Hilux Max's 07 D4D Hilux

On a side note....could anyone with an 05+ tacoma double cab please get for me the inner measurement of their bed?

Why I ask is I'd like to know if the Allpro expedition racks will fit the Hilux Bed -


I need the internal width of the top edge of the bed where the angled edges/mounts of the Allpro rack would sit/bolt onto, and length of the bed from the same top internal edge upfront behind the cab to the tailgate.




As a reference my internal measurments of the hilux bed with the factory bedliner fitted are exactly 59 inches wide by 59 inches long.

Much appreciated guys.....

 

Unfortunately I can't help with measurements, but the sidewall flex one those MTR's is crazy!

 

yeah it doesnt make sense on the prices of tyres here, same thing with price of fuel...we all stick to the international pricing per barrel for oil and our Aussie dollar is 1.05 compared to the US dollar so you'd think fuel would be cheaper, but we are paying $1.50 + per litre here at the moment and someone recently calculated that in the US the average price is 95cents per litre equivalent!

we havent seen 95 cents per litre here for atleast 10 years or so.

 

New 305/70x16 MTR's, new adjustable height coil overs.....

front is sitting at just on 3" Id say or a tad bit more, not sure (I dropped the front end a little bit more last night)....trimmed the mount too as it "just" touched on full steering. a custom wheel alignment in a weeks time will add more castor and make it all work even better.





The front end lifted with a trolley jack...needed 2 blocks off wood on the jack to raise the tyres off the ground when before it wasnt needed...massive improvement in droop.


more pix to come tomorrow.

 

Nice droop! Looks sharp man!

 

OK, heres some more pics from the weekend.
Firstly some more poser shots from Tuff Truck Vendor Display. :roll:

In the pic above there was still 2" worth of uptravel available if there was sufficient load on the front end.



When I got home I re-adjusted the front end a little....I dropped the coilovers by about 5 mm (equating to around 10mm overall)

Image below for reference showing that the bottom adjustor ring is 5mm off the lowest setting.

I then Proceeded to cut my bodymounts, heres the plan -

Cut the bottom half off first -

I then cut vertical slices going across and finishing off by cutting across the top and then using pliers bending them up and down to complete removal as I couldnt get the angle grinder to cut through in that position all the way.

Completed -

Full Clearance -

View from Underneath -

Done -

And one more pic of full droop with a trolley jack and some blocks of wood -
:shock:

 

Nice droop! You think the cv's can handle it with turning or do you try not to turn when flexed out? You going to box your mounts back up?

 

Not quiet sure whether Ill box the mount back up...will see how I go...I guess it would be the right thing to do.

Coming soon is an upper bump stop bracket that will bolt onto the chassis rail and be adjustable to limit excessive droop.

I have a set of upgraded front shafts that have been sitting on my workbench in the garage for ages waiting to go in that can handle the extra droop.

The beauty of this kit is that it is setup to work in conjunction with the diff brackets which lower the front diff close to 1.5" (1" below the crossmember) and utilise the extra droop that is available now for the cv's.

My hilux front end is now sitting at 3.8" of height ( i compared with other guys on the local hilux forums) and my factory cv shafts that are still in there, the rubber ribs on the inner boots dont even touch yet at ride height...thats damn good in my opinion.

Ill try and get a pic of the cv shafts tonight and post them tomorrow.

 

The kit -


The Flex -

On RHF theres still 2" more uptravel available if loaded up.
I'll get some driveshaft angle pics soon....front end is sitting at about 3.8".....headlight height on 33's is 1190mm
And when sitting level the inner driveshaft boot ribs dont even touch.
Drop bracket lifts are a thing of the past.
This kit will give you a genuine 4" front lift.
This kit will protect your cv's and offer you an upgraded cv option aswell.
This kit will give you maximum clearance without needing a drop bracket crossmember.
Will handle both on and offroad and give you front travel numbers to make some solid axled vehicles blush!

 

Sweet Build man! I wish they would bring the diesel Hilux to the US.

 

Now that's a complete and thought out kit. Props to monster rides.

 

I'm currently working on it......struggling to find time to complete it....will post pics when compete...wont look pretty but it'll work!

