Build Mike's 1978 FJ40 Turbo Diesel Refit Project and Cross Country Road Trip!

[Godfather90]

While in CA the project wasn't exactly off my mind:

I needed something to fabricate the throttle pedal off of. Luckily below the donors injection molded pedal there was a tapered steel insert i could build off of when i return to NY:

More on the way...

 

[Godfather90]

Oops ignore that last picture...

After some time the harness was competed:

Love this heat shrink sleeve:

Back to NY in the next post:

 

[Godfather90]

Back to NY for more goodies:

Lots of maintenance on the engine:

Mig-Blasted a Hybrid steel/aluminum oil pan from some Mexico model Golf:

More to come...

 

[Godfather90]

Mom here to fill in for Dad while hes at work:

Custom Chevy Truck clutch built by my friends at Falcon clutch in Long Island. I have had nothing but exceptional experience with Mark at Falcon. He's one of the few people that really takes pride in what he does and bends over backwards to make what you need.

Back in she goes:

More on the way...

 

[Godfather90]

After getting the engine in for what was supposed to be the last time, i realized that there was an issue with the interface between engine and transmission so it has to come back out. Instead of giving up hope i decided to keep forward momentum and moved on to charge cooler pipe fab:

Back to CA i go

More on the way...

 

[Godfather90]

We had a family emergency so i had to come back 3 days after arriving in CA

I spend the following days with family during the day, and in the garage at night like some sort of nocturnal Land Cruiser obsessed Vampire.

I started with new shifters:

more to come...

 

[Godfather90]

I did not take many pictures over these next days as it was crunch time.

I started mocking up water lines:

Notched the radiator:

Combined the power steering lines (sorry no pics of the result):

Pulled the engine again and fixed the interference issue and re-installed it:


My buddy went to work on one of my other cars that was also being stored at my Dad's:

More on the way...

 

[Godfather90]

Skipping a ton of the little things that make a swap like this take so long here's the first start video hopefully this works:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/i1oBCm1CcQcgbARz9

I will post more updates later tonight.

 

[74fj40]

Very cool. I’ve long thought about a tdi swap. Lots of upgrades for plenty of power. Sort of unrelated, but since it appears your a vw fanboy, about 10-15 years ago someone swapped a 2.8 v6 into their fj40.

Project Toy-Audi

 

[troy scott]

cool stuff

 

[Godfather90]

Here are the time lapse videos of the first 18 days of the project:

My apologies for the lack of editing and music, I'm trying to earn these things now.

I realize these are quite boring actually!

If you're really bored here is the full length (54mins!) version of the swap's time lapse:


Here is a 400X faster sped up version:


Here are the individual days with no subtitles:

Day #1
FJ40 BHW Swap Day 1

Day #2
FJ40 BHW Swap Day 2

Day#3
FJ40 BHW Swap Day 3

Day#4
FJ40 BHW Swap Day 4 youtube

Day#5
FJ40 BHW Swap Day 5

Day#6
FJ40 BHW Swap Day 6

Day#7
FJ40 BHW Swap Day 7

Day#8
FJ40 BHW Swap Day 8

Day#9
FJ40 BHW Swap Day 9

Day#10
FJ40 BHW Swap Day 10

Day#11
YouTube

Day#12
FJ40 BHW Swap Day 12

Day#13
YouTube

Day#14
FJ40 BHW Swap Day 14

Day#15
FJ40 BHW Swap Day 15

Day#16
FJ40 BHW Swap Day 16

Day#17
FJ40 BHW Swap Day 17

Day#18
FJ40 BHW Swap Day 18

And the first start video:
TDI VW Diesel Swap 1978 FJ40 First Start

 

[Godfather90]

Upon return to NY one last time for a long weekend. Next time I fly back will be next weekend, and I will be driving cross country.

Now onto preparing for the big trip. New air cleaner:

Made an aluminum rear coolant flange from another model work and added senders (sorry no post TIG welding pictures):

One last visit to my parents house:

Enjoying the forest before moving back to the desert:

more to come...

 

[Godfather90]

Here's a little background on why i started this project.
Its a long story, but in short i built this minitruck with my dad and used it to move from NY to CA years ago:

Here's the night my poor truck met its untimely demise. Some young man ran a red light

I shipped the truck from CA back to NY to get some of the powertrain parts from it. You can see Dad's disappointment when it arrived:

This is one of the big reasons why i decided to do the cross country build. When we built this together i thought it would be our last big project together. I didn't realize how much it meant to me until i saw it destroyed.

 

[Godfather90]

It took a lot of cutting but we got the good parts out:
I gave a lot of the truck to my buddy in exchange for him taking it apart while i was in CA.

