Gallagags Trolley tug build

[gwagensteve]

Not sure if this should go in tech or "show us your ride" but as it's a build thread, (and will be a big one) I thought it should sit in here... feel free to move it or tell me off as you see fit.

Michael bought the tug in late 2004. It had lived its life as a trolly tug, and may never have been out of 2nd gear. It is a 1991 factory SWB ute back. when he bought it, it looked like this:


Anyway, It got a new gearbox, a tidy up, and after the first trials day, entered my shed for a buildup. - 2" BL, 2" OME springs, N76 shocks, custom shock mounts etc, a (broken) welded rear diff and a lockright front, ex Critta. With 31's still on it, it looked like this.



and with my flogged old 33 9.5 MT's, it did adventure tour '05.

anyway, Michael wanted to step up in tyre size, and picked Q78 as they tyre of choice.

with my old (Ex G wagen) Q78's, It came up like this, as guide to what had to be cut.



At this stage, the guard work was done, and it was set up with a S4 rockhopper, airlocker front, double tough CV's, Spool rear, and some natty grey paint.

so it looked like this:

Which is how it sits now.

Anyway, enough of the background. As some of you know, after some 170odd thousand kms in mostly second gear, the motor was getting pretty long in the tooth never ran that well offroad (carbies ) and was truggling in the highway even with pretty close to "correct" gearing, so after much bench racing, a Baleno front cut was sourced, along with a three speed vitara auto, X-90 EFI fuel tank, vitara power steering pump etc, so the next phase of giving it some power has begun....

[gwagensteve]

So, Day one saw us get the engine out of the cut, and day two saw the engine cleaned down of unwanted/unhelpful accessories, the loom pulled out of the car and the K member stripped etc.

Here's the motor:



and here's all the stuff that gets thrown from the cut:



We still have to rework the 1.3 sump to accept the 1.6 crank angle sensor, and resolve the rear facing thermostat housing, but this *might* work because of the 2" BL in Michael's car.

anyway, the major job was stripping the baleno loom down to just what we needed. Here is what we didn't need



And here's what we did need. That's it folks - a full engine loom. This loom actually has more than we "need" as it still contains the temp and oil pressure gauge feeds, along with coloing fan signal wires for both engine and A/C.



This took about 4 hours of work without a wiring diagram to work out.

Another little job that's nice to get right is the instruments. In this case, the baleno need a VSS signal, which in the WT dash is as simple as bolting in a vitara speedo drive unit and running one wire, but as the 2000 baleno is a (desirable) coilpack motor, we also needed the baleno tach unit as a conventional tach won't work, along with a check engine light, which actually resides in a NT and WT 1.3 dashboards already but needs wiring.

anyway, because I'm a nerd, I thought I would swap the Baleno instrument faces. No good reason for the tach as the scale is the same, but there is a little bonus in the speedo - it reads to 200km/h but has about the same sweep. This has the effect of "correcting" for a bigger tyre. In this case, it won't be perfect, but it will be heaps better that stock, and looks a bit nicer too.

Anyway, here is the completed dash cluster:



I will try and get this updated as we go, so you might have an idea of what's involved in an EFI swap. Part of my point is to prove that they're not that scary.

Feel free to chime in with any questions or requests for how we are handling stuff.

Steve.

[gwagensteve]

Engine and gearbox choice - some rationale.

Michael has chosen the Baleno donor for the following reasons:

The 1.6 baleno is the biggest and most powerful variant of the G16 motor
IT is easier to fit the G16 than the later J 18 or 20 or M 15 motor series, for the following reasons:

Engine mounts are broadly compatible
G16 motors bolt to vitara gearboxes, or sierra/G series Jimny gearboxes with minimal fuss (off the shelf adapter)
The Baleno has no crossover pipe over the motor, making installation much neater (Vitara's have the crossover pipe)
it's a coilpack motor, making for more accurate timing, and a cleaner install (no plug wires and distributor)
The 1.3 engine fan bolts on (not the case with J motors - there's no room for a fan
the 1.3 sump fits with modifications
This motor came with PS and A/C


Gearbox - after kicking around keeping it manual or going to an AW-4, a Trimatic was decided on for the following reasons:
They're cheap and plentiful
Michaels car is SWB and has a rear drive disconnect, so rear driveshaft length is an issue. With the length of an AW-4, and accetpable jackshaft length was going to be unachievable.
The trimatic requires no wiring.
Cores are very cheap
The gearbox can be built with a manual valve body, a range of converter stalls are pretty much off the shelf, and with 100hp it should be pretty indestructible.
Michael currently has plenty of low range but tall diff gears (3.9) If we went with an overdrive auto, holding overdrive might become marginal, so shorter diff gears might be ideal. Digging into both diffs adds a fair bit of hassle to the job.

For a LWB and a car designed for more road use, and AW-4 might be a better choice.

[Gallagags]

Hey mate thanks for putting this up, you don't realize how big the change is when you see it in stages but going from the original photo till now you can appreciate the amount work that has gone into it more. I didn't really hurt my shoulder I just couldn't face that loom.

