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Yea, I'd have loved to stick to pass. drop, but with the 4l60e's offset pan and valve body, it was just too tight to squeeze a DS in there. Even a two piece would have been near impossible.
No pictures from yesterday and it's raining now, but got a few things done.
Engine mounts are in. Took the GM mounts and cut the frame end of the mount off, and flipped the engine side around 180 so it points almost straight down. Drilled an enormous hole in it to accommodate an enormous bolt. Welded on a chunk of 2x2x0.25 tube and drilled a hole in it to match. Stuck a hockey puck in between and torqued down. I think it'll work.
I had some wicked oil leaking from the donor motor. PO said it was the rear main, so pulled the trans to replace, but the seal looked good and I don't think that's where the oil was coming from. Thinking it may have just been the oil pan gasket. Oh well. Did the rear main while I was in there, as well as the valley cover and valve covers while I was at it.
Bolted up the np243c to check fit. I think it'll work. It has the 1350 yoke front output, which I'll probably swap out with the 1300 series flange (the long flange, cause that's what I've got, but I'll do a shorty if I can find one). Then I can probably use the GM DS flange and just swap out two caps for toy caps, and mate a Toy double cardan up to the GM flange. I THINK this will work.... If not, I'll be on the hunt for a GM double cardan again, and just swap out the caps on the diff end.
For fueling, I think I'm going to just run a hose from the toy pickup to the bottom of the tank, then pass that to an inline 255lph pump. No idea if this is going to work, but it's cheap/easy and if it works, it should work fine. I've never used an inline pump so I have no idea if they have trouble priming.
Your fueling is going to suck, and not in a good way. I did that going from carburated to EFI. It works, but the first time you suck some air on any sort of incline or run too low on fuel you'll regret it. My 225lph mounted on the frame after a filter sucked bad to get primed again. Had to drive around with a turkey baster to inject fuel into the filter or it would not prime. Another truck I had used a 20 gal fuelcell with the same walbro 225. Had to block off the vent pipe and blow into the otherside vent pressurizing the fuel cell with about 5 big breaths ballooning it up and have someone else cycle the ignition to turn the pump on after taking the shrader valve out the fuel rail. SUCKS at 15 degrees!
Anyways, if you are not looking to have that much fun you can always build a "surge tank" for cheap. Google can help you there.
Been looking into dakota fueltanks. Nice intank unit inside the framerail.
Got a start on the exhaust yesterday. Finished extending the headers. There is NO clearance. Slightly less than 1/8" clearance to the frame rail. I could've got about 1/4" on either side, but I had the body on to make damned sure I'd clear the floor, and me and welding upside down under the truck in the dark and wind = lazy.
I also burned in my "motor mounts". Ain't pretty, but again, too lazy to spend time on aesthetics, and it's just going to be caked in mud in about 4 seconds anyway.
When I was burning in the mounts, I decided to risk pushing the engine backwards another 1/2-3/4" and drop it down another 3/4". This is as tight as you will ever see a 5.3 without chopping the hell out of the frame.
Rigged up my fueling. Just ran the stock tank assembly (for now) and chucked in a rubber hose with a pre-filter on it into the stock pump location. Then plumbed the HP out over the frame rail to a Walbro 255LPH@85PSI inline pump, then back over the frame rail to the filter/regulator on the CM. I think this should all hold up. Had to do it this way because there was no safe place to plumb fuel up the rail to the motor, cause exhaust is just too damned tight. This way, my fuel runs through the tunnel (strapped to the trans cause I don't want anything connected between the frame and the body except a few quick connects). The pump, reg/filter, and all plumbing are easily accessible with the body on the truck. Double bonus, I can also throw on a quick connect on the pump intake for drive-by siphoning.
I was hoping to have it running today, but the parts store (Lordco) ˟˟˟˟ed up both my orders and stuff ended up at several stores all over the city (I actually don't hate Lordco anymore as I've found a few people there who know what they're doing and give me decent pricing). Still waiting on a couple 22.5 and 90 2.5" elbows to finish up the exhaust. It's depressing that everything else including the muffler is just sitting there waiting to be burned in. I also didn't want to risk running the water pump dry for my test run when I'm so close to putting the body back on and putting together my cooling.
I've decided I'm going to try using the stock toy rad. It's 2" thick, and only about 1/3 less wide than the stock chevy rad, which is only 1" thick. Overall, the toy cooler has around 35% more surface area, it's solid copper (vs chevy aluminium), so it COULD do a better job. Dunno yet. I still don't have enough room to run a decent puller fan so I'm debating cutting out the entire front of the body (rad support area) and pushing it all forward 1-2". That'd give me loads of room for a 4500CFM puller. I just don't trust pushers. The Toy cooler also has ports for oil cooling at the bottom, which I'll use for either my steering or transmission, and I've got 4 or 5 more little rads for any other auxillary stuff.
