RedRhinoProducts
07-06-2007, 07:47 AM
Sooooooo… It’s been about a year since I laid a hand on my truck after OZ and the OBC. Took a bit of a sabbatical I guess you could say. Anyhow, I’m back and turning wrenches again. Me and a buddy are running our trucks as “chase” rigs in the Baja 1000 for the McMillan’s. Should be an absolute blast! Figured I’d drop a line and share with everyone what’s been done on the rig of late and where I'm taking it.
Running gear – The Nissan Patrol GU/GQ front and rear running gear has been fitted and is 100% functional. This stuff is bullet proof man! Huge…in a big way. The main gears a 4.10’s and are currently open. I’ve got the ARB lockers, just need to fit them up. With the rear diff being centered and the front being so far over and farther back it created some serious concern about drive line angles and vibe. Well, with the help of my boys at FleetPride we were able to make up some quad cardin (double cardin at both ends) shafts and the truck runs and drives like a dream as far as that’s concerned.
Suspension – We ended up linking the rear with some serious DOM tubing up to the stock a-arm area with all new mounts. Works very well, very meaty! We ran a set of 10” King’s through the rear floor with all new mounts and kept the limiting straps. On the front we built some nice new hoops and went with the same shocks up front. My boy Adrian in OZ did the work with communication back and forth with me. All is good except where he chose to mount the pan-hard rod and the draglink. They’re all fuct up! Going to be re-tooling their lengths and locations this week along with fitting a hydro steer setup. Once that’s all sorted she should drive like a dream with the new Toyo muds (vs. the Simex which are on their now)
Those are the biggest changes thus far. Obviously the BIGGEST concern is removing as much weight as possible... I'll be getting to that! :) I’m trying to decide what to do about the interior. It’s already stripped with the exception of the dash and I’m thinking bout just pulling it and fabbing up a nice aluminum one. At that point I could also completely remove ALL the Rover wiring. I’m gutting all my auxiliary wiring anyhow next week and retooling it all. (Learned a lot since I built it the first time.) My thoughts are that if I went extremely simple with the rig as in manual gauges, electric fans, electric fuel pump, etc… I could completely ditch all the Rover wiring and run some simple power/ground wires and connect all my auxiliaries. I could go with a easy relay system for the lights and what not but then obviously there is the ECU… Am I nuts here to even attempt this? What started all this? Well, the damn truck died and I can’t get it started and there is all of a sudden a relay clicking obnoxiously on the right lower floorboard. It’s been identified as the damn rear lamp relay. Why it would stop the truck starting who knows…bottom line, there’s a problem with the factory wiring and to be honest, I’m not sure how to troubleshoot it. First inclination is to rip it all out…
Running gear – The Nissan Patrol GU/GQ front and rear running gear has been fitted and is 100% functional. This stuff is bullet proof man! Huge…in a big way. The main gears a 4.10’s and are currently open. I’ve got the ARB lockers, just need to fit them up. With the rear diff being centered and the front being so far over and farther back it created some serious concern about drive line angles and vibe. Well, with the help of my boys at FleetPride we were able to make up some quad cardin (double cardin at both ends) shafts and the truck runs and drives like a dream as far as that’s concerned.
Suspension – We ended up linking the rear with some serious DOM tubing up to the stock a-arm area with all new mounts. Works very well, very meaty! We ran a set of 10” King’s through the rear floor with all new mounts and kept the limiting straps. On the front we built some nice new hoops and went with the same shocks up front. My boy Adrian in OZ did the work with communication back and forth with me. All is good except where he chose to mount the pan-hard rod and the draglink. They’re all fuct up! Going to be re-tooling their lengths and locations this week along with fitting a hydro steer setup. Once that’s all sorted she should drive like a dream with the new Toyo muds (vs. the Simex which are on their now)
Those are the biggest changes thus far. Obviously the BIGGEST concern is removing as much weight as possible... I'll be getting to that! :) I’m trying to decide what to do about the interior. It’s already stripped with the exception of the dash and I’m thinking bout just pulling it and fabbing up a nice aluminum one. At that point I could also completely remove ALL the Rover wiring. I’m gutting all my auxiliary wiring anyhow next week and retooling it all. (Learned a lot since I built it the first time.) My thoughts are that if I went extremely simple with the rig as in manual gauges, electric fans, electric fuel pump, etc… I could completely ditch all the Rover wiring and run some simple power/ground wires and connect all my auxiliaries. I could go with a easy relay system for the lights and what not but then obviously there is the ECU… Am I nuts here to even attempt this? What started all this? Well, the damn truck died and I can’t get it started and there is all of a sudden a relay clicking obnoxiously on the right lower floorboard. It’s been identified as the damn rear lamp relay. Why it would stop the truck starting who knows…bottom line, there’s a problem with the factory wiring and to be honest, I’m not sure how to troubleshoot it. First inclination is to rip it all out…