- Picked up an Odyssey starter battery http://twurl.nl/hhpazh as well as stainless steel hardware for the roof rack. #
- Roof rack is back on the van. Now with stainless hardware. New battery is installed as well. #
- Need to replace the control arm bushings and the camber bolts on the left side, otherwise they can’t get the alignment right :( #
- New post about what we did on the project this week. – http://dinoevo.de/2010/02/roof-rack-mud-flaps-and-alignment/ #
- WOW. I didn’t expect that many people are interested in the wiring diagram of a Mitsubishi Delica l300 http://is.gd/93SO3 #
- Try to find a replacement for the big steering wheel. Looks like Grant does even have the right adapter for a l300 http://64.60.165.189/ #
Monthly Archive for February, 2010
An update on what we have worked on this week.
The Delica came with a pretty sweet and solid aluminum roof rack. Unfortunately some of the bolts were rusted quite badly, so we took it off cleaned it properly and replaced the hardware with stainless steel. Now everything is nice and shiny.
The light bar in the front came off too, but I don’t think I’ll put it back, because I rather get some strong off-road lights on the front push bar and maybe mount some additional lighting on the roof rack.
The rims offset are perfect, so the wheels are not sticking out of the fender wells. Therefore I took the fibreglass fender flares off and sold them to a fellow Delica owner. To get the maximum articulation without hitting metal I had to grind down the fender wells quite a bit though. After all this trimming we mounted the modified mud flaps back with some custom brackets.
My friend Jay likes to work on all the electrical stuff, so he discovered a few weird “spaghetti” wiring from the previous owner in Japan under the carpet and behind the dashboard. We want to start fresh, so he took almost everything out. Also the old batteries had to go too. He replaced it for now with a single Odyssey PC1400 to get not stranded in the next few month. More on this subject once we work on a proper dual battery set-up.
With way larger tires than stock we also need to go to an alignment shop. A few people recommended Dale’s Alignment in Langley. Off we went to them yesterday. Nice guys for sure with – as far as I can tell – professional 4-wheel laser alignment set-up.
Continue reading ‘Roof rack, fender wells, mud flaps, battery and alignment.’
DINOEVO spent some time at the shop of Butch and Edwin at CVI. This guys know Delicas inside out and are very reputable mechanics in Vancouver, BC. They mainly did the usual maintenance work after you imported a car from Japan. They replaced and worked on the following items:
- Timing belt and tensioners
- Water pump and thermostat
- Drive belts
- Re-cored radiator
- Ultrasonic cleaned the injectors, adjusted valves (photo below)
- Upper and lower stabilizer bushings
- Oil & filter change
- Front & rear differential fluids
- Transfer case fluids
- Manual transmission fluids
- Fuel filter
- Engine coolant
- Greasing ball joints, tie rods and drive shaft
Probably some of the work are not entirely necessary right away, but I like to have a piece of mind if we are in the middle of nowhere.
A while ago – before we even got DINOEVO – I was researching for any kind of snorkel options. Unfortunately the ‘ultimate’ company Safari does not have a specific model for a Delica. Beside an expensive Australian company I just found FTS4×4 in Taiwan which still makes perfectly fitted snorkels out of fibreglass.
A few people from our Delica Club were interested too, so we ordered as a group to bring the price down. After a couple month, I finally received the package today. Looks all good and I can’t wait to install it. However I want to modify the air canister at first to reduce the bends/piping and get a better airflow right from the tip of the snorkel into the engine.
A friend who did a custom snorkel a while ago, reported quite a difference in performance. We will see how it goes…
Finding the perfect wheels is a difficult task. You will never find a tire without a draw back. Also the variety of different brands and types are just overwhelming. During my research I came across a few very interesting articles about the advantages of different tire sizes for each application. Really informative is the text from Expeditions West about tall and narrow tires.
A tall, narrow tire is a better choice for all off-highway surface conditions with the exception of soft sand, snow and soft mud that’s depth exceeds 110% of the vehicles minimum ground clearance.
If you have a look at most military vehicle as well as modified overland campers, you will notice they use quite skinny rubber for many reasons outlined in the article. The main goal is to keep the width as close to the stock as possible and just increase the tire diameter to get more ground clearance.
So lets compare a few available tire sizes to the original Delica tire (235/75R15):
235/75R15 = 29 inch diameter and 9.5 inch wide
245/75R16 = 30.5 x 9.7
31×10.5R15 = 31 x 10.5 (very common in North America)
235/85R16 = 31.7 x 9.3
265/75R16 = 32 x 10.5
Recent Comments