INSANE HILUX BUILD! Jock’s daily driver tackles Australia’s toughest tracks – how he built it & why

would you recommend a solid axle pot to a lot of people and no I wouldn't [Music] agon legends Jocko here and today I thought I'd take you through the highlights build a little bit more so we can go into a bit more detail about why we set things up the way we have I've actually had this vehicle for around about seven years now I bought a completely bulk stock didn't have a mark on it and slowly built it up over time I built it up as an ifs for drive first and then I sort of got to the point where it wasn't really suited for the type of for driving I'd like to do and it sort of came to a crossroads of selling it or doing the conversion so we went with the conversion instead so I went ahead and did the solid axle swap and I've got a little bit carried away on the rest of it the work was done by Matt Kinsella it can sell US Customs and now that it's done I think a question I get a lot is would you recommend a solid axle swap to a lot of people and for the most part no I wouldn't it's one of those conversions that it costs a lot of money it affects retail value and if you don't look at engineering it's it's a waste of time and money so it's one of those things if you are going to do a conversion like this you really need to think about it before you do it and think about at the end of the day what you use the vehicle for and go with that if you're just doing a conversion like this because you don't like ifs or you want a sick fall drive then I think it's a bit of a waste of money that said though this vehicle is now perfectly set up for what I want to do I am the knight about doing this conversion for probably a couple of years before I actually did it in fact at one point I even bought all the stuff to do the conversion and then sold it again so if you are going to do something like this make sure you put the time into thinking about if it's worth it so the solid axle swappers made this vehicle an absolute weapon offroad but one of the main advantages is it's also light weight is a critical factor to consider when you're building a fall drive and I think unfortunately it's something a lot of for drivers tend to get wrong because they want all the bells and whistles on their vehicle but sometimes simplicity is key so when you're doing a solid axle swap it involves cutting out all the factory suspension and welding in new mouths to suit the solid front axle so all the work has been done by Matt that can sellers customs it uses an 80 series front housing which is actually pretty standard apart from an hourly air Locker I'm still running the factory Seavey's one of the main reasons for that is they haven't broken yet I think when they do break I'll probably upgrade them but for now they're doing the job so Matt's also done flip radius arms on this housing what that basically means is you cut off the radius arm mounds from the bottom and put them on the top now that has two main advantages the first one being clearance you're not going to hit radius arms on rocks and logs and things on the track and the other one is by doing that you're able to set up a nice flat arm so what do I mean by a flat radius arm well I found an old broom in the shed so I can try and demonstrate it imagine this broom is a radius arm when it's nice and flat and it's moving along as you can see it moves on quite freely but the problem is if you lift a full drive you're changing the angle of that arm now if I try and push the same thing see how it's much harder to push the broom along it's kind of a bit of a basic theory but the idea behind it remains the same you want that arm to be as flat as possible so that when your front diff hits bumps it moves through its range of motion rather than wanting to fight the vehicle that's why a lot of cars when you lift them start to try of like dogs if you lift them too high and don't do anything about that angle of your radius arm but also by flipping the arms we gained a fair bit of clearance and it also meant we could mount this waiver up tucked away nice and high as well it's actually just an 80 series factory sway bar it turned out it fit really nicely so the vehicles running a set of 2-inch ad series front coils which isn't that high and the reason is the height was more dictated about where the coil hats were placed on the chassis rather than actually putting in a massive coil that said though I put the shops in went to Cape York and drive around for a month [Music] on the way back home I stopped in at my truck shop in Brisbane and they valve the shops to suit the vehicle which absolutely changed it again if you are going to invest in the set of shops like this because it is an investment make sure you get them the valve to suit your vehicle otherwise it's just a waste of time so the pool bars and our bee bull bar is on the vehicle when I bought it but since then we've modified a little bit to suit the worn high mount winch so the winds itself the motors been upgraded and then your pretty standard things you do to a Warn winch like a building tap brake shaft and fill and drain plugs and things it's also running a plus 76 air free spool drum what that basically means is it's a wider drum than you get on a standard winch and the air free spool means when you activate a switch in the cab it essentially disconnects the drum from the winch so you can pull the Rope out faster and it won't be under much tension to fit this drum we cut the center section out of the bar and then Matt folded up a new