I have already manufactured poly bushes for it. Noticed the enormous amount of poly bushes options in Australia, and figured out it was kind of an upgrade. I will post some pictures. Thanks for checking!
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I recon that. But at the time I did it, this is what I could do locally without importing anything.
I recon that as well, LOL. Squeaky indeed! :biggrin:
Let's invest the saved bushes money on sound deadening mats and forget it squeaks! :clownredpuff:
I have found that Neoprene bushes actually chew into their metal components. I have also been advised that they fail quite quickly, where as the black rubber takes a lot longer to do so, giving you more time to fix it.
Dude! The biggest problem of those cars (in Europe) does not concern you - I mean rust. On those picters after underbody wash, your beast looks like new! If I ever could buy one in THAT of a good shape ;-)
Keep up the good work, I will surely check on your progress :-)
Oh, just figured out I missed two important topics that have been addressed before I started driving around, so they come before our suspension talk. Spare tire and alternator issues...
My Patrol came without a spare tire/wheel. There is a Brazilian wheel manufacturer called Mangels that used to produce steelies with round, D shaped and triangle slots, this last one very similar to the "sunnies" as I've noticed it is how the Patrol wheels are known in Australia. Here, the models are called Orion (round slots), Daytona (D slots) and Triangular (sunnies). Mangels no longer manufactures them, so I had to keep looking at local classifieds just like your Gumtree site, keeping an eye for 15 inch Triangular Mangels steelies. A long time waiting and nothing like that showing up for ages. Then, an 16 inch Mangels Orion pops up, not what I wanted, but brand new/never used with minor scratches, out of an store display, for almost half of people usually asks, so I took it. The idea was to keep looking and in the event I could find one Sunny, I would then sell this one and maybe had it for nothing since the Orion had been gotten really cheap.
Mangels Orion (steel):
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Good backspace, similar to the Nissan sunnies:
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Then, a friend gave me a call, he was at a tire shop replacing two of his 32" BFG mud terrains and was keeping one of them as spare, asked me if I wanted the other one for my Patrol spare. Off course I wanted! When I got home with the tire I realized that the tire he gave me was 15 inch, while my current spare wheel was 16 inch, LOL. At least I got to have an idea of how a 32 inch bald tire would look in the car.
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At the end, car was ready to drive for engine break in purposes and I didn't find any 15 inch steely. Another friend gave an old 16 inch tire from his van and that became officially my spare.
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I had also to buy a jack to fit the OEM place. Over here, Toyota Hiluxes come with a screw-type bottle jack that would fit the place and would probably look just like OEM. But used units were more expensive then new hydraulic-type bottle jacks so a new one it was...
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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.
So I started driving around, headlights not working, turning signals eventually, etc. Stop light was good. Just a few daylight rounds around the block to satisfy the itch... I knew I had to fix that before any serious driving. On top of that, voltage on on the dash voltmeter didn't seem to go past 12v and measuring at the battery terminals it was just 12 something with engine running, so I had issues with cabling (grounding usually) and/or alternator.
Checked on the alternator area for some interesting findings. First these two wires were broken, and for the coloring/lack of copper shine, for a long time.
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Also found this skinny black wire, that came from the positive post of the alternator, hanging loose:
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Alternator is a 70A unit. Not sure if that is the same capacity you get in Australia. It is definitely different because it does not have a vacuum pump as my blacktop TD42 has a gear driven vacuum pump bellow the IP.
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Uh-oh, something weird over there, let's unwrap that cable...
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The black one on the bottom of this picture was a ground wire. The white one was positive, with a "T" derivation totally exposed going nowhere.
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Kept unwraping it and found matching wires for the broken ones from the alternator housing. Looking at the wiring diagram downloaded from the forum, the white with a red stripe was a signal wire for the dash battery light to go off once the alternator field is "up". I fixed the broken wires.
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Traced all the wires from that loom into headlight, turn signals, corner lights, etc to find some of them with slightly melted isolation that could possibly be grounding to the fender and thus not lighting their bulbs. Fixed all of those. Then, I looked into that ground wire. It was not worth it to fix, so I crimped connectors to a new wire, and seeing what happened before, I used an very over-sized (comparing to the original) wire.
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And the last step, I found the origin of the skinny black wire connected to the positive post of the alternator. It once came from the butt of this small piece, which is screwed to the alternator body and thus grounding to it. The part itself is a condensator, which I assume to be a capacitor, and sitting between ground and positive post, I suppose it is some sort of high frequency noise filter. If someone knows for sure, please share with us. Since I could't just stick the wire back to it, I left it alone (and removed the black wire from the positive post, off-course).
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So, time to see if it did any good... Started the engine, watched out for smoke signals or smells, all good. Checked the voltage at the battery terminals and voilá! It is charging!
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Quick run around the car and it's all working! Yessssss!
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Also, all the indicator lamps on the dash were in working order! Dash backlight has a few burnt bulbs but that's nothing. Easy fix for the time I need to take the dash apart.