Paul’s esoteric meanderings

I decided that my home made winch mount needed to be tested so I could trust it somewhat. I see from some of the conversations I am not the only one with doubts. The mount performed perfectly, although he synthetic winch rope broke.

The tests were all done on the first layer of the drum to give maximum tension. This also places additional load on the mount due to the increased height adding leverage.

Test 1 - Drag Car on Dirt (Wheels Locked)- Passed

Test 2 - Drag Car on Dirt Up Hill (Wheels Locked) - Passed

I wanted to fit a winch to my ‘98 HZJ105 without wearing a huge  weight penalty, or spending too much money. That ruled out walking into ARB and handing over the Credit Card for a new Bullbar and Warn. It meant I had to DIY this little exercise.

I wanted to keep the weight down, so decided a 9500lb was smaller and lighter than a 12,000lb. If I needed more pulling power, I would use a pulley block.

This just turned up with my rego renewal.

They are a scam, it’s so well documented I can’t even be bothered linking the hundreds of articles.

http://www.google.com/search?q=firepower+dans+data&rls=com.microsoft:*&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&startIndex=&startPage=1

Scammers, Charlatans, Scumbags, Liars, Theives, Con Artists, Rip Off Merchants, Fools and Money.

What next - Hyclone ads? I’ve got some magic fairy dust I would like to sell you…..

I frequently hear people talk about intake flows, filter restrictions and snorkels, but most don’t have any testing to backup their theories.

Here is the testing to blow some theories away, you’ll find out which ones.

OK, oil analysis is neither simple nor my specialty. Here are the details from the last seven changes I have done, with an analysis at each one.

http://www.neuralfibre.com/paulfiles/Cruiser_Oils.xls

Oil Filter Pics Here 

Technical info can be gleaned from links below or Google.

This analysis is not perfect of definitive. My motor is not factory and fuel system hasn’t been touched possibly every (250,000km). I have changed multiple variables each time (oil, filter, driving style etc)

What I read in this analysis is

1. I need to try 10,000KM filter changes, 5000 seems to be nowhere near capacity

I had been told a number of stories about the differences between different filters for my Landcruiser. As they were contradictory, the only way to get real answers was to open them up.

I have been doing a program of Laboratory Oil Analysis with Castrol in conjunction with this to obtain some definitive information. None of these filters have run longer than 5000KM.

Sick of oil dripping down the side of your 1HZ motor every time you change the filter? My 1KZTE powered surf came with one, but my ‘98 GXL cruiser missed out.

Actually the catch tray in the surf was better, as it had a hole and hose leading to near the sump plug, so whatever leaked, ended up in the bucket too. This one you have to clean out manually - I use a rag. Oh well, can’t have everything I guess.

• Toyota Part Numbers are:
  Receiver, Oil 15674-17010
  Bolt, FR Oil Pump Cvr - 91511-J0820

Sometimes when you buy cheap junk, you get what you pay for.

A mate bought a brand new set of “TBC Corproation” Korean 235/85/16 muds the other day for $500 for 5. Sundown was their first trip out. The roads were bad, the Discovery fully locked.

In comparison another Defender without lockers did the same roads with some assistance. The Defender had a brand new set of Maxxis on it. My Cruiser had Mickey T MTZ’ s not pictured, here. Same roads, also minimal to no significant damage.

Tyre pressures on the Korean tyres were 22PSI initally, then dropped to 17PSI. All work was low range, generally 1st or second. There was wheelspin, but in the cheap tyres it was minimised as far as possible. The Maxxis copped more of a flogging due to not having lockers fitted to the car. Yes the rocks were hard and sharp, but the other tyres coped.

AGM Batteries, especially cheap Chinese ones don’t like heat too much. All Lead Acid batteries subject to thermal runaway when charging and the design of an AGM is such that as it gets closer to fully charged the catalyst that stops it losing water produces additional heat as well.

The construction has approximately 50% more lead in it than a normal flooded cell, and the electrolyte is not free to move around as easily as it charges. The cells are tightly packed with an adsorbent wadding leaving no room for movement.

Toyota Australia imports them as a commercial vehicle. Even the Lexus is a commercial vehicle. This means no cabin filters. Ahh well, not much dust in Oz…..

