1UZ-FE Transplant into 91 Hilux Surf

[Mudman]

After exploring some of the old gold mining areas & 4WD tracks of the lower part of the south island of New Zealand in my 1988 Hilux Surf 2.4 diesel turbo, I decided it was time to get rid of the old ride and try something a bit different.

But what else can you get thats any better for taking away on holidays, towing the dirtbikes, playing in the mud, or just everyday driving all in one package?

Well I guess.....

-Nothing.

So... I decided to sell the old beast and look around for a later model.

The 88 Surf was a good truck and served me well for about 12 years. It was completely standard when I bought it however it didn't last long in standard trim. - It had to be different from the ordinary 4 X 4's most people drive around in.
So during its life when I owned it, I added a 2" body lift & 1.5" suspension lift and 32" mud tires, fitted a 2.8 diesel turbo and made my own bumper etc.

I have always been impressed with the 1UZ engine and thought it would make a great conversion into a hilux (or any vehicle for that matter)!!!

A good friend of mine (known as LO LYF) had already started one of these conversions on his 1991 hilux so I went over for some advise and to check out his project.
I was impressed with his project so far and then I saw his engine.....
-WOW...
What an awesome looking engine!!!!!
I had to get me one of those!

I found that he was using a custom made adabtor plate & flywheel to adapt the R150 transmission to the 1UZ engine & bellhousing and that these were available from Johno at Performance Metalworks up at Silverdale for a very good price.

Johno loves these engines and has done a large number of these conversions using the same flywheel & adabtor plate with great success.
After seeing the quality of these and finding that they were available, I decided that I have to do one of these conversions myself.

LO LYF told me about this great site.
I find it really fascinating to see how other people find different ways of doing things... Some great, and others..., well, lets say I would have done it differently... but thats all part of discovering different inventions I guess and we all have our own opinions.
After looking at some of the other conversions other people have made, especially threads from "twisty_toy94" & "Guts", this encouraged me even more to do my own conversion. These are great threads with loads of information and well worth checking out if anyone else is thinking of doing this conversion! -Thanks a lot guys.

It wasn't long before I found a 1991 Hilux Surf with a manual R150 gearbox and a blown 2.4 diesel.
- Perfect for what I wanted!
The previous owner had a leaky radiator and so of course - overheated it and blew the head gasket. A friend of his (who was a back-yard mechanic) took the head off and told him that it was blown.
The previous owner left it sitting on his back yard for about 2 years with the head off. He eventially got frustrated with it and decided to get rid of it so after a thorough inspection, I offered him $2000 and to my delight... (after a few mutterings under his breath that is), he accepted my offer.

The thing was mint!!! (except for the dead motor of course). It only had 64,000 km on the clock.
It may have been wound back at some stage or had the speedo disconnected to save on road user charges but I didn't care... The engine was going to be tossed anyway.

I figured the conversion would take me about 6 months.

I bought the surf back in February last year and so far 11.5 months have gone by and I still haven't finished.
I guess the old saying is true... "Good things always take time"

 

[AmmoJammo]

pics or ban

 

[cebby]

pics or ban

Seriously ya big tease...

 

[LO LYF]

Yeah come on Dean get the camera out !

 

[Mudman]

Here's the new surf all ready to begin the 1UZ transplant.


The original 2L-T with the head off & the cylinders full of water.
It was like this when I bought it.


Original dead engine removed.
I wasn't sure if I should trust that ratchet lifting thing but it held together - just.

 

[Mudman]

Empty engine bay.
Ready to begin engine transplant.




Now this is what I'm talking about!!!
They should have used these in the beginning!
Doesn't it look beautiful. Its a 1991 1UZ-FE from a Toyota Crown Majesta (front sump)
The front sump version of these engines are the easiest to use for a Hilux (LN130) IFS conversion.

 

[Mudman]

I decided to use the factory bellhousing and purchase an adaptor plate & flywheel from Johno at Performance Metalworks because I already had the bellhousing. It came with the engine when I bought it.
The only problem with the adaptor plate was that it didn't have a pedestool for the clutch fork pivot. The reason for this is because not all vehicles have the slave cylinder in the same place. Anyway, its not that hard to make one and weld it on... As long as it's measured up correctly.

I later found that there are 2 different factory bellhousings....
One has "U1" and the other has "U2" cast on the top.
There are slight differences between these two bellhousings. They are both identical as far as the length and bolt holes go, but the location of the bolt holes at the transmission end are rotated about 5 - 10 degrees on the "U2" bellhousing.
This ment that If I used the "U2" bellhousing, my transmission would still bolt up using the adaptor plate, but would be rotated slightly to the left.
After finding this out, I checked to see what mine was...... It had U2 cast onto it.
AAAAAAAAARRRRHH!!!!
I rang the importer that I bought the engine from and asked if they could swap it for the "U1" which they did.
Once I had that minor hickup sorted out, I bolted it up to the Hilux gearbox (R150) and decided on the best location for the clutch fork. (Which was pretty much where the original Hilux one originally was).

Here's the adaptor plate with the clutch fork pedestool welded onto it.

 

[Mudman]

The adaptor bolted to the R150 gearbox.


And the bellhousing bolted in place with the original hilux clutch fork and new thrust bearing.

