Randii I made the hole bigger so mud could drop through, and I will build bumpstops soon when I flex the truck up to see where they should be mounted.

12 bolt third assembled. Nothing special done xcept welded, cleaned and reassembled.




front hanger done, frame is all done.




Soem of the welds on the gussets are cold because I was brave (or lazy) and didn't tip the frame to do them-- just did them out of position/upside down, need more practice. I also think the front hanger is off a bit, had trouble lining it up because it was essentially built in "space" as it was welded to frame extensions that weren't "square" or relative to anything. I just eyed it actually. besides that I am happy with how it turned out.






Built the front toyota axle. I chose to "martack" the inners which allows you to skip on using the outer circlip on the inner which makes birfield changes easier. A tack weld keeps the inner shaft from drifting into the 3rd. This pic shows my first attempt, I taped an area on the splines and slid the shaft in. The grease pushes away on the sealing surface to indicate where the inner has stopped. I thought this looked good and it looks like the seal is resting dead on in the middle like it should be. Turns out I did not factor in the width of the seal itself so it was actualy riding too far inside -- when tacked, the inner did not slide into the 3rd far enough to allow the birf to clear the brass bushing of the spindle. I realized this after I tacked both sides of two sets of inners (one for trail spares) ha ha I had fun for a few hours doing it all over again and using a cut off wheel to re cut splines.... Anyway incase you do this, I would suggest using the grease method shown but also installing spindle and birf to check clearances.



birf in knuckle




they say the spindle is hard to line up and they are not kidding. Here is two gaskets, a spindle, a cut down dust guard, and a grease seal you have to finagle 8 bolts through.




toyota SST (special service tool) Hub nut wrench built using exhaust pipe and the old "use welder as caulking gun slash construction material" method, haha, this thing is getting retired.

[img]http://berisford.net/uploads/cpom/projectpup/23/11.jpg[/img]



[img]http://berisford.net/uploads/cpom/projectpup/23/12.jpg[/img]
[img]http://berisford.net/uploads/cpom/projectpup/23/13.jpg[/img]
[img]http://berisford.net/uploads/cpom/projectpup/23/14.jpg[/img]



kind of looks like some menacing black insect, or maybe that is just all the toluene talking....
[img]http://berisford.net/uploads/cpom/projectpup/23/15.jpg[/img]

I'm using your frame pics as a referance and I have a couple of questions.

1.) How far forward did you come with the front axle?
2.) Is the gear box mount in the OE position?
3.) Why did you remove the OE engine mount brackets?
4.) What was the easiest method to remove the old brackets? (They are all a ***** but the control arm brackets are posing the biggest hassle for me. I'm trying not to heat up the frame rails but those damn things just will not budge!)

I responded about frame cleanup in your other thread. This engine's mount brackets are close to the front of the engine versus the 3.1 engine brackets which are more rearward. Rather than hacking something up I chose to just start with clean rails "a clean slate".

I did a few measurements on the old engine and bellhousing along with the new one and learned a few things:

-The old bell tapers off more gradually
-The new engine is shorter in length.
-The old engine had a lot of space between it and the firewall.
-I am going to have to cut up my tunnel and part of my firewall anyway to fit the raised drivetrain.

So I realized I could be more riskier with mounting the engine closer to the firewall.

On my truck, the firewall was in-line with the passenger side bracket on the framerail that holds a fuel or brake line I forget which, maybe fuel tank vacuum. Either way I just lined up the back of my engine with that. I figured wherever the shifters ended up would be ok since I am going to have to build a new floorpan section anyways.

Since I went with the dual cases, have no problems cutting the sheet metal and moved the engine back, I wanted to mount the axle in the stock location. It ended up about 3" forward at full compression because the further back I mounted it, the higer I would need to lift the front end since my shackles are through the frame. My goal is to keep it as low as possible for CG and legal issues. With the shackles in the rear and use of Zu rear springs, the axle moves a lot during travel I would estimate 8" forward on full droop and 3" forward on compression. Actual numbers will be less in the real world. Hope this helps sorry about the novel.

For Randii and whoever else was following my clutch engagement problem I ran some numbers and some possible solutions and made up a game plan. I am going to have the aluminum spacer posted earlier made up on a lathe designed to hold a high speed bearing for a pilot. The spacer will be .6" thick to give me 1" of Input shaft engagement. (I have .41" right now). I will source some longer hardware for the spacer and try to use all the available threads in the crank. For the starter engagement issues I'm going to get another flywheel ring gear and stitch weld it along the inner edge to the back of the flywheel aligned with the existing ring gear. It will just look like a really thick ring gear when done. I should only need about $100 for the spacer, $20 for hardware and $30 for ring gear and be done.

Before I came up with this I researched all the other options and found this is the only one that should work.

I worked out using a 2.8L camaro flywheel as they are thicker but even though both motors are externally balanced the balancing would be different. The strength isues with fill welding and redrilling a flywheel for a different pattern concerned me. Plus I would be looking at more machine shop time to build a pilot bushing for me from bronze. I'd also need to swap pressure plates.

I looked at a simple spacer made from cutting down the flexplate (.175") combined with milling the front mating surface of the trans (.13" max) and this would only give me .71" engagement. I couldn't make a flat spacer any thicker without a locating "shoulder" built in. The .71" sounds ok but I subtracted an estimated loss due to the marcel spring compressing, .03" and a loss due to the friction disc wearing down .07" Which would bring me to .615" engagement and run risk of failure.

A custom flywheel would need to be balanced like the old flywheel and my internet research has shown some smal shops have problems with this even after the 600-700 dollar price tag. My drivetrain cost less than that (minus adapters).

Sounds like a good idea for the fix. But will you need to balance the new double ring-gear setup (since you'll be welding them together, i.e. adding more metal to a rotating mass)? I would think so, but I'm not the sharpest crayon in the box at times.

Yeah, if it is cheap I guess I could do that. Who would balance a flywheel, maybe I should call around. I wasn't planning on balancing it. People run a bead around their wheels for diy beadlocks and don't balance them but I suppose tires aren't travelling at 6000 rpms. I was planning on using a very low current setting and wire speed and just putting 6 or 8 inch long beads evenly spaced but that is definetly something to think about.

I don't know much about Isuzus really, but I've built a few engines and such and I'd say balance that flywheel/ring-gear setup otherwise you and a lot of drivetrain will be hating life. Machine shop should be able to take care of you no problem.

Also, I'm not sure how those ring-gears/flywheels are made, so I don't know if welding would be bad (heat)?!? Would hate to see it shatter apart on ya' once everything is put together. I think you're on the right path with small, low heat beads though. Can anyone comment on that? (Feel like I'm throwing in too much doubt here.)

Cool that you researched the clutch issues so fully, Chris. I like the simplicity of stacking ring gears... might want to preheat these to minimize warpage of a fairly thin metal, but the starter gear should be fairl forgiving of dimensional wobbles, as long as the whole thing holds well onto the flywheel.

I'm impressed by that price for the spacer you illustrated... good deal!

Randii

Hey Chris, in your original post in this thread you said "My first and only engine mod will be to slice some "speed-slits" in the plastic bag covering the intake as I hear that is good for atleast 10HP. all the racers do this." Where did you get the info on this modification, as I'm going to be undertaking a Camaro 3800 swap in the near future.

Also, how are you dealing with the looooong nose on the intake? It *MIGHT* fit on our amigo, but I'm really debating trying to put a 45* or 90* bend between the MAF/throttle and the intake so it isn't quite so long.