I'm impressed by all of it, but the bellhousing is the best. I once helped build a custom bellhousing out of a piece of 14" sch80 steel pipe and two pieces of 1/2" steel plate, and getting proper alignment and depth was a LOT of finicky measurement and layout work, and using constant diameter pipe instead of the nice curved-side bowl shape made us do a small version of your tunnel work, but it worked out in the end. Pilot bearing fitting gave us some grief, too.

The first time you get that beast off the ground, fly it over here and we can play. I wonder if 300hp and a fast shifting a/t will keep up with 345hp and a two stroke shifting m/t???? At least I'll have more valves....

Actually you are giving me too much credit for the bellhousing. I know what you are speaking about, I've done something like that too, but not with this project, it was way easier with this one...
The bellhousing(NP465) I found had correct depth for inputshaft to reach pilot bearing. Also the center hole on bellhousing had exactly the same diameter than NV4500 inputshaft bearing retainer, so it was already aligned, the only thing I needed to do was new attacment points for tranny and during the welding not to heat it up too much to avoid warp



Are you speaking about engine valves? How many do you have then and what engine are you speking about?

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Cooling
First of all the radiator had to go a lot forward. There was not much room for a radiator on Raider. If to put higher radiator, then it should fit between the frame rails. If to go wider then body to frame attachment points will be an issue. The fact was that 1 row radiator could not have as much surface area as needed for cooling capacity, so I needed more rows. Ideally I wanted to go for custom built 3 row all aluminum radiator and it would have been useful to have already 2 or 3 built, otherwise if to brake one there is no replacement û at the end VERY EXPENSIVE.
Alternative was to find some production car radiator. I couldnÆt find many cars with 2 row radiators. The one that I found was Ford Explorer 4.0. I was a bit concerned about cooling capacity, but still went for it.
Oil cooler is from Mercedes W126 S class
Power steering oil cooler is from Silverado
àAlso I kept AC radiator. I havenÆt got it connected yet, need some custom hoses to be made for it.

Cooling fan
I didnÆt want to keep original belt driven fan. There were a lot of electrical fans available on the market, so I bought one 16ö 2750 cfm from Ebay, but when it arrived and tried it, it didnÆt blow like I expectedà Luckily I found out that Ford Taurus had 16ö electric fan in stock. Bought one and WOW, this thing blew much more than the one before.
The next question was where to attach the fan û front or back of radiator. There are a lot of problems if to put fan in front. If to build a fan shroud that allows fan to blow through the entire core, then incoming air with speed has a very small area to go in. If just to attach fan in front of the radiator without shroud, then itÆs not efficient at all. Also, if to use AC radiator, then the fan should be in front of it, which reduces efficiency even more.
So definitely wanted to put it to the back of radiator, but with fan shroud it had some clearance issues. After some measuring and thinking about radiator position, I managed to build a shroud.

Attaching the other radiators was a little challenge as well. They came so close to the grill that I had to trim it quite a bità



Results & Conclusions
Despite the radiator size and cooling capacity concern at the beginning I have never overheated the engine. I think itÆs a big thanks to the powerful fan as well. The amp draw was so big that it blew 30A relay and 40A fuse, so I went for 2 parallel 30A fuses and relays (it is controlled by Megasquirt ECU).
I had a very weird problem with power steering fluid temperature. When we started the car in the garage first times, I noticed that the fluid was getting hot even when steering wasnÆt used at all, so I installed the original Silverado power steering cooler. It didnÆt look very efficient, but as it was original I expected it to be fine. First offroad û fluid was getting extremely hot, blew steering box input shaft seal out and oil with it of courseà I knew that if I run the engine after that, IÆll kill the pump without fluid, but as it was the first offroad with V8, I didnÆt want to be towed home, so pump was sacrificedà Put a new Chevy pump, new Montero steering box û same problem, too hot. Patch on patch engineering û run the fluid return line also through radiator AT cooler (I had AT radiator) û PROBLEM SOLVED. Do not know the reason still, maybe Chevy pump and Mitsu steering box do not fit together, or something else. The pump is actually universal pump that IÆve seen also on Dodges and Fords with different pulleys and reservoirs. IÆm 100% sure I connected the lines correctly, didnÆt swap them. If anyone has experienced the same problem and/or found different solutions for it, I would like to knowà

As you can see from the picture above, the hood lock needed to be moved as well


Will add some more pictures soon

I had this EXACT SAME PROBLEM with my 4.3 swap.

The power steering fluid was getting hot enough to lose power steering!!! I stuck a thermometer in it when it got hot once. 260 degrees!!!!!

I put a cooler from a C4 corvette in there, and that crutched the problem some, and helped out, but did not solve the problem totally. My solution came with a GM stering box capable of handling the GM pump. I think the mitsu boxes are too small to handle the flow of the GM pump.

I too, went out on my first offroading trip since my swap, and lost powersteering... boiled out all my fluid, and was going to strong arm it home. Got it to ALMOST off the trail, and the shaft seized, and broke. Of course a Serpentine system cannot opperate - 1 pully, so I had no way to drive myself home. No water pump......... had to get a tow.

You've got a Saginaw pump, and it's considered industry ultimate. It's a VERY good Hydraulic pump, but I think a bit overpowered for your mitsu box. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/kewl.gif" alt="" />

Very interesting... What GM steering box did you use? Was it hard to install, can you put some pics up here?
Was steering lighter after that?

Hmmm...
I stayed stock Mitsu steering box with stock 4.3 GM pump. No issues.

Kary told me he was having some sort of problems with his pump either whining, or overheating. I don't remember exactly what it was....... lemme go dig through my PMs and see.
I hope Kary does not mind.... doubt he would...


SO says Dr K. and He'd know.... I don't know why mine overheated so badly. BUT it sure did. GM steering pump, on a Stock mitsu box, and it was very very VERY unhappy. <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />





The GM box install was a serious undertaking, and I only did it because the Mitsu box was not going to work good with my SAS. I have no idea how well it would hook up to the sotck mitsu IFS. I fabbed a mount up on the framerail with 1/4 plate steel to bolt the box on, and reinforced the hell out of it.

That was a complex situation.
Adding a Saginaw pump, then modifying the Milemarker, and adding a larger in-line reservior seemed to generate a bit of bubble flow. Then the custom hose fittings became suspect. All this added up to some issues, but they we certainly not "stock GM & Mitsu"...

Mitsu pump only outputs about 2.2GPM which is a lot less then 3.5 for GM. The hoses and tubing for PS matches that flow and is fairly small size like 5/16 (8mm) or smallter. GM prob is using 3/8. You might want to upgrade stock hydraulic lines for larger stock. Although steering box would still be a problem.

Sorry that I did not make it over to look at your truck today. By the time I got my truck loaded it was 10:30

Maybe next time I come to town. Or a spring wheeling trip?