note:please excuse spelling errors. My tablet likes neither my big fingers, nor how fast I type, and sometimes cant tell what buttons I pressed and tries to substitute letters for me instead.
Ok so some already know I have been having a few issue of late, mostly health related. I have a back injury which will take some time to come good, and in the mean time im stuck not being able to pretty much do anything involving any sort of lifting. Only a week or two ago things were bad enough I was looking at selling my troll collection, before withdrawing everything from sale.
since then I have officially moved house, and whilst I still have a cloud over me with regards to income and long term housing, at the moment things are ok.
anyways I may be getting ahead of myself with this post as there is every chance nothing will come of the plans but for the moment its a spark of light and something for me to aim for.
my friendly mechanic mate has a habbit of dropping off the face of the earth for weeks at a time. He just pokes along doing his own thing. Anyway I have seen him twice now in as many days, and today got talking to him about cars and 4wds etc.
he has been looking for an early model falcon to play with, and it just so happens that I have one I want to part with. Anyway, its motor is currently the failed transplant sitting in my patrol 'hermit' taking up the space between the chassis rails that really ought belong to the sd33t motor I also have here. Ill get to that further on after I give a bit of history on hermit.
Anyway, I initially told my mate on meeting one that he could have the car for a small sum of cash. Today he asked if I had a motor for said car and I had a bit of a brain wave-thats a small miracle itself when on heavy pain killers. I told him the motor is sitting in my patrol, and that he would have to pull it himself if he wants it. but if he can replace it with the 3.3 td at the same time, then he can have the car, motor and all the bits it needs for mothing- or rather as payment for getting my hermit trucks diesel motor installed.......
Anyway he got all keen and thinks he can have a crack at it on boxing day.....
Next I said to him that I sort of wanted to swap the gearbox too, as I have a marks box sitting there which has the 4.8 ratio first...... his reply was "well the box is easiest to get to when the motor is aleady out"
So you can all see where this is heading........
so now I slightly have my hopes up that hermit will be sorted in the near future, and not just running, but running with her sd33t, as well as 5speed truck box.
now for the history bit.
I bought hermit almost 3 years ago, as one of the neatest straightest yet modified g60 utes I had seen. Fully engineered with a 4.1 efi cross flow falcon motor, 5 speed mk patrol gearbox, disk brake conversion, bucket seats, custom wood floored tray, and 180 liters worth of long range fuel tanks. I also got a half ton of spares with her, including a complete and re built marks box, as well as another cab star box in need of new bearings etc.
Even on the drive home from newcastle to near cooma she ran hot. The heavily modified rad set up and thermo fan was strugling and even after a flush and new coolant half way home I knew I was going to have to sort tjings a bit more. She was however a dream to drive, with a bucket load of power, and quite comfortable.
within a few weeks I had replaced the old rad with a 2 core falcon job, re set up the thermo fan, and added a mechanical 4 blade fan to the front of the motor, off an older falcon pre cross flow donk.
I used her like this for months untill the season changed and things started to warm up in summer.
A new thermostat that opened 10 deg sooner than the old one, and a pair of flash chrome bonnet vents sorted any other heating issues the big girl had.
A few months later some minor electrical issues started to develope, which were later to become much larger issues and eventually toll the death bell on the falcon motor....
the only mechanical issue I really had with her other than the cooling was the distributors habbit of stripping drive teath of the dizzy main shaft. This I was to learn was an inherent fault with this particular series of motors, which was aggrevated by high pressure oil pumps, and aftermarket cam upgrades. Hermits motor had both, and I went through 6 drive gears before I managed to track down a matching hardened dizzy gear. Most of the drive gears I ended up changing on the side of the road.....
Gradually though the electricals were breaking down, with ecu and other spark related issues getting more pronounced to the point I would not drive her further than 60km from home unless I had to for fear of not being able to get home. Her tuning would change every time she was started, and on a good day she ran like a clock with no issues and usually used 15-16 litres of petrol per 100. On the bad days she ran like a dog and would chew around 40- 50 litres of fuel per 100. Running so rich it would make your eyes water.
Eventually the head gasket blew on a particularly hot day. So the next stage of planning came about.
I threw around lots of options, but really didnt want to pull the 3.3td out of grip, my other g60 ute which I spent 2 years building, so other than the 3.3td the only real decent option was a ford 5.0 v8 efi motor.