Front AC panel with slot for filters

At $245 + $35 postage, the fridge slide from 4WD Systems seemed like a decent deal. I later found out that the genuine Waeco was about the same money, and probably a better unit. The Waeco slide is spec’d at 15KG.

The one I bought is worth the money as scrap steel however - weighing in at 20KG, it weighs more than my entire drawer system. I’ll be “modifying” this to reduce weight significantly when I can afford a plasma cutter.

It’s a fridge slide. The fridge slides in and out. It kind of stays out, depending if the locking mechanism lines up that time or not. The straps it came with were a joke.

I purchased a pretty average fridge slide to complement my home made shelf / drawer system before a trip over XMAS. The straps it came with to tie the fridge down were a simple “loop” type with a plastic tensioner, as you tend to find on kids school bags etc. The problem with these is two fold:

1. They are difficult to tighten as the lop just goes round and round as you try and tighten it.
2. They make it very difficult to remove the fridge as each strap has to be unthreaded back through it’s buckle. A tedious job for the rear ones.

Back when I first bought the 100 Series I did something silly and broke the front diff. That was 15 months and 25,000km ago.

Last month saw me in Tassie for a holiday and gagging to try some of the more famous Tassie tracks. After the first decent circuit done and heading up a dirt road I hear and feel a noise - clunk clunk clunk about once per wheel revolution. I had heard a very faint noise 2 weeks before, but it was consistently only on deceleration and I had put it down to the new tyres.

As my 1HZ has an aftermarket turbo, and as I occasionally give it a good workout towing large loads, I decided it highly appropriate to fit an EGT gauge. This would allow me to see just how hard I was working the motor and reduce the risk of catastrophic damage from pushing things to hard. It is very possible to have extreme EGT’s with the resultant cracked pistons, head damage, cracked valves and yet have the engine temp read normal. Fitting the boost gauge and EGT would also open up further tuning potential.

I am far to poor (cheap) to afford one of these expensive drawer systems. And I figure, they don’t actually meet my needs anyway. Normally I don’t want all my camping gear in the car, so although drawers give more space, unpacking and repacking them is not much fun. Opposite Lock sells a nifty solution, but the price was still a bit out of reach.

So I copied my old man.

A timber shelf with plastic boxes under it, carpeted. Have boxes for day to day, and another set on the shelf in the shed for camping. It’s quick and easy to pack / unpack / change over, practical for camping as you can leave the boxes at the campsite. And cheap.

I recently fitted a set of Airlift 1000 Series helper airbags to my ‘98 HZJ105 Toyota Landcruiser. They were much cheaper ($200 vs $1000+) than a pure rear airbag solution, and easy to fit. At 5psi they have little effect, but with up to 40psi they can handle 2200kg additional load on the rear as per the spreadsheet I worked out earlier. I doubt my shocks would handle that sort of load effectively.

I had a constant damp mist of oil near my fuel filters on my ‘98 HZJ105 w/ 1HZ engine. Looked like diesel, spread and picked up dirt like diesel, was all around the diesel filter.

It wasn’t diesel.

A lot more looking showed it to be P/S fluid blow into that spot, and several others. The hose wasn’t leaking, despite the oil on the hose that made it look that way.

Difflocks aren’t much help here.

Airsprings differ from conventional Leaf or Coils in that their behavior is not linear. This gives a significantly different ride to a conventional spring with great resistance to bottoming out. I wont get into better or worse, but will settle for different.

If you are running PolyAirs or similar helper airbags in your vehicle, it’s probably a reasonable idea to know what effect the pressure you are running has compared to the normal spring.

Attached is a spreadsheet that should help you work it out.

For some reason spring loads are commonly still in lb/inch, hence the combination of imperial and metric.

This thought occurred to me as I was fitting the bash plate last week. This thing in front of me that seems to be working just fine - should not work well at all.

Twin tube shock absorbers don’t work on their side or upside down. The gas in them mixes with the oil and turns it into a foamy mess. This sends the damping rates all over the place, making it unpredictably worse than useless.

Monotube dampers are fine on their side, but not many people run monotube steering dampers. My steering damper didn’t look like a monotube.