2 Diesels, 4 Continents

[esh]

If you can stick to 31s, do it. If you find yourself needing a little more clearance, 33x10.5s are great. If you need load-carrying in a similar size, look at 255x85x16s for a D or E rated tire. That isn't the most common size but gets you close to 33x11. BFG MT/KM2s come in all those sizes. Goodyear MTR/Kevlars also seem to be very popular lately.

Look at the oem for Extreme Aire compressors. They come in a variety of flavors such as PacBrake in the full-size diesel pickup market at about $150 off the price of Extreme. Same unit- 3/4hp, 3.4cfm, nearly twice the compressor as the Viair setup. Great electric compressors. Search ih8mud for a thread on them. Lowrider type sites are plentiful and can have good prices on manifolds, tanks, fittings, and other components.

 

[24vRHD]

Thanks Ken, As much as I like the 33s that are on now I think 31s might be more prudent. Sadly there will be a lot more highway miles than offroad miles and we are always worried about out center of gravity with the roof rack and tent up there.

I think we are going to hold off on the decision for now. We want to load up the truck and see how she does with 33s at 5-6000 feet before making a decision.

Routine maintenance is drawing to a close and we will be getting on with the build shortly!

Now, one time only, I'm going to shamelessly point those that are interested towards the trips little website at 4by4 | 20,000km To Raise $20,000… The Ride Of A Lifetime!

It is worth mentioning that that site does point many people back to IH8MUD!

 

[mailking]

Thanks Ken, As much as I like the 33s that are on now I think 31s might be more prudent.

I'm always confused by the sizes you Americans use, but I am guessing that 31s means something similar to 7.50 - 16 right?

I find that a very good size. Less noise, greater milage, high clearance. But above all you can buy it almost anywhere we travelled so far. So best to check where you will be heading and find out if you can buy your size tire on the spot. Unless you will only drive a short distance of course [read: never intend to change tires in the first place]

Adventurous greetings,
Coen

p.s. great site. I got your RSS in my newsreader!

 

[crushers]

okay, the difference between 33s and 31s is not enough to worry about. if you want 33s then run them but make sure the sidewall is stiff. the 16" tires usually have a stiffer sidewall and skinnies seem to also be stiffer than the fats...

 

[24vRHD]

2nd Alternator

Hey guys, thanks for all your feedback on tires. We are going to get the roof rack and RTT on this weekend and chuck 400-500lbs of gear and see where we stand.

In the meantime we are working on the best way to mount the 2nd alternator (to power the 12V bank) I suspect we will have to add a double pulley and a second belt to get everything running true. I need to take a look but I suspect we have the pulley setup with only 2 holes on it that was not designed to add a second crank pulley.

How much work is it to remove the crank pulley to get it to a machine shop and add a second sheave?

 

[mailking]

In the meantime we are working on the best way to mount the 2nd alternator (to power the 12V bank) I suspect we will have to add a double pulley and a second belt to get everything running true. I need to take a look but I suspect we have the pulley setup with only 2 holes on it that was not designed to add a second crank pulley.

How much work is it to remove the crank pulley to get it to a machine shop and add a second sheave?

Why would you go that way? Extra force on the engine, another thing that can break and would not be easy to replace. A thing that sits well exposed at the bottom.

We have a 200 watt converter that gets me 12v out of our 24v setup and we have a inverter to get 220v from the 24v setup.

Adventurous greetings,
Coen

 

[24vRHD]

A good omen, we have the 6 bolt crank pulley, now to find a PS or AC sheave that fits... or make one fit...

I like good omens! I would have never guessed the 2B would have this crank considering that some 3Bs dont...

hmm... not much paint under there. Guess we can make a small fire under it to get it going on cold days just like the folks in Siberia without doing too much damage

 

[24vRHD]

Hey Coen,

Where did you find a good 200 watt converter? I was looking at them but they were very expensive, not very efficient and hot. What brand are you using? Would love to see the details.

One of the reasons we are using a 12 V alternator is because we are using a number of high draw 12V items such as our winch and our air compressor. While it would have been nice to have these in 24V we decided to go in 12V because they may eventually be donated to the other cruiser which is 12V. To find a DC to DC battery charger that could keep up with the potential load was very expensive.

From a reliability standpoint we felt that a 12V alternator would be easy to replace if it broke since it is not unique to our vehicle (we are going the GM single wire route). That being said we will most likely have to mount it down low and this does present a very real reliability concern. If it does go down low we will look into building a shield for it.

