Builds Lumpskie's Diesel 80 build (3 Viewers)

[Lumpskie]

You should probably consider getting that radiator replaced too! Brown plastic is scary!

I know the picture you looked at. After looking at that pic, I ran outside and popped the hood because it looked so bad! In person, it looks much darker. But, I'm sure you are right. I should probably just replace now rather than wait for it to get too old.

 

[toyota guy]

fyi- i have a 4" lift on my HDJ, the front driveline was making noise so i had to adjust the castor and then instal a double cardon front driveshaft. I also installed a spool in the transfer case and hubs on the front axle to make it 2wd, that was the best investment. i would get a digital angle finder and look at your castor and driveline angles before you start spending money and changing things.

 

[Lumpskie]

It's been a long time since I did a trip report!

Last weekend the family and I headed up to Pittsburgh NH, 20 minutes south of the Canadian border. This was both a family get away and a good shakedown run for the intercooler. I packed the luggage up and we hit the road.

We headed up some steep mountain passes. I saw one sign that said 9% grade!

The Cruiser did great! I could maintain 75mph in top gear without issue. In fact, I could accelerate as well. In the event that I wanted more "go", I could floor it, down shift and pass, even up the steepest sections! This is a night and day difference that non-intercooled, where I would have to move over to the slow lane to avoid high EGTs. My EGTs never got above 1050f for the entire trip! Here's what the gauges looked like going up some of the passes:

On the way up, we hit some crazy thunderstorms. Visibility went way down. Believe it or not, visibility was worse that what it looks like in this picture. (I would have taken a better one but I already got yelled at for taking pictures while driving in the storm )

We stopped and had some food at a little restaraunt along the way. Meatloaf was awesome. I got to try fried fiddleheads for the first time as well. They are a local delicacy, which are only in season for 2 weeks (or so) a year.

We got to our rental cabin up north after dark:

 

[Lumpskie]

In the morning, Chunky, Nutnut and I took a short hike down to the river behind the cabin. The water was flowing!

From there, we decided to take some logging roads up to Garfield Falls. Unfortunately, all the unpaved roads were still closed for the season. Apparently, they had over 8 feet of standing snow this year and it was snowing as recently as last week! So, we played an audible and decided to drive some dirt roads over to local lakes and rivers. This turned out to be a lot of fun. First, we came up to 1st Connecticut lake. It was really big and beautiful, even with the low hanging clouds in the sky. Chunky threw rocks in the water.

From there, we went up to 2nd Connecticut lake, and looked at the dam while we were there. Chunky threw rocks in the water.

After that, we headed down to Beaver Creek Falls. This waterfall is much cooler in person than in pictures. But you can get the idea. Chunky threw rocks in the water.

After that, we headed back to see more of the Connecticut River. We followed a cooler route that took us past Chesse Factory road to Bacon Bridge, then over Potato Hill. I was starting to get hungry... At any rate, Chunky threw rocks in the water.

After a full day, we headed back to the cabin to enjoy the night

The next morning, we hit the road early, headed back to our daily life. It was a memorable trip for being so short.

 

[Lumpskie]

Oh, I almost forgot to mention my favorite part. Fully loaded, going 70-75mph through mountain passes, I got 21.22 mpg!

(sorry. I forgot to take a picture when I filled up. But here's one along the way)

 

[toyota guy]

Did you install a MPH gauge or did it come with one? Wish mine had MPH... KPH only on mine.

 

[Lumpskie]

Did you install a MPH gauge or did it come with one? Wish mine had MPH... KPH only on mine.

I was lucky. The previous owner swapped that in. I believe you only need to swap the actual gauge face, which makes the job fairly straight forward. Now that I think about it... I think the previous owner might have swapped the diesel tach gauge face into the FZJ unit. I wonder if that would be easier.

 

[Lumpskie]

I ordered what I thought was the Thailand made oil filter from Amazon... got a Japan 90915-30002 instead! Win.

Decided to dig into my turn signals so I cut up the spare housing I had. I cut and bent some poly-carbonate to make a shallow housing. The plan is to mount an LED turn signal to the poly-carbonate.

Without the protective paper... I'll spray the inside with silver once I RTV everything together.

Sloppy side... turns out I didn't need to cut out as much as I thought. Oh well... should work when finished.

 

[Lumpskie]

Made the other stubby turn signal housing with more overlap than the first. I ordered some simple LED turn signals from Amazon and they should get here late this week.

 

[Lumpskie]

Because I am an 80 series nerd, I'm going to get some shirts and stickers made with this design:

 

[Lumpskie]

I made more progress on my turn signal housings.

