well, through the advise of Neesmo31 through Ozhonda I decided today to put my car up for all to see, my journey into 4wding started off much like most peoples, through a few mates.
The world of 4x4s was quite different to the form of car modification i was used to, as my project car happened to be a highly modified Honda Civic, lowered on racing Coilovers, fitted with a roll-cage and a 200HP B18C from a JDM Integra type R it wasn't exactly off-road material but was becoming increasingly less daily-drivable and more track toy so i had started to look into a tow-car.
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One fateful B-shift at work sealed the fate of my little cars life though, as i fell asleap on my way home, ensuring that that car would be off the road for some time. Driving around in my Girlfriends brothers bog stock grandpa-spec Subaru Impreza for a while i was looking at any options i had for new cars. Narrowly missing out on a sweet little SPOA sierra on 33's made me know i wanted a 4wd more than just fixing up my little rice rocket, so when i was trawling through the old style Outerlimits for sales folders i came across a recently (re. half day listed) 1995 GQ RX2.8 with a recently completed (re. pretty much running and that's it) td42ti swap with alot of fruit for a DECENT price i knew i had to look at this thing ASAP.
I have a good mate who knows a little about patrols and what to look for so with no real description or photos other than "great condition" I decided to bite the bullet anyway and do the trek down to sydney from newcastle when we arrived at the guys house we were not sure what to expect, after introductions he promptly showed us to the garage and pulled up the roller door to be greeted by a dark green patrol with what looked like a bright champagne front guard, sligtly offput, i continued to look none the less. the owner let me know he picked up this car with slight damage to the front guard from an impact with its alloy bar and a wrecked grille after much inspection and a bit of a drive. With the usual little niggling GQ things i knocked off a couple of hundred dollars and shook hands on it, my first 4X4.
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so with money being a little tight i left it like this for a while, happy enough with its capabilities with 31inch ATs and ARB air lockers front and rear and sagged as suspension...
until one fateful day with my girlfriends brother, alone we got stuck onto the chassis because it was so low, with the minimal traction the ATs offered and next to no clearence we were left in the center of a rut helpless. LUCKILY we got ahold of one of my friends and he came to our rescue, he also happened to have a 2 inch TJM XGS lift kit he was trying to flog off from his GU ute because he has just gone for a 4 inch procomp/dobins setup so he persueded me into it
I also had a mate at work roll his 4runner on stockton not long before so he was wrecking that and i happened on some 33 inch bighorns with probably 75% in them, so for not much outlay i had this :
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by this time i had removed the sidesteps as they were destroying my sills and damaging my floor, content with recieving sil damage if it came my way now as they were already mighty chewed out i plodded along like this for a while.
the engine always ran solidly but the speedo and tacho never worked, the front mount intercooler had not been plumbed in and custom air con lines needed to be made up, so the outside of the car still pretty much looks like this, after getting the speedo to work with the matchbox from marks, the tacho sender unit had an erratic pulse, so we just put a sensor in the alternator and got it working that way. My Girlfriend also got a fine for having the tyres sit 2 inches out of the guards with no flares i had the stuff for it i just wasn't quick enough for the local constabulary in putting them on
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The intercooler piping came later, through a shop called Blacktrack Performance at Thornton, who specialise mainly in high performance XR6T falcons and rotaries they made the piping out of alloy as the space they had to work with was really restricted the airbox was slightly modified to accommodate and has been working well ever since.
One downside to the newly plumbed in inter-cooler was the length of the piping, which introduced some lag and a loss in about 2psi boost pressure dropping it to 8psi the car was a little sluggish. but ran nicer than without it, i have since added a mechanical boost controller and pushed the boost up to 12psi and it runs quite well on the Turbosmart boost tee.
The air conditioning became somewhat of a headache, as the compressor in the car had not been ran for such a long time we found, after making the custom lines that the compressor had seized after sourcing a new compressor through Ari at FreezEquip (who also did my great custom lines) the air con now works!
I had the guard painted to match early in the peace too because i HATED the looks people gave me with the gold one. me and my friends also went to son of trials PLUS last year and had a good time there, highly recommended
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After that i had started to get ready to do a 1/4 cut as the back of the car incurred some minor damage and i had the 147L long ranger fuel tank put in the 1/4 cut was relatively painless and i just finnished the bottom off with some rubberised paint to deflect the stones and so far it has held up really well.
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That's pretty much my journey until now, save for an abundance of recovery equipment, and the like that is never factored into a build i have got a Tigerz11 12,000LB Two Speed winch waiting to go on but there had been some minor overlooks in the assembly of the item and i have to make some gaskets up so it can be waterproofed as in assembly they were "pinched" and cut off leaving half a gasket.
