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LEXUS 1UZ-FE Engine Swap My blood sweat and tears. It will be worth it!!

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  #166  
Unread 06-26-2009, 12:42 AM
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Here is the upper plate I cut and drilled. The tubing will weld right on to it and go from side to side. I'll be making a larger plate that will mount underneath the one that you see here and it will sandwhich the crossmember end as that part is body welded and glued to the body pretty good. Then I will box that piece in with steel to enclose the crossmember end. I'll also be welding the upper and lower plate to the body as well for good measure. Then right where you see the chalk line is right where I'm cutting the stock crossmember out and then I'll keep cutting up into the body to remove more and more flimsy stock material. Then the rest is a little hard to explain but that's a good enough start for now. I have it all in my head and it will go really fast once I'm set up in the shop and turn off my phone. =]



And as an update here is the assembly welded up and just strong as hell! There will be much more going on underneath this mounting point that I just made. There will be a bottom plate that will mount to the new frame mounts I'm making for the body. And from that lower plate to this upper plate I'll box them in and weld the body to them in a few places eventually.

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  #167  
Unread 06-28-2009, 10:17 PM
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ALright! I got the little front radiator support all done and it's going to the powder coater tomorrow morning first thing.



Keep in mind that the tubing you see isn't the bumper. It's just a lower radiator support and also stiffens up the front end much more than what was there from the factory. I'll be extending the front bumper out just tad forward but eventually I'll build my own front bumper the way I want.

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  #168  
Unread 06-28-2009, 10:21 PM
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And next I'll be running tubing the whole way across the top of grill line. I'm looking at extending the hood forward 2" and the mounting position for the latch as well. I really want to cut out the whole top piece from side to side and just have the tubing there with the latch mounted to it. A friend of mine keeps telling me I should keep the factory upper cross piece there and extend that forward to keep the look of it. The look? You don't even see it with the hood closed but maybe he just prefers the factory engine bay look when you look in to see the engine? I dunno.

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  #169  
Unread 07-11-2009, 10:39 PM
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I'm kinda doing a lot at the moment. 4 days at Laguna Seca last weekend put a dent into my schedule. Tomorrow I've scheduled a whole day to work on the front end. I have been gathering materials like crazy. My v-bands came in for my exhaust I'm going to build. I'm going to build a louder system and then a system made up of the stock components from a brand new 5.7L Tundra that I acquired. One loud and one quiet for traveling or road trips etc.

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  #170  
Unread 07-11-2009, 10:44 PM
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I also came across a deal that I couldn't resist. Thanks to Bram down in LA for hooking me up with a set of billet control arms for the front suspension. I've always wanted these but they are just too expensive to justify. I'll be building some new lower control arms but for now the new uppers will be awesome.

Here are some pictures from the day trip down to L.A. and back to pick up everything. (click here)



These things are some serious eye candy. I also dropped by the builders of these arms and picked up some new spacers and hardware. I'll be playing around with these once my front end is done and the engine swap is finished.
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  #171  
Unread 07-11-2009, 10:58 PM
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Here is how I'm mounting the fan on the radiator. It fits PERFECTLY and all I had to do was weld on some thick rails along side the fan on the sides. It worked out so nice. Tomorrow will be the positioning of mounting tabs for the whole thing. My mission is just to make it all as solid as possible. But of course I'll be using some sort of rubber/poly material to calm down the vibration.



And you can see the aluminum strip that is placed on the ends so that I could mark them, cut'em and weld them on.

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  #172  
Unread 07-15-2009, 07:39 AM
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I got all the parts I need for my newer front end conversion or updating. New grill and lights fit up nearly perfectly. I need some mesh for the big hole up front and I'll be coating it black.



Yesterday I picked up some more tubing that will be going across the whole front to support the upper radiator. The front end went together like a dream and I'll be able to at least fill the radiator to run the engine. Then when that happens it's going on a trailer to my friends steel shop where I'm going to redo the front body mounts and spend another day adding some more support tubing up from the frame to the stiffen up the whole front end.

Here is a shot from just behind the radiator to show how much space extending the front end has helped out:


I'm just kidding here with this picture... this is a friends race car and I wish my truck looked like this under the hood!
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  #173  
Unread 07-16-2009, 06:52 AM
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I have done a lot of time off roading in the sandbox and for that you really need some cooling action when you are full throttle / low speed wheeling. It was the only time I would ever need to turn on my radiator fan while running my 3RZ with a manual fan switch. My Adaptronic EMS will tell my fan when to kick on now. With my new radiator slanted it easily fits the fan and the slant will allow me to retain the factory hood latch position. I can also install my AC condenser on top of the front side when the time comes. When the thing fires up I'll take it straight to a buddies shop to continue with the tubing and to permanently mount the radiator as well. I'm just glad it all fits and the basic layout is done. When I get the truck to the shop the ears coming out from the front of the frame for the body mounts will be completely redone. I'll be taking out those cylindrical body lift aluminum spacers and the new mounts will come up from the frame with some short poly mounts holding up the body for vibration dampening.

I cut everything out between the headlights as you can see.



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  #174  
Unread 07-28-2009, 06:55 AM
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I was in China to browse through your posts. I am going to start tomorrow JEEP modified to 1UZ, we often discuss the possible?
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  #175  
Unread 07-29-2009, 04:42 PM
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The transmission falls out very quickly as the bolts are easy to get to.

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  #176  
Unread 07-29-2009, 04:47 PM
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Well here we go. I haven't been all that productive at all. D knows why. Motivation to pour into side projects is kinda hard to come by when life altering events pop up. Nevertheless I managed to drop the transmission again to make some adjustments to the hydraulic throwout bearing spacing. It simply wasn't mating with the pressure plate fingers which I kind of expected. But I didn't think I would come up so short. It's not big deal though. On these units you can shim the bearing instead of making a new backplate to move the whole unit towards the engine more. But the shim can't be much bigger in diameter than the shaft the the bearing is mounted on. That way when the actuator from the hydraulic unit pushes out it pushes on the shaft and not the bearing. It's hard to follow my description of course but the pictures will help.

Here is the bearing and shaft out of the hydraulic unit. You can see that I cut a few different length spacers. Usually the shims they have are very slim but the length of the spacer I need had to be more. So I made a few spacers each is about a 16th larger or smaller than the next.



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  #177  
Unread 07-29-2009, 04:49 PM
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Cutting a few spacers out. Might as well cut a few different sizes. It's nice to be able to change the height of the clutch pedal and where it engages the clutch plate. Although you have to drop the transmission in order to remove the assembly in order to do so.

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  #178  
Unread 07-29-2009, 05:07 PM
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So with that out of the way it's time to finish up the radiator. Here is my friend Tom applying his TIG welding skills to this tricky piece of work. With the heavy vibration expected we had to make sure the welds were applied liberally to make the thing stronger than usual.

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  #179  
Unread 07-29-2009, 05:10 PM
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The radiator all welded up. As you can see the bottom outlet was extended most of the way up the side so that a simple 90 degree hose is all that is needed. It was 1.75" OD in the first place so I reduced it to 1.5" to accommodate the engines inlet tube. With these mods I won't have to go looking for any tricky hoses.

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  #180  
Unread 07-29-2009, 05:14 PM
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I'm not sure if I will offset the radiator to the left or not. I'll probably center it for the safe of aesthetics and so people won't ask why I put it to one side over and over. It was a lot of work to build this radiator the way it is. Once again it was something I didn't plan on doing but I figured I might as well do it the right way while I have everything apart. Tom also suggested I start relocating the inlet and outlet while we were fabbing up the radiator fan mounts.

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