85Diesel

Did you make those roof beams I see in the pictures or did they come with the sunrader? And are they slightly arched or flat? I need to come up with one or two of those for mine but I haven't figured out how to put the curve in them yet. I like all the reenforcing you did. Mine's stripped bare too so I'd like to do something similar.

If the timing chain is old and stretched it can wear a groove into one of the coolant passages, simulating a h.g. failure. Fairly common on older four cylinders.

I really like your front bumper, do you know anything about it?

What was the spacing on the 1x2's?

One step closer. I found and bought a 1983, 145,000 mile mercedes five cylinder turbo-d today out of a smashed up coupe.

Check out this chart. A little easier to read. http://www.marlincrawler.com/tech/transmission/transmission-gear-ratio-chart

Yeah rust isn't much of an issue here. You can pretty much get away with not even painting metal, it just gets a bit of surface rust and that seems to protect the good metal beneath for many years. Where you do get crazy rust is right on the coast, from the salty air just off the ocean. My friend who lives on an island in northern B.C. goes through a Toyota frame every couple of years, despite any and all attempts at painting/preservation. Driving on the beach scavenging logs doesn't help with that of course.

I'll be using a Toyota 5-speed, probably an R-151 turbo tranny that I have in a parts truck here. They have a nice low first gear that will be perfect for the Sunrader. Mercedes seem to go for a premium out here on the west coast, very occasionally I see them that cheap though.

Just to keep this thread on track...I'm working on getting the title sorted out, apparantly there's a lien that I didn't know about because the title was lost. I think I've got it figured out though. I have my eyes out for a low mileage 5 cylinder mercedes turbodiesel. There's one near me with 145,000 miles on it. I hope to start working on it this summer.

Well said. Nice, concise history of the US diesel market.

Just wanted to point out that while the rear axles on 86 and newer trucks are wider, the frames are not. 84 and 85 has the same frame width as the later trucks, the axle can be swapped right over with no mods.

Oh yeah I forgot about the fake duallies. As WME pointed out tire sizing is not very straightforward. There are tire size comparison charts out there on the web. Sometimes I go to tirerack.com and look up sizes there, they have very detailed information on every tire they sell, including overall diameter and revs per mile.

Mine is geared 4.10 from the factory (code 29). Here's my door plate. It seems to indicate mine came from Gardner-Pacific with 15" duals from the get-go.

You can also pull the driveshafts off from the axle end and there should be a dab of paint on the axle side flange. The most common ratios are: 4.10 is pink, 4.3 is blue, etc. I have all the codes so if it's not one of those post here and I can look it up. Are your tires front to back the overall same diameter right now? Again it's not the rim size that matters it's the actual tire size.

That's a crazy story. I live just down the road from where you got stuck, in Cave Junction. Never been on that road, though.

P.M. for my email and we can talk about 2L-T parts. I won't be pulling the engine for a few more months, though.

Where Where are you located if you don't mind me asking? I have some 2L-T parts, the engine was recently rebuilt but for some reason it dropped a combustion chamber and ruined the number three piston, scratched the cylinder wall, and the badly pitted corresponding head surface. It's my friends engine that he's giving me because it's not worth the expense of a new piston and head. But all the other parts prettty new, if anything off of it can help you let me know.

What engine do you have in your Chinook? I was going to do a 4x4 Chinook conversion too before I came across the 4x4 Sunrader last month. Weird parallel.

I really like what you did with the roof supports. I'll probably do something very similar, maybe glass the ends in though. Mine didn't come with any, so I'll have to just estimate the curvature.

I especially appreciate the almost non-existent wiring harness.

I'd like to find some way of repairing the floor that doesn't involve removing the shell and cab from the frame. You'd be surprised how much room there is under the hood of a Mercedes converted toyota. It's a little tight front to back but there's plenty of room on either side. Here's my buddy's truck:

No offense but I'd sooner sell it than live with a gas engine. It's diesel or nothing for me. I actually consider it easier and funner to convert it to diesel than deal with the gas engine wiring anyway. I have a 22-RE parts truck that I could just pull the whole harness from but I have no interest in that. There's a bit of modifying required with the 1KZ-T too, mainly motor mounts and driveshaft shortening and lengthening, plus most parts have to be ordered from japan. Whereas there's a bolt in kit available for the mercedes that uses the toyota 5-speed, and mercedes parts are everywhere. I just have to cut out the 4.3L mounts (which certainly were hacked) and weld in the original 22-RE mounts. I have no interest in a full size truck at this point in my life, although that's a pretty good idea. I like the T100 you modified, plus it's not quite as ungainly as an american full size. I really don't want to hack this thing up any more than it has been, I really like the idea of a small diesel 4x4 camper, and I'm pretty loyal to Toyota anyway. Would you (baja) care to expand on the "remove the shell from the camper" part of your post? The floor needs some serious work, but I'm not sure how to best go about fixing it. It's hard for me to tell exactly what's going on with it, and it doesn't help that the p.o. hacked it up pretty badly.

