By request I am going to post some of the mods on my Sprinter. Due to the huge amount of them I will probably just put a before/after or just a finished pic of each mod. If someone would like to see more pics or have any questions please let me know. I am happy to answer them on here regarding what i have done or anything else. But before anything else heres what my machine looked like last time I took a pic:













Anyway heres the specs that I currently have planning to have:



Engine: Toyota 4AGE 20 Valve Silver top



Clutch/flywheel: 20V flywheel and exedy 212mm clutch



Planned Induction: Factory quad-throttle bodies, custom made inlet trumpets with a custom airbox sucking through a K&N pod filter



Gearbox: T50 with custom short shifter
Planned gearbox mods: Installation of an oversized Delrin Shift Bushing and also a change of gear knob.



Diff: T-18 with disks with 1 : 4.1 TA-22 diff gears
Planned Diff: Current T-18 with TRD 2-way LSD center. With also custom stroke limiting rods.



Radiator/fans: Hyundai Excel with modifed hyundai mounts and one of the two OEM fans, which is the former air-con condesor one.



Front shocks: ST-204 4-way externally adjustables by KYB: AGX



Rear shocks: Commodor IRS 8-way externally adjustables by KYB: AGX



Front Springs: Kings 65mm I.D coilover type, 325 pounds/inch (5.8 Kg/mm) 180mm long, Linear spring



Rear Springs: Custom kings, 70mm lower than standard, approx 180 pounds/inch (3.2Kg/mm), progressive spring.



Front Brakes: MK2 Supra vented 260mm



Front Brake Pads: QFM organic sport pads



Rear Brakes: ST-141 280mm disks with AE-82 corolla calipers.



Pan-hard Rod: Custom made adjustable




Exhaust manafold: custom made stainless true equal length and equal diameter extractors, 4 to 2 to 1. 50cm primaries and half length secondaries.



Planned Exhaust: fully deburred, mandrel formed, stainless steel system which is 2 1/4 inch. Middle metal cat that leads to an angled straight through stainless muffler with a chrome tip.



Ignition: OEM 4AGE 20V ECU in conjuction with modifed loom and custom waste spark ignition.
Planned ignition (second stage): 2 x Twin channel M&W ignitor modules with individual coil packs for each cylender.
Coils type: Hyundai Excel OEM



ECU: OEM 4AGE 20V ECU in conjuction with modified loom.
Planned ECU (second stage): Wolf 3d 3.1 (already have)






Stereo:



Heat-unit: Clarion MP3

Front speakers: Jaycar response 4 inch

Front Tweeters: Ex OEM

Rear speakers: Alpine 6 x 9s

Amp (sub only): Cadence

Sub-woofer: Reactor

Woofer enclousure: Custom

Other bits: Composite parcel shelf and fader control adapter to be woofer level control.






Also lastly I have copied most of this from another forum so if something doesnt quite make sense this is why.

[Updated on: Tue, 11 October 2005 08:25]

Heres some more old projects I have done:




This is where I made my own clear indicators that use 4 LEDs in the sides. I plan to make another version of these in due time that uses a segment of leds from the back. I had to modify my flasher can because it didnt sense the current.










Installation of my Engine Management System (EMS), its a Wolf 3D with a hand conroller.









My twin channel ignitor modules for the ignition on a custom made mount.

[Updated on: Thu, 17 November 2005 01:36]

heres another one of my old projects, I continued my trend of not using sprinter parts by putting in some later model Celica seats. I will need to go back there and write down which model it came from for my records. Heres a pic I took half way when I had only done the drivers:






for anyone whose interested forget it. I am an experienced car butcher and it still took me ages. I had to chop off all 4 mounts on each seat and start from scratch with my own design. The first seat took 12 hours!! and the second took 7 hours. Understandably I am not going to redo it anytime soon. Anyway the result was awesome, my passenegers dont even need to hold onto the Jesus bar anymore, and with my driving that's really something. They work so well infact that it actually feels like I am going slower. Another no so expected outcome is that its so much easier to steer around a corner, this is because I dont have to hold myself in position at the same time.

