Quad Cab - 4 door coil sprung shortened troopy/extended swb build (1 Viewer)

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While looking at the front of the vehicles today, I noticed that the chassis rails at the front extend a further 100mm forward than the 40 series chassis rails. From the center of the axle to the end of the chassis rails is 620mm for the 40 series and 720mm for the 80 series. The front x member is 250mm back from this. So now I plan to 1) cut the chassis at the 620mm mark and move the x member to 250mm from this. This is where the front bib/valance bracket goes and from there everything follows suit.

I have also measured the distance along the guard in a horizontal line from the leading edge to the center of the axle, this is 385mm. I will be setting the front guard up at this distance in order to get the wheel placement in the guard looking correct.

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the front of the 80 chassis is 100mm longer than the front of the 40 chassis
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This wheel placement within the front guard is a vital location to get the looks of the 40 right.
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this is the 80 series chassis with the distance of 620mm marked on it. This is from the center line of the axle.

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the 620mm is the measurement from the center line of the axle to the end of the chassis rail of the 40. I will look at moving the x member back a bit as it measures 250mm from the front of the chassis on the 40, so I will look at replicating it here.
 
Wat a ripper build!!!! Plenty of time effort an thought going on im very impressed! Beat me to the build tho....iv been having evil thoughts about my ex mines vdj76 and a hj47 ute. Ill be keen to see this project progress!!!!!

If you use the 47 chassis you will be in trouble as the oil pump and filter area will foul the lhs chassis rail unless you sit the engine all the way over to the right. Then you will have an issue with the brake booster and steering column.

If you use the 79 chassis then you will have to put all the 79 gear into the 47 body and also do intrusion bars in the doors and some other things to meet the year of the 79 ADR's. eg airbags if applicable. Could be done though.

At the moment the 79 series are too expensive to butcher a nice one. I got a stat write off, ie can never be registered again, and feel that is the best way to do this type of build at the moment. Sure in 15 years time when the prices are <$10,000 it will be a good thing to do.
 
I have been busy looking at HP improvements for the 1VD engine. While a new turbo from Gturbo is getting excellent results, upto 1100NM, I will wait a bit before jumping into that deep end, but will probably do it.

As we had a company that use to make car exhaust systems for OE, I was always concerned about the size of the cross over pipe from the RH bank to the LH bank where the turbo sits from a performance aspect. I know that Toyota will have it sorted, but that is to meet some euro 1million pollution setting but as soon as they drive off the show room floor they don't meet it after a while. (

Problem solved with a 2" pipe to replace the 1 1/2" pipe. While this wont set the wheels alight it will free up the performance of the engine a fraction and when added to all the other bits, like 3" exhaust, should come up with some good figures while retaining 10-12L/100 or better.

I also purchased an oil catch can to stop any oil going through the system and fouling things up. I will also look at the EGR pipe as I have located some people who sort out this sooting issue that these vehicles are prone to. They do things with the EGR set up and make it use fresh air rather than exhaust air, so will look into that a bit more.

Anyway, photo of new 2" cross over pipe and oil catch can.
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Been a bit quiet in the shed with the kids home for 9 weeks with school holidays and all that entails. Got some time to do a tidy up of the tools and a general sort out as the shed was a bit out of control for a while.

Anyway, while the chassis is away with the ute part of the body ready to be extended by 200mm and also have the 1VD-FTV installed, I have taken the opportunity to pull the BJ42LX to bits. Found some rust in the usual places and have quite a job to do cleaning the underside in preparation for some sand blasting at some stage soon.

Anyway, here's some pics

80 Series chassis with 1VD-FTV bolted in heading off to the fabricator guy to weld in new mounts and also do the GQ patrol center into the rear and adapt the GU patrol front into the 80 front end. Will make some new brackets and use the 80 series radius arms. Yes I know that you can make an 80 front strong .......
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The 42 in the shed ready for some spanner action

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The rear tube is good, some slight rust at the very corners but nothing that some welding and sheet metal can't fix.

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I purchased a car rotisserie. Brilliant invention will save me a lot of time and reduce the chance of damage to the body or me in trying to move the dam thing around.

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While lifting the body off the rope snapped and dented a few panels. Nothing too major just hit them back into place.

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Got onto scrapping off the gunk that had accumulated under the body. Looks like it had an engine grenade itself or a loose gasket for a very long time. I do know that the engine that was in there seized, so perhaps this is where the oil went to.

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After 3 hours work. I think it might come up alright. The floor pan will be cut away and the sills will be moved parallel with the back part of the body. The doors will also be shortened 4-5" at some stage.

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Anyway, on with the build.
 