Hopefully have it fired up for a quick test tomorrow. I'm hoping to have the exhaust complete, cooling complete, body back on the frame and maybe even bolted in, as well as run throttle cable (damn I wish I could've found another 05+ with the TBW).
I'm also still not sure what I'm doing about t-case linkage. I have an np241c and an np243c (electronically shifted 241). The 243 makes life very easy as I just run a DPDT switch to the motor. But, the motor is a motor, not a servo. I'd have to hold the switch till it was in the correct gear. Hooking up some indicator LEDS to help me would be easy, and I've been able to pretty reliably switch it blind, but I'd prefer to set it up so 1 click = next gear. To accomplish this, I need either a couple relays and relay switches, or a PLC. I'd rather go the PLC route as it's cleaner and way the ˟˟˟˟ cooler (it could run LINUX!), but the relay/switch setup is faster and just as reliable. Just bulky.
OOORRR I just run the 241 and use the factory e-brake pull lever for a cable actuated shifter. Also cool, relatively simple to do, but I'm not sure if my knees will be smacking it all the time. I can't really tell yet as the driver seat is some abomination power seat from some unknown donor, and has no power, so I really don't know how much leg room I've got.
Last edited by Ben Feral Selinger; 05-21-2016 at 07:05 PM.
Your fueling is going to suck, and not in a good way. I did that going from carburated to EFI. It works, but the first time you suck some air on any sort of incline or run too low on fuel you'll regret it. My 225lph mounted on the frame after a filter sucked bad to get primed again. Had to drive around with a turkey baster to inject fuel into the filter or it would not prime. Another truck I had used a 20 gal fuelcell with the same walbro 225. Had to block off the vent pipe and blow into the otherside vent pressurizing the fuel cell with about 5 big breaths ballooning it up and have someone else cycle the ignition to turn the pump on after taking the shrader valve out the fuel rail. SUCKS at 15 degrees!
Anyways, if you are not looking to have that much fun you can always build a "surge tank" for cheap. Google can help you there.
Been looking into dakota fueltanks. Nice intank unit inside the framerail.
Getting too old to give fuel cells blow-jobs
I know practically nothing about fuel systems, but I know a little about pumps and fuel tanks, and I just can't see the pump ever starving. The tank (like all modern-ish tanks) has a little bucket dealie in the middle, where the pump would normally sit, and the return line runs back into the bucket. The bucket looks to have around 800mL capacity. So, if you're on a steep crawl, and low on fuel, your worst case is that you have 800mL of fuel to get you through till you can level out. Nearly a L of fuel is a lot when I'm crawling. In the Jeep, that's at least 15 minutes of fuel if I'm heavy on the throttle the entire time. I can't imagine ever being at that steep an angle for that long.
I did give the pump a test run today to make sure. My toy tank was empty as I'd dumped all the fuel into the GM tank earlier, so I just disconnected the pump intake from the toy and dropped it into the GM tank and fired up the pump. Pretty much had full flow and 60PSI in about 1 second. That's from bone dry, to fully charged (I even held the schrader open at the rail to purge all the air). So I'm not super concerned about starvation. I feel like that may be an old muscle car issue, or maybe an issue with tanks with no fuel return bucket dealie?
Okay, not a ton of progress as I'm still waiting for my SYE from JBconversions. Everything else though is just waiting for the body to go back on the frame.
Engine is running and everything working good.
But, I was out wheeling with a (new) wheelin' buddy last night, and he took me (with my XJ) through some most excellent trails. The XJ, with it's 104" WB and 35's kept up to his very well built wrangler on 40s', but I definitely sustained more body damage than he did. Up here in the PNW, short WB really is key.
So I went and re-measured the runner just now, and it's currently sitting at 109" at ride height on leafs. This is going to be at least 5" too long.
On leafs, the front axle has to be 5-6" forward to clear the firewall on compression, due to the amount the axle sucks back. So I'd have to pull the rear forward 5", which would require digging into the rear seats. So I think I'm going to have to link the front for sure. This should allow me to pull the front back 5-6" without changing my compression clearance, as it'd all be vertical. This sorta sucks a little as it means I'll be hurting my approach angle, but there's just no way I'll be able to make these trails at 109".
Derp. Well I scrapped the 1st gen and started a new build around a 2nd gen body. Picked up a minty 2nd gen for $250 complete. Will post link to to thread later.
05-20-2016, 01:48 PM