 

Thanks mate.....we are hoping to bring this kit to the states for testing sometime in the near future.

 

i love your truck!!!

 

Ok, heres some inner cv boot pics for those of you that are interested.
Mind you, my cv boots have been running at 3" for 80,000km already so the rubber of the boots kind of "wears" into position if you understand? for example, if the vehicle/driveshafts were absolutely new then the spaces between the ribs would be even greater.
Ok, so now for the pix -


They are "barely" touching....and to be honest they were touching alot more with my previous 3" suspension lift that I had on.

Ill update cv boot pics when I get around to fitting the heavy duty driveshafts.

 

An upcoming mod is to upgrade the pititful standard front brakes the hilux comes with. Standard Hilux front rotors are 297mm in diameter by 25mm thick (11.69 inches indiameter by 1" thick), so I have decided to fit front rotors and calipers from a Prado 120 which comes with 338mm in diameter rotors by 28mm thick (13.31" diameter by 1.1" thick)

The supercharged Hilux TRD was the only hilux to be sold with the Prado front brakes package. The booster and master cylinder remained the same as standard hilux items. The braking performance of this hilux was awesome which I aim to emulate.
I disassembled the Calipers today at work and gave them to my friend to use compressed air to blow the pistons out.

He also gave them a bit of a steam clean. Stupid me tried to get the pistons out myself beforehand and damaged a couple of the pistons....no stock in Australia so have to wait till stock comes in from Japan. I could probably use emery paper and lightly take the burrs off the edge....will see.
The other thing with these brakes....because they are so big, they wont fit on a 16" steel wheel. Prado and Hilux models that came out with these brakes had 17" wheels fitted as standard.
In order to overcome this I will have to "polish" both side of the caliper a little to get them to clear the wheels.
As you can see by the shaded area I highlighted below -

Heres a pic of one done on a Prado to enable them to fit 16" wheels over the calipers -



Did a late night session last night fitting the Chip-It module to the Diesel Hilux after 9'ish when I put the kids to sleep.
Comes with its own loom with instructions on it where to connect everything. You piggy-back the common rail plug to the loom and the same with the MAF sensor plug. Also has a fused positive and ground wire you need to connect.
With the EGT-Exhaust Gas Tempriture Gauge I mounted it inside the dash below the ashtray. Also comes with a seperate fused positive and earth wires to connect aswell as a cable running into the engine bay to the actual chip it module itself and a Exhaust tempriture Thermocouple that you have to mount on the exhaust pipe outlet from the turbo.
Initial test drive didnt show any results, meaningI had to check the power connection to the unit and sure enough I didnt connec tit 100%.
Second test drive left me in awe! :shock:
Off idle theres a slight extra "jerk" forward from the engine.
Between 2-3000rpm or so she revs out like a V6.....I'd almost say that I think my hilux would have no problems keeping up with a standard 1GR 4 litre V6 hilux at the moment. possibly even beat it .
There is a more pronounced "whine" from the turbo which makes the hilux sound more like a supercharged V6 does under acceleration.
The other benefit is the auto shifts into lock up convertor (4th gear) noticely sooner and holds it longer which should see me getting some of my fuel economy concerns sorted after fitting the 305 MTR's.
I have been offered to also test the VMN-3 Drive Flat Throttle Controller. This is basically a little unit with a seperate dash display that allows you to adjust the percentage of full throttle compared to your accelerator.

This unit works well with any late model fourby.
Heres some more info -
Dash Display -

Heres a diagram that shows what it does in the 3 modes it offers....basically, if you hold your pedal at 30%, in normal mode its the same as stock, in economy mode your throttle percentage is less (thou you still have full power available it just takes longer to get there) and in Sport Mode you get upto 68% throttle so double what your pedal is doing-

There are 7 levels on Sports Mode and 5 levels on Economy Mode.

Ill be getting one to trial in 3 weeks and to do a review on it. Will keep you guys updated. This works on any modern vehicle. Alot of the "ricers" and drag racing nuts are using similar products. It would greatly help getting your vehicle with bigger tyres off the line around town.

Coupled with the chip it module, it should give me the option of either tyre frying performance or torquey economy around town.

