the day or night. Without having to worry about upsetting neighbours!

I used to live in Boronia. Went to Piranha one or two times.

Me too! Piranha is a cool place!

 

[Ben]

Sway Bar.

I had been after a sway bar (or anti roll bar if your not from Australia) for a while but it was proving hard to find one as most people remove them as they limit articulation off road.

As RJ will be mainly road based with some beach driving and light off roading, I decided I wanted one for the improved road handling.

Well I finally got lucky and found one.



Stripped it down ready for paint.



Got it outside with a load of other parts that needed cleaning up with a wire wheel in the angle grinder.



I had intended to get all these bits shot blasted then either electro plated or powder coated but as I'm struggling to find places up here that are willing to work for a fair price and not rip you off, I figured I would just clean them up and paint them myself.

Did these 3 and they actually came up pretty good.





Gave them a coat of this rust killer and primer in one. Not cheap stuff but I'm impressed with it so far.





Followed by 2 coats of this black enamel.



Spare Wheel Mount

While I was cleaning up the spare wheel mount and getting it ready for paint I found a crack in it.





Cleaned it up better using a wire wheel in the drill.





And then found 2 other cracks!





Fusion welded them back together with the TIG.





And gave it a couple of coats of paint too.



Thermostat Housing O Ring

The O ring I ordered from my local Toyota dealer arrived on Monday.



Which meant I could bolt the housing back on.





Interior

I stripped the interior out a little bit this morning.

Pulled the front seats out.





Followed by the vinyl flooring, which because it had been fitted without any underlay its badly damaged and split.



The floor pan isnt too bad for a 31 year old car.



Theres a couple of tiny holes that need repairing.





I wanted to remove the access panel off the top of transmission tunnel next.





That will make it easier to connect the transfercase stick and fit the new rubber boot to the top of the gearbox as the old one was split.



Radiator Hoses

I've been looking at connecting the rad up to the engine.



The standard Lexus hoses seemed like a good starting point.

Top hose wont work though sadly.



And the bottom one isnt really long enough at the top.



Cut some out of the top one.



Until I got it fitting nicely.





Taped it together.



And that is my sample hose, all I need to do now is take it to my local Repco/Bursons etc. and look through the hose boxes.



Most people who do this conversion seem to make the rad hoses up using multiple universal silicon bends connected with joiners and lots of hose clamps, but I'd rather just use one hose top and bottom if possible and keep it nice and neat and simple.

Radiator Cowl

A rad cowl is extremely important, I found without one fitted to my other 70, it overheats!

So I needed to make one to help channel the cool air through the rad.

Took some measurements and pulled the rad back off.



Cut some 2mm alluminium sheet.





Got it into the folder.



First bend.



To 45 degrees.



Second 45 degree bend.





Resulted in this.



Clamped in position.





Folded some more alluminium for the other side.







Drilled and bolted both pieces on.









Cut and folded some more.





Cut one last strip.





Using my big Stanley compass, I marked what would need cutting out, using a center point I worked out from my pen marks on the cardboard.



Cut all the sections out.



Clamped and welded it all together.







All done, or so I thought.





Went to fit it and found it was hitting the chassis rail on the passenger side.



Chassis rail is marked in red.





Cut a section off.



Test fitted it.





Cut and welded in a strip of alluminium to cap it off and get some strength back into the structure.





Bottom Radiator Outlet Modification

I needed to change the bottom outlet for the bottom rad hose.





2 hacksaw cuts later.







Clamped it in position and welded it on.





New Parts for the build

I had 3 deliveries today for the build!

The alluminium radiator neck for the top of the rad has come and so can be welded on next.

And 2 orders from Amayama which is mainly engine parts and pieces of interior trim that I was missing.

I've ordered some NGK Iridium spark plugs from the UK (much cheaper than getting them in Australia) and once they are here the engine can be completely put back together.

Parts I still need to buy:

-Stainless steel exhaust parts (mandrel bends, flexies, collector cone to make 2 pipes into 1, flanges and tube).

-A new battery, maybe an Optima.

-5 x 33" x 12.5 x 16 BFG KM2's.

-Airfilter/induction kit.

-Vinyl flooring and underlay.

Oh I almost forgot................................

I almost bought another soft top RJ70 this week.

I went and looked at this:







But all I really wanted from it was the super rare, genuine Toyota fiber glass hard top.





So I decided not to buy it, had we been in a position where we had some land and wernt planning on moving every year for the next 5-10 years then at that price I would have just bought it and parked it up in a shed.

 

[clivehorridge]

Brilliant work Ben, just caught up on the last 3 updates...

Like the oil filter mount reduction, "he who dares" eh?

Fantastic!