It's getting there now nice progress mate can't wait till it's finished
 
A little bit more progress being made with the body preparation. On this body I will be cutting off what is basically the front 2ft to the door frame and foot well and using the remainder, the doors back, to form the rear 1/2 of the 4 door 40 series. I cut out the dash face plate and drilled out the spot welds across the top. I will be using parts of this to add the 2" into the width of the body and given I wont be using the firewall and other bits, it should be a lot easier to just weld similar bits in rather than making all new ones.

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I am no panel beater but like a challenge. Used the trusty heat gun and scraped away all the tar type substance on the inside of the body that acted as a sound deadener. I will look at some dynamat type of product, or something that can be painted on, to put down once the body work is completed. I will also be cutting into the doors and putting some deadener material in there as well.

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I have a bit of rust in the lower corners so will need to sort that out. Both sides are the same so some metal work skills will be acquired, that should be interesting.

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I will plug all the unnecessary holes in the tub while I'm doing patch work.
Have cut the firewall strengthening brackets off today as they aren't required in their current form. Will keep them for my other 40's as a just in case part.
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Also cut the lower panel out at the same time.

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Off to see the progress on the chassis next week, so will have some pics up then of a mock set up.
 
A bit more of the panels removed today as well as a tidy up of the tar type substance that was used for sound deadener.

Starting to look like the rear 1/2 of a quad cab now, some work still to be done like a new floor between the door sills and aligning the doors up parallel with the rear part etc.... and cutting out some rust but it's starting to look like something I'd planned about a year ago.

Front cut off and left with the floors. I will be joining the rear to the front somewhere along the up part of the footwells. Distance yet to be confirmed pending front length required as I'm 6ft 4" and would like to be able to fit an adult behind my seat and drive normally.

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Rear door will be cut down to 29" wide and the frame will come forward from the back so there is still the same amount of front opening for feet etc...

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Rear floor is pretty good apart from 3 little bits of rust but 2 of them are a real pain in the backside to change over but the guys in the states can buy new parts easily and have delivered, we can't do so easily here.

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Looking good man, will be interesting to watch your build.

Where'd you pick up the rotisserie? I'm going to be looking for one in the coming months so I can put my LX on it.

Dan
 
Looking good man, will be interesting to watch your build.

Where'd you pick up the rotisserie? I'm going to be looking for one in the coming months so I can put my LX on it.

Dan

I picked up a tufflift 1.3T rotisserie from them. Thought I would as I will be doing 3 cars with it over the next 10 years. You can get them on ebay delivered but the one I would have purchased came from Adelaide but he didn't have any stock or them. Hold their prices okay for second hand as well.

Only issue is I would have liked at least one wheel where you can put a brake on it. I will look around to find one as when your scraping or the likes it tends to move away from you. Other than that has made the job a lot easier so far.
 
Sweet, thanks for the info. I've been looking at the ebay one in Adelaide. A lot easier as it's local.

I'll get good use for it with the LX and the 55 in a few years.

Dan
 
Worked on the chassis with the fabricator guy the last couple of days. Took the front suspension mounts off the chassis and diff and also started lining up the body and front guards.

Set the guy on his way and in about a month will get the rolling chassis back with motor body and diffs mounted. Then the build really begins in earnest. The rear 1/2 of the 4 door body should be completed being cleaned this week and in the next week or so should be sandblasted and rusty panels cut out.

1VD-FTV engine in rough position with front guards clamped onto the outside face of the 80 series chassis. Shock towers and spring perches will be made and the lower guards will be made to suit.
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Put the body and front guard on to see what it was going to look like. Engine will be dropped about 50mm from where it sits now.
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cutting off the brackets that the body sits on. New ones will be made to suit the body location.
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I will be doing a radius arm flip on the front. Diff has been moved 75mm forward after this pic was taken.
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Cutting the suspension brackets off the Nissan Patrol axle. New bits will be made to suit.
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Spent the best part of the week working on a list of parts that I needed and also getting the 40 ready for sand blasting.

Sent some panels off the other week and got those back looking good with only a few small pieces of rust above what I already knew about that I consider that to be a bonus. Got 2 doors that have no rust in them and 4 others that only have a small amount. As for the rear ambulance doors, well I have ordered some of the bottom section cuts from CCOT so I will have those here soon and will set about fixing those. Found that my rear door lock mechanism is missing a few bits so hopefully I can sort that out soon to get the doors back in working order.

Cut the rust out of the side panels during the week so the sand blaster guy can get in there and stop the rust. He got the body on Thursday so hopefully by early next week he will have completed the 28 items I gave him.

