Builds 550hp 2JZ 1978 RN28L Build (1 Viewer)

[snivilous]

Passenger side shock I was worried about alignment in the coil bucket, from being tweaked it actually ended up lining up better!

I then did the same setup as the driver's side and adjusted the shocks and settled on this spot as rode height:

And she's on all fours and looking pretty bad!

The adjuster knobs on the shocks make a huge difference, on the lowest setting it's really squishy and bounces around before settling down. On the highest compression you can barely move the front, and highest rebound it slowly returns to ride height and doesn't overshoot at all. Out of 20 adjustments I left it at 5 on compression and 10 on rebound. Excited to play with the suspension setup, and it's nice it gets so soft since the rear is gonna need it!

 

[snivilous]

New rear springs came in today, got those installed then did some alignment on the front and rear. The rear axle had to be scooted over half an inch or so, and on the front end the passenger toe was way out. Then onto some fabricating of things for the rear. First was a new fuel cell filler, the stock Aeromotive one is an absolute pile of s*** and I'd be shocked if it had ANY sealing capability. Bought a 2" ID threaded bung and cap and cut out a new plate.

But the real goal was to get the rear tires to clear now that ride height was so low. I wanted to flare out the bedsides, but the first requirement was to stiffen the tail gate area so it wouldn't rotate as the bedsides got pushed out. I've been meaning to do this for a long time, literally one derpy bolt at the bottom was all that held the bedsides on, really the tailgate latching is what held them in place more than anything. I just wanted it fixed, so I cut out a bracket and welded it to the frame.

I then made the bedside "flare brackets", which is a tab on the cage, a tab on the bedside, and a piece of sheet metal (with a stiffener on the back side). These I would like to eventually be a cool billet piece, but for now this boring flat bar will work.

This flared the bedside out about 1.5" so it just overhangs the rear tires. There is about an inch of up travel before the tires start to pass the bedside, so this was going to be needed very fast to save everything. And the completed product rolled off the lift, at the correct ride height and fenders flared out:

The truck is looking so good! Lots of little things I had been putting off coming together while I wait for other parts. At this point I'm not sure what else to work on that's needed to drive it. The driveshaft guy apparently has been sick, I told him I'd be down the hill this weekend so we'll see if he ends up getting it built by then.

 

[ntsqd]

Something that I suggested to a couple of the local pre-runners was to cut a plastic bedliner until it fit around their bed cage. Make it easy to remove, but will keep the road grime off of stuff above it. Light, and cheap (since no one wants them any more).
Food for thought anyway.

 

[snivilous]

Finally got the driveshaft today!

For maybe the first time ever I had to work on the truck without the lift. Ironically having a low vehicle makes jacking it up easier since it makes such a big height difference hahaha

The FJ is currently hogging the lift

Everything went in smoothly, then we bled the brakes, clutch, and cooling system. I did find one small leak on a coolant tube so pulled it off and sealed it with the welder then ran another pass over that stretch, otherwise no issues! Right now it has straight water while checking for leaks. Bleeding the cooling system is quite a bitch, this time it took the thermostat opening like two or three times of getting bubbles out and spilling s*** all over the floor.

And the whole time we were also trying to figure out why the laptop wasn't talking to the ECU, and turned out the cord was ****ed and all but one of our cords laying in the house were just for charging and wouldn't transmit data (cheap pieces of s***). Finally we found a literal 3" long cord that would talk to the ECU to confirm everything was fine. Trip into town to grab a replacement, and then we took it for a test drive!

Everything seems to be working great! We only drove it a couple miles to warm up the rear end. I'm also very concerned about the front end alignment shifting since it's just held in place by friction of two M8s. My plan is to throw it on an alignment rack next week, see if there's any tweaking needed, and then do some fat tack welds to make sure the adjustment plates I made don't move. But the alignment actually felt really good surprisingly, I actually think the right side might have better overall alignment than the driver's side since it seems to have a bit less camber at ride height.