section and we welded that in I've also got in and out winch controls on the bull bar as well [Music] so under the bonnet I haven't gotten too crazy but I have done a few things I did have a top man intercooler on here for a while but it wasn't that good it was just getting hot I did want to fit a front mount but because of the high mount winch space is a little bit tight so I ended up finding a water to air intercooler Secondhand off some bloke so I tucked that on and it's been working way better than the top mount so far I changed a radiator before I went to the cope which has been sick and then also I'm running two batteries in under the bonnet they're pretty much just for winching although this one is connected to some 12-volt power in the back so I can run basics and things like that when I went to the Cape I actually had a freezer in the back of the vehicle and then my fridge in the canopy it's running a 3-inch exhaust and it's running a rapid chip and things like that but apart from that I've sort of just kind of left it I just keep servicing it and it keeps ticking along provided these engines don't get hot they're pretty reliable engine so this model Hilux came with a chain driven transfer case from factory when we did the conversion pulled that transfer case out and put one in out of an earlier model highlights and LM 106 which is gear driven that enables you to run reduction gears in the transfer case which gives you way more control offroad and also gives you more torque at crawling speeds it also means to do that we had to run an adapter plate on the back of the gearbox but it just gives you way more control and keeps things nice and smooth when you drive and tough stuff also because we're running that transfer case it meant we could install a low profile crossmember as well which gives us more clearance at the rear housing is out of an n 70 high axle later model Hilux on this one we put that in to match the wheel track of the front an 80 Series front housing is around about a hundred mil or so wider I think it is than what the original ifs was so this housing matches the wheel track so obviously the N 70 housing has been modified a fair bit but the original plan was to actually just run leaf springs in the rear I actually had a set of RG Colorado leaf springs I was going to put in that's a modification a lot of n 70 Hilux owners do because the leaf spring is quite long as they sit cut everything off ready to go we had the leaf springs we sat them in place and we just sort of realized that it was going to be a fair bit of a mission to get it right there's going to be a lot of hours in setting the leaf springs up to work well and it still would have required a fair bit of chocolate chopping and changing and things like that so with everything cut off Matt suggested of doing a four link in the rear and to sort out well may as well [Music] so one of the advantages of having a setup like this is it means that it limits what's called rear steep an example of rear series in a patrol or a Land Cruiser when the rear housing moves forth range of travel if you look at it you'll see that the rear housing almost wants to pull forward as a droops that's restore and basically it means that the link arm is pulling forward as it articulates with a longer arm you get more of a range of travel before that happens so with this rear falling setup in particular it can move to its range of travel quite easily and that's because the arms are quite long obviously there are limiting factors like the shock length and your sway bars but if you watch how this vehicle articulates in the rear you'll watch the tire go straight up and straight down and that's because Matt put massive amounts of hours into getting the link geometry perfect if I have my time again I probably look into an ATT rear housing just because the DIF Center is bigger and the housing itself is actually much stronger that said I'm happy with how it is and it works amazingly offroad [Applause] in terms of other factors on this read if it's running a sway bar from company called drive industries that's loosely based off an 80 series rear sway bar but it's been modified to suit this vehicle and it's also running the Petters drum to disc brake conversion as well there are bump stop pads on this housing because the original plan was to run hydraulic bump stops but with the rear disc brake conversion I can't so they're just sitting on the shelf at home maybe I'll put them in one day but we'll see so with the rear fall link setup it meant that we couldn't actually run the tub anymore because the link towel would have smacked into the bottom of it I didn't really want to cut a hole in the tub because they had drawers and things in it so decided to put a tray on it's one of the things I've always wanted to do so we did it then so the tray setup itself is about 1400 by 1800 one of the reasons I went for a shorter tray was to minimize how much rear overhang I had just because I have such a weight advantage with this vehicle and I didn't want to lose it it's one of the cool little things on this tray is designed that Matt came up with the rear guards actually slide in and out there's four bolts holding each one basically when you head off road you crack the four bolts slide the guards in and then do them up again then when you head back on the road you do the opposite and pull them back out they do have mud flaps as well but I ripped this one off this morning so one of the more recent additions to the vehicle is the mini canopy I actually put it on about a day or