[Updated on: Thu, 17 November 2005 07:33]

UPDATE: Looks like its back to plan A, I dont think I will use this tank but instead get my tank modified, it amoungst other things saves me having 2 pumps.


so this is what I ended up putting in:



this is going to be my surge tank, no prizes for guessing that I used a bit of leftover stainless exhaust pipe. To the left is the pan-hard rod and its mount, and behind that is the diff. To the Right is the fuel tank and all lines coming out of it. Its a tight fit but it should be ok. The total volume I have worked out to be is 500cc, if I am not mistaken this works out to 20 seconds worth of fuel when I am using 200KW of power, so yeah I dont think I will be going around a corner longer than that. I will need to obviously fit a top and bottom cap and also buy and fit all the fittings to it.

heres where the secondary pump will most likely fit (the VL one):




I plan to have the pump mounted about there and the other pump above it. I also plan to make a full removable cradle that holds all this in place. This picture really shows how I am squeezing all my gear between my panhard rod and my fuel tank.

Also of note here is the fuel pump mount I made. I used some leftover exhaust pipe and some industrial tubing. I wanted this to insulate some of the vibrations of the fuel pump

[Updated on: Thu, 17 November 2005 07:42]

Today was another long day. i managed to fit my radiator and on the side rewire the power supply to my brothers fuel pump in his car.

The bottom hose had already been taken care of, but on the top the inlet of the radiator and the outlet of the water pump were different sizes. I did however notice that the hose from one very nicely slid over the other. So what I did first up is use part of the sprinter OEM hose for off the water pump and the Hyundai one off the radiator, I trimed them down untill they fitted together nicely with them overlapping each other i the middle. I was happy to find it fitted very nicely together. From here I choped off an aluminium peice of pipe and jammed in into my smaller pipe off the radiator, again with some assistance from my heatgun. Like so:



from here the larger hose slid over the top and the aluminium insert was used to provide a support for the hose clamp that held the two together. Besacuse I had to use the heatgun to put the incert in I wont ever have to worry about it moving around, it just in there way too tight.

After it had all been done up:



There, looking like it was made to be fitted that way!


I made the brackets that the Hyundai OEM radiator mounts will screw into. I welded them on and spray painted them from an expensive colour matched metalic spray can I had laying around. Also as per usual I used toyota OEM bolts to hold it down to further the original look and practicality. Heres how it looked:



Also notice how the oginal overlfow bottle hose on the top left looks like it was made to fit on.

Lastly a pic from the back showing how nice it fits:




I also started on my electrics and I am still working on that, I will show some pics when I have done it. I am still thinking of what method I am going to use on this, one thing for sure is that I will have individual relays for each fan, and its almost certain I will have a switch mounted next to them for the manual overide.


UPDATE: Since my change of plan to get a 20 Valve non turbo I have no need for such an excessive cooling system. I havn't bothered to wire the fans on this thing up yet and I have been driving for like 2 months as is. Only after sitting it traffic for ages does it slowly warm up a bit, and it really drops quick as soon as it gets some airflow. It really is amazing how well it works. Anyway my point is that this isn't necessary for my plans anymore and I have decided to take off the larger fan. Ones more than enough and with the larger one gone it will free up some room. I guess I will take another pic once I take it off.

[Updated on: Thu, 17 November 2005 07:48]

I installed my rear AGX shockers into my car. Heres how I did it:





This is the orginal design, an eyelet style with a bolt through the middle. The shockers I am fitting are almost identical with the exception of a 40mm shorter stroke and with a different bottom mount.





The Commodor used a realy primitive and stupid setup to hold the shocker in, its held in by one side only with a bolt thats aproximetly 13.5mm in the shank. To comensate for the pathetic design they used a big, heavy cast iron mount to fix it to. If that wasnt stupid enough they used a bolt with a rolled thread and a shocker that has a 15mm hole in it. So basicly all Commodors have heaps of slop in the lower mounts and rely on bolt tension to hold them captive. So what I did is get a spacer machined up which I pushed in. This is to reduce the diameter from the 15mm down to suit a common 10mm bolt. I decided to have a single bolt going right through.





Heres the deisgn I came up with, it uses 3mm plate. It uses a 10mm hex head bolt with a cylender shaped head. To stop any slop forming I welded a nut on one end and put a thick section of pipe to support the head at the other end. So I have the equivolent of about 10+ mm of material at either end of the bolt. Very simple, light and effective. In this photo I had chopped off the original mounts and was ready to weld mine on.