The shocks feel great, and we didn't notice the flat spots in the tires so I think they're good to keep running. The gearing wasn't as noticeable as I thought it'd be, though it's been awhile since I drove it. Going through the neighborhood felt like a comfortable 2nd gear instead of 3rd or 4th though so that's good. The resonator/muffler thing is hard to say if it did much, though at 2500rpm the truck is extremely quiet, and I think with the gearing I should be able to do interstate speeds in 6th around that rpm range, so if it can cruise in an rpm range that's quiet that would be a big win! The biggest issue is the rear fenders rub pretty bad, doesn't take much of a bump to hit the fenders. I think I'm going to grab a fender roller and try to flare them out a bit more, and then maybe add a second flare brace that's behind the axle. I can't imagine how bad they'd eat up going fast around a corner or launching it.

She's back and working great! Just a little bit of dialing before I start pushing it!

 

[ntsqd]

Fender roller:

 

[snivilous]

Got the truck aligned at a friend in town yesterday morning.

The camber was within 0.2deg between both sides, and the rear end thrust angle was at 0.50deg, I'd call that good enough for government work. The front right caster was at 3.6deg compared to the driver's side being at 0.1deg which apparently is factory spec. There's no way to (easily) fix the caster on the passenger side, either the caster is correct or the wheel base is correct since the upper arm/assembly is bent backwards, so the lower arm is exaggerated in how forward it is to get the wheel base in the right spot, and all of that gives it a lot (more) caster. I said to call it good and he just dialed in the toe and then adjusted one of the rear links to get the thrust angle to 0deg. After driving home I then added two big tac welds (ie an inch+ each) on the adjustment brackets I made. I was really nervous about the front end shifting and throwing the toe off and the truck darting off to the side, so now there are two welds and two bolts holding each pivot of the lower arm. I also tried to flare out the fenders a bit more with a tube, the rear I think moved a little but really I'll just need to add another bedside support since it's not stiff enough to bend by rolling it.

Today after working in the shop a bit, the wife and I went for a drive that turned into a 75 mile loop up into the mountains and grabbed some photos along the way.

The truck is doing fantastic! I don't think I touched the engine at all in the past few months, but it's still running great as ever. It makes so many turbo noises constantly and is a lot of fun, even at really low throttle you can hear the turbo spool up, the BOV is constantly dumping air, it's amazing how much more visceral all the noise is when you have minimal sound deadening hahaha. The exhaust has actually made a huge difference, from about 2300-2800rpm it's actually impressively quiet. Near 2000rpm and 3000rpm it really ramps up the noise, but there's a good rpm band without any resonance and accelerating from a stop it doesn't sound like you're trying to race everyone and everything now. I'm very happy with that tiny resonator.

The new gearing is awesome too, it doesn't feel like you constantly need to be shifting into the next gear. Cruising in 3rd or 4th feels great, and even in the neighborhood in 2nd feels good. With the stock diff if you were doing almost anything you wanted to be in 5th gear. Now in 6th gear at 2300rpm it's at 65mph, and 2700rpm is 75mph, so it should be able to cruise at interstate speeds and stay in that sweet spot of the exhaust not being crazy loud, and around 2900rpm should be 80mph where as before it was around 3500rpm so massive improvement. I'm still getting used to having to slip the clutch a lot more to get going.

The suspension is night and day different and is a huge improvement! The front end doesn't bounce all over the place hitting bumps or taking corners, and the whole truck is much more settled and controlled all the time. I set the rear to 5 clicks (out of 20+) compression and that helped reduce the body roll a bit and seems to be helping the rear fenders from rubbing as much on sideways bumps. Considering this thing has 2-3" of up travel, I couldn't feel us ever bottom out and even through bigger bumps honestly feels more plush than most if not everything else we own. For minimal screwing with the shocks I am blown away by how nice it rides considering how low it is now.

It's hard to say much about the 4 link yet, I am pretty timid at the moment to get on it much and haven't launched it since I want to get a couple heat cycles in the gears. I have no complaints about it, it feels planted and less rowdy I guess at first impressions. I want to get a camera on the back to see what it's doing once I start pushing it a bit more.

The flat spots on the rear tires aren't noticeable 99% of the time. Occasionally at a specific speed and smooth area you might feel them, but it's hard to distinguish that versus other noises and feelings going on. The rear tires are at 20psi so I think that makes a big difference since the contact squish patch is pretty huge that one little flat section just gets absorbed.

