Builds Another Prado in Montana (3 Viewers)

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A couple of weeks ago the copper gasket I made to go between the turbo and manifold adapter plate gave out and started squealing whenever I accelerated. I finally got around to taking it apart last weekend. Rather than replace the gasket I think I’ll run without one for now and see how it does; the original turbo and manifold setup on the TDI has no gasket either.
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The turbo was an absolute pain to get out due to stuck downpipe nuts and inaccessible turbo flange bolts. I decided that while I had it apart I would make a new downpipe that was easier to remove and had a flex joint in it. Luckily my brother had a section of leftover 2.25” exhaust tubing from his HDJ81 intercooler project so I broke out the bandsaw and made some pie cuts. Yesterday and today I was able to piece together the new section and get it all tacked up, hoping to get it fully welded and installed tomorrow.
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`stuck downpipe nuts and inaccessible turbo flange bolts.`

I hear that brother
Unfortunately I have no one to blame for any of it but myself; every inaccessible bolt and stuck nut I dealt with were installed by me, and I decided how it all went together in the first place!
 
New downpipe is fully welded and installed. I took it for a short test drive and the exhaust seem a bit quieter than before. Better yet, it is much easier to hit and maintain 20psi boost than it has been for a long time; I think that gasket had been leaking a little for a long time but finally gave out a couple of weeks ago. I haven't had it up to highway speed yet, but I am curious to see if it will have any effect on EGT's.

I will need to take it all out again to heat wrap the upper portion of the exhaust and replace the downpipe bolts, the new ones I got ended up being too long so I dug out a few old, random M8 bolts.
 
A couple of days ago I was driving home from work when there was an odd noise under the hood and I suddenly lost power. First thought was a blown boost coupling, but the boost gauge was still reading about 10psi and I could make it hit 20+psi if I gave it some throttle. EGT's were way down, and acceleration was leisurely at best; I could barely hit and maintain 105km/h. Once home with the hood open the issue was pretty obvious:
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Not pulling air through the MAF = no fuel injected = no power!

The driver power window had gotten a little crunchy sounding and was not wanting to roll up perfectly straight, and with the +90ºF weather and no AC I have to be able to use it on a daily basis. With the door panel off I could see that a couple of the little plastic rollers in the window mechanism were worn out, so I put some grease on them to quiet them down until I get new ones. The RH rear door handle quit working from the outside, so I pulled that panel at the same time. Luckily it was just a strike plate on the handle that had come loose and moved, so I readjusted it and lubricated the whole latch and lock mechanism.
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A few weeks ago I installed a 7-pin trailer plug in one of the cutouts in the rear bumper. The hole in the bumper was a bit too tall and narrow, so I had to use a piece of aluminum plate to mount the plug in. I also made a rubber gasket to protect the powder coating on the bumper.
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With the trailer plug installed I can now legally use my latest project:
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A couple of days ago I was driving home from work when there was an odd noise under the hood and I suddenly lost power. First thought was a blown boost coupling, but the boost gauge was still reading about 10psi and I could make it hit 20+psi if I gave it some throttle. EGT's were way down, and acceleration was leisurely at best; I could barely hit and maintain 105km/h. Once home with the hood open the issue was pretty obvious:
View attachment 3085368

Not pulling air through the MAF = no fuel injected = no power!

The driver power window had gotten a little crunchy sounding and was not wanting to roll up perfectly straight, and with the +90ºF weather and no AC I have to be able to use it on a daily basis. With the door panel off I could see that a couple of the little plastic rollers in the window mechanism were worn out, so I put some grease on them to quiet them down until I get new ones. The RH rear door handle quit working from the outside, so I pulled that panel at the same time. Luckily it was just a strike plate on the handle that had come loose and moved, so I readjusted it and lubricated the whole latch and lock mechanism.
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A few weeks ago I installed a 7-pin trailer plug in one of the cutouts in the rear bumper. The hole in the bumper was a bit too tall and narrow, so I had to use a piece of aluminum plate to mount the plug in. I also made a rubber gasket to protect the powder coating on the bumper.
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With the trailer plug installed I can now legally use my latest project:
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It‘s amazing how much better yours looks with a proper brush bar. 😊

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Disaster was narrowly avoided last weekend. Over the course of a couple of days I had noticed that there was a distinct vibration coming through the steering wheel when turning left. I popped the hood to check it out and found that the exhaust was rubbing on the steering shaft; but when I built the exhaust I left plenty of clearance there. Looking deeper into the engine bay it turned out that the end of the RH motor mount had sheared off and the engine had dropped about 3/4” to the right side.
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Needless to say the Prado was immediately retired from use until I could make a new mount!
 
As soon as I got the time I pulled it into the shop and tore the old motor mount out. Since this mount is on the RH side of the engine it gets the most abuse (downward shearing force) from the torque the engine exerts on the drivetrain. I decided to change the design slightly and double the material thickness for the new mount to prevent another failure.
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Fortunately I have a complete CAD drawing of the exterior of a VW TDI engine, so I pulled mounting hole locations from that:
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The new mount is much beefier:
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Once everything was buttoned up I took a quick trip into town to the parts store. When I came back out there was quite a puddle of oil underneath the engine; a fitting on the turbo drain hose was leaking. Unfortunately the actual flare fitting was bad, not just loose, but a new one fixed the leak. It has been running great for the past week!

