workingman1
New member
Whats your top speed now? Can you maintain speed up hill better now that you re-geared the axles?
1993 HiAce Firetruck Build Thread
- Thread starter Fenderfour
- Start date
Fenderfour
Active member
Top speed is 70 ish. Going up hill requires a down shift to 4th with the weight of the camper back there. Before I added all that weight, she did ok uphill in 5th. Still not fast, though. I'm slowly working on adding a modest turbo kit (7psi) to recapture the un-burned fuel and get a little more power.
workingman1
New member
I've got a 95 with a 3L Hiace , drove it back from Denver to Austin and man everytime i hit an incline it slowed to 30 miles per hour. Trying to figure out if the gear swap or a turbo should be the first step. I just want to maintain a minimum of 60 mph on the highway
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Fenderfour
Active member
spent a bunch of time getting electrical installed last week. It feels like this shouldn't take very long, but then you get started...
My battery is on the floor of the galley cabinet, all the way forward in the camper to help with weight distribution. Its a 230aH 12v battery from ACOpower. They aren't well known but have a number of other consumer products that are doing fairly well, so i took a chance on their battery kickstarter. They hosted a free battery giveaway during the kickstarter, and I won it, so this battery cost me nothing. Every now and then you get lucky.
The battery has attachment points for bolted brackets, so I used them to attach it to the cabinet. The kill switch is in a Tanos MiniSystainer that is velcroed to the battery. I cut out the front panel and cut a new one from 1/8 ABS. Clearly, the new panel has openings for the main battery cutoff and a couple of breakers to isolate my PV array. One breaker is for the 200w panel on the roof. The other is connected to an Anderson Connector out the side of the camper so I can plug in a portable PV panel. I figure I'll be parking in the shade when I can, but will still need some solar.
This is my 12VDC mains box. Here i've just gotten the feed from the battery hooked up. Same as the other box, a Tanos Systainer with the front cut out and a custom ABS panel glued on to house switches. This box houses a 100A main fuse for the 12VDC panel, and a 12 gang fuse box with negative bus from Blue Sea.
The front of the panel looks like this, a Vicron battery monitor, a USB charger and switches. I'll make better labels later.
My battery is on the floor of the galley cabinet, all the way forward in the camper to help with weight distribution. Its a 230aH 12v battery from ACOpower. They aren't well known but have a number of other consumer products that are doing fairly well, so i took a chance on their battery kickstarter. They hosted a free battery giveaway during the kickstarter, and I won it, so this battery cost me nothing. Every now and then you get lucky.
The battery has attachment points for bolted brackets, so I used them to attach it to the cabinet. The kill switch is in a Tanos MiniSystainer that is velcroed to the battery. I cut out the front panel and cut a new one from 1/8 ABS. Clearly, the new panel has openings for the main battery cutoff and a couple of breakers to isolate my PV array. One breaker is for the 200w panel on the roof. The other is connected to an Anderson Connector out the side of the camper so I can plug in a portable PV panel. I figure I'll be parking in the shade when I can, but will still need some solar.
This is my 12VDC mains box. Here i've just gotten the feed from the battery hooked up. Same as the other box, a Tanos Systainer with the front cut out and a custom ABS panel glued on to house switches. This box houses a 100A main fuse for the 12VDC panel, and a 12 gang fuse box with negative bus from Blue Sea.
The front of the panel looks like this, a Vicron battery monitor, a USB charger and switches. I'll make better labels later.
Fenderfour
Active member
I'm beginning to think the 3L is lower power than the 2L in spite of more displacement. I have friend who has a 3L in a van and it's super slow, especially up hill.
I don't know what your experience is with driving these old NA diesels, but you can't put it in 5th and push harder on the pedal. If the engine bogs, the fuel doesn't produce power, its just turning into soot out the tailpipe. Try to keep the engine around 3k rpm and shift to keep the engine breathing well. That probably means down-shifting up hills and doing 45 mph.
Re-gearing will make your uphill speed worse, it only helps in the flats where you are running out of RPMs. It does mean that you run out of HP sooner, so more downshifting.
More power can come from a turbo kit. Folks in Australia have been adding them to these NA diesels for years. HD Automotive has one. Their kit is for a hilux and it won't fit on our engines out of the box. There is a fair amount of work getting it all packaged correctly. There is a thread on IH8Mud on fitting a turbo to a toyota firetruck.
workingman1
New member
Thanks for the tips , this is my first diesel so definitely not familiar with any of it, lol
Fenderfour
Active member
More (modest) progress!
Got the counter top attached. I hoped to get a slab of bamboo plywood for a counter, but no one near me has any. this is 25mm baltic birch plywood with 5 light coats of polyurethane finish.
The wire run for the 12VDC loads box is just to the right on the right of the window. It passes through a hole in the counter that's got a PVC coupler (little white bit) to protect it at the transition and create a barrier to spills on the counter. I'm choosing to keep the wiring out of the wall to simplify the build. Individual runs will be attached to the carpeted walls using velcro. I'm not 100% confident on the final wiring layout, so this allows some flexibility.
I also turned on the system. This is the readout from the app provided by ACOPower. Bluetooth monitoring is built in to the battery. The 12VDC mains box didn't work, and I think I know why. The solar input worked great. I was getting 2amps from my dirty partially shaded panel late in the day. 2A doesn't seem like much, but the panel maxes at 8 amps.
Got the counter top attached. I hoped to get a slab of bamboo plywood for a counter, but no one near me has any. this is 25mm baltic birch plywood with 5 light coats of polyurethane finish.
The wire run for the 12VDC loads box is just to the right on the right of the window. It passes through a hole in the counter that's got a PVC coupler (little white bit) to protect it at the transition and create a barrier to spills on the counter. I'm choosing to keep the wiring out of the wall to simplify the build. Individual runs will be attached to the carpeted walls using velcro. I'm not 100% confident on the final wiring layout, so this allows some flexibility.
I also turned on the system. This is the readout from the app provided by ACOPower. Bluetooth monitoring is built in to the battery. The 12VDC mains box didn't work, and I think I know why. The solar input worked great. I was getting 2amps from my dirty partially shaded panel late in the day. 2A doesn't seem like much, but the panel maxes at 8 amps.
Fenderfour
Active member
I sorted out the issue with the 12VDC mains panel. Each switch has a three pins: source, load, ground. The ground pin is to operate a built in LED. I have all the grounds chained together back to the negative bus on the blue sea fuse box. When I first powered up, the ground chain wasn't on the ground pin, so I made a direct short. The 3amp fuses on the three circuits saved my equipment. I moved the ground chain, replaced fuses and now it all works. Feelin pretty good.