Unfortunately there was a lot of damage to the powertrain from the frame pinching it during the collision:

More on the way...

 

[Godfather90]

Cracked unobtanium R151F bell-housing:

Here i sold the Passat rolling chassis to a nice guy up north:
My dad was excited to get this eye sore off his property...

Here's a quick picture of my Audi:

Dreaming about my Cruiser being so far away from me:

My friend drew this for me

Working on out trucks together :

More coming soon....

 

[Godfather90]

Here's a picture with my Dad's 1983 CJ7. It hasn't seen mud since he got it new back in the 80's so its still really shiny.
I grew up riding in the back of this Jeep. When my truck was wrecked i looked all over CA for a worthy Jeep replacement. Needless to say i was unimpressed by what i found, expecting to see something like my dads.

I remembered seeing an FJ40 the first time a few years ago at Arches National Park and thought to my self... Why didn't i build one of these...
I rented a car and drove to MOAB to meet the previous owner of my 40 and bought the first FJ40 i looked at.
What better way to make my dad grumpy than to make him jealous and buy a classic LandCruiser

Anyways onto the trip preperations.

The first shake-down test of the truck was driving to the Adirondaks to my families cabin (around 400 miles round trip):
I met up with my buddy from Rochester NY who brought his 80 series:

The truck performed beautifully with one exception, an intermittent grinding of the starter. I caught wind of this issue while priming the engine for the first start so i came semi-prepared with a different starter:

This was both of us back in CA a few months earlier (He drove his 80 back to NY a few weeks ago):

More on the way...

 

[Godfather90]

Now more trip preparations:

After getting back to my Dad's garage the next day I installed a cheap Roof Top Tent.
Here's the ladder rack, i had to reinforce it a bit after this:

And the tent installed and opened:

I had to catch a flight back to CA so i didn't get to play around with the tent much.

After the tent was installed i investegated the starter issue further before leaving:

Everything points to too little backlash:

As you can see i filed a bit of the starter adapter flange to move it away from the ring gear, and this helped. I needed more though....

 

[Godfather90]

This post brings us to today.

I had another flange machined to move the starter away. Not the most graceful solution, but hopefully enough to get me by on the drive for now:

So now we're up to date. I fly back to NY in 5 days to leave for this cross country trip with my Mom.
I have a few odds and ends to catch up on and we will be leaving.

here's a picture of my mom on the beach in south Texas several years ago with the Minitruck when we drove cross country the first time:

Any advice or route suggestions will be greatly appreciated!
Last time we drove this together was in the winter during the "Polar Vortex" if anyone remembers that. We those the northern route this time!

 

[deliverance]

What kind of power can you get out of that engine?

 

[Godfather90]

I'm sure if you read this far into the thread you have realized that the engine removed was not the one that was intended to be in this vehicle. The previous powertrain was comprised of an 1985 Mercedes OM617a with a hybrid turbocharger setup. The truck when i got it had 35" bias ply tires and had a hard time maintaining highway speed out here in CA where everyone is in a big hurry. I did a bunch of work to the engine trying to squeeze everything i could out of it without replacing the injection pump. When i went to the 37" radials it really helped out a lot, but still did not have what i wanted. At the end of the day the 5 cylinder did not have the torque at low engine speed required to move the heavy truck around with the ratios available in the H42. It would have been plenty with an narrower transmission gear set and some smaller tires, or taller rear gear like a 4.88 or so.

I knew when i first bought this truck where i wanted to take it. I had a similar powertrain as the one being assembled here in the 94 Pickup above and i loved it.


Earlier i talked about the decision making process behind the gear train selection. I made a few quick plots to explain why i chose this setup.

This chart is pretty self explanatory i think:

I built up the R-Series originally with a 0.83 overdrive, then later changed to a 0.69 overdrive gear set. Finally i settled on the 0.79 overdrive which made the TDI happy in the old truck. On this truck i had to choose between the 4.7 and 2.295 R1FA ratio in my reduction box, and i opted for the 2.295 gear set. This decision was obvious after trying to drive the 40 at pismo with either the 4.0 low range or 4.7 low range to choose from. I simply needed the 2.295 more times than i could could when running the truck on the trails.

Here are some plots to show how the full gear selection stacked up.

I hope this comes through all right in the post:

Its hard to see the real differences above so here are some drive torque (torque as could be measured directly at the wheel) plots including the full load torque curves and torque multiplication of the gear train factored in:

Now to take this a step further, here are the drive torque vs. vehicle speed plots. These include all forward gear ratios (16 for old, and 20 for the new setup)
First the old powertrain:

New:

more coming...