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What do you use for heatwrap?
I just got some 1" wide exhaust wrap material on eBay. It came with a sort of gold foil tape that I used on the main vacuum hose that comes from the vacuum pump, but that hasn't held up very well and is starting to peel off.
 
I realize it has been a while since I updated this thread. I hadn't done much to or with the Prado other than just drive it, but parts had started to accumulate.
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First things first, the easy stuff! A new heater blower resistor got my fan running on its lowest speed again, and the driver grab handle looks much better with the screw holes covered.
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Next up were some fresh suspension and steering components for the front end. My tie rod ends had been getting pretty worn and as a result steering was a bit sloppy. It is much improved now!
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Then it was time for the big job: caster correction bushings, OME 872 lift springs and an extended brake line. The radius arms were much easier to remove than I expected, and the axle was pretty stable once the weight was taken off the springs. Rather than try pressing the old bushings out, we drilled a series of holes through the rubber and pressed the center of the bushing out, then cut through the outer metal case with a Sawzall and knocked it out with a punch. The new bushings pressed in nicely with a bit of grease on them.
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The front pinion angle looks way better with the caster correction, and the new springs provide a slight lift over the factory ones with 30mm spacers. There is still a bit of a stinkbug stance though, so I may add 10mm or 15mm spacers in the future to level it out. Ride and handling are much better now, but the steering wants to catch around halfway to full left lock so some more tweaking of the alignment is in order.
 
One other small task I completed while the front end was apart was knocking together a set of 2” sway bar drop brackets. I’ve been thinking they might be a great way to incorporate a sway bar disconnect, too.
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A couple of days ago I took the Prado out into the mountains for some light snow wheeling and to see if I could find any mines to explore. About halfway through the day, while pushing through some fairly dense, wind packed snow I noticed a popping noise coming from the front RH hub area. I found that if I feathered the throttle very gently it was ok, but any time I tried to give it much power while in the deeper snow it would start popping and lose traction. My gut tells me the RH electric hub didn't engage fully, and started skipping teeth when it got too much torque sent its way. Luckily I have a nearly complete set of electric hubs thanks to @mudandrock, so hopefully the damage is fairly limited and I can swap out the worn parts.
 
Took advantage of the warmest part of the day (8ºF, -13ºC) to pull the cover off my RH hub and check on the hub splines, axle splines and hub motor. Everything looks fine visually, no obvious damage to any of the splines, and with the cover off the little motor spins nicely when I press the hub lock button.
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I didn't really feel like pulling the hub down any further since there aren't really any other mechanical failure points beyond this (and my fingers were starting to get a bit cold). At this point I'm not really sure what could have caused the popping/skipping sound that I experienced, unless the hub was only partly engaged. The birfs have never been serviced as far as I can tell, but I'm pretty sure that any failure of the CV joint would be pretty catastrophic and much more noticeable.
 
Hi
I think there is a bit of wear on the hub splines? 🤔 Hard to see on the pic. But I doubt this would be serious enough for the hub to 'jump over'.
Was it such cold when you tried to engage the hubs? Maybe the grease was all stiff and prevented full engaging?
Cheers Ralf
 
The photos don't really show it very well and it was hard to see anyway, but I didn't notice anything major. There were no metal flakes anywhere either, leading me to believe that it didn't wear much. The splines look very similar to the spare set of hubs I have. When it gets a little warmer (high of -18ºF, -28ºC today, supposed to be -36ºF, -38ºC tonight) I will pull it apart again, clean the splines thoroughly and put on fresh grease.

It was probably around 20ºF, -7ºC the day I was out snow wheeling, so it is totally possible that the one hub didn't properly engage.
 
Those sort of problems started for me a couple years ago with similar noise. Had been reliable for quite a few years before that. I decided to give up and go manual hubs. It's so nice now not wondering if they'll work each time. You should just machine an adapter for manual hubs like the radd cruiser one.
 
Those electric hubs rely on a motor and gears that are more appropriate for a Timex watch than a 4 wheel drive vehicle.
 
Took advantage of the warmest part of the day (8ºF, -13ºC) to pull the cover off my RH hub and check on the hub splines, axle splines and hub motor. Everything looks fine visually, no obvious damage to any of the splines, and with the cover off the little motor spins nicely when I press the hub lock button.
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I didn't really feel like pulling the hub down any further since there aren't really any other mechanical failure points beyond this (and my fingers were starting to get a bit cold). At this point I'm not really sure what could have caused the popping/skipping sound that I experienced, unless the hub was only partly engaged. The birfs have never been serviced as far as I can tell, but I'm pretty sure that any failure of the CV joint would be pretty catastrophic and much more noticeable.
Dane, I’ve got plenty of manual hub adapters on the shelf for conversion to manual hubs…. And my shop is nice and toasty warm. Stop in when you’re ready
 

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