 

Didnt end up using the larger brakes...they proved to be more of a problem with my current wheels than it was worth and I wasnt prepared to spend big to buy 17's and tyres to suit at the moment.


The Chip It chip is performing amazingly.....The powerband on the setting I have between 2-3000rpm is awesome...I can confidently say that I culd out run a standard V6 Hilux/Tacoma from a rolling start on my 305's.....

Max boost is 6 pounds more than standard so around 20-21pounds for short bursts of full throttle. Torque I have been told should be over 500nM.

Finally got round to completing my Version Two of the High Clearance Bashplate.

For those of you that may have missed the original Version getting built a couple years back here is the link to it -

http://www.newhilux.net/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=41&t=4508

Main reason for Version Two was a couple things -

1) To strengthen it, which I did by welding on another 3mm plate to the 3mm plate that was already there.

2) I had to make a diff protection plate to suit the diff drop. I ended up using 10mm plate steel for this which was a
challenge to use, both bending and welding the plate with an ancient arc welder.....ended up breaking the
sledghammer trying to bend it, (yes I did cut first before using the sledge to bend it then re-welded the bends.) On
top of the diff mounts I welded 8mm steel plate section for more protection.

3) The swaybar relocation brackets moved the swaybar bout an inch forwards so I had to cut out a section of the front
of the plate to allow the swaybar to poke through then rewelded a piece of tube cut in half lengthways over it to
protect it.

Conclusion: Unfortunately the actual diff pumpkin protector ended up slightly bent when welded on. And the bolt holes under radiator needed some reworking with a tap as the bashplate has been on and off so many times over the years that they had seen better days. I ended up screwing in a couple heavy duty self tappers through the bashplate into this crossmember for added strength/assistance in case of a big hit.

Also painted the xrox bashplate....been ages since this has been on the truck in complete form.

One more little thing to go before Im ready to take her offroad. The UCA droop stops that I trialled the other week, the rubber was too soft, the manufacturer messed up so am waiting for the right rubber to come in and Ill be able to get back offroad again.

Next fabrication project will be a new crossmember for the crawlbox which will have rubber mounts either side of the chassis rails. Wyatt will be sending me some mounts this week from the USA that I will be able to make use of. Already have a transfercase mount for below the Crawl Box....will do some head scratchign and see how I could in any way incoporate an extra skid plate below the craw box.

Anyway, heres some pics of todays efforts :mrgreen:







Heres a pic of a Crossmember Wyatt built for one of his customers stateside....Ill be making up something similar -

 

you.............bastard

 

Small update -

The brakes didnt end up working and I had issues with the chip I had installed....long story shot....

Did a few small mods to my custom towbar sidemounts......

Before



After

Cut the front portion off abd a bit off the bottom-


Mounted up again-


You obviously can see the difference. Heres another pic of the extra tab that was welded on the inner side to mount these brackets underneath the chassis rails when they were originally made-


Ive seen non genuine towbars mounted like these with 4 mounting points per side so i guess for most towing duties other than real heavy loads I'll be fine. This also gives me a good mounting point on the chassis rail for some tube quarter protectors if i ever get round to it.

Your all probably wondering right now "why did you do that Max?"

Here's why-



To make room for some of Buddy's fine 75mm extended shackles. Damn these are big and chunky :shock: Gave them a couple coats of black primer-



To get these sitting at the 45 degree or so angle i want im going to need the extra clearance from the towbar brackets when suspension is compressed. Also to achieve this shackle angle will be getting custom top leaves installed in the near future when they are ready......hoping to get an extra 3-4 inches of down travel, and bugger all height increase in the rear. Should be able to keep both rear wheels on the ground with 1 of the front right up in the air.....cant wait for it or pics, she'll flex like an 18year old gymnast :roll:

I hear what some if you are thinking.....are you goint to invert the rear shocks and runner bigger ones?

Well, no.....you'll have to wait and see

The other "small" piece of equipment to arrive this week is a rear one of these -



:twisted: Hope to have it installed in the next month when I find some time to book it in.

Oh! And the front bar on my hilux is sold to another hilux and Ill be fitting a new version to suit a high mount winch.