All welded up and painted. Looking here you see that I drilled 4 holes through the middle which I used to weld, I also welded from all the edges.





This is the top, the shocker was the same at the top however the bushes supplied with it were slightly different. Fitted into place the bushes show themself to be larger but it isn't a problem. To fit the covers I just pulled the inter peice of trim up a bit to clip them on. Once in place its indistinuishable.





All finished with the shockers mounted and ready to use.



Testing: It was a bit hard to test because I was experiencing front shocker problems at the time and I am using standard springs temporarily, however I found the new shockers to be awesome. From setting 1 it feels like a well worn standard sprinter item, to 8 where the whole car feels very well dampened. I recomend this to just about any sprinter driver who has the equiment to do it.

[Updated on: Thu, 17 November 2005 07:54]

I have had a bit of a setback, a pictures worth a thousand words:



I was happy to get my car running after having the suspension out for a while and I was out giving it a test run when I heard the engine sudenly make an ugly noise. I managed to limp home ok. After much cursing I eventually pulled the head off and found it had blown the gasket between the last two cylenders. I bought a gasket, put it in and put it back together. During a test drive it felt good (relativly speaking, its still a bloody 4Ac) but when I came back it was making a hissing sound. Looking at where it was leaking it apeared it was coming from where the coolant return pipe comes off the back of the head, crap! So now I am unsure what I will do. I am thinking of pulling the transmission out, because I have a spare and I want to try it out, so when I change it it will give me a good chance to get to that pipe, effectively hitting 2 birds with one stone.



My car is finally back on the road, but what a drama it was. I did end up taking the transmission out and I appled some gasket sealer to that pipe and also cut myself a gasket. Putting it back together it still leaked. So it was taken off again, fully scraped back to metal, cleaned up and ordinary silicone applied. It was bolted back up and it held tight, so much for the proper way. Anyway I decided to fit a spare T50 gearbox that I had that had ben sitting in the rain for atleast 4 years. So with Kev's (Phrostbyte) help we put it back in and connected it all up. Testing it out I realised it still needed some more work down, but the actual gearbox was in very good condition, which was fantastic, and no my spare T50 isnt for sale!

I also bought myself another steering wheel, so Kev will be getting my old one with an old boss kit i made a while ago. I will fit it as soon as I finish making the boss kit.

[Updated on: Thu, 17 November 2005 07:58]

Heres my custom brake brackets, it was very hard to take a decent shot of these so I had to touch it up heaps in photoshop, hence the noise.



I shaved a bit off the bottom of the strut where the red arrow is pointing. That edge used to be rounded between those two bolt holes, hence why there is a step that comes up. As u can see it was shaved back to make room for the plate that the caliper is supported by. From the photo what I did looks rough and not that strong, but it's quite the oppersite. I made it just about indestructable and then suported it a bit more.

For the brake bias its an issue that many overlook. Right now I have too much front bias, as in the front will lock up too early. I will fit a Wilwood brake bias adapter to whichever line needs it; front or rear. It needs the restriction on the front right now but that may be reversed once I fit the rear disks with the new diff. So I will wait till that is fitted and then see what happens. Its funny to hear that someone could pay $2500 on a rear disk conversion and then have bad braking power.


Also another shot of my new brakes, here u can see how my caliper is a nice fit and also how the disk hasnt been worn in yet. Also I have since painted the calipers red.

[Updated on: Thu, 17 November 2005 10:30]

well I took temporary possesion of this guys car I am getting my 20 valve from. I started with this:



now this isnt my picture so no comments about the shadow!

I in one night starting at about 8Pm got to this stage:

[Updated on: Thu, 17 November 2005 10:41]

I started to make my custom extractors for my engine today, I spent about an hour and I am realy happy with how far I got considering the standard I made them to.

I decided I would go for 1.5 inch primaries and 2 inch secondaries, I would of gone for 1 3/4 secondaries but 2 inch is a size I already have in mandrel bends.

Heres what I managed to do:



2 x 1.5 inch inlet and the exact size for a flattened 2 inch for the exit. I didn't have a peice of 2 inch stainless at the time so I used a peice of mild as a template only.




A view from inside, I will do some more finishing later once its welded.