The custom cabs are kind of rare but for some reason I see a lot of them in southern oregon. I've seen five different ones just in the last few weeks. I think there were two different companies making them, one of them was Fabco out of Hemet, CA. It was a dealer option with new trucks. They made them in 2WD and 4WD, from the late 70's to 89 or so when the body changed and Fabtech didn't want to make a new fiberglass mold. I guess they didn't think they could compete with the newer, slightly bigger (than the original) extra cab, even though the custom cab has way more room. The frame is cut just behind the original cab and two feet are added to it and then it's all welded back together and heavily reinforced. The driveshaft is obviously lenghtened. The extra cab is fiberglass using the original Toyota rear window, and a full width bench seat that comfortably fits three with legroom to spare, it also has an integral roll bar. The bed is the original size, 6 feet. I pulled off the standard Toyota bed to install the flatbed. I'm not sure what you mean by "cross reference with the 1 tons", everything is the same on them as every other Toyota half-ton truck. To make it a true one ton you'd just have to convert the rear axle to a full floater and add some leaf springs or airbags. I have firestone airbags on mine. The front axle is already a one ton. There used to be a good website about the custom cabs but it seems to have disappeared. Sorry I don't have any pics of the frame extensions. The only major drawback is the extended wheelbase, meaning turns are a lot wider than your standard toyota. Do a google image search for Toyota custom cab and you'll see some good examples.

I try and get the highest quality, clearest oil I can find, preferably from a sushi restaurant. I mostly run canola and corn as far as I know, sometimes peanut. Of course you can't be that picky these days, the competition for biofuel being what it is. Almost all the restaurants oil supply is locked up by biodiesel processors who drive hundreds of miles to collect, and pay for the oil, and clean the grease traps! I've also seen many hokey veggie conversions gone bad, it's just not for everybody. You really have to be attentive to the system and the quality of the oil you're using. It's so easy to polymerise and really foul things up. I think the veggie oil thing has seen it's heyday and now there's not many of us left. It just requires too much tinkering and messiness for the average driver. As far as mileage, I don't really keep track any more, and I don't know that my friend with the Mercedes conversion ever has, but I generally get in the low twenties, and that's driving around 70 on the freeway. I know I get better numbers driving 50 to 55, but it's hard to bring myself to do that for very long. The lowest I've seen is 19, and that's with a big load or pulling a trailer. I would expect that's around where the Sunrader would sit. I would think a pump run on good, properly heated and dewatered veggie oil would last much longer than the same pump run on ulsd, just based on the vastly better lubrication qualities of the veg. I don't have any studies to back this up, but I have read studies on the superior lube value of veg oil.

Yeah that's the one. The previous owner thought it was an 87 for some reason, but it's definitely an 85, it has a factory solid front axle up front. The wheels are 15 inch all around, which I read is pretty rare. Larger bolt spacing than the standard toyota 15 inch rim. Unfortunately it didn't come with a spare. Hopefully I'll come across one or have one made up when the time comes. To Jdemaris, impressive in the dramatic power gain over the carbed 22R, for one. You had to be careful to not break traction coming out of first gear in that thing! I've also driven a 300d in Mercedes station wagon form and thought it was a slug, but i now think the automatic transmission coupled with the extremely heavy body is the power suck. It was a totally different beast in front of a Toyota five speed. I hear you about the price difference in diesel, but I run on waste veggie oil 90+% of the time, which is free or extemely cheap. There's also a couple places in Oregon to buy b100 biodiesel, and one of them sells it for less than regular diesel, at least last summer it did. The inline injection pump is a draw for it's durability, and I wish more diesels had them, but I've been using rotary pumps on veggie oil for years and so have several of my friends, without problems. You just have to filter the oil well, and have a well designed WVO system that heats the oil to over 160 degrees before injection. My friend has a 4BT (Cummins 3.9L) in his breadtruck home and that thing can seriously get around even at 13,000lbs plus. However it is hellishly loud, he has to wear ear protection just to drive around. I've heard of it being stuffed into a Toyota, but it seems like a poor match to me, and just unneccessary. If the 300d is anything like the 1KZ-T in my toyota truck, I'll be plenty happy. Like I said I towed the Sunrader behind it a couple days ago, over 50 miles on the highway, and it did great. The trailer must have weighed around 5,000 lbs if not more, plus the weight of my truck itself. I'm going to keep the Sunrader interior ultra light, and there looks to be plenty of room for veggie oil tanks underneath.