I am extremely happy with all the upgrades from this round of modifying. My hope is everything can stick together for awhile, and this can be a solid baseline to get the truck well dialed and reliable again. I want to take it easy and slow and get up to speed with what it wants so I don't shoot past a weak spot and destroy everything again. I want to drive it and enjoy it, and it's been a long time since I was able to get lots of miles on it!

 

[bj70bc]

we need to hear the turbo noises

 

[snivilous]

Took the truck out for another 40 miles today and threw the GoPro on the back. My neighbor thinks I'm insane but new hardware always stresses me out from pushing it much. Even if it should be totally overbuilt, it's not like slapping on some product that's already been developed. Even though the links are huge, there could be bad welds, the geometry could be off, the handling could be s***, etc. I figured getting some footage of how the rear is behaving just to confirm it's doing what I think would be helpful and then I could start pushing it a bit more.

I threw some clips together of a walk around of the truck in it's current configuration and then a couple pulls.




I did not get a video of my last pull, but it was by far the best and I was starting to get confidence again to put the hammer down a bit, and I was able to get a 5.53 0-60mph time:

Certainly a LOT slower than I'd like the truck to eventually be, but between the start of the day and this last pull I had already dropped the 0-60 by over 0.5s, and now I'm less than a second off from my Tundra's 0-60 time which was done at a much lower altitude and cooler weather.

What is awesome with how the truck is currently setup is I can tune a lot of things without opening anything up. As you can see in the videos the suspension is twisting a lot from the torque roll, so I think I'll play with the shock settings since I now have compression and rebound adjustment on every corner, and can play with the preload if need be too. Additionally the boost control tuning needs a lot of work:

Ideally the boost curve would just hold at 33psi (absolute pressure, so ~20psi of boost) but you can see in the highlighted area the boost controller is fully opening the wastegate to try and bleed boost off, this is because I have it set in open loop control so it's completely based on that table in the bottom right. And how it's setup now is very conservative to not activate the overboost limits, but there's a lot of boost left on the table since that blue line would ideally be flat. And you can feel it, the truck accelerates and then feels like it hits a wall as you can tell boost is being turned down.

On my last pull (not in the video) I launched "well" compared to the other pulls, but it was lots of wheel spin occurring and the rear getting a bit sideways. Now that I have a rear end that can handle the power, I can activate the launch control and maybe be able to dial in the launch, though I think that will always be the limit. The truck accelerating as well as it is I think is somewhat impressive considering it's a complete battle of putting any power down in 1st gear. And of course, I have four levels of anti squat so could always adjust the rear links if I'm really feeling froggy. But at the end of the day, it is a 2500 lb truck with no weight in the back, and ultimately this isn't meant to be a drag racer. I think if I can get the boost control working nicely it'll be a bit more fun, but it's already a blast and I look forward to dialing in the current setup.

With that said, I do think the turbo is really holding it back. As you can see from the Dragy it's just not accelerating that hard, my Tundra's acceleration is around 0.5 Gs after it has gotten out of the holeshot and is tapering down, and the Hilux isn't getting over 0.5 G ever, which would kind of indicate a similar power to weight ratio I would think, and that would mean the Hilux is WAY low on power compared to what it could/should be. I think the turbo is just too small for big power---that's not necessarily a bad thing, because it's fun how fast it spools up---but in the future I think I will look at upgrading the turbo to something more suited for the 2JZ that maybe doesn't compromise the fast spool and can also not fall on its face as quickly.

Anyway, looping around to my opening statement, today I climbed a lot of steps in getting confident with the truck. I need to do more work to clearance the tires, but that seems to be the only real "problem". Oh and I filled up, and the truck is getting over 18mpg over the past two days! For some pulls and driving up the mountain with 5000ft of elevation gain yesterday, I am stoked, hilariously the truck continues to be the most fuel efficient thing we own!

 

[snivilous]

Truck is running great! Been taking it for a bunch of drives and at this point pretty comfortable to fully open the tap on it. Went to the car meet in town for my once every 4 months visit

I still need to get a dash hooked up, but the truck has failsafes for oil pressure and temperature, and it's absolutely locked in on both so most of the time I just drive around with no gauges. By this point I probably have 200-300 miles on it, and the gears are well enough broken in compared to the instructions of "please at least drive around the parking lot before hitting the strip". I did realize the 9in 3rd member has a level plug on it, the rear end started leaking a little from that plug (which was barely tight) so I popped it open since I had kind of arbitrarily filled it. It turns out that the 9in only takes like 2.5qts of fluid which seems insanely low, so I had it way overfilled by a quart or so.

