AJ120s 2009 D4D and DIY camper trailer

[mackayvx Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close mackayvx]

Hey AJ.
Of all the awsome mods u have done, I am really impressed with your recovery points. Im in the process of making myself a set the same as yours and i have a question. Does the rear most bolt fixing the recov point in place (above sway bar) screw into a factory captive nut on the chassis? I ask this as my 'pre d4d' 120 does not have a captive nut in that position... only a hole. I am wondering if there is a slight difference in the early 120 chassis in comparison to the d4d chassis...
Cheers mate. drew.

[AJ120 Out of control poster! Find all posts View Profile Close AJ120]

Hey AJ.
Of all the awsome mods u have done, I am really impressed with your recovery points. Im in the process of making myself a set the same as yours and i have a question. Does the rear most bolt fixing the recov point in place (above sway bar) screw into a factory captive nut on the chassis? I ask this as my 'pre d4d' 120 does not have a captive nut in that position... only a hole. I am wondering if there is a slight difference in the early 120 chassis in comparison to the d4d chassis...
Cheers mate. drew.

No difference in the chassis between years, that bolt has a "nut on a stick" which ARB use to fit their Bullbar, the stick is long enough that they feed it in from the front of the chassis before they fit the bullbar and bolt the recovery/mounting bracket before fitting the Bullbar. If you look at the pics of my new recovery bracket (post #150) you will notice the original bracket had a hole in that position and the new one has a slot, that is so I didn't have to remove the bullbar to fit it up. Once you unbolt the ARB bracket the nut on a stick drop into the chassis, with a bit of wire and patience I was able to retrieve it, screw in the bolt and with the slotted hole the bracket could be fitted without removing the bullbar. Hope that all makes sense.

Whilst I am posting I will throw in some pics from my recent Madigans trip.










Cheers Andrew

[LostDingo2 Find all posts View Profile Close LostDingo2]

To hold the mounting arm I made an aluminium housing to bolt under the reinforced dash, then a locking plate and a couple of aluminum knobs to tighten it up. I will have to add some Knurling to the knobs as they are pretty hard to get a grip on, need to buy a knurling tool for the lathe first though. I also made nylon washers for between the plate and the knob for a smooth tighten up.



I did tidy up the rounded end of the mounting arm, it looks a bit rough in that pic.

The Ipad holder that I got from Ebay needed a bit of extra strength IMO, so I added some more 2.5 mm aluminum to the back of it, held on with double sided tape (see Madkores comment next post) and also the screws that go through the swivel brackets also help attach the reinforcing.



All it needs now is a bit of a clean up and some paint to make it look nice!

Cheers Andrew

What a metal smith you are Aj and well thought out beefing up the stress areas.

[mackayvx Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close mackayvx]

Gday AJ... Ahh the old nut on a stick trick.. Thanks for your reply and yes that all made sense and it leaves me with the problem of getting a nut into that hole without removing the bullbar... Im considering bushing that hole thru to the inside wall of the chassis... drilling a 12mm hole thru and having a bolt and nut right thru the chassis to hold the recov point.. im not keen on drilling the chassis though... Do you have an opinion on that? It sounds bodgey doesnt it?. That ipad mount is the trick as well- bloody excellent idea.

[AJ120 Out of control poster! Find all posts View Profile Close AJ120]

In search of more flex!

After our most recent recce to Bendleby I got to thinking that the rear flex in the Prado maybe isn't as good as it could be. After plenty of reading I decided a few measurements were in order, what I found was as follows.

Rear droop is 80mm, the shock is the limiting factor here as it is topped out at that point.

With the shock disconected I get another 20mm droop before the swaybar holds things up, this would probably be worse if the opossite wheel was flexed up to its maximum.

With the sway bar and shock disoneccted I get another 25mm droop before the control arms start to limit travel, this is about the point that the spring becomes loose.

from maximum droop I have 205mm clearance between the diff housing and the bump stop, the OME shocks have 224mm of travel so 20mm of up travel that I cant use, I also think it would be unlikely that I would ever hit the bump stops with the heavier springs and airbags.

The rear shocks were removed from my old Prado before I upgraded and its fair to say they are getting towards the end of their lifespan, so I think a set of LC80 rear shocks to replace them should give me an extra 25mm of droop with no loss of up travel.

The swaybar connects will be marginal with this set up, I could get extended ones but they are a bit pricey so I took a cheaper option and machined up a couple of spacers to make use of the excess thread on the originals, its only 12mm extra but that will hopefully be enough, when I get some new shocks I can test it out and see how it works.







Cheers Andrew

[Madkore Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close Madkore]

Remarkable...

You take the rules AJ and you laugh in their face...

Surely you will make an appearance in some sort of 4WD Action affiliate magazine soon?

[Peterpilot Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close Peterpilot]

I can certainly vouch for 80 series shocks and sway bar spacers to increase rear flex. I managed to get 50mm more droop travel over stock just by using a 618mm long rear shock and 7mm spacers at the sway bar.

