Joel's 1972 Land Cruiser Project

[freeskier7791]

I would look into electric boosting the brakes.  Packaging could potentially get really good.  Also look at what Wilwood sells for the pedal box kits, they are really small and we used them on trucks with 35s and 37s and they could stop a truck easily, no booster.  But if you want to stay boosted at least you can look at the wilwood technical drawings for ideas of leverage ratios on the pedals.

[frijolee]

After looking at this for a while I decided I was far enough along that I should stay the course and get the booster mocked in all the way.  It's really the only way I can know how much space I have and need.  I think I'm going to be about an inch shy of where I want to be but maybe I can find that and it'd sure be nice to do this on the simple approach I'd been planning.

Need a spacer to located the booster vs. pedals.




Turned the ID of some heavy wall stock to make the bore.






Even using the wood to try to prevent hole saw walk, I still had it move on me.  That sucks.




Got to practice my gap welding, but I got it done.






Had to shorten the clevis and thread the booster rod a bit deeper but it does bolt up now.




Flush to the upper skin of the hood.  Gotta be a least a 1/4" down from here but at least it gives me a feel for things.




Throttle is fine, but I was about right on calling out the +1" vertical I wanted for the brake.  Boooooo.




Well, with the booster pushed full high, I can still shift the pedal up (actually this lets me put it 1/2" forward as well which would be good), but I'm still worried about brake system gain.

If I'm staying the course here, I figured I should at least run some math and scope out brake system gain.  Giving up 5-10% on my pedal ratio might not be the end of the world.



The good news is that I think I can get a net system gain similar to what I'm used to in my rx7.

The stock D60 brakes use a 1.25" Master Cylinder.  If I drop this down to 1.125" to up the hydraulic ratio that puts me in the ballpark, but I have to hope the pedal feel doesn't suck.  I'm hopeful as I found a gent who talks about doing something damn similar:  http://home.4x4wire.com/erik/4runner/brakes/  Looks like it's a relatively proven setup all the way up to 44" tires:  https://www.pirate4x4.com/forum/toyota-truck-4runner/61436-d60-under-toy.html

Note, this guy was using a Toyota booster but it also looks like a dual diaphragm that's the same general size and class (8+9").  Two differences between his math and mine.  1) He compares hydraulic ratio vs. a single brake caliper vs looking at ratios vs. both sides.  I added the row to my spreadsheet called 1/2 Gain to compare apples to apples.  2) He's just looking at hydraulic ratios where-as I also calculating gain of the entire system from brake pedal to COF of the pads, to leverage of the tires.  The method is from the book "High Performance Brake Systems - James Walker" if anyone is curious.

The references to available boosters from the 70s and 80s GM 1/2, 3/4, and 1ton trucks were helpful.  Notably, the old school master cylinders with integrated reservoirs are shorter in most cases than the plastic versions and I need that to keep the booster high.

The last issue is the MC to booster pin interface.  For the life of me, I can't find a means to search MC's by attributes and half the time they don't even give me bolt spacing much less details on the booster MC interface.  I'm debating buying the more expensive Wilwood booster (https://www.summitracing.com/parts/wil-260-8556/) just so I get the MC "bullet" insert that I can easily machine for a variety of depths.  Oh and for the record GM used 3.220 and 3.400" bolt spacing on the old school MCs.  The Wilwood comes with slotted mounting to work in a range from 3.220 to 3.400".  If I go cheap and buy a 76 Blazer MC I'm going to have to machine it open a great deal further since I'm measuring about 3.150" on the Subaru booster and the Blazer is one of the 3.400" versions.

-Joel

[frijolee]

Decided I was driving myself crazy over the brakes so I should switch gears and try to knock out another project scattered all over the garage:  headers.

I came back from a Ronin header session with quite a bit of scrap from setting up the madrel bender.  I was hoping I had enough to make headers for my FJ40.  Since I'm trying to run down the interior of my boat sides I really don't have a choice about custom.  I also don't have space for a 4x tube bundle so unfortunately these have to be mid lengths.  I'm giving up quite a bit of power by not taking advantage of pulse length tuning, but packaging won out and I'm doing what I can.