Our housebank will be two 12V in parallel, this gives us the option, if our main alternator died, to unhook them and “self-Jump” and also to charge one pair of batteries while running the other as a total loss, and then swapping.

You could of course counter that argument by saying the 12V alternator is going to be the first to fail as it is down low, which is fair but a risk I think we are willing to take.

Hopefully there won’t be too much load on the 12V alternator when we are not winching or airing up.

 

[24vRHD]

The Winch

Cousin Rob got after the truck with his welding machine this weekend:

From the man himself:

"I just finished the mount for the winch. I welded a section of 2" by 6" by 3/16" wall tubing in between the frame rails. I also added a section of 1/2" by 2" plate to the front of the tubing to allow me tie into the frame better. Hell for stout. The winch will bolt directly to this. I'll have to rework the bull bar a little to fit around the winch. I could have avoided this by mounting the winch off to one side, but wanted to keep the winch centered. Anyway, when I re-work the bull bar mount, I'll incorporate some nice stout recovery points.

I'm happy with how the winch mount turned out. Should stand up to plenty of abuse."

Great to have a guy like this covering your back! Thanks Rob!

 

[mailking]

Hey Coen,
Where did you find a good 200 watt converter? I was looking at them but they were very expensive, not very efficient and hot. What brand are you using? Would love to see the details.

I have no idea what brand or any details, as the truck came supplied with it by the PO.

One of the reasons we are using a 12 V alternator is because we are using a number of high draw 12V items such as our winch and our air compressor. While it would have been nice to have these in 24V we decided to go in 12V because they may eventually be donated to the other cruiser which is 12V. To find a DC to DC battery charger that could keep up with the potential load was very expensive.

Okay, I don't have this problem, and almost all my stuff is 24v. And I don't think it would be wise to draw a winch from a 200 watt source.

From a reliability standpoint we felt that a 12V alternator would be easy to replace if it broke since it is not unique to our vehicle (we are going the GM single wire route). That being said we will most likely have to mount it down low and this does present a very real reliability concern. If it does go down low we will look into building a shield for it.

You should be okay with your setup. Good luck

Adventurous greetings,
Coen

 

[24vRHD]

The good news is I think we've found a way to mount the 2nd alternator up a bit higher. Pictures along shortly...

 

[24vRHD]

The home-grown crank gets brought up to speed at the machine shop.

 

[24vRHD]

Sorry Gents,

I've been shirking my responsibility to keep you guys up to speed on the latest. While I've been lazy in reporting a lot has gotten done. Took the rig for a test drive off-road up to just shy of 8,000'. After crawling around in Low gear it became apparent that the fan is hitting the shroud when the motor torques over.

We will try and tighten the engine mounts but may need new rubber inserts. Any ideas on where to get good replacements for a 2B?

There is also a small leak on the radiator. This is a 30 year old bronze radiator that works great but upon draining / flushing / repeat it is clear that it has been neglected by previous owners and the coolant has long ago lost the ability to prevent corrosion inside. Fortunately the leak seems to be coming from the drain valve. We will pull it (again, first time was to repair the mounts and install new hoses) and get it to a radiator shop.

If we need to replace are there any good options?

Our radiator has the inlet and outlet on opposite sides and is the exact opposite of the FJ radiator from the same year. (The inlet on top is on RHD driver's side [starboard] and the outlet on bottom is on the passenger side [port])

Basically the opposite of this:
1970-1980 TOYOTA Land Cruiser ALUMINUM RADIATOR FJ | eBay

Hoping its an easy fix for the radiator guy.

Here is a pic from the crawling session. Notice the new security deck taking shape in the rear (to keep things out of sight)

 

[mailking]

Looking good there!

 

[24vRHD]

Security

So call me a paranoid American, I'll accept it, but I do feel that I am better than most (I bet we would all say that

I know that having someone break into the truck, or worse, taking the truck would really ruin a trip like this.

So we have taken some rather drastic steps. All the doors and the hood have received some heavy duty hasps and locking hardware. Sure you can break a window, but your not going to get the door open... or the hood for that matter.

It also makes a statement, I haven't decided if it is good (A strong deterrent) or bad (attracting attention) but its there.