Cheers

[cj!]

This is a great thread. It's nice to see the progression and get the reasoning behind the choices made

[gwagensteve]

Hey mate thanks for putting this up, you don't realize how big the change is when you see it in stages but going from the original photo till now you can appreciate the amount work that has gone into it more. I didn't really hurt my shoulder I just couldn't face that loom.

Cheers

Stripping looms is like meditation for me..... does that make me sad?

Sorry if i'm stealing your thunder.. I just had all the photo's and thought i'd get it rolling.

[gwagensteve]

OK time for an update -

We haven't been moving all that fast - No work was done last weekend, but we got a good day in yesterday.

(no photo's though - not much to photograph yet)

Storage: Storage in the SWB ute is a bit of a curse, as access to behind the front seats isn't good and because the ute back overhangs the bulkhead, items stored up against the bulkhead are difficult to get to when the car is packed. We have also made things worse because of the shock mounts tough the floor in the back.

The resolution there was to run a rifle case sized spacecase behind the front seats (cab side of the bulkhead) This will be long enough to fit axles etc and keeps the weight between the wheels. It will be fiddly to get out but most of the stuff that's in it won't be coming out very often.

For frequently used tools, two 50cal ammo boxes will sit on the tub beside the storage rack. These are 12"long X 6" wide X 7.25" tall and much cheaper than commercial toolboxes (they also seal better and are stronger) They will be very easy and quick to get to. they won't overhang the sides at all and will be strapped down so they can be pulled off easily to take to where theyre needed.

Seats : Michael has chosen not to put the busted, torn, smelly, brown vinyl seats back in It look slike he is keen to go with sparco sprints, the same as I have been running for years and Mitch has for Doof. The drivers one can be fixed or on runners and for the passenger side it looks like the mount will be a 1.0 passenger mount which pivots the whole seat forward with a parallelogram base. This moves the seat further out of the way than a sliding base and works with fixed back seats (like the planned Sparcos.)

Front Clip - Michael has decided to go with a 1.0 front clip, as it will suit the look of the finished car better. I'm also pushing for a 1.0 bonnet too - I think they look heaps better.

Colour- I think Michael has settled on CAT yellow.

Engine: Nothing to report ATM.

Gearbox: We had a flexplate supplied with the trimatic gearbox, but when we tried to bolt that to the motor, the flexplate fouled the oil blanking plate on the back of the block. I pulled out an old flexplate I had when I bought my trimatic in about 1997, and it cleared. Turned out they're 0.57mm different in mounting face to starter drive ring. Wierd. Anyway, that sorted that out.

The tailshaft housing plate has been made. It's 6mm steel, chosen over alloy because if neccessary, we can weld mounts on to it easily or tap it for bolts. A bearing block and seal needs to be sorted, which is a little bit complicated because the sierra slip yoke is 32mm diameter, which is 0.2mm bigger than 1.25", the next common metric size being 35mm. I will do some research into this this week.

Jackshaft/Transfer: because about 40mm will be coming out of the jackshaft, we'll be lifting the transfer case to get the best possible angle on the jackshaft. This will also lift the shifter and disconnect lever and flatten out the underside of the car.

Wheelbase - we will be pulling the rear axle back 1" or so. This is only really because the rear drivshaft is a little bit long ATM with the rear disconnect. We'll be doing this just by redrilling the spring pads.

Rear axle - at this stage, I think we will be going with a stock WT housing set up as a full floater. Michael's car doesn't need the extra width and as he needs to run 3.7-3.9 diffs to work with his three speed (non overdrive) automatic. That rules out a vitara centre, and the ring and pinion strength with the tall ratios shouldn't be an issue.

Unresolved issues - Coolant pipe locations, power steering pump (looking like EB falcon) and method of vitara steering box mounting- Michaels extension etc was built around the stock steering box, so there's some work to do there.

That's all for now - we're getting the tub off next time we're working on it so we shoudl have some photo's of the engine/gearbox mocked into place.

Steve.

[gwagensteve]

A quick update -

With the help of the machinist at work, I have resolved the tailshaft housing. It will have a 32X58X13mm bearing to support the output shaft of the auto and slip yoke, and a stock sierra gearbox output shaft seal. The bearing will be plash lubricated with ATF, which should be adequate - it has very little load on it.

The bearing will be a press fit into the alloy housing. The sierra gearbox slip yoke that fits into the back of the auto is 31.957mm diameter so it will still slip in an 32mm ID bearing.

The seal will seat on a small boss welded onto the back of the cover plate I have made.
This should all be complete my next week. I'll post some photo's when its done.

I'm glad we have this area of the conversion resolved as it was an unknown but I'm happy with the outcome- all the parts are off the shelf suzuki or from bearing suppliers, and can be changed over readily.

Steve.

[Gallagags]

Sounds like it is coming on nicely.

Cheers

[Phantomzook]

How is this going? Pictures speak a thousand words.