Builds U-p-g-r-a-y-e-d-d

[bustanutley]

Sorry for the delay guys, I was on holiday for a little bit there.
As far as updates, I doubled down a few weeks ago and hammered out all the rest of the essentials. I took it wheeling the weekend of the dirt riot race in Csprings. Maiden voyage was romping it around on the course after the races. Impressions? The way the 2uz makes this thing move is silly. As of now I'm very happy with the way it works. We wheeled Penrose the day after the race, and everything went well. No pictures thou.. Went wheeling again this past Saturday, here are a few pics from the day:

The gearing in low range feels really good, which is good, or bad. I'm going to be re-gearing the truck this winter to make high range more useful and I have a feeling I'm going to need to get a less deep atlas..

I have lots of odds and ends to tie up yet, so, work will be continuing. I'll try to take some pics this evening of some of my work up to this point.

 

['74 UA FJ]

Looks good. Makes you wonder why you waited so long for v8 power.

 

[mookie]

First pic is a sick looking trail!

 

[bustanutley]

A few pictures:
I built a simple engine cage, almost done:

Complete engine bay:

I decided to rework my steering shaft with a nice Toyota slip to get rid of the crappy sloppy jeep D-shaft I had before. I also had to notch the firewall to get the DBW pedal in an acceptable location, which you can kinda see:

Gauges installed:

Some plumbing:

Rear belly shot:

 

[bustanutley]

Looks good. Makes you wonder why you waited so long for v8 power.

haha, yeah, however, it was a lot of work to do right, and fairly expensive so the timing was actually pretty good I'm pumped now that its running. The truck sure is fun now, now, time for some dampening! soon.

First pic is a sick looking trail!

Yeah mook, its a good one!

heres a few other shots of the day posted by a dude who was with us on a local board

Carnage BV-6-30

 

[TxCruzr]

The toy v8 is just awesome!

Once I get my junk done I'm taking a couple weeks off and hitting the road. You're going to have find time to show me some of those bad@$$ trails yall have up there

 

[GLTHFJ60]

Gorgeous rig man, good work

 

[yOHda]

Awesome 40. The 2uz looks like a very clean swap.

Im building its little brother. 1uz on 80 axles, 3 link front, leafs rear on 37s. Im worried my drivetrain is too long for the 40. my wheelbase is working out to about 100".

Do you think a prerunner adapter and dual mini cases can fit in place of your atlas? Ive been keeping an eye out for a used atlas in case my original plan falls through.

 

[bustanutley]

Thanks for the compliments guys
Tx, let me know, I’ll point you in the right direction if I can't go wheeling myself.

YoHda, You are going to run into trouble with your planned drivetrain, there is no way I would consider using the prerunner adapter in a 100” 40. That adapter must add at least 4”. Why would you not use a 4wd trans out of a tundra or sequoia? Then you could either run an atlas with a 3/8” adapter, or a yota case with a ½” marlin adapter. Atlas, of coarse, being the best choice all the way around. The prerunner adapter + dual case setup must be, at minimum, a foot longer than my setup. And, compounding the problem, you will need to set the rear of the drivetrain (rear output) waaay higher than I have my atlas if you want to have a somewhat flat belly because the front output on the yota cases hang low. Personally I wouldn’t want my rear shaft to be any shorter or have any more static angle. It’s pretty happy now, but, I’m planning on lowering the truck a little this winter that should make things pretty legit.

A little useful info regarding this subject:
The 2uz/auto/aa/atlas setup is ~1” shorter than the F/sm420/novak/atlas setup it replaced. Also 235lbs lighter from my research.

I put the tcase in the same place as where it was before, but, I clocked the atlas up some and dropped the rear output several inches. Also, centered the drivetrain in the frame. This made me push the radiator forward ~1/2” or so to use the factory 2uz fan.

The trans pan is the lowest point in my drivetrain, I set it flush with the bottom of the frame and angle the drivetrain according to its angle. Its like 3 deg or so? I don’t remember.

My wheelbase is ~103”

The 57:1 low range gearing I have seems perfect with 40s, re-gearing axles might make me trade out to a 3.8 or even 3.0 atlas.

 

[TxCruzr]

The 57:1 low range gearing I have seems perfect with 40s, re-gearing axles might make me trade out to a 3.8 or even 3.0 atlas.

What gears are you running in your axles right now? I know you're shooting to have a lower hi range, what will that do to your low range? Are you shooting to stay in the mid 50s in low or would you be ok with being a little higher?

 

[bustanutley]

Currently, I’m running factory 4.1s. I think anywhere from 45-60:1 would be an acceptable gearing in low range from my limited experience wheeling an auto. My friend’s utra 4 car has him at 40:1 and he say even that feels good. I’m moving to 9 inch axles so ultimately I think I will end up with 6 or even 6.5 gearing in the axles. That gearing paired with a 3:1 atlas that puts my truck right back where I am now in low. But, there may be an intermediate step using 5.29s and my current case.

 

[TxCruzr]

cool thanks, the 14bolt is going to screw me with gearing options. I think you're on the right track gearing down the axles and having a higher t-case gearing.

 

[yOHda]

Thanks for the advice on the UZ swap. I finished wiring my megasquirt and nearing hearing this thing run. a couple techs i work with wired up my stock trans to shift manually. looking for the 4x4 tailhousing and will run inchworms tacoma adapter to my dual cases. probably going to be as short as i can get it. hopefully only 3-4" longer than my stock drivetrain.

with such deep gearing planned, is a jump in tire size also in the works?

 

[bustanutley]

I think that is a good plan. Do you need to swap the tailshaft also? or can you just lop it off? I was looking at swaping the back of an aw4 and tailshaft into my trans to save a couple bucks since the atlas would bolt right to that, but decided opening up the trans was a big scary can of worms for me! I checked out your build thread, looks good, I love my engine/trans.

No tire size change planned, 40s are perfect. I actually might be looking at a forced tire size decrease in the future, as, I am toying with the idea of maybe racing this thing I just want it to be fast, and even with 6 something gearing it will still go over 100mph with the OD trans. My buddies old truck on 44s with a 2uz dual yota case drivetrain and 4.1s was fast as s*** with 2.28 tcase engaged and I’m kinda trying to duplicate that situation in high At 6:1 I will have quite a bit more speed than his old truck. 5.29s might be good enough thou.

 

[yOHda]

im not 100%, but i think i can just lop off the threaded portion of the stock tailshaft and run with it. i will have a complete donor a340f if i need to swap shafts. i work with people smarter than I, so one of the guys out in the shop will build the trans if need be. they are actually trying to talk me out of the V8 swap and into turbo/propane for the 2F. i sell buses and we install dual fuel propane systems.

my build thread is lackluster. i am waiting until i have more progress to put an official build in the hardcore section. If your friend is who i think it is, his truck is the reason i am puttin a UZ in now. i love that thing.

 

[bustanutley]

Long time, no post.

My homie gave me first dibs on his gently used old shocks for a more than fair deal, so, time for some dampening

2.5” ADS 12” travel bypass shocks

It took some work, but I got them installed outboard of the frame like I wanted. I ended up narrowing the rear portion of the frame. I made a new bumper, and attached the shackle hangers to it which lowered the rear of the truck ~2” as planned. Smaller details include cutting off the old perches and repositioning for different spring angles and remaking the brake lines.

 

[Mace]

good enough deal that you decided that you needed bypasses on a Rock crawler or??

 

[bustanutley]

It can only be a rock crawler?

 

[MicahMan]

Well Done!

 

[Mace]

It can only be a rock crawler?

The "or??" was more of a question on what else you plan to do with it.