Builds The "Red Rocket" Troopy (1 Viewer)

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Ok well I took them both to a local starter guy, he put them on his machine and the both turned over fine, said my connections weren't good enough probably, went and connected it to the battery with battery clamps going straight to the starter, wire brushed everything, put a fancy starter switch to it all, andddddddddddddddddd nothing... same exact thing. I'm gonna pull up to his shop and drag him out to show me what I could possibly be doing wrong that he did right. Beyond baffled.
IMG_6916.JPG


More quite bad news is the clutch, more so the engagement of everything. Using an Aisin clutch that matches the specs of the Isuzu pressure plate, but is a 21 spline. then I'm using the Isuzu pressure plate, and flywheel obviously. Hopefully, I can explain this well enough, to sum it up, when the clutch pedal is fully depressed at first it was still entirely in gear, then after adjusting the clutch rod as much as possible its still half way in gear but I can hear the clutch slipping when pushing the troopy forwards and back. The clutch slave cylinder does engage and do its job, pushes the pressure plate in and out great, but I believe the Toyota master cylinder is limiting how much the Isuzu slave cylinder is able to move. I thought the rod wasn't long enough so I took it out of the master and made a homemade one which was quite a bit longer.

Below is the OEM bolt, didn't get a photo of the longer one once it was finished.
IMG_6921.JPG
IMG_6927.JPG


Installed it all with the long rod installed and now it just maxes out within the master cylinder instead of hitting the floor. Still giving the same effect it had prior.
Here is a video explaining a bit more the difference of Neutral vs 1st no clutch vs 1st with the clutch depressed fully.


and another video going more into depth, both of these were after I installed the longer homemade bolt
 
Now for good news, the 80 series throttle cable finally arrived, it bolts up perfectly to the firewall mounting points, the ends that connect to the pedal inside are the same as the OEM troopy one and it's the perfect length to reach the end, I used the old throttle cable mounting bracket from the 3B valve cover to mount it where the Isuzu throttle cable was mounted. Worked out GREAT. This is quite a great win in the ongoing struggles of just trying to start the dang thing and then whatever clutch issues I'm running into.
IMG_6938.JPG



 
What I meant to ask in my first post of the day was are there any alternate 70 series master cylinders that might be longer or push more fluid down stream? maybe for a 1hz or gasser powered 70 they needed the master to be bigger but have the same (or roughly the same) mounting points. Below I'll add a video of the slave cylinder moving, it moves quite a bit, just needs a tinyyyyy bit more and it wouldn't be engaging the clutch.




This may be a dumb thing to ask but if I can't figure out any work around... would it be any bit acceptable to just let the clutch self clearance itself? Jack up the rear wheels, run it, and let it spin/burn off until it doesn't engage when the pedal is fully depressed. I understand that that is unbelievably jank but would that even work? or would I just render the flywheel, pressure plate, and clutch useless? Thanks for all the wisdom as always, you guys are carrying me through this.
 
I think you're on the right track with looking for a larger clutch master cylinder. Do you still have the Isuzu master, or can get dimensions on one? Internal volume should be close between master and slave, though the slave should be a bit larger to account for future clutch wear. The alternative would be to get a generic clutch master cylinder from somewhere like Summit Racing that has approximately the right bore/stroke to get the movement you need out of the slave.

I would not recommend letting the clutch self clearance; there is not much material thickness on a clutch disc and you would risk burning the surface of your flywheel or pressure plate.
 
theglobb said:
Ok well I took them both to a local starter guy, he put them on his machine and the both turned over fine, said my connections weren't good enough probably, went and connected it to the battery with battery clamps going straight to the starter, wire brushed everything, put a fancy starter switch to it all, andddddddddddddddddd nothing... same exact thing. I'm gonna pull up to his shop and drag him out to show me what I could possibly be doing wrong that he did right. Beyond baffled.
View attachment 3349564
Click to expand...

Put a voltmeter on the plots of the battery to see what is happening. Voltage should drop when engaging the starter but not too much.


And maybe a stupid question but is-it paint on the your battery clamps? How clean is the inside part? Maybe worth cleaning the metal connection part with some emery cloth.
1686817614421.png



Would be good also to measure the resistance / Ohm between the battery plot and the starter connection, for both cables (measure to do while starter is not activated).
 
ohhhhh yeaaaaa, after a year of sitting and no glow plugs this thing starts up GOOOOOD!


btw the starter issue turned out to be were shorting out the ground by running a wire straight to the starter, instead it should have been running to the frame cause the starter grounds itself.
 
Well turns out the clutch wasn't as bad as I thought it was. Jacked up the rear, went through all the gears just fine, revved it up in 1st gear holding the clutch in and it didn't spin the rear or anything pretty awesome. What is even more awesome than that are the 2 videos below!




This is a pretty amazing and unexpected win, I thought I would have been battling the clutch issue for the next week or 2 before it moved. Absolutely amazing.
 
congrats buddy 🤘 🍻
 
FJBen said:
That’s awesome! Road trip! Anxious to hear how it runs.

What are you doing for exhaust? I wouldnt go below 2.5”.