I cut a hole for the wires to pass through

Here's what the LED turn signals look like mounted

Then I RTV'd everything together to seal them up in the rear

Here's a test fit:

Signal off

Signal on

 

[Lumpskie]

We had a fun run up in the lake region of New Hampshire for Father's Day. We explore some class 6 roads that we rediscovered late last year. So, in recent history, this was only the 2nd run of this route. That made it all seem like more of an adventure.

Starting out, we had some trouble actually finding the trail. You can see the trail is actually off to the right here:

Once on the trail, things looked a lot more typical for New England. The trail had medium sized rocks and the classic, heavy forest canopy.

We had to clear a number of trees from the trail. The biggest was a pine close to 2 feet in diameter.

After navigating some smaller rocky sections we got to the ravine. This is the obstacle that drew us to this trail. As usual, the pictures really don't do it justice. It felt pretty tippy and the Cruiser felt really wide in the ravine. My approach was to hug the drivers side enough to keep the cab from rolling in that direction. The hope was that this would keep the body off of the wall. I ended up dragging my rear bumper along the wall on the driver's side and, at one point, got my passenger tire stuffed into the wall so I couldn't steer. Like I said, the pictures don't do it justice

 

[Lumpskie]

After that section, we had a few fun, steep, and rocky hill climbs. It was hard to get pictures because the forest was thick.

After climbing for a while, we reached the payoff. A great view of the area. I'm still a westerner deep down. So, when I see stuff like this, I feel like I'm in a far off country. There have been a bunch of times where I tell my wife that "this trail feels like what I imagine wheeling in eastern Australia would be like".

 

[mudgudgeon]

this trail feels like what I imagine wheeling in eastern Australia would be like

Not even close!
We don't have forests quite like that in too many places at all. I look at your pics in awe everytime. Love how green and lush it all is.
Don't get me wrong, I love our bush, and it can be stunning and spectacular. We do have forests, some are wild and huge, some are tall and lush but it's not the usual.

A lot of our forests are dry, open and scrubby and dull muted colours, not vivid greens.

Very different environments.

 

[Lumpskie]

Not even close!
We don't have forests quite like that in too many places at all. I look at your pics in awe everytime. Love how green and lush it all is.
Don't get me wrong, I love our bush, and it can be stunning and spectacular. We do have forests, some are wild and huge, some are tall and lush but it's not the usual.

A lot of our forests are dry, open and scrubby and dull muted colours, not vivid greens.View attachment 2004435

View attachment 2004429

Very different environments.

View attachment 2004430

View attachment 2004431

Great pictures! Your terrain reminds me of when I lived in the high desert of Arizona or even Colorado, outside of Rockies. It's funny, because my son and I are addicted to 4wd Action videos. They always seem to be in some sort of rain forest type environment. It's cool to see some pics from your area. If you ever feel like it, feel free to post more up over here!

 

[landtank]

I was lucky. The previous owner swapped that in. I believe you only need to swap the actual gauge face, which makes the job fairly straight forward.

If he only swapped in the face, the odometer would still be displaying Kilometers which would put your MPG at around 13.18

 

[Lumpskie]

If he only swapped in the face, the odometer would still be displaying Kilometers which would put your MPG at around 13.18

It definitely read mph accurately. I guess there's more to it then.

 

[landtank]

It definitely read mph accurately. I guess there's more to it then.

I don't know what diesels typically get for MPG. If it's around 21 MPG than he had to have swapped out everything.

 

[Lumpskie]

I don't know what diesels typically get for MPG. If it's around 21 MPG than he had to have swapped out everything.

Yeah, 21 mpg is about right for a diesel going 70mph or so. At 60 to 65, seems like folks are getting 25 mpg or so. I rarely travel that slow so I wouldn't know, haha.

 

[Lumpskie]

I made more progress on the Cruiser this weekend. After installing my PDI intercooler with the integrated transmission cooler, my front grill didn't fit quite right. My relocated horns and the transmission cooler lines touched my grill and made it stick out in the middle. I had to zip tie it to hold it on because of this interference. I ground down the grill with a dremel and made clearance this weekend. It's not held on with screws and no zip ties!

You can see how it was before (kind of) here. This middle of the grill stuck out

Here's the after

I need to reapply my plastidip but you can see the ground down areas and the transmission cooler lines here

It's not beautiful, but at least it works. When I get my new grill (this one has almost all the mounting tabs broken off), I'll copy where I ground this one. But, I'll use a die grinder or something with a larger radius to make the work cleaner.