7mgte 2wd hilux swap (its gonna take a while)

[jlaffo91]

the restrictions over here suck majorly. truck will probably be off the road for a month or so while engine swap papers are going through. now im back to borrowing my mums lancer

[jlaffo91]

took her over the pits. failed bad. told me to tow it home but fuck that. was a 5 min drive so I just hooned home. engine is out. got a dickhead as an inspector. said, "the engine wasn't bolted in enough". I showed him it clearly was and he just started picking at other stupid things. oh well, at least now I have awesome 4x4 stance in the front

[jlaffo91]

so I have slightly busy with exams and what not lately. still waiting on engine mod approval papers. I got completely anal raped by my materials and manufacturing exam today so I took a break from study and worked on the car a bit. I got in the 2 new rear shocks, now have new corner lights for both sides, and got a new rad support assembly. I drilled out the spot welds and just bolted in for now. slapped some seam sealer on and rattle canned it gloss white. I need another can but its coming up well. I stripped the bay back a bit to get it ready to be repainted. Just going to do it gloss white like the rest. Also painted both cam covers gloss black but they're already dirty. put in new cam cover seals too. Picked up new engine mounts as my old ones had seen better days.

Please excuse the night time phone pics. I need to work at more appropriate hours and invest in a good camera

New corners


Gave that top grill bit (name escapes me) a coat of paint


wasps have begun settling in


I honestly had no idea how bad I scraped my U-bolts. they were pretty bad. one was snapped




new rear shocks on both sides. they were el cheapos from supercheapauto for $40 each. the old ones had no rebound whatsoever










the new rad support in


painted covers. nice and dusty


some paint on the inside


and some on the outside

[jlaffo91]

some progress has been made. I now have a proper throttle cable (from a mx83), seals done on engine, new engine mounts. and 90% of the wiring all cleaned up. it is considerably neater. I will get a better photo tomorrow when there is sunlight

[jlaffo91]

everything is in aside from the radiator and a couple of hoses. will hopefully finish tomorrow and put all the panels back on. I have put connectors on everything so any electrics can be easily disconnected from now on.

[jlaffo91]

so the car is now complete besides the bumper which I'm waiting on a new one. radiator is in. thermos are in but extremely tight. ran one 12" push and one 10" pull. runs better than ever and is booked in to get looked at by engineer soon. Also got approval for 17" rims and 50mm of suspension drop, although ill be running lot more than that. I also got some Perspex and made up a new rear window drivers side piece as the old one was smashed. Popped in my new corner lights too.





front thermo


rear thermo

[244Brick]

Nice!!! Glad i don't need approval for my car!

[archie.]

Sub'd for Aussie Toyota I-6 swapped light commercial goodness.
100% feel your pain on defects man, but bald tyres are just asking for it.
In saying that, your bay looks extremely clean and well-sorted now, best of luck with getting it complied, hopefully you catch your engineer the day after steak-and-blowjob night and he's in a good mood.
Looks like parts of the build have been a struggle, but props for keeping at it. You make me enthusiastic to keep struggling with my deo.

[Isuzupickup]

The bay looks sweet man!

[L3GACY]

Joined up here just to say that your truck looks and sounds amazing with just the 7mge in it so far and cant wait to see how your 7mgte turns out. I have to say I loved going through the whole thread you have and am so glad you didn't stop updating when you thought it was dead. This is going to be an unbelievable help to me as I start my 7mgte swap process this summer. I have a 93 ext cab hilux/pickup that mine will be going into. Most of anything that I've done (which isnt much) is on toyotamini's. Cant wait to see you get it all legal and lowered again!!

[jlaffo91]

Thanks for the kind word guys. I had the car checked by the engineer a week or two ago. He was happy to approve it. Just waiting for him to email me with paperwork so I can head down to Department of transport and get my plates back. Also my brother has a problem that he cant settle on a car. he has recently purchased and sold a couple cars, a 350z (insurance was crazy as he was 19), another s14 (which got yellowed so got sold), a ford festiva, a camry, a landcruiser, a navara, but the big one that will be getting kept is a 1977 RA28 celica. We will be putting a 1JZ into it. Runs mint and just picked up some rota grid classics for it in 15x9, -10offset. I will create a thread as he cant be bothered, and I have been doing the work anyway. It was given a horrible matt paint job by the PO









will have updates on ute soon

[Randomofodication]

That celica looks sweet! Also those poor u bolts!

[jlaffo91]

These arrived on Monday. If I was not with my mum i probably would've yelled every swear word i know out of pure joy. next Wednesday is the big day it goes to the inspection pit at 7.45 in the morning.

[jlaffo91]

It has been a while since I have uploaded anything on the actual car so here is a short video me giving it some juice with the new exhaust. its a 2.5" mild steel with a high flow cat, resonator and hotdog. Road was wet so there was some tyre spinning going on. Watching in HD helps

[jlaffo91]

So today i got it re-licensed and got new plates (the third set now). Plans now are to Get the lowering blocks back into it, wind down the torsion bars, and get drop spindles. Will put a Supra torsen LSD in it soon as well so i can spin 2 both wheels nicely. Future plans are to obviously get a turbo 7M in it and at some stage a 4 Link in the back with coils. Currently I'm chasing some 17x10's for the rear and 17x9's for the front. Not sure what i want yet, but considering steelies or some sort of 5 spoke. The old 17x8's are horrible and are just generally shit.





For those of you who watch roadkill and saw the muscle truck with the boggers, i would also like to at some stage try something like that as the ute does see some dirt and will carrying dirtbikes. I think this would be cool.