The passenger fender flaring bar was coming into contact with the tire since the suspension twists so much under power, so I cut some new ones that sit 1.5" taller and are also 0.5" wider and now all the rear tire clearance issues seem solved. The front rubs occasionally, usually just sharp turns and hitting a bump or reversing out of a spot at full lock. Not bad enough to care, but I may like to tweak the fenders eventually for it.

Today going to lunch I had a couple issues with the truck stalling. As I've mentioned before, I thought an electronic throttle body would be needed since if you punched the clutch the rpms would fall and by the time the ECU was trying to correct with timing it might be too late or the truck would stumble a bit trying to bring the rpms back up since it can't mechanically adjust the air intake. Today it was very hot out, and seemed like it was having more issues than normal, both just getting going and died twice from the rpms dropping coming to a stop. I looked around in the ECU Masters software and was able to find some additional settings for idle control.

The truck is setup to use ignition timing to control idle, and before it was just setup to kind of randomly keep increasing or decreasing timing to try and hit the target idle, but I then discovered this table on the right (which is enabled via the correction table checkmark on the left) which gives you an open loop idle correction (compared to essentially the closed loop control before). What's nice about this and how I now have it setup, if the idle falls much at all it can "prematurely" crank the timing to bring it up before the idle has fallen too far. You can see I have it set so by 150rpm it's already adding in 4deg of timing, and by 250rpm it's 7deg. This is in contrast to before, where it seemed to add degrees of timing in a closed loop feedback of adding a degree, then a degree, then a degree, and by the time it had added enough timing to be useful the rpm had fallen so far it was hard to recover. Now if the idle drops much at all it instantly cranks the timing to bring it back around.

The wife and I just went for a test drive and it seemed to make a HUGE difference. I can punch into neutral and the rpms will drop and once it hits 900rpm it is locked in. It also seemed to make taking off a lot smoother, letting the clutch out the truck didn't fall on its face as easily, but it might just have been the cooler weather or me doing it, but that seems like an added perk I wasn't aiming for.

I've also done more research and testing of the boost control settings. Last time we tried to dial in boost control it was very confusing the values for the boost solenoid we were getting. What I realized is that turning boost control to closed loop just activates additional tables that build off of the base duty cycle tables, where as open loop uses the same base tables but there is no corrections applied. This was a bit confusing at first, but makes a lot more sense now. However the truck is still running in open loop boost control right now. Today we made a lot of progress with the boost control and getting the duty cycle table dialed in.

At the end we made two pulls for the draggy and that's the two spikes in the datalog, and you can see the engine is coming up to ~30psi MAP and holding there pretty well, with a max peak of 32.78psi (~20psi boost) which is right where we want it to be. Having the wastegate duty cycle at 50% closed seems to be right where we want it. What I can do next is activate the closed loop mode, and that will then take the base duty cycle table and adjust it like a fuel trim to try and reach the target boost. I'm not entirely sure if that's worth doing, the main issue to overcome is to make the turbo spool fast and then not overshoot the boost target, but if it spools too fast it seems to blow past the boost target. Turning it into closed loop mode might make it too slow to respond (similar to the idle control). Already the boost duty cycle lags behind the actual boost by quite a bit, so it's kind of a balancing act. With all of that said, these last two pulls are really nice, the truck gets into boost and isn't doing the surging it was before as the boost keeps getting pulled back, it's holding pretty flat and there might be a psi or three left on the table but that's it.

And this seems visible in the dragy, we only did the two launches and they weren't great, but there's a few G spikes that are higher than we've gotten before. And this is without launch control or any boost at take off.

The truck is an absolute blast though, and the rear suspension and handling feels awesome. 1st gear of course spins, and 2nd gear can spin too but the whole thing feels very nice and controlled. The slipping in 2nd gear is just enough you can feel the rear end step out a little bit, but it doesn't want to get crazy, just the right amount to make you smile and not be scary. It's a lot of fun just since it's so small and lightweight too. It's not the fastest thing, but it needs such little throttle and braking to get a huge response, it just ends up feeling so effortless to do what you want. Like it'll hit full boost at 60% throttle and 4000rpm, so a little throttle gives you a ton of feedback, and the brakes are a hilarious combination of having good feeling and just being so incredibly overpowered that you never worry about braking performance. It never feels like it's working hard to do what you want and that makes it a blast to drive!