Chassis should be back in about 2 weeks with the 1VD-FTV mounted and front cabin, radiator and guards mounted as well. Should look like a 40 again. The front GU Patrol has been sorted with new brackets and radius arms and the rear GQ Patrol center has been welded into the 80 series outers and new lower arms made and new upper arm brackets made. I will have some decent pics soon.

Anyway, rear 1/2 of the body on the rotisserie ready for blasting and soon both bodies can be mated with the chassis and the fun will really start. Trying to sort out a set of seats (7) as I want to run it as a 7 seater, so will get some measurements and then hit the wrecking yards with fingers crossed to find some comfortable seats at a reasonable price.
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In the meantime, found some new window channel for the sliding windows at the rear so have 5M of that as it's 2.5M per window. Thinking with the LX interiors that I have, I will turn them from brown to black by some method that will probably need to come from an upholstery person, but a few months away from that stage. This guys sells this all over the world and is only 30 minutes away from home. He also had all sorts of other odd bits and pieces of rubber there as well.

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Anyway, once the chassis is back we should see some good progress being made. Body colour is the 1G3 Magnetic grey from the current crop of 70 series. Roof will be black, wheel rims will be walker evans (probably) running 35" MTZ's.
 
One of the things I am going to have to tackle is the dash. You see the computer gets a lot of its information from the dash cluster so I need to incorporate that into the look of the 40's dash.
I have 2 speedo clusters here that I will cut up one frame to splice into the other and mount the 79 series dash bits,(speedo, rev counter, oil pressure, fuel and battery gauges as well as the warning lights) into it. The 79 cluster is about 30mm wider and will require the cutting out of the parts across the bottom of the 40 cluster and some way of mounting it all. Will speak to a speedo instrument person but so far the best people have been the hot rod guys so might have more luck following that path.
 
Been close to a month since I last updated the thread. Storms have ravaged the area where the guy is doing the chassis work and he lost power for 10 days, so that has stuffed a few things up given all that was left to do was to fully weld the tacks up and add 8" into the wheelbase to get 120".

The body has been dropped off at a panel beaters who does a lot of hot rod stuff, so is use to the type of work I am having done. If I was to do it, it would cost twice as much as I would have to do everything 2 or 3 times and buy the material all over again, and it would take 3 years. This way it's being done correctly the first time and sooner.

50mm added into the width of the body. 2 reasons, will give more interior room and will mean that I won't have to run 150mm wide flares to cover the additional axle width (200mm wider) Given I have the parts here I already have the required profiles to just weld in the required distance to suit (50mm).

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Rear doors have been straightened up to run parallel with the rear 1/4's.
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I will be running Land Rover Discovery 4 3rd row seats in the 40. These fold flat and with the middle row seats should provide a long area of flat to lie down on or store gear when the middle and 3rd row seats are not required.
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I have cut 4" (100mm) out of the rear door to give the side profile a better look. The 'B' pillar will be 5"-6" (130-150mm) wide across the top (the distance between them at the moment in the photo). I am 6ft 4" so sit back a fair way in the cabin of the 40, so will end up with the back rest of the chair behind this pillar. The final distance will be decided when the 2 1/2's of the body are brought together and I see how it's all looking.

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The door sill will be reduced by moving the rear portion forward the 4" (100mm) the same distance that was taken out of the doors.
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As I am widening the body by 2" (50mm) 25mm each side I am widening the rear ambulance doors by the same amount. My aim is to make it look standard at first glance and then get people to really look to work out what has been done to the 40.
One wider door (R) and one normal door (L). Difference is hard to see.
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Both doors wider.
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While this has been going on, I have been busy with the sandblaster tidying up the hinges and putting primer on them.

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Hopefully the chassis will be back in a few days, then I will be taking the ute body off and pulling the 1VD-FTV out, then putting the ute body back on anddropping the chassis and body down the the panel beaters.

I will then be putting a 6 speed auto behind the engine.
 
Can't wait to see the body finished...:clap:

Your patience and dedication are outstanding...
 
another pic of the door sill that is now 4" (100mm) shorter and matches the new length of the door. I plan to keep the door shape as per the 40's and have fingers crossed that I have measured everything correctly and the rear wheel arch should start be about 8" behind this door. I'll be a bit pee if I have to change it, but will be changing to a small section on a 45 degree angle still using thee same type of corner though.

Chassis is 10 days away at the moment but will be ready for rolling underneath the rear portion of the body as soon as I take the engine out.

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Petrol filler will be moved to the other side as I will be (well planning to) running a tank beside the drive shaft and a sub tank behind the rear axle. As this is an 80 chassis I should be able to put it there without too many mods.

This door is 30" wide (std is 34") and I'm pleased that I didn't make it any smaller. Proportions are looking okay at the moment.

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