[Updated on: Thu, 17 November 2005 11:07]

well I have finally finished the hard part of my extractors and what a job it was to make them, they are all identical length according to my measurements, and they are of a true equal diameter design. The primaries worked out to be a very long 50cm which apparently is good for low down power. Anyway here they are with some temporary paint on them.

[Updated on: Thu, 17 November 2005 11:11]

I dont have any factory trumpets and I don't plan on losing any power, infact I plan to gain some by changing them, heres number one of four of what I am making to replace them:



to fit inside the airbox I will use mandrel bends, it will look bizarre but it will work.

I have seen results of a test that showed that the air flow difference between a full bellmouth and a flare is 3%, so for now I will use this.

[Updated on: Thu, 17 November 2005 11:16]

[Updated on: Sat, 26 February 2005 14:25]

Today I started making a tottaly new setup for the cooling that doesnt require any cross-over pipes, so basicly I have wasted my time so far, great! The information I got requires the use of a RWD water pump so I tried using a single cam one (4AC).

Anyway down to it: I took my stock water pump off and this is how it looked:




I found a spare pump sitting in my back yard in the weather, it had been there for many years, needless to say time hadent treated it well, heres it alongside the 20V one, notice how the 20V one has no provision for a thermostat (right):





I took it apart and found a huge black spider waiting for me, that found itself inbeded in the cracks of soles in my steel capped boots. I found a broken bolt which I drilled out out and tapped and I also disassembled the housing. From here I cleaned it up with some acid based mag wheel cleaner which worked wonders. I decided to get a new front assembly if this works out so I didnt clean it.






Once I took the top section off it fit nicely onto the engine:





After doing this I fitted the pulley off the 20V and I found I had a problem:





and that was that the pulleys didnt line up, I will consider my options from here, a custom pulley seems to be in order. I have been told though that theres 2 versions of shafts on this pump so I will see whats around.

[Updated on: Thu, 17 November 2005 13:34]

Heres some stuff I have worked on prior to this forum:



My custom center console. This car comes standard with a double din hole, or something close to it. So what I did is cut up a stainless plate to fit ontop, cut out the hole in the middle for the face and then covered it. I love the finish and its sturdy too. The way the head unit is held in is a different nighmare altogether. I might take a pic of that soon. I think I am going to have a P.H.D is fidely crap when I am done with this car.





This was put in my car when I was getting it ready for my turbo 4agze conversion, it's still there though and will be untill I get an oil-temp gauge to replace it. This is far from a standard mounting job too, the cup was from Speco and the gauge was from Autometer, both 2 5/8 but slightly different sizes, so it didnt fit. I ended up cutting a slot in the side and having a tiny bolt to clamp it to compensate. I also got a friend to tig weld a mount on I made and I had it painted. This is also light but very solidly mounted.



Next up is my "WTF was I thinking?" parcel shelf, a project that has collected dust for a while now, I will get back to this in due time. Here it is the strangest parcel shelf for a Sprinter ever!








I will soon also show my short shifter and revisit my parcel shelf for more work.

[Updated on: Thu, 17 November 2005 13:41]

[Updated on: Tue, 01 March 2005 15:28]

and something a bit more recent:







This is a photo of my unfinished boss kit that I made myself, I am currently using it and the only thing it needs is a peice of 3.5 inch pipe to be welded on as a shroud to hide the horn holes, cables, etc... Since the photo was taken I have since wired the horn in and obviously attached the wheel. Notice the base where I am using the original (well a corolla original) plastic plate with the brass ring, this is to keep the horn running. To make this I chopped the center out of my old Corolla wheel and machined it down in the lathe at work when no-one was looking, welded a peice of pipe, made my eloborate flange and welded that on. When I get that 3.5 inch pipe i will take it off again and weld that on. In the meantime however it works great, would be almost indestructable while still being very light and still lets the horn work. I know this is an unsual thing to make but it has worked out well so far and besides I made this during a few quiet times at my work

[Updated on: Thu, 17 November 2005 14:05]

Heres a pic of my steering wheel with the half finished boss kit, the steering wheel center wasnt made for it but some simple mods fixed that.






notice also my 4 piston cross-drilled keyring in the ignition

[Updated on: Thu, 17 November 2005 14:23]