We have made a "deck" in the back to keep prying eyes out of the storage compartment. This also locks down so if you can't get the back doors open its going to take some extra work to get the deck open. And you will still have to pass the items through the broken window. Thats after you wrestle the action packers open. (I know Crusher hates those Optimas in the housebank, but we decided to go with AGM and they were the best bang for our buck. Will let you know how they hold up)

Since we have a 12V house bank we will wire up the car alarm to that, so disabling the batteries in the engine compartment will not disable the car alarm. The car alarm is a Viper 350 with 2 way paging. So it will alert the car keys (within a reasonable distance) that there has been an event at the vehicle.

We have purchased and will activate a spot to update friends and family (and IH8MUD of course!) about our progress. We are going to try and work out a way to wire up the spot so it takes juice from the house bank and can continue to run in "track" mode for extended periods of time. This way if we need to leave the vehicle for days or weeks we can see online if it is moving or not. Sort of like a poor man's lojac.

Of course there are events that we are not so well prepared for: Car Jacking is the main one. Also if someone manages to disable the car alarm there is only the standard precautions to prevent them from driving the car off. I suppose if we leave it for a long time we could do the usual, which would be more difficult to defeat if the hood is tightly secured:

Put the T-case in Neutral
Disconnect starting batteries
Disconnect fuel lines.

ok, that's enough, will stop being paranoid. Although, as I said earlier, I feel that I am just being prudent and trying to avoid any unpleasant surprises.

 

[baja9007]

lovely rig ......love the black boxes in the last pic looks quite handy

 

[mailking]

Never seen those locks before... how does that work?
Adventurous greetings,
Coen

 

[24vRHD]

So the lock is the central cylinder. The Hasp is two parts and they meet in the middle when the door is closed. The Cylinder lock joins these two together but is protected by the arms of the hasp.

The idea here is it is very difficult to strike the lock directly or pry against it. At this point it would be easier to just unbolt the door.

 

[mailking]

But don't you worry about the look and feel of the car? I mean I wouldn't like a lock like that, because I think this attracts people who might think you are hiding a million dollars inside. I is like one of those armoured money trucks.

When I saw a german truck once with a simple yet unobtrusiveness, I copied his idea and in our trucks this can be accomplished with ease, you just need to lengthen the key a bit.

This fits right in you door, below the original lock. Just have to think about it when the window is down, that you can't insert the key
That left receptacle thing you can forget about, the two pins will just lock behind the door frame.


Adventurous greetings,
Coen

 

[crushers]

if someone wants it bad enough they show up with a wrecker and off it goes.

but seriously
get a big dog and you don't even need to remove the keys.

well

it works for me.

So call me a paranoid American, I'll accept it, but I do feel that I am better than most (I bet we would all say that

I know that having someone break into the truck, or worse, taking the truck would really ruin a trip like this.

So we have taken some rather drastic steps. All the doors and the hood have received some heavy duty hasps and locking hardware. Sure you can break a window, but your not going to get the door open... or the hood for that matter.

It also makes a statement, I haven't decided if it is good (A strong deterrent) or bad (attracting attention) but its there.

We have made a "deck" in the back to keep prying eyes out of the storage compartment. This also locks down so if you can't get the back doors open its going to take some extra work to get the deck open. And you will still have to pass the items through the broken window. Thats after you wrestle the action packers open. (I know Crusher hates those Optimas in the housebank, but we decided to go with AGM and they were the best bang for our buck. Will let you know how they hold up)

Since we have a 12V house bank we will wire up the car alarm to that, so disabling the batteries in the engine compartment will not disable the car alarm. The car alarm is a Viper 350 with 2 way paging. So it will alert the car keys (within a reasonable distance) that there has been an event at the vehicle.

We have purchased and will activate a spot to update friends and family (and IH8MUD of course!) about our progress. We are going to try and work out a way to wire up the spot so it takes juice from the house bank and can continue to run in "track" mode for extended periods of time. This way if we need to leave the vehicle for days or weeks we can see online if it is moving or not. Sort of like a poor man's lojac.

Of course there are events that we are not so well prepared for: Car Jacking is the main one. Also if someone manages to disable the car alarm there is only the standard precautions to prevent them from driving the car off. I suppose if we leave it for a long time we could do the usual, which would be more difficult to defeat if the hood is tightly secured:

Put the T-case in Neutral
Disconnect starting batteries
Disconnect fuel lines.

ok, that's enough, will stop being paranoid. Although, as I said earlier, I feel that I am just being prudent and trying to avoid any unpleasant surprises.