Honey Badger the Y60

[BrazilianY60]

As long as the outer diameter of the tire and rim offset (back space as you called it) are the same, you shouldn't have a problem.

I believe you are referring to outer diameter of the 15 inch wheel/tire in comparison to the outer diameter of the 16 inch wheel/tire, and that is correct, thanks for the observation. On the other hand, these bunch of old tires will find their way to the recycler once the time for new ones arrives. At this time the focus was to fix things until I got a chance to do bodywork, and interior, and seats and, and, and... My goal "was" to drop money on wheels and tires only at the very end, but it happened to happen before, LOL.

As for backspace, it is the distance from the wheel mounting surface to the edge of the rim. It is a more direct and thus more interesting measurement of the wheel offset. And it is actually the info that manufactures stamp on the wheel instead of offset. I was looking for similar backspace to the OEM wheels to keep them inside the fenders to the same amount.

[mudnut]

Yes, the driveline does not work well with different size tyres.

[MB]

Please do be aware BZ Mate that whatever tyres/rims you finally do choose all around your 5th spare if it’s 1.0mg greater size/weight than a standard OEM spare will overweight flex and crack your rear door pillar eventually between the barn door closing lower window points if that makes sense. Across Australian only slightly outa city roads/tracks it is a longevity ‘must’ on both Y60’s & Y61’s to get all rear barn door weight off and onto aftermarket steel rear bumper bar best built carriers


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[MB]

Love em, unfortunately not cheap, but did thankfully shove my old GQY60’s front ute log forward approximately 20mm extra needed and instantly corrected angles of the dangles same time




https://roadsafe.com.au/wp-content/u...Radius-Arm.pdf

Best part for me personally was BZ Mate that I could retain OEM front guards as is with OEM flares with only slightly butchering/trimming the rears of them to fit and properly ‘flexy work’ 35” x 12.5” R15” old faithful BFG moderate lugs


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[BrazilianY60]

Love em, unfortunately not cheap

Do you know what I consider to be not cheap for what it really is? Drop boxes. It is a very smart idea, easy to construct (once you have seen one) but are sold for a lot of cash.

With regards to spare tire load onto the wider barn door, how do people do when running factory rear bumper? Do they reinforce the door? My wide barn door was cracked, shitty welded and had a junk plate inside to reinforce, but all very shitty overall. I took the reinforcement out, the door was straightened, properly mig welded, some spot welds that had poped were welded as well. My friend who is the body shop guy working on it said it is now properly done and should hold it. I have an idea in my mind that, if I notice the door may not be holding the weight well, I will drill the aluminum step and put some "L" bracket with such height that the spare tire can rest on top of it, taking away that weight from the door, if that makes sense.

[MB]

I’m guaranteed to get ‘flamed’ here BZ Mate but in regards’Drop Boxes’ IMHO we may as well be running Toyoda hook up/hang up leaf spring hangers…..ignite fire
Off-road it makes total sense to me to keep our toughest old faithful Nissan chassis lines as obstruction free, as smooth as slippery cat shit as possible underneath
IMHO, there isn’t enough strength in any vehicles body panels since about 1957 to hold a half sized 4x4 tyre canterlevered…..chassis real steel is where it’s safely at proven across Australia shitty roads let alone adventure twacks


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[BrazilianY60]

No reason for flames mate, I have an 105 myself and was astonished to see the way that both front and rear suspension brackets were all boxed to frame level on the Patrol, in contrast with the hanging brackets on the Toyota frame.

[BrazilianY60]

A full suspension rebuild was on the order of the day... That provided a lot of challenges to me and my hobbyist tools. There were some serious torques at some points that I didn't have proper tools to deal with. First I started taking a look at the rear shocks. I have a trail built Suzuki Samurai where I use nitrogen rear shocks for a Ford Ranger that are pretty long and most important, readily available off the shelf. So I took a shock out of the Patrol and one out of the Sammy to compare.

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First issue was quickly noticed. The Ranger shock, despite being good size, had a super small eyelet/bush compared to the Patrol one. That made it very clear that the Patrol suspension needed that amount of bushing to flex. Patrol front shocks were a no-go as well. The bolt-bolt design is not that common for the options of large shocks I have here. Most are eye-eye or at least eye-bolt design. So I gave up on that and ordered OEM style shocks (Kayaba) from a neighbor country.

As for the link bushes, I had already in mind to make them locally in poly, after seeing the vast amount of poly options and brands available in Australia. I understood that it was a common replacement or even maybe an upgrade. My plan then was to take out the rear panhard bar and one of the four rear links. The idea was to do it in two steps so not leave the axle free to move too much. I would then take those to the machine shop, have new bushes made for the panhard and for the four links (despite having just one at hand). Back home, I would reinstall those, remove the remaining three links and replace bushes. First issues were with my tools not being good quality enough for the panhard bolts.