Always a place to stay here in Colorado and we will hit some trails this time. @shellb is just down the road about 45 mins with a sweet HZJ73.
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YUP pretty darn cool. Road trip will have to wait, there's still tons of wiring, tidying up, then doing trial runs up and down the street, to the beach and back, to my college town 6 hours away (to get exhaust work done), then to the OBX. And if I still somehow have any time and money left after all of that... then sure road trip haha. Exhaust for a bit will be a crappy felx pipe dumping into the driverside wheel well. Then I'll take it up to some good friends who run an exhaust shop in my college town and have them put a 3" pipe through the wheel well and just doing a side pipe behind the first passenger window.

Appreciate the offer, I was gonna take my merc wagon across the country this summer but everyone I had on board for that trip has bailed now... wish I could afford to not split gas with others or else I'd just take off for Colorado as soon as I felt the troopy was broken in lol
 
Now it's not all glory and perfect, weird grinding/bearing noise happened a couple times when would come off the gas in 1st gear. It stopped happening after I took the Tcase out of 4-HI, didn't know it was in lol. My possible guess is I installed my front aussie locker in wrong but I really wouldn't know, worked fine the 3 times I used it before the engine blew up, what do yall think?


There is a BAD clunk coming from the whole drivetrain when you let the clutch start to transfer power from a dead stop, especially in reverse. I'm pretty certain it is cause my transmission mount is pretty much ripped in half, once again I'm on quite a budget so I was just gonna send it but it's too far gone to just "send it" I'll buy the mount as soon as I got the money to and hopefully that will get rid of the funky clunk. And coming back to cheaping out, I opted for the $20 aftermarket motor mounts instead of the $100 EACH OEM Isuzu motor mounts for the swap and it clearly shows...


Well, later down the line I'll fork together the money to get the real OEM ones to stop that crazy torque. These motor mounts have been absolutely great for planning and fabricating at least.
 
Yeahh. At least the Red Rocket Troopy rocks again.
Congratulations to you and your crew. The rest is a piece of cake now.

The grinding noise on the front in H4 rather sound like splines not engaging to me. That could well be the locking hubs.
Were the hubs supposed to be locked in when this happened?

Keep the spirit up!
(And: I whish I had a garden big enough to drive my Cruiser around lol)
 
Got a video of my (lack there of) transmission mount. Called @cruiseroutfit and they got it shipped out on a Friday near the end of the day, awesome. Hopefully will be here sometime on Monday or Tuesday. Until then, this weekend is my birthday so I'll be a bit busy but I'm hoping we can knock out the pretty simple wiring, move the vacuum line to the other side of the engine bay, and just a bunch of other small stuff. Not gonna drive it down the road with my mount like that.

 
Yeah that transfercase/transmission rocking up and down sure was cringe to watch 😬

Due to their geometry, there is a number of forces acting upon the propshafts wanting them to move more 'linearly', and without restraining with proper mounts... well let's just say something's got to give.

I second your call for making sure that things are done right and everything is tidy before you hit the road. It'll be there when the Red Rocket is ready :)

I know you know this but please take your time evaluating your drivetrain's geometry when done installing things. I don't think that you have a particular problem or anything, I just always want to be cautious with the arrangement of the drivetrain, as the forces involved (when not setup right) are sufficient for things to self destruct. Again, I don't see any red flags other than the obvious lack of mounts 😆

Keep at it.. 👏
 
theglobb said:
Got a video of my (lack there of) transmission mount. Called @cruiseroutfit and they got it shipped out on a Friday near the end of the day, awesome. Hopefully will be here sometime on Monday or Tuesday. Until then, this weekend is my birthday so I'll be a bit busy but I'm hoping we can knock out the pretty simple wiring, move the vacuum line to the other side of the engine bay, and just a bunch of other small stuff. Not gonna drive it down the road with my mount like that.

Click to expand...

Once you get the tranny secured to a mount, you might fine that your cheap motor mounts are holding the engine just fine. The engine rocks and moves alot more when your crossmember mount is bad

. So I was in a hurry to make it to uwharrie a couple years back when I found my crossmember mount was seperated. I had limited time and couldn't wait on the correct part and utilized some cadillac motor mounts and modified my crossmember to make it work.........You have a different engine/tranny so you may have similar issue of not everything lining up nice. If that is the case, make plates that bolt to your mount and figure out how to weld those to the crossmember. If you crank down on the crossmember mount bolts using force to move that rubber and bolts into the proper position it will vibrate your truck like you won't believe. Loosening the bolts helps, but having things bolt up nicely at proper angle/position without forcing it into position is best...........Perhaps you won't have to learn what I am describing. I hope all your stuff lines up well!
 
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OK welp, the mount arrived today. Got it bolted up and it fixed the knocking noise I was having in hi range, it still happens cause the motor is so toruqy in lo range but that is the least of the problems right now. More setbacks
IMG_7203.JPG



The clutch is slipping, 1st gear you can't feel it, but 2nd - 5th it slips quite a bit. We have thought and theorized for quite a bit and think it can be 1 of 2 things.
1: the clutch sucks and cant handle the pure raw Japanese power of the 4bd1t
2: Clearance issues within the bell housing area

The clutch is an OEM aisin clutch meant for I think a different kind of box truck, same size as the one that came off of the box truck just with a different spline count (21) to account for the H55f. Therefore it's probably not the clutch that's the issue.
IMG_7220.JPG


Meanwhile the bearing retainer on the H55 might be stopping the throughout bearing too soon, thus pushing on the pressure plate slightly, causing it to slip. This is further supported by the videos below for a better explanation than I can do while typing





Does anyone have any other idea as to what it could be or what we could have done wrong? would like as many possible views on this as possible
 
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