westracing01's Build Thread

[westracing01]

Originally Posted by Irongrave

looks good mike. now we just need to wheel the thing.

Yeah, that's up in the air a bit until we sort out some stuff with the house.

Thanks for the compliments guys!

[westracing01]

Best mod so far... Wrote a fat check to pay her off last week.

[Irongrave]

so when do we start tuning the suspension

[Stezzyfrontiers23]

Good looking truck!! really nice

[bob280zx]

Great job - very clean work. Could you provide a some detail on this:

INJEN Cold Air Intake modded with a separate tube to draw air from the fender

How did you mate the tube up with the Injen housing?

Thanks

[westracing01]

Originally Posted by bob280zx

Great job - very clean work. Could you provide a some detail on this:

INJEN Cold Air Intake modded with a separate tube to draw air from the fender

How did you mate the tube up with the Injen housing?

Thanks

It's not quite as cool as it might sound. The INJEN has a flange on both sides of the box. I bought a coupler and a short piece of aluminum tube and cut the coupler at an angle so that the tube would run back into the stock fender cutout. It's held to the box via a hose clamp. I'll take a picture of it later today if I have time.

Out on the highway, or really at speeds over 40mph, it lowered the IAT's about 3-4 degrees. I run 10-11 degrees over ambient with the extension on there where it was about 15 degrees over ambient without it. I also had made a plastic piece that went around the aluminum tube to seal off the fender cutout, but not only did it not improve the temps, it actually made them worse, so I got rid of that and just run the extension now.

EDIT: Pictures attached below.

Originally Posted by Irongrave

so when do we start tuning the suspension

The spring. Once the roof is done on the house and some other stuff is hopefully sorted out.

Or, over the winter if we get a chance to come out to PA we can go find some local crap and test it out. Then at least we can get on paper which direction we should go.

[bob280zx]

Thx for the intake pic. It appears Ijen changed the design.There isn't a flange on the fender end anymore. It just has about a 4" opening with a very small rounded lip. Good info on the IAT

[westracing01]

Thought it was a good time to update this. Haven't done a whole lot on it but did get some stuff accomplished so here we go...

Bought an airtank for the ARB, but re-plumbing the air system will be waiting for better weather so that's on hold.

(Picture #1). I asked for a tool box for Christmas, and due to that, I needed to move the CB antenna mount so I could get the box as close to the cab as possible. Seeing as how off the shelf stuff didn't suit my needs, I made a new CB antenna mount out of 3/16" aluminum. Made an aluminum plate out of 3/16" too that slides into the utilitrak and tapped two holes in it for the bolts

(Picture #2). The tool box I asked for. Very cool piece. Got a little banged up in shipping but nothing that I couldn't pound back out.

(Picture #3). This is the new gauge console I built. It's made out of 16 gauge aluminum and covered in some grey headliner material I got at JoAnn Fabrics. The black gauge plate you see I had made by Gauge Plates. These are temperature gauges for the front and rear diffs along with a spot for the front and rear locker switches. In the spring I will be replacing the E-locker with an ARB and I am hopeful that they (ARB) will have something for the M205 at that time. I decided to just go ahead and wire them up now instead of pulling it all back apart later. I replaced my Ultra Lite gauges with Ultra Lite II's because I was having a hard time seeing the Ulta Lite's at night. The II's do not have actual diff temp gauges so oil temp gauges were substituted and I had the gauge plate made with the words "Rear Diff" and "Front Diff" imprinted on them. They light up amber at night (the words, not the gauges.) The gauges light up white through the dial and have red needles. I will get a night time shot of the whole dash lit up and post some picutres of the console on my work bench after it was assembled so you can better see how I built and wired it.

During this project I took the time to re-wire some of my previous work. I had tappped the dash light circuit in the engine fuse box and ran that to a relay on the engine fuse/relay panel I built, then to the gauges in my A-pillar. This time, I cut that wire and ran it from the relay to an 8-way distribuition block to use as a (+) stud. I bolted that up under the dash below the steering wheel. That stud now sends power to all the gauge lights and the switch lights so they come on only when the dash lights are on. Similarly, I used another 8-way distribution block to create a ground (-) stud that the grounds for all the new stuff I added go to, then ran a fat 12 gauge wire up under the dash as a ground strap. All the power to run the switches and the gauges still runs from the ignition hot fuse box I added in the drivers side kick panel area.

The Front Diff and Engine Oil Temp gauges are not hooked up yet. I will be re-doing the way I have the Oil Pressure sender hooked up so I have to drop the engine skid to do that. When I get to that is when I will hook up the other two gauges.

EDIT: Completely forgot to mention that I got to go wheeling with my buddy John (hard2kill). Nothing crazy, just some trail riding in the woods. Good for a shakedown of the truck though. Should've tried the one hard obstacle but after seeing John's Toyota get denied, I thought better of it. I just wanted to test the truck to make sure there wasn't any strange noises or binding or anything. Pleased to report the ole girl did great. Somewhere, someone has a picture of me posting up on an old train bridge retaining wall and there's a video coming over a little crest and down a slope. No idea where those are though. It was a good day with good people though and that's what counts.

[westracing01]

Finally managed to figure out a way around the camera problem I've been having... As in not having one that works. Crappy cell pic but here's a shot of the truck flexed out a bit on a bridge abutment from the test run a couple months ago.

[hard2kill]

congrats on truck of the month bro!!!!!!!!!!!!!! you deserve it ......