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I'll get around to posting soemtihng up on youtube eventually, it's pretty quiet actually the vortec intake makes it sound a bit like it's got a supercharger.
Maybe I juSt thinkit's quiet becuse I was driving it around a bit with no exauhst on past the header.
Yea mine starts pulling good at 4k to redline, for a 5 cylinder. Mines an auto though. Any load behind it, it needs to down shift to get the RPMs up. Yours may be better with a manual trans
Update, had a few kinks ironed out over the past couple weeks and still don't have a working speedo or tach but here's what I slapped togeather for a VSS.
I had a spare output flange kicking aroudn and decided to turn it into a 40 tooth reluctor wheel.
cut a strip off soem 1/4" plate and marked it up
grooves cut in with a grinding disk.
wrapped it aroudn and welded to the output flange.
I painted it all black and made a bracket to bolt onto a couple of the output shaft housing that pointed a speed sensor from an 04 colorado with an auto trans, the autotrans one hase a bracket built into it that made this easier, the standard one ould need to be tapped onto something.
took it for a quick test and with my torque app I was getting a speed about 1/3 what it should have been, this was a bit odd and I decided it might be becuase the braket the sensor was atached to was a bit loose and allowed some movemant, I tightened that all up with some JB weld and clearanced the sensor a bit closer to the reloctor wheel, I think this will do the trick but atleast the theory works, if it ends up at the wrong value still I can tune the axle and tire size ratios around to make it work.
Side note, I did this and tested it then proceeded to swap out my little electric fan (wasn't quite keeping up at slow speeds off road) with a bigger more powerfull one from a torus, I did this all last night and didn't quite finsih mounting the fan so I haven't tested the speed senor since I tightened it up, but maybe tonight.
I had been getting an error code that was due to "higher then expected idle" I'm thinking this was becuase the ECU thinks it's in nutral and at 0 kmph all the time and was giving my ˟˟˟˟, I'm hoping a speed signal will solve this and give me a bit better highway cruising econemy.
Ok so I'm kickstarting this thread again, becuase I might change some things up.
I'm getting a driveline vibration from somewhere,. I think I may have messeed soemthing up huling my camper up to the B.C. interior and over seom mountians I realy had no right driving over.
Anyway my next step in this build was to put one tons underneath, dana 60's or a dana 60 front with king pins and a corperate rear.
The D60's are apparently 67" WMS so that's only in total 9" or so wider then the 3rd genpickup's axles. I have this theory that I can do this and get wheels with a 7 or 8" backspace and not have to shorten the axel housings with soem flares, there's a guy locally selling a complete D60 high pinion drivetrain right up to a divorced NP205 transfercase for only $750 and I think I can get it s bit lower, but that's a good deal already.
I've also been having some issues with my transmission and clutch operation, it's working and the slaves not leaking anymore but engagment is right at the bottom and reverse is giving me ˟˟˟˟ for some reason also the novelty of a standard truck offroad has worn off, expecially hualing stuff at slwo speeds.
So here's the next plan, find a 2wd 4l60e transmission from a 3.5L or 4.2L maybe even the 4 cyl and have the ECU reflashed back to stock 2wd so I can run the divorced np205 and switch over to a drivers side drop, this alows me to use the more common ford high pinion D60 king pin axle. It also gives my ECU a good VSS (ya it'll be off in 4lo but who cares).
I'm not sure if this drivetrain package comes with drive shafts yet but all I'd need to do is shorten them a bit, this'll also transfer some of the lower gravity to the rear. that's always good in a truck right?
I hope to start this part fo the build up over the winter.
I hope you are still monitoring this thread because I am fascinated with this swap.
I remember a guy on the trail gear forum doing this with a GM automatic transmission and an adapter to match it up with the Toyota transfer case. This was back in the mid-2000s. There was discussion at the time about the common dimensions shared by the Aisin "R", AX 15, MA5 manual transmissions. I thought at that time -- Wow! An all aluminum 3.5 - 3.7 liter engine with compact dimensions and relatively big displacement. And you don't have to cut the radiator core support and delete air conditioning (like you do with so many other swaps) . This is as near to perfect as you could hope for. In-line engines even leave plenty of room on the sides for turbocharger hardware. I'm hoping you can elaborate on what you learned about matching the Toyota transmission to the GM 3.5 engine. I'm wondering if the second-generation Toyota "R" series transmission (1996 - 2005), which is supposed to have the same length input shaft as the AX15, wouldn't be a straight bolt-on. Then there is the question of the clutch and the related bits like throw-out bearing and pilot. I think you mentioned that the Chevy uses the hydraulic throw-out. Does that require any particular input bearing retainer?
