bringing this thread back from hibernation.........
ross brought the cruiser back down to the shop for a few more "upgrades". don aka fcfabrication buil;t some custom rear corner protection since it this was the only unprotected part of the body. since the cruiser does the rubicon trail a few times a year, it sees some dents in those areas. well, no more. i'll post some pics of them tomorrow.
we also opted to convert the rig to fuel injection. ross lives pretty much at sea level but takes the cruiser to rubicon and other trails at 7000 foot elevations or more. altitude compensation definetly becomes an issue with carbs and the last thing you want to do is to have to adjust the carb everytime you head up in the hills. nevermind flooding out the engine on the steeper or off camber obstacles.
we finally decided to go with the turbo city setup. it utilizes a gm throttle body along with a series of sensors, custom harness and a re-programmed computer all supplied by them. the kit we purchased was very complete. the only thing we opted for was to go with a gm style distributor. the installation went very smoothly, got both tanks plumbed for return lines, installed the frame mounted electric pump, the computer went in the glove-box, towards the top and we mounted a small 12v electric fan in the oem speaker hole to keep it cool. after checking all the new circuits and fuel pressure, we cranked over the engine and it fired up within 2 seconds. STOKED!!!
at the same time, we opted for dual batteries as well as a trick battery management system from extremeaire. a lot of the wiring in this rig needed to be cleaned up. numerous people had worked on it and installed the different harnesses or added to them so it was a mess. i tried to weed out the wires as best i could and re-loomed most of the engine compartment once i had all the new wires run where i wanted them.
another upgrade this time around is the extremeaire magnum compressor. until now, the 40 had a york for oba and a small arb compressor for the lockers. i removed them both and replaced them with the single large electric unit. this also allowed us to clean up the ps pump mount and pulley system.
last but not least, we decided to run an edelbrock aluminum waterpump. the engine in this cruiser had chronic heat issues. we had taken all the steps one usually would in trying to keep an engine in a 40 cool; aluminum rad, aux trans cooler, free-flowing exhaust, ......yet it was still running warm. the waterpump had been installed by the initial engine builder so we had'nt considered it possibly being an issue. upon removal we found out that the pump was a reverse rotation unit, designed to be run with a serpentine belt. got the proper pump on there now and so far, so good. we also installed a 195 thermostat while we were at it; the efi systems require a little more temperature to go into closed loop running mode.
here are a couple of pics. ross will be picking up the 40 tomorrow and i'm sure he'll post up more ( bikini chicks?! )
georg @ valley hybrids
the front output on the nosecone was leaking, seemed like it was the seal itself. that was a little upsetting because i installed a new oem toyota seal and piloshed the seal surface on the drive flange prior to installation as well as applying sealant on the splines of the front output shaft.
