The Plan...

[cruiseroutfit]

Game on!

 

[dieselcruiserhead]

Unfortunately the wand on my welder broke today.. Lots of use, $200 part unfortunately.. I need to get a new one ASAP though most of the welding is done... The copper normally wraps around the black but lots of broken strands... It had been failing for a few weeks, I was trying to figure out what was going on...

 

[dieselcruiserhead]

I started working on figuring out the power steering hose. Interesting is the pump side of the mercedes is nearly identical to the Toyota, but not the steering box side. There is a pic of the Toyota steering box with the copper fitting and then I pulled it out for the photo... I happened to have two Mercedes high pressure hoses so I pulled the two fittings and though they're slightly different it should work just fine... But if it doesn't for some reason, a FJ60 power steering hose of all things should bolt right up... Photo 5 shows the original Toyota high pressure hose fitting.

 

[dieselcruiserhead]

Here is how I adapted the Toyota oil pressure switch (triggers the low oil pressure idiot light) to the Mercedes. It took this M12 x 1.5 to 1/8" NPT adapter to make it work. E-Gauges.com sells the part for about $5 but I was able to find it locally at Salt Lake Rubber and Hose supply...

I had to grind a little aluminum off the oil filter housing but it looks clean. My other setup I was planning on using was pretty hoaky using the Mercedes 6mm high pressure hose and compression fittings and adapter somewhere on the firewall. Mercedes use mechanical oil pressure gauges.. This is the oil dripping down your leg when it blows if it ever happens to you in a 300D..

 

[dieselcruiserhead]

Here is some messing around I did with the motor oil cooler. I have this vehicle buildup on my site as well (4BTswaps.com) and there is much more detailed info on the engine-side aspects there because this stuff is a little boring/technical... Here is the area where I start discussing the oil cooler and you can see photos of the OEM setup:
http://www.4btswaps.com/forum/showt...ta-Pickup-Benz-OM617-diesel&p=97694#post97694

I am going to do something like adapt an oil cooler (this one is a little hammered but would work) and/or just loop it for now as some OM617s came with an oil cooler and others didn't... Or I will use a vegetable oil-style "hot plate" as an oil cooler at some point...

At first I was going to use the hot oil to heat vegetable oil but read that it takes a long time to heat up and rarely gets above 200F on OM617s so it would actually be a hinderance. The 300D used an air/air cooler so it doesn't mind how long it takes to heat the oil. Some engines like Cummins use an oil cooler in coolant so it actually warms and cools the motor oil so it is better for engine warmup than this setup..

 

[dieselcruiserhead]

Here is a pretty complicated aspect of the Mercedes conversion. Normally I wouldn't post all of these incredibly small details but for a mechanical diesel conversion this is a very difficult one with lots of small aspects. The flywheel on these are externally balanced from the factory. I'm not sure why but that is how they did it. If you look at photo one there are lots of drill holes in the original automatic flywheel (it is not a flexplate, it is a genuine automatic transmission flywheel. You have to carefully mark the flyhweel and get your new one balanced (and eventually installed) identically otherwise the engine will vibrate.

The white marks are factory Mercedes. You can see they painted two of the bolts white too and it looks like they had to remove the flywheel and rebalance it again, sort of like balancing tires, because they bolts have been removed but this is a factory mark from Germany in 1983..

I thought I was being really clever with my marks but it turned out that center section is flywheel too and I removed the flywheel without making an adequate mark.. So I tried to guestimate to where I remembered...

 

[dieselcruiserhead]

.... But this ended up being wrong. I only know this because there happened to be a little piece of rust that was bonding the flywheel and the crank together. This let me find the factory alignment again. The red dot is also from Mercedes. You can see the little tick marks I banged into the crank and flywheels so I wouldn't lose it again. It goes down to SLC to a performance engine balancer to have them balanced...

In photo 3 you can see the piece of rust on the flywheel. So lucky as again my best guestimation ended up being a hole off and I would have been screwed possibly after all of this work by this simple little thing...

 

[dieselcruiserhead]

Here are the adapters. Photos 1 shows how it aligns with the engine which is Waay more robust than even the OEM Mercedes setup. The flywheel is also noticeably larger and heavier, which is always awesome for a 4WD driven diesel as it makes them slightly harder to stall off road (this is the secret recipe of the 4BT Cummins, the flywheel weighs 70 lbs and it is nearly impossible to stall them even with your brakes!). Luke has been talking about how the engine is a "torque monster" and I really hope it does turn out this way (but anticipate it will)... Because everthing is bigger and larger and heavier duty now I also torqued the bolts to 60 ft/lbs to mount the adapter. The flywheel bolts will also need to be torqued to something like this as well. And I also used red loc tite... All just in case / do it once...

Again I am so impressed with the www.4x4labs.com adapter (and honestly, all of their products). Besides that Luke Porter is just the man... Everything shows up quickly and on time, no issues what so ever, and everything is just so robust and so incredibly well designed...

 

[dieselcruiserhead]

The Advance Adapters bellhousing kit (GM to Toyota 5 speed) uses an oil impregnated brass bushing for its pilot bushing/bearing. I pressed it in (hardly needed a press). It was pretty cool seeing the oil sweat out of the brass....

 

[dieselcruiserhead]

And finally the pilot install and the Advance Adapters bellhousing (also very very nice)...

I am really excited.. That is it for now.. It was nice to be working with the engine again today, and to also finally breathe a hair and clean up the shop a little...

 

[cruiseroutfit]

Beauty!

What are you doing for a slave?

 

[dieselcruiserhead]

Whatever comes with the clutch kit.. I am coming very close to running out of money so all of these things add up including purchasing of clutches etc.. The trailer sale (which is helping support some of this build) is taking a little longer than I anticipated so I am trying to get an advance on the final payment to float some of these items...

 

[Poorboyota26]

Ok, so this build is just awsome! I love it! I have a question though. You are using:
A mercedes diesel engine, to a GM bell housing bolt pattern adapter plate, to an Advanced adapters bell housing, to a Toyota Transmission?

Why not just go:
Mercedes, Adapter plate, Toyota?

I understand that the GM clutch is going to be BEEF and that's important and if that's the reason, sweet. Just asking.

:beer:

 

[cruiseroutfit]

Whatever comes with the clutch kit.. I am coming very close to running out of money so all of these things add up including purchasing of clutches etc.. The trailer sale (which is helping support some of this build) is taking a little longer than I anticipated so I am trying to get an advance on the final payment to float some of these items...

Its likely designed for a Land Cruiser slave cylinder, I'll check on it tomorrow. Its very likely you can make something else work, possible even the original slave?. Give me a ring tomorrow if you would.

 

[dieselcruiserhead]

Sorry I was confusing slave and throw out... Correct, designed for (the awesome) FJ60 Land Cruiser slave. The mini truck and LC slave are nearly identical but I think the LC slave is a hair larger. I didn't look to see about mounting it if I need to fab up a bracket. There wasn't an advance adapters part number listed for a bracket like there usually is when its suggested..


Will do to call you tomorrow..