This evening I was able to make a little progress on the mutant beast. After the recent polar vortex we had to endure here in Michigan I decided to add another battery since even my 3VZ almost did not start, and after all its a Land Cruiser, it should not have to fear cold weather.
I found a deal online for a FJ80 battery tray, it did not fit as good as the OEM FZJ80 one, the holes needed to be enlarged just a little bit. Here it is pictured with the battery from the LHS to test fitment. I dont happen to know off hand which way the battery is supposed to be installed, it seems that the clamping bar is kinda close to the battery terminals.
I decided to do this now because I am getting close to having to design a cooling package for the engine and turbo, so I want to make sure that it fits around the dual battery setup.
Another item from long ago was the coolant outlet, as I mentioned before the R2.8 coolant outlet will touch the steering box. Since I am not a fan of altering excellent toyota engineering, I decided to engineer some of my own crap. I previously posed some pictures of the machined stainless steel parts that I intended to use to work around this problem. I found these slick things called pie cuts, I got one from stainless brothers out of Austin Texas. This along with a 90 degree bend and some straight sections allowed me to make this rather odd looking thing.
I need to rig up something to back purge before finishing the welds, i'll try to bang that out this weekend.
For reference here are two shots of the R2.8 coolant outlet installed, as you can see its very very close to the steering box.
Here is my homemade one installed...
This fits much better, and as long as the motor mounts dont break we should have no contact between coolant outlet and steering box.
Looking ahead to the future I see lots of plumbing issues since the power steering pump will now be on the opposite side of the engine bay. I removed this mess of hard and soft power steering line to free up space for intercooler plumbing, I dont think it will be much use anyways.
I know the OEM's use these cheesy things to help cool the power steering fluid, but I think we can do a little better. Since I ditched the A442 I just happen to have a kick ass trans cooler that already has factory brackets. I'm not sure if anyone has used an old trans cooler for this purpose but I dont see any reason what it would not work. I have had the privilege of installing some B and M trans coolers on other vehicles and from handling this unit I am left with the impression that the LC cooler is built a good bit better. Anyone care to challenge that claim?
I think I could plumb the power steering system using that neat little hard line thing that passes through the sheetmetal just below the LHS headlight, sorry but I dont have a picture handy at the moment. Im sure the 80 series guys know what i'm talking about.
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Here is a picture of the core support pass thru, its the details like this that separate the land cruiser for just about everything else. What ever cooler is decided on this will allow for super clean plumbing.
, it will be close, we will see if it works out. In the event it does not work have you ever seen a connector that will accept two 8AWG wires and one 16AWG wire. I know, it sounds crazy. The R2.8 alternator only have a charge lamp driver, not the two extra wires that the 1FZ alternator does since the R2.8 voltage regulator does not have a sensing wire. The other one I am not sure of the function.
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