My measurements suggested that the sway bar limited travel to about 615mm of shock extension, so your 12mm spacers will be more than enough to cater for an 80 series shock.

[120D4D Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close 120D4D]

I was thinking the same thing Andrew that weekend, with the occasional thump as the lifted rear wheel came back down.

Not being in the market for new shocks, I was also thinking about the sway bars length but for the $$ the benefit seems not worth it.

I'll be interested to see your results and how much (if any) the spacer lets the rear stretch out.

[AJ120 Out of control poster! Find all posts View Profile Close AJ120]

Remarkable...

You take the rules AJ and you laugh in their face...

Surely you will make an appearance in some sort of 4WD Action affiliate magazine soon?

I sent 4wd action some pics and specs some time ago when they were looking for Prado's to feature, I never heard a word from them so I doubt they are interested! There should be a few pics of the old girl in an upcoming edition of 4x4 Australia when they publish the Madigans report

I was thinking the same thing Andrew that weekend, with the occasional thump as the lifted rear wheel came back down.

Not being in the market for new shocks, I was also thinking about the sway bars length but for the $$ the benefit seems not worth it.

I'll be interested to see your results and how much (if any) the spacer lets the rear stretch out.

With the axle at full droop on both sides the spacers will make no difference with the existing shocks. I don't have the ability to check what effect the sway bar has at full flex in the workshop as I cant fully compress one side (well not safely anyway) so they may help a bit in the real world.

Some late night research has revealed that the OME 80 series shock has some impressive open and closed figures that should allow me to get even more droop than my initial research suggested I could achieve, in this case the sway bar may again be the limiting factor so my spacers might have to be shelved for plan "B", still not willing to pay the big bucks for the superior extended ones but if I can source the correct steel I think I can make my existing ones fully adjustable and extendable for not many $$ but just a bit of my time.

This would have been a good spot for measuring flex and droop





Cheers Andrew

[Madkore Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close Madkore]

Did someone say 'calendar shot'?

[wooley Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close wooley]

Did someone say 'calendar shot'?

I just wanted to show off :P Andrew was only copying me. haha.

[AJ120 Out of control poster! Find all posts View Profile Close AJ120]

Still waiting for my new landcruiser 80 series rear shocks to come in so no progress on the rear suspension this week.

In the meantime though, I liked the sticker on the back of Wooleys rig so much I got him to get one for me as well, which he kindly dropped off to me today.




Cheers Andrew

[AJ120 Out of control poster! Find all posts View Profile Close AJ120]

Following on from the suspension upgrade started in post #277.

I purchased a set of Old Man Emu N71E shocks to suit an 80 series Landcruiser, they are physically identical to the Prado shocks except that the open and closed measurment are longer and they have more travel.

Prado OME shocks: 580mm open, 356mm closed and 224mm travel.
LC80 OME shocks: 620mm open, 370mm closed and 250mm travel.

The old shocks still had 20mm of uptravel left when they hit the bump stops so the 14mm longer closed length has no effect, just means I can use all the shock length now. Just replacing the shock gave me an extra 20mm of down travel until the swaybar holds things up, adding the spacers to the sway bar mount from post #277 gave me another 10mm of down travel. I still have another 10mm of down travel available in the shock but the swaybar wont allow it to drop, so looks like a bit more work is required on the sway bar mounts to gain the maximum droop.

Eventually I should go from 80mm droop to 120mm of droop, so a 50% improvement.

The piece of timber gives a visual of the improvement.






And the spacers fitted, until I do something better!




Prado versus LC80 shocks.




I went for a run last night, approx 250kms, high speed highway work including about 10kms of really crap road, and then really rough but hard sand dune country and a bit of mud, the rear end rides beautifully and a definate improvement off road, only issue is the front now seems to wallow a bit, funny how things just get slowly worse and you can't tell until you upgrade something else. Might be a front suspension upgrade in the pipeline as well.

I have a number of big ticket items on my list that I hope to get ticked off in the next month or 2 so stay tuned.

Cheers Andrew

[berniebgf Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close berniebgf]

Hey Andrew,

Allot of work to get that little bit extra travel! but that little extra puts you ahead of the rest of us!

Question: with respect to the sway bar spacer, do you think I could just use a nut to achieve the same thing? measure up the thread size and get a nut (or nuts) to match and then just thread them on and put back together?

bernie

[AJ120 Out of control poster! Find all posts View Profile Close AJ120]

Hey Andrew,

Allot of work to get that little bit extra travel! but that little extra puts you ahead of the rest of us!

Not that much work, the research took a bit but the job isn't big. Handy when you have a lathe sitting in the shed to make it easier

Question: with respect to the sway bar spacer, do you think I could just use a nut to achieve the same thing? measure up the thread size and get a nut (or nuts) to match and then just thread them on and put back together?

bernie

A couple of nuts would probably work OK. You can't screw them all the way on as the thread only goes part way. get a couple of nuts and then drill out the thread should work, you can't go too big with the nut or the washers won't sit down very well!

Cheers Andrew