 

[aztoyman]

You've come a long way with it. I'm glad more positive things are happening for you. You're fine tuning vs grenading something and rebuilding. It looks like a little Baddass.

 

[snivilous]

Listen to her choof

 

[bj70bc]

bitchin

 

[snivilous]

Over the weekend I added two big upgrades to the ECU, a full time data logger (since it for some reason can't do that inherently) and a bluetooth canbus module. The data logger is nothing exciting, has a memory card (and its own bluetooth connection) and just constantly records as long as the ignition is on. It's a pain to always carry the laptop around, and the one time you don't is when something hiccups and now you can't look back to find it, so big upgrade right there.

The canbus bluetooth module has been on my desk for awhile. I think I had posted a long time ago but I wanted to build my own dash, and I had gotten the app "Real Dash" running on a raspberry pi and having bluetooth was the final thing to do, and I got it working! I was going to run two screens but it was kind of a bitch, but I found a wide screen 12 x 4 display on Amazon for $130 and it got here next day, and today I rigged it up!

This was my initial plan was to lay the stock bezel over the display.

But the display actually ended up fitting beautifully by itself in the dash. I absolutely hate the look of tiny displays crammed into a huge cavity, which was why I wanted to reuse the stock bezel. But after comparing, I really liked how the display by itself was going to look, plus would give me a lot more useable screen real estate.

I cut out a quick overlay and it just clamps the display in place and was really easy and looks pretty good for minimal effort actually!

I have a multi port USB outlet I added, the display takes one power port, the Raspberry Pi takes another power port, and then an HDMI goes between the two. I don't know anything about programming, so a lot can be fiddled with. Right now the Pi seems to get power and automatically boot up, and then I have a start up program that boots directly into the dash. Only caveat is I have to (or should) power down the Pi physically before turning the ignition off, but not a big deal since the turbo needs to cool down anyway.

Real Dash is like Torque Pro for a phone on absolute steroids. Everything is completely customizable and there's a bunch of user configurations to download. It pulls data via bluetooth canbus from the EMU Black. I need to add a GPS module to the Pi, but there's presets for maps and everything.

Here is the preset I grabbed and tweaked and was most in line with what I wanted for displaying extra information:

And what is extremely cool, besides everything else, is since this is a tiny computer running Linux, I can pull up a movie, browse the internet, it's essentially a laptop shoved into the dashboard and it talks to my ECU. I don't think I can tune through the screen since ECU Masters doesn't have Linux support, but that is really the only limitation with it. I have a lot more to play with it, but right now it's showing everything I want with bar graphs and texts and has medium and critical warnings set up. Speed doesn't work since I need GPS still, and "boost" I can't tell what it's talking to. There's also MAP but it likewise seems slaved to whatever "boost" is, and it's not what the real MAP/boost values are but that's probably buried in the variables somewhere, and frankly one of the less important values. Coolant and oil pressure is 99% of what I want. This display is also a touch screen, and while I haven't enabled that yet it will give some flexibility to not have to bring a mouse and keyboard to get around (but with how the boot sequence and power off are set up, you don't need a mouse or keyboard anyway).

Huge progress and was actually a lot smoother sailing than I thought it would be!

 

[snivilous]

Last week had a lot going on, first drove to LA on Tuesday for work, worked onsite Wednesday then drove home and got home at 2am, woke up and prepped the Hilux and then drove it for 8+ hours up to Idaho to go dirt biking!

Before I left for Idaho I changed the oil (forgot to change the filter) with some random ass diesel synthetic oil that was left over from the semi, changed the rear diff fluid, put some "Water Wetter" in the coolant to try and help with temperatures and give some corrosion resistance since it's straight water right now, and then built a retarded looking little air scoop above the cab to try and direct some air down around the radiator.

Almost immediately after leaving I had to stop and crank the compression on the rear. With the minibike, some tools, and a jerry can in the bed I had about an inch of up travel and would blow through it hitting anything. The rear shocks having adjustable compression and being extremely easy to access was a life saver, since the alternative was to turn around and crank the ride height back up. Having 80# springs in the back isn't great when a minibike uses up all your travel!