Started passenger because I'm mad at my driver firewall headaches:




The real build never lands exactly like the legos do, so I recheck every tube before moving on.










Note, checking spark plug fitment was something I probably should have been doing earlier in the process.  It was actually some work on the driver side that clued me in that I should probably double check that.  By the way, the while the headers legos are rad, I found it helpful to cut everything 1/8" long and then trim back cutting and grinding to optimize fit.  Trial assembly is via the blue painter's tape.   I cut just little openings in the tap before tack welding to be sure the clocking doesn't slip.

Passenger side went so well that I decided to be ambitious and tackle driver too.  I pretty much know what I'm ducking under with the merge.  I also wasn't kidding that I had bends and header lego's strewn all over my garage and I do need to pack all this ish away and move in 5 weeks.

Primary #7 will be my tight spot at the firewall so this one is a 2" CLR bend (where-as most of what I'm doing is 3" CLR.)






I was trying to jog low for the spark plug and use a single bend to both clear the frame rail and jog down toward the merge.  By the way, if you want to try building headers fixture your merges!  That was one of the better tips I ran into online and it really help when you can make one tube at a time from point A to point B.  The problem I ran into here is that if I jogged any lower to clear the spark plug the 3" CLR 180 was almost touching the frame rail.  It was also bit further outboard than I really wanted  I solved it by switching to the 180 to a 2" CLR and cutting it in half to making this primary out of four bends instead of three.  1) Out and down from exhaust port, 2) curve back to flat, 3) horizontal 90 to clear the frame rail, 4) 90 canted downward to hit the merge where I wanted.

Final driver model (one tube slipping out but you get the idea):




By the way, 3x pennies at the block flange make just about idea spacers to convert 1 3/4" header legos to 1 7/8" like OD.  That's what you see taped in there at each connection.  I'm not doing anything too crazy for these ones so they're just 1 7/8" throughout.

Complete (or at least laid out and ready to be tacked anyway).




When the bend ends up just right, you feel like such a rockstar.  It's good.  Better yet with the primaries all tacked, I can now pack up all my loose bits. 
-Joel

[freeskier7791]

Nice work, Definitely a good point about spark plugs.  My uncoated headers are melting the boots right now.  Going to fix that with some header wrap soon

[digitalsolo]

Headers look really good Joel.    I wouldn't fret that much on the mid length headers, this thing should have a ton of power regardless.     Good to see it really coming along now.

[Cobranut]

Awesome work Joel.  That thing's going to be one cool off roader. 

[wickedrx7]

Did you give up on this and take up surfing?

[frijolee]

Unfortunately, it's just been sitting there.  Between breaking my other cars (fuel system on FC, powersteering on the Jeep), setting up the new house/workshop, and a hell of a year keeping up with supply chain challenges on Ronin, it's waiting for some love.  I've done some research and bought some parts but that's about it.

When I get back to it (hoping in a month or two), burning together headers is probably first up just because it'll be relatively easy and should make me feel good about having something pretty to stare at.  I've also decided I need to start contracting out work that can be done by others.  If I spend my time on others' stuff for Ronin I need to start using some of the those funds to get my own projects done.  Guessing axle assembly could be done by others...  it's just big bitch stuff so transport isn't easy.

[wickedrx7]

I've also decided I need to start contracting out work that can be done by others.  If I spend my time on others' stuff for Ronin I need to start using some of the those funds to get my own projects done.  Guessing axle assembly could be done by others...  it's just big bitch stuff so transport isn't easy.

The only flaw in this plan that I can see is if their quality of work isn't up to your standards, it really makes it hard to pay someone else to do lesser quality work... At least that's my experience.

[Cobranut]

Yep, I've found out too many times that you can't pay someone else enough to care as much about your project as you do yourself.