so before I went up to Katy or for a month so it was a couple of late nights and that but one of the main reasons I went for a smaller canopy was when I had the flat tray I realized that I wasn't actually taking a whole lot of stuff and I have such a weight advantage with this vehicle I didn't want to lose it by having a mega canopy that I could just pile stuff in I find that when you have a lot of space you tend to fill it up so by having a smaller canopy it forces me to keep the weight down that's pretty basic inside recently I changed to a stand up fridge bought this one secondhand off some old bloke I wanted to do that mainly for weight just because I didn't like the idea of having the weight of the fridge slide and the fridge as well worked really well after the Cape one of the questions I get asked a fair bit is the stuff fall out no it doesn't if you do pack improperly although if I did have to say one thing about him when I was up the Cape I had one of those cardboard containers of long life milk that was sitting in the door and it split and leaked into the canopy and the whole canopy smelt like milk for about a month but it's not the end of the world and we have this extra a little bit of space and that came up with this cool idea of a little slide-out pantry and I just put things like coffee and cutlery and things like that in there so with this side of the canopy I kept it pretty basic and that was mainly because I didn't know what draw setup I wanted in here and sat the moment I've just got a storage box I had a 12-volt board that I made for the old tub setup when the vehicles IFS because also strapped for time for the Cape I just chucked it back in the same way it used to sit here and it worked really well but the problem was I just kept hitting stuff on it so at the moment I'm currently rewiring everything to suit I've moved the charges to the back wall behind the fridge and I've just started making this little 12-volt panel which is a bit rough at the moment because I haven't finished it yet so hopefully I'll tidy it up a bit but for the most part it's pretty much empty in here I've got two batteries at the back there but I'm still sort of aiming and knowing whether I want to move them under the tray if I can fit them so that's pretty much where I'm at at the moment with this canopy setup and sort of spending my time trying to get things right and and changing things I don't like so-so because I was really thinking about weight distribution with this setup we decided to mount the 35 inch spare on the trade is to try and keep it as far forward as possible but the interior of the Hilux is actually relatively basic I've got an iPad up here that I put on when I go off-road that I use for maps and they'll just take it off when I don't need it as far as switches and everything goes everything that's air operated is over this side so lockers and the winch free-spool the winch in/out switch is here the reason I put it there was just because I can also reach my UHF as well so I can winch and and talk if I need to and then up here I've got a roof console that I pulled out of a wrecked Hilux for cheap and you can buy these little switch panels for them as well but I found this one for like seven bucks online and then just have a whole bunch of switches at home and I put it in there this one up here is the winch isolator so if I want to use the winch I have to flick that switch first I did that to keep it out of the way so they don't accidentally knock it and apart from that everything else in here is relatively straightforward oh I've got a set of Recaro seats in here as well I managed to pick up second hand which changed the comfort levels for long drives which is really good anyway guys that's a little bit more of a rundown on the highlights it's not the prettiest for drive in the world but I'm not the prettiest bloke in the world so that doesn't really matter it suits my needs perfectly and I absolutely love it to bits so future plans for the Hilux I want to spend a little bit more time setting up the canopy and 12-volt system and then after that just head out and keep having fun and keep driving it I love this vehicle so much and every minute I'm out in it is a good time I've also started to shift my focus away from this a little bit because some of you may or may not remember the old thousand bucks I was lucky enough to take to Cape York a few years ago I actually ended up buying that and I'm currently doing a chassis up rebuild in the shed so that's taking up most of my time because there's a fair bit of rust in it but watch this space because that'll be my next bill guys thank you so much for watching if you like this video make sure you subscribe for the for drive action YouTube page and I turn your notifications on as well if you have any questions about the highlights just chuck them in the comments below and I'll be sure to answer Cheers legends [Music]

Channel: 4WD 24-7

Views: 492,718

Keywords: 4wd, action, 4x4, offroad, outdoors, travel, overlanding, toyota, nissan, hilux, patrol, landcruiser, camping, diesel, petrol, shaun whale, graham cahill, australia, dirty 30, gq, gu, 80 series, 40 series, 60 series, 79 series, troopy, Hilux, Toyota Hilux, Coil rear, solid axle swap, dual cab canopy, 4wd 24/7, 4wd action, 4x4 action, 4 wheel drive action, 4wd action full episodes, 4x4 24/7, 4x4 247, Jocko, Shauno, Four wheel drive, 4 wheel drive, 4wd cars, car, 4WD Fails, 4WD build, 4x4 fails

Id: VPyUe8v3ZHc

Length: 15min 7sec (907 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 06 2019