The new gauge screen setup is absolutely awesome. I didn't screw with it any more after the first test drive, but it works great and the current configuration I really like how all the gauges have both definitive numbers as well as bar graphs and colors so you can easily glance at the screen and quickly see if there's issues and roughly where everything is without reading anything. I would like to change the RPM to have a bar graph style also that sweeps across the top though.

The next (and recurring) issue was the truck getting hot, which I suspected would happen since it did before. About 50 miles in I pulled over after the truck started getting annoyingly hot (approaching 220) on a hill, and adjusted the hood scoop angle, and that actually made a pretty huge difference and dropped the coolant temp 7-10deg by itself. The rest of the drive the coolant hung around 208-210 at 75mph which was 2800rpm and where everything felt happy. Otherwise I had no issues all the way up to salt lake city. I had some noise cancelling headphones in, and it was painfully hot, but otherwise was great cruising!

I met up with some friends in SLC, one of which said he would ride with me for the trip (the Hilux and not suffering alone were the main reasons I even went) and then another friend with his GX towed three dirt bikes up. At this point we maxed out the compression on the rear since the truck was sitting so low with two thiccq bois in it plus a bunch of s*** in the bed, but the truck actually handles exceptionally well even with such little up travel. There were still a few bumps we'd bottom out on, but 99% of the time it was very plush and comfortable riding. My buddy also grabbed a weed sprayer with water and we used that to mist ourselves for the drive which made life much more tolerable without A/C.

We maintained about 75mph the whole way and got a consistent right at 20mpg. I had the rear tires up to 30psi which seemed to help with feeling the soft spots, but there was a bit more vibration at 80mph (3000rpm). We finally got to camp again around 1am or so since I had such a late start---we didn't leave SLC until probably 6pm. But besides watching the coolant temp, the truck performed flawlessly and was by far the most I've ever driven it for a trip or at one time. We did nearly 600 miles in it and I drove it all the way across Utah. Around 10pm I had my buddy drive it the remaining part since I was dead from driving ~21 hours of the last 48 hours.

We had another friend meet us the next day with a van, and then spent two days dirt biking near Ketchum Idaho in the Sawtooths. One night we went three deep in it and went into town for dinner and also cruised around the mountains a bit and I let the other guys drive the truck. Maybe not the smartest thing to go ham on the little truck when you're 600 miles from home, but she took it happily!

Here's a couple short clips of ripping it around:




On Sunday we headed back south, traded off driving once for a few hours, and then I drove it from northern Utah all the way to southern Utah in one shot and on a single tank of gas. I was pretty nervous driving north, but after how successful it had been and my friends beating on it and the truck not having any issues, I felt a lot better on the drive home and was cruising at 80mph for most of the way and the interstate and traffic through SLC didn't bother me. Once I got south of SLC I did have to slow down since the truck started getting hot again, it was difficult to keep it under 214 even going 75mph. The intake air temp even outside of boost was reading over 100 in a few spots and I think the cooling system was just right at its limit once the ambient temp was well over 90deg and not getting good ram air to the radiator. When we were in Idaho and the ambient temp was below 90 you could go whatever speed and the truck was totally happy and would barely crack 200, but once the IAT started showing 95 or higher the coolant temp would climb quickly. It wasn't a huge deal, just slow down a bit, I'm not sure if the temperature is from getting into boost or from the higher rpms just generating more heat. I think the air scoop made a big difference just because the radiator ends up in this vortex of hot air, so the scoop can flush some cooler air down around the radiator. What I want to do is make a custom molded air scoop that protrudes above the roof and then ducts directly down into the radiator and really blasts it with air so hopefully the fan isn't needed at all, but that is eventual goals.

I also should've put the mini bike on the driver's side since I couldn't see anything out the passenger side and I still have no side mirrors.

I got home with the truck leaning out if I took a sharp corner, but it made it nearly the entire length of Utah on one tank of gas, and ran great the entire time! Nothing broken, it handled amazing, and did everything I asked of it without a hiccup! I would like to add more creature comforts, more sound deadening and insulation, A/C, but ultimately it proved it's back and successfully did 1200 miles!