I had a chap organised to do the conversion for me, but at the last second he took on a larger full time contract, leaving me in the lurch and without a running vehicle. I got by with borrowed cars, but that can only last so long before it becomes a issue.
I started looking to do the conversion myself and quickly struck a few thousand dollars worth of issues. Mostly cause I was silly and never looked at the bits that actually came with the v8 when I bought it. Buyer beware.
At about that point in time I just wanted hermit going again, and was offered a donor falcon with a good running 4.1 efi motor in it for reasonable money. That was anout the point where I got injured and couldnt do anything much for myself physically.
after lots of arm twisting I got a couple of pairs of good hands to help me swap the motors over in hermit, and then set about sorting the electronics out with an updated ecu and sensor set up from a later eb model falcon.
I was largely successful, though she still had some issues with not starting at all sometimes. When she did start she ran like a clock.
It took a few more weeks before I was able to do more, and then it was the exhaust that got some attention finally. Over 2 days I built a complete 70mm exhaust set up for hermit, routed it out and safely past anything It had to clear etc. The only bit I didnt have to make were the tuned length extractors.
I had just finished this exhaust and went to go for a test drive, only to have her caugh and splutter before turning tail and only just making it home again. I left her for a few days, stressing and beating myself up trying to work out what was wrong, before deciding to go over everything again. By now not a single part of the spark, fuel or efi systems is original. I wasted another day re doing the lot before physically checking my fuel tank only to find someone had drained the main tank on me which was the reason she was coughing and spluttering. She had no gas, just fumes
fast forwards a long week and a brought 60 litres of petrol up for her and fired her up. All sytems were a go, so I motored out to the highway and went to get up to speed. She immediately dropped 2 cylinders.
back down to 4 cyl I swung around and had just hit my dirt road whapen she dropped another cyl. No power I had to put her in low 1st to crawl up the drive just to get her back to the shed
I was almost to the shed, which is inside a big yard with gatedps on it and went to pulld up so I could open the gate, and even with clutch pedal to the floor she recused to stop. I had to stall her out so as not to take out the gate. By now im wondering what the hell is goigpng on???.
I opened the gate and fired her up with no clutch, but now when I started her I could hear an audible rattle and thump coming from flywheel. I had to stall her out again in front of the shed. And that where she has pretty much sat ever since.
I had a good crack at getting a few people to help me pull the motor out again, but everyome I asked was a no show, regardless of how many favours they owed me or how many I had done for them in the past. I was feeling lower than a dogs breakfast, wondering what had I done to deserve this sort of luck??
Anyway about 4 weeks ago I used my current triton ute to pull hermit in alongside grip, the grey g60 with the sd33t already in it, and decided that the time has come for hermit to get a decent motor. If I ever finish grip she can have a shiney new 3.3 or 4.2 diesel to pull her along. A week or two after that everything turned to crud again in a big way and my life had to re evaluate itself again. Which brings us now full circle back to the beginning of my post.
summary of my current build plans, yep they are big but hey this is my ultimate plan cor the old girl:
sd33t into hermit, preferably with the marks 5 speed.
Custom 3inch exhaust for the 3.3
custom intake manifold and intercooler for the 3.3
New tires,
dobinson 2 inch lifted std weight springs with full mk patrol spring eye conversion- meaning std mk patrol polly spring bushes can be used.
add a coil sus kit installed from the swb red six, essentially giving her some more on road comfort
bull bar off red six pulled off, cut and shut, turned into a winch bar and installed onto hermit.
new steel tray with better acces to main fuel tank
rear lsd center or auto lokker for the rear h260 diff
customised p steering set up installed. This one will be the most dificult bit and I imagine it will end up needing engineering too. But ill need it for the cab extension anyway.....
cab extension, bubble back the cab, extra cab, or custom dual cab set up. Not 100 percent decided which way to go, but the roof line has some rust now, as does a few other spots, and it will be about the same effort to build myself an extra cab out of one of the other swb boddies I have here than to fix the original cab.
dual battery set up with power outlets to tray.
Custom canopy for touring. Has to be able to handle being lived out of for extended periods, my thinking being along the lines of doing the big lap of aus with it. Which is and always has been my goal with my patrols. I want to do the lap of aus in a g60, or a pair of them if I can ever get them built and my life roughly on track....
anyway, thats about as short a post as I can make it. And im positive I have missed a heck of a lot of story and planning from go to whoa,
fingers crossed it all comes together
chers
kev
?. But it could have been that I undid them in the first case and im remembering wrong. 