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I didn't have the strength to turn it with a short socket handle, so I put some pipes to provide leverage. The socket handle poor material was the next weak link and bent. Those were not CrV tools.
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Found this contraption in my tool box, something I built some 20 years ago for a specific job and never used again, but the handle was not up to the task as well, LOL.
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A lot of cursing and bending handles back to position later, I was able to remove the parts as planned.
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Examining the rear link, a surprise... It had already been tweaked at some point in life! Some bastard had replaced one of the bushing eyelets for a new one with the same OD and smaller ID, to use some sort of commercial vehicle bushing.
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I even took the time to try to find out which car/truck that bushing was from, but no luck.
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I could no longer ask the machinist to turn 8 identical rear bushes all at once, oh boy. But poly bushes would be the way, nevertheless. For reference, this were all the bushes I planned to have made:
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Talking to the machinist, he showed me a red poly material that he uses to make 4x4 bushings day and night, and he also had some blue poly material that was a bit softer. So we decided to use the red one for panhard bars, to position the axles with less give for a more precise alignment/driving and to use the blue material for the other links to provide more flex capability (in comparison with the red material, not with the OEM rubber) and more ride comfort. The first batch came out sweet!

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A trick I learned from an Internet mate called TheCrazyLatvian: to jack the diff housing close to the pinion to facilitate the alignment of the bracket and bushing holes for the bolt to pass through easily.
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Second batch came quickly after:
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Another tip from TheCrazyLatvian: rear lower control arms are slightly tilted outwards. Knowing that before hand was great!
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These were all the bushes accomplished this far:
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Also, I have replaced my rusty/scrap pipes I have been using for leverage with a proper CrV breaker bar. Man, how nice is to work with the correct tools! I have bought an torque wrench as well (not in the picture).
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[BrazilianY60]

Forgot to mention that the driver side rear lower control arm bolt interferes with the muffler. I needed to jack the muffler up to remove it. Oh, and this is a LHD car, so "my driver side" is what I meant.

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[BrazilianY60]

With the rear suspension covered, and new shocks on their way, I started working on the front suspension. I have never liked bolt-bolt design shocks (or should I call them stud-stud design shocks?). The drama on the front suspension disassembly started with the shocks. Top bolt, impossible to grip them on that ridiculous 10mm (maybe less?) flatten part of the bolt to unscrew the mega-frozen nut. I ended up winding some tie-down straps several rounds around the shock upper part (dust cover) until it locked and I could then only focus on the nut. Bottom bolt had a better sized grip thing, maybe 15mm or 17mm, where the bolt is welded to the shock body, but then, it is like 1/3 of the width of a common open end wrench. No way to fit a regular wrench there to hold it. Since the shocks were destined to the recycle bin anyway, I used vice-grips to hold the shock body while I was working on the nut. One of them was so frozen, the stud broke.

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In one of the sides, I found this "rattlesnake" there. You can imagine how that added to the already super rattling panels noise I was experiencing when driving.
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This time I decided to take it all apart instead of the two step approach used on the rear suspension links. No dramas to remove the front radius arms other then loosing one of the cross-member bolts to allow for some room to wrench on the mushroom bushing nut.
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Radius arms bushes were cracked.
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I can't come up with a good reason for the Nissan engineers to suit the upper coil buckets with a cover plate... My buckets were so packed with dirt, that it was full to the top. Had to excavate that to be able to reach the upper suspension bump stop nut, and of-course it was pretty frozen. Used an wire-brush attachment to a cordless drill to clean the nut and the last bolt threads and then soak it in penetrating oil to be able to remove the bump stop. All that dust with all that oil, you can imagine the mess.
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The coil spacer/cushioning thing was completely disintegrating. I measured what seemed to be the original width at a non-compressed part of the rubber and it had 10mm. I decided to have a 30mm coil spacer made to replace the OEM rubber one, with 10mm to account for the disintegrated rubber and 20mm to account for an eventual sagging on the original coils after 20+ years and 280k km on the clock (with no way to figure out if that was true).

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Took the old rubber, front and rear coils to the machinist for him to turn me new front/rear coil spacers. For the rear ones, since there was no previous rubber spacer/cushioning, I had to provide him with some more measurements.
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Rear coil springs have the last loop flat, while the front coil springs don't, so he made me different front and rear spacers to suit. They turned out very cool in my opinion.

Rear spacers:
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Front spacers:
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Then these babies arrived!
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And not so long after, these ones arrived!
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Front radius arms, panhard bar and new shocks all went in in a single night after work, and then on the following night, replaced the rear shocks. Suspension is all buttoned up and the car drives like a train on tracks now!

Let me approach the subject of wheels and tires on another post, and then I show you how the car instance is now. It is looking amazing.