I'd also like to get as much information as you have about the ECU. How did you get it to run as a standalone? Is there more that can be done to get the the Chevy ECU to play nice with the Toyota wiring? Can the Chevy ECU be made so it can provide an OBDII port, a check-engine light and signals for the Toyota gages?
That's all for now. I'm sure I'll think of more. Thanks for sharing your experiences.
Hard to believe its been 2 years, last summer I attempted to shim the clutch and over shimed it so I left it for a bit, had a baby and here we are, I got plans to use a Colorado slave rather than e jeep one but haven't gotten to it yet. The next gen trans might work but a couple things:
can't swap parts over with the ax15 so your clutch disk pilot bearing and so on would be all different then what I got to work but maybe not impossible.
the bell housing for the ma5 is only available as an internal slave so I needed to also use the bearing retainer from the older ax15 with the internal slave, is retainer swaps onto the r150 and you need to get creative with the clutch lines but I don't know if itl work on the later version r150. Honestly I'm not familiar with it enough to say for sure.
I'm giving the r150 another shot becuae I've gone this far and I truley do like it butifi had to start again I'd probpy just use a gm trans. Ecu and stand alone wiring I had nothin to do woth the guy that did it use to frequent to 355 nation forum. If I keep e standard trans itll function well but will benefit a bit from being properly standard trans programmed but its all software you can mod through HP tuners. I used whatever original sending units the toy already had adapted to the new engine and they work fine, but I never managed to work out the tach and spedo. The computer has all that info its getting it to drive the cluster that's hard, one could run a tablet if they wanted blue toothed to the obd2 port
If you ran the gm bcm as well then you could drive a gm cluster easily enough, if you could maybe fit one into place or make a franken cluster. mechanically it was fairly simple if you have no body lift it gets a bit tight between the frame, not real tight mind you but the stock exhaust goes right down where it gets tightest, I had to get a steel header and modify it down by the o2 sensor to change its angle.
Hey, do you have any idea if the manual 5-speed transmission behind the Chevy 2.8 four cylinder is the same MA5. They list them together when you search car-part.com. It seems like you can find these transmissions pretty cheap at the wrecking yard. It Might be the place for me to start to see how GM handled the throwout bearing hydraulics and bearing retainer issues.
A bcm is the body control module, its a little computer slaved to the main ecu that drives a great many complicated things.
An ma5 should be the same across the atlas engine platform, I know they also use a variant behind the solstice. A 2wd version might vary in gearing but I'm not sure, controlling the t case may also ad a complication since they're electronic. You could run a divorced tcase off a 2wd trans, lots of options, 2 years ago I had trouble finding them for reasonable price but things change, but I also wanted the r150 for a few reasons that seem irrelevant now.
Ya there's a tab and hole in the base held in place by a sort of snap ring washer on a pin, if you could snug it up nicely enough to a different retainer you could tap and screw it on, but so long as your lines are protected from the bell housing I'm not so sure letting it float will do and real harm. That looks like the right slave but jeep did use a Peugeot transmission in some of them years too so make sure if you buy one it says asin, if your using the wrong bearing retainer your main problem is going to be throw out distance.
I see a 4runner like this and it seems to be begging for 300 hp. In the big wide open spaces of the North American West 225 horsepower just doesn't seem like enough.
Of course, if it was a dedicated crawler that would be different, but vehicles like these spend most their time on the paved roads. And in Colorado, there are so many of the roads that have mountain passes at 9000 to 11,000 feet above sea level. I think you can make a good case for a low boost turbocharger under those circumstances.
Last edited by wrenchtech; 09-03-2016 at 09:22 PM.
07-25-2014, 10:00 AM