 

[Mudman]

The next thing to do was to replace the cam belt, tensioner & idler bearings which was a lot easier than I thought. Not only did the cam & crank pulleys have alignment marks on them (as you would expect)... The cambelt also had alignment marks as well.
It would be great if Toyota made everything this easy!

The flywheel was a custom made billet steel flywheel which bolted up directly to the crank. The clutch & pressure plate was an aftermarket heavy duty hilux with a clamping pressure of 2100 1b.
Once I had these bolted on, it was time for a trial fit.
I made up a temporary engine mount which consisted of some angle iron & a 25mm SHS which I had lying around in my garage. I bolted a short piece of angle to each end of the SHS and then bolted it across the front of the chassis so that the sump had something to sit on.
This worked really well because it was perfectly level across the chassis, and I could raise it to the final height and also slide the engine back & foward and sideways to get it in the exact position I wanted.
Once I had this sorted out, I could attempt the engine mounts.
I made sure the engine was about 6mm higher when I measured up for the mounts to allow for settlement once the full weight of the engine was on the new mounts.
The Hilux mounts on the chassis didn't need to change so I used them along with the Hilux rubber mounts. I then measured up and fabricated the engine mounts out of 10mm thick steel which is probably overkill but at least I know I'll never break them.

I already had a 2" body lift so there was plenty of room for the sump.
The gearbox ended up 30mm higher and came foward 32mm. (I ended up with 10mm clearance between the back of the engine and the firewall). I made the gearbox mount out of 6mm thick steel which bolts onto the Hilux gearbox crossmember.

Here's some pics of the flywheel...

 

[Mudman]

Here's the 1UZ bolted up to the gearbox and sitting on the temporary support.
The wood between the SHS & the sump is to pack it to the right height to make the engine mounts.

I wanted to get the engine down as low as possible without having to cut & modify the sump. This meant I had to remove the steering dampener & cut the mount off the tie-rod to get enough clearance.
I'm planning on putting an aftermarket steering dampener on later on and repositioning it below the tie-rod.

 

[Mudman]

The engine mounts didn't take very long to make once I figured out what to do.

First, I cut a rectangular shape of steel big enough to bolt up to the 4 mounting bolts on the engine block and bolted them in place. I then cut some smaller rectangles and bolted them onto the original Hilux rubber mounts on the chassis.

Next, I made some templates out of cardboard to fit between these 2 plates before cutting them out of steel just to be sure there was enough clearance to get a spanner or socket to all the bolts.

I tacked one one of the engine mounts and compaired it to the one on the other side and found that I could make both engine mounts an exact mirror image of each other and so proceeded to fully weld them.

The mounts were fabricated out of 10mm plate steel which is probably overkill, but I reckon overkill is much better than making them too weak and having to rebuild them again.

 

[Mudman]

Here's the right hand side engine mount bolted in place looking from the back of the engine.

 

[Mudman]

Now that I have the engine mounts bolted in place, I removed the temporary engine mount from across the sump and found that the engine only dropped about 3 or 4mm.
I was expecting it to drop about 6 - 8mm so I still had plenty of clearance.

The gearbox was now 32mm further foward and about 30mm higher than the original position so I decided to keep the original gearbox crossmember and fabricate a new gearbox mount out of 6mm plate steel to bolt on top.

I'm thinking of possibly making a new crossmember later on to give more ground clearance but for now... this will have to do.

 

[LOWBOY NZ]

You seem to have a lot more room for your headers than i do in my 2WD. can you give us a pic showing the headers in relation to the steering???

 

[Mudman]

The steering rod wasn't connected in the photo. I was just trying out the factory headers to see if they would fit which they did on the passengers side, but not the drivers side due to the steering rod being in the way. The only way to make them fit with enough clearance is to cut the header flanges off, shorten the primaries and weld the flanges back on.

I thought if I had to do this, I may as well make up my own set of headers. I've made a set of headers before for my offroader and it didn't take long so I figured it wouldn't be to bad...

I was wrong!!!

Making headers with equal length primaries to fit into a hilux is a nightmare.... but not impossible.
I've lost count on how many hours it took me but I guess it would be somewhere around 60.

I'll post some pics soon.

 

[gloverman]

Hello Mudman

What management are you going to run? If you want a link I can help out. Cheers Kelvin

 

[Mudman]

Hi Gloverman,

I swapped the factory ECU that came with this engine for one from an earlier crown when I bought it - so that's what I'll be using. (For now anyway)

I may change to a Link later on but for now, I'll stick with the one I have.

Cheers.

 

[gloverman]

They seem easy to wire. I got a 260E merc conversion going the other day - that was running the factory lexus auto and Celsior(LS400) management. Now I have to intergrate it with the merc wiring and fuel pump controls. Even so my team should be able to sort it. Good luck with your conversion - cheers

 

[Mudman]

Because of the gearbox moving foward, I had to cut the hole around the gearstick to give it some clearance.

 

[Mudman]

I found that with the 2" body lift, the steering rod would be too short so I made up a 12mm thick spacer and bolted it between the steering rod and steering box. I also had to extended the studs so that they would bottom out on the steering rod to prevent the rubber dampening disk from shearing off when the steering takes a hard knock.