Now moving to the Intercooler work. This truck is 24V (at least for now), so I want to retain both batteries in the engine bay, even if I eventually convert it to 12V.
As most of you might know, the fan shroud of the 3B's are like a mile long. Eventually, I hope to add Air Conditioning to this 42, so I wanted to move the radiator back a little to create some space for both, the intercooler and the AC condenser.
I talked to Bill
@bkcruiser about some ideas to move the radiator back and he came up with an elegant solution to this. He fabricated a metal bracket that extends the lower feet of the radiator support on the frame. I would later drill the two new holes to move the radiator back as much as I needed. We will grind and clean the feet once all the fabrication is done, but for now we are worrying about fitment of all the components the way they are intended.
I had suggestions of moving both batteries inside the cab, maybe keeping one in the engine bay and one in the cab or moving them under the frame. I wanted to keep both batteries as Toyota intended so both battery trays needed to be modified.
We had multiple options for intercooler selection. We considered different size intercoolers and tried to fit a couple of different ones. We ended up following the recommendations of my good friend Ofer
@ofer bruhis on an intercooler that he had used on his green HDJ40 build (Kermit), which I want to believe is a twin relative of this build (though Kermit is MUCH nicer than this one)
We purchased the intercooler core from a place called First Place Autoparts. When we got the Intercooler, we noticed that it came directly from Holley. The intercooler is 11"x12"x3" in size with a 2.5" inlet and outlet, PN FRO-FB600B. I ordered the black version so it wouldn't be too "in-your-face" kind of setup.
Took a screenshot of where we ordered from, just in case the link gets broken in the future, and attached the link also for reference:
Frostbite Air to Air Intercooler Universal 11"x12"x3" Core w/2.5" In/Out, Black - (FRO-FB600B) - https://fpautoparts.com/Performance/Frostbite-Air-To-Air-Intercooler-FRO-FB600B
Just for reference, the turbo outlet and the engine intake on my 15BFT are both 2" in diameter. All the piping and hoses will be 2" in diameter, so I ordered a 2.5" to 2" 90-degree elbows to exit the intercooler and go into the piping itself. I ordered these elbows from Amazon.
The battery tray on the Left-Hand side of the 42 was the hardest to work on. This battery tray needed to be modified to allow for both, the intercooler pipe and the steering shaft from the firewall to the steering box to run under the tray. Once again, I talked to Bill about some ideas I had and he came up with a plan to make all this happen. As the batteries are typically heavy, and they carry a lot of mass, we decided to overbuild the battery trays they way Toyota did it originally on these trucks.
All the fabrication work will be taken apart, cleaned, painted, and reinstalled once the truck is running and we know everything is working and the way its supposed to be.
Some photos of the progress just for reference. Notice that I had already cut the radiator fan shroud and moved the radiator back about 1.5" on the photos below. I have to remove the masking tape and paint the shroud, too.
Thank you, Bill
@bkcruiser, for all the hard work on this truck. I truly and sincerely appreciate it.
The Right-Hand side battery tray was much easier compared to the Left-Hand one, as it only needed to allow the intercooler pipe to run under it.
And finally, a photo of the intercooler core semi installed. Bill later fabricated an upper and lower mounting bracket to keep everything in place.
I still need to connect the turbo outlet to the intercooler pipe and the intercooler pipe to the engine inlet. Need to find an elegant way to do so. Also, eventually an AC condenser will live between the radiator and the intercooler (there is plenty of space there).
(T-shirt borrowed from Galen's stash @bottombracket)