Other news is that my friends and i are planning a trip to Fraser and i have had an Iron Man Roof Top Tent deliverd this morning and last night I won an auction on eBay on a 52" Litestorm LED lightbar and it should be on its way up from melbourne tomorrow, and i will be in contact with some people to make me a custom full length alloy roof cage. I'm really excited for this trip and cant wait to get up there and enjoy the Island. If anyone bothered to read my ramblings, thanks and give me your thoughts, Nick.
The world of 4x4s was quite different to the form of car modification i was used to, as my project car happened to be a highly modified Honda Civic, lowered on racing Coilovers, fitted with a roll-cage and a 200HP B18C from a JDM Integra type R it wasn't exactly off-road material but was becoming increasingly less daily-drivable and more track toy so i had started to look into a tow-car.
One fateful B-shift at work sealed the fate of my little cars life though, as i fell asleap on my way home, ensuring that that car would be off the road for some time. Driving around in my Girlfriends brothers bog stock grandpa-spec Subaru Impreza for a while i was looking at any options i had for new cars. Narrowly missing out on a sweet little SPOA sierra on 33's made me know i wanted a 4wd more than just fixing up my little rice rocket, so when i was trawling through the old style Outerlimits for sales folders i came across a recently (re. half day listed) 1995 GQ RX2.8 with a recently completed (re. pretty much running and that's it) td42ti swap with alot of fruit for a DECENT price i knew i had to look at this thing ASAP.
I have a good mate who knows a little about patrols and what to look for so with no real description or photos other than "great condition" I decided to bite the bullet anyway and do the trek down to sydney from newcastle when we arrived at the guys house we were not sure what to expect, after introductions he promptly showed us to the garage and pulled up the roller door to be greeted by a dark green patrol with what looked like a bright champagne front guard, sligtly offput, i continued to look none the less. the owner let me know he picked up this car with slight damage to the front guard from an impact with its alloy bar and a wrecked grille after much inspection and a bit of a drive. With the usual little niggling GQ things i knocked off a couple of hundred dollars and shook hands on it, my first 4X4.
until one fateful day with my girlfriends brother, alone we got stuck onto the chassis because it was so low, with the minimal traction the ATs offered and next to no clearence we were left in the center of a rut helpless. LUCKILY we got ahold of one of my friends and he came to our rescue, he also happened to have a 2 inch TJM XGS lift kit he was trying to flog off from his GU ute because he has just gone for a 4 inch procomp/dobins setup so he persueded me into it
I also had a mate at work roll his 4runner on stockton not long before so he was wrecking that and i happened on some 33 inch bighorns with probably 75% in them, so for not much outlay i had this :
by this time i had removed the sidesteps as they were destroying my sills and damaging my floor, content with recieving sil damage if it came my way now as they were already mighty chewed out i plodded along like this for a while.
the engine always ran solidly but the speedo and tacho never worked, the front mount intercooler had not been plumbed in and custom air con lines needed to be made up, so the outside of the car still pretty much looks like this, after getting the speedo to work with the matchbox from marks, the tacho sender unit had an erratic pulse, so we just put a sensor in the alternator and got it working that way. My Girlfriend also got a fine for having the tyres sit 2 inches out of the guards with no flares i had the stuff for it i just wasn't quick enough for the local constabulary in putting them on
The intercooler piping came later, through a shop called Blacktrack Performance at Thornton, who specialise mainly in high performance XR6T falcons and rotaries they made the piping out of alloy as the space they had to work with was really restricted the airbox was slightly modified to accommodate and has been working well ever since.
One downside to the newly plumbed in inter-cooler was the length of the piping, which introduced some lag and a loss in about 2psi boost pressure dropping it to 8psi the car was a little sluggish. but ran nicer than without it, i have since added a mechanical boost controller and pushed the boost up to 12psi and it runs quite well on the Turbosmart boost tee.
The air conditioning became somewhat of a headache, as the compressor in the car had not been ran for such a long time we found, after making the custom lines that the compressor had seized after sourcing a new compressor through Ari at FreezEquip (who also did my great custom lines) the air con now works!
I had the guard painted to match early in the peace too because i HATED the looks people gave me with the gold one. me and my friends also went to son of trials PLUS last year and had a good time there, highly recommended
Other news is that my friends and i are planning a trip to Fraser and i have had an Iron Man Roof Top Tent deliverd this morning and last night I won an auction on eBay on a 52" Litestorm LED lightbar and it should be on its way up from melbourne tomorrow, and i will be in contact with some people to make me a custom full length alloy roof cage. I'm really excited for this trip and cant wait to get up there and enjoy the Island. If anyone bothered to read my ramblings, thanks and give me your thoughts, Nick.
