So is it a coincidence that my son Johnny @JohnnyOshow22 is posting up to @Zoverlander today on MUD when Zoverlander and I also traded info on Instagram today on this very topic, instigated by me out of the blue ?
When Johnny's shop learned directly from NWFW personnel that the Black Box needs an external reservoir, pump and cooler, and a third hole drilled in the case to facilitate the oil circuit while leaving the breather open to atmosphere, if running for extended periods on the road, literally ONE WEEK after Georg @orangefj45 got the thing rebuilt for me, with new plastic guides that had disintegrated due to lack of oil/heat, I was flabbergasted/gobsmocked/f'n mad. Note that Georg HAD talked to them about my build and they were not saying this at the time, which was springtime 2018. Following Tor Slining's lead we had even put a deflector on the breather port thinking that would help the oil belching, but it did not. I was/am totally invested in this drive train solution because with the BB installed, the new structural belly pan/skid plate/cross member is designed specifically for this drive train, with the BB falling in behind the H55F as Johnny has said. For those not familiar with my FJ60, Georg has done a 1HZ/turbo/H55F swap on it. I had the 4:1 low range Tcase gears. I LOVED the gear reduction but didn't care for the high range 10% underdrive or the noise of the gears. When I grenaded the gears at Turf N Surf I looked for a new direction and decided on the Black Box. Actually Johnny was the one that told me about it, so really this whole story/journey is his fault. With stock gears in the split case and a Black Box the final drive ratio is 50% lower than just having 4:1 gears in the split case.
I really needed a solution to the oil belching and having just replaced the power steering pump and a bunch of stuff in my wife's 80, it got me to thinking. The power steering pump only has two ports - not three. I tossed out the idea to Georg to not disassemble everything and drill a third hole in the BB, but rather to just use the breather/drain in the BB for the oil loop. My thought was that I would pull oil out of the BB via the drain, going through a cooler first, then to the pump and up to the top of the reservoir, and then gravity feed it from the bottom of the reservoir back in through the breather, thus creating internal negative pressure rather than forcing it in through the breather which would internally pressurize the BB and possibly push fluid into the split case. The reservoir itself would have a breather to atmosphere.
Georg agreed this wasn't crazy, and we set to work. I sourced the pump and reservoir and sent them to Georg. Georg wanted a method of alerting me if the oil in the system was running low, and his right hand man Dominic found an aircraft oil float sensor that they integrated that into my reservoir. If the reservoir fluid gets too low, this will activate a warning light on my dash. They supplied a cooler, and installed the system, with Dominic creating all the custom bracketry necessary for the pump, cooler and reservoir. In total, the system holds 3 qts.
I drove it home the one hour from the shop and for the first time ever oil wasn't dripping on my driveway from being belched out the breather. I was ecstatic. The next morning it was rather cool, and when I turned the key the oil pump made a rather loud squealing noise as it tried to move the thick gear oil through lines and ports that were never sized for this rate of fluid flow. The relay feeding power to the pump is tied into a keyed-on ignition circuit, so I decided to install a thermo switch on the relay ground. I found a normally open 105F switch on Amazon (half the width of my pinky nail and ~ 1mm thick), placed it against the oil hose adjacent to the BB drain port, taped in on, then wrapped it in split heater hose, and zip-tied the assembly. Now, on a cold morning, the switch is open, the relay ground isn't complete, and the relay doesn't send power to the pump. But once on the road for a while the heat in the BB migrates to the hose by the drain, the circuit closes, and the relay the powers the pump, circulating oil as designed.
I've just put close to 3000 miles on this assembly on a 12 day western U.S. road trip, which also included some hard core trails, and it worked perfectly. Johnny's already posted a few pics of the system above, but this weekend I'll put some more pics up, as well as a detailed list of the parts used to make this work. It's also worth noting that we had to lengthen the transmission tunnel hump to make everything clear, whereas in a 62 the stock auto trans already took care of this, making the switch to an H55F and Black Box a little simpler.
It's a fantastic combination that provides great low range crawling (123:1) and allows you to keep your diff gears high for lower highway rpms. I get to use 4.10 diff gears with my 37's and still crawl, while running 70 on the highway at 2600 rpms in 5th gear (2600 rpms in 1st-low-low gets you 2 mph ). And my front and rear drive shafts are within 1/2" of each other in length now, meaning I only need one trail spare. Videos of trucks running down the highway are boring, so here's a video (thank you Valley Hybrid's Adam Schwyhart!) of the Black Box-enabled Goat in action on an optional line up Rubicon's Cadillac Hill, with Georg's toes in the background .
Definitely not a coincidence!! But the following IS all SUUPER coincidental!
- that @JohnnyOshow22 is your son, and is somewhat responsible for your blackbox odyssey!
- that both of our journeys essentially started with grenade'd 4:1 low-range gears, at Turf-N-Surf nonetheless!
- that @orangefj45 is also closely involved in both our BB ventures - as it was his comment on one of @dirtyboots 's posts, also back around spring 2018 that got me started!
Enough thanks for sharing all this brilliant and helpful information cannot be conveyed! Those pictures and the thorough description of the issues and solutions yall figured out are invaluable! Based on a conversation I had with a gentleman named Kyle up there, apparently the newest BB design featured improved internals that holds approx. double the oil capacity, additional ports on the housing (for plumbing a cooler), and a repositioned breather port which makes it less burp-able) - and they are willing to help existing customers exchange older units for newer ones.
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