Archive for the 'exterior' Category

Brake Upgrade

Published on August 18, 2010 in exterior, modification and parts. — 1 Comment Tags: brake.

Finally another upgrade to our van. Converting it from a single piston caliper to dual pistons including slotted rotors and braided steel brake hoses. Main reason for that: We wanted more stopping power. Specially with the bigger wheels you had to press hard on the brake till the loaded van actually came to a stop.
I knew from talking to friends it was possible to upgrade the l300 brakes with the brakes of a l400 respectively Montero. So off I went to source the parts and ended up with Power Slot rotors, Hawk LTS brake pads and Russell brake lines. The calipers were only available as oem parts. Due some stocking issues with the Russell fittings it actually took a few months to get all the parts together.
Anyway we worked two full days to make this modification right, but in the end it was totally worth it. The biggest surprise (at least for me) was as we changed the long rubber hose in the back to a braided steel hose. The pressure point at the pedal felt so much strong and not spongy anymore. Doesn’t matter how loaded the van is, I feel now confident to stop it without any delays.

Challenges:
There were a few challenges during this modification.
First it seems like there is no 7″ DOT braided steel brake hose available which would be necessary for the front top portion to make it a nice fit. We used 9″ instead. Not ideal, but works.
Second, you need to make new metal brake lines with tiny curves on the calipers. So make sure you have the right tools including tube cutter and flaring tool.
Third, it took us a while to figure out the right bracket to attach the hose to the caliper. Main challenge is you don’t want to hit the brake line neither with your bump stop, nor with your wheel.
Fourth, you need to trim the head shield to make the dual piston caliper fit.

Last but not least a huge thanks to “lazygreenfox” and “Golf Cart” for their help on this job. It is great to have such a good Delica community in Vancouver where everybody can learn from each other!

Here are the part numbers I used for this job:

Rotors:
Power Slot 126-46040SR
Power Slot 126-46040SL

Calipers:
2x ‘92+ Mitsubishi Montero front left/right caliper semi-loaded

Brake Pads:
1x Hawk LTS HB214Y.618

Brake Lines:
4x Russell 656012 (9″)
1x Russell 656062 (24″, shorter is fine if you don’t have a lift)

Brake Fittings:
8x Russell 641411
2x Russell 641431

Misc:
2x Russell 683942 (90 degree bracket)
2x 3/16 in. o.d. SAE inverted flare metric brake line with 2 pcs. M10 – 1.0 long tube nut fitting
DOT 4 Brake Fluid

New paint

Published on July 1, 2010 in exterior. — 0 Comments Tags: paint, rust.

Even DinoEvo is still in overall very mint conditions, it had a few rusty spots on the mirror rods and front wiper arms. So I took them off and cleaned/sanded everything properly. Treaded the rusty bits and painted the rods with flat Tremclad. The same goes with the two mirror brackets on the car (driver side) and the wiper arms. Just a bit more masking. After everything was try, I reassembled the mirrors. A nice little job for a sunny afternoon.

HID fog lights

Published on May 20, 2010 in electric and exterior. — 0 Comments Tags: lights.

This was really a hard decision. Way too many good fog lights out there, but in the end the Lightforce Striker 170 HID made it onto the bull bar. Main reason: Very light weight, low energy consumption (just 35W/3amp each), high-power light output, different lenses (wide beam, combo, spot), very good reviews and apparently good customer support.

At the beginning I thought two lights would be enough, but once I saw how nice three lights would actually fit, there was no way back. Unfortunately Lightforce just sells them in a set, so I bought a box for myself and shared one with a good friend.
Unlike normal lights you have quite a bit of electrical stuff (igniter and ballast) to hide with three lights. At the beginning we thought to hide everything inside the van, but apparently you are not allowed to cut the cables, so everything had to be mounted outside. I went to the Metal Supermarkets and found a nice piece of perforated aluminum, cut it in the right shape and built two little covers to hide the cables on each side. It also worked great to secure everything with tie straps on it. After screwing it to the light mount, the ballasts were hidden behind the left indicator light. The lights are secured with special lock-nuts which hopefully protects them against thieves.

I’m very happy with the outcome of the whole bull bar. Everything looks how I had it in my mind. I haven’t got time to try the lights properly, but I already can tell you one thing. They are fricking bright.

Thanks again to my friend Jay for the support on this project!

Side Step

Published on May 20, 2010 in exterior and modification. — 0 Comments Tags: paint, welding.

With the higher lift we use the side-step below the sliding door quite a bit while camping. After crawling under the van I discovered that all tubes from the step are just welded on the bottom and had no strength on the top. Not really ideal, so I took it of and brought it to Metal & Wood Products to get their opinion on it. After a couple of days they made the whole step stronger and reduced the flex.

Another problem was the rust. I already knew from our old van, that the side step can rust quite fast due the rock-chips from the front wheel (even with mud flaps). Therefore I cleaned and sanded it properly and used a few coats of black rocker guard as protection. The hardware is now also stainless steel. We will see how good it holds up.

Modified bull bar

Published on May 20, 2010 in exterior and modification. — 1 Comment Tags: bumper, paint, welding.

It was time to work on the front bull bar. In general I was quite happy with the standard set-up we had on our old Delica, but wanted to improve a few things. To clarify it right from the beginning we are not planing to install a winch as well as there is no need for any Hi-Lift Jack points. It don’t have to be a heavy-duty bumper, more a light-weight protection of the front and a mount for fog lights.

The first step was to take the plastic cover off which I was not planing to use anymore afterwards. Unfortunately after the cover came off quite a few big metal brackets were welded to the bull bar. So I spent a whole night grinding everything unnecessary off. After cleaning up I had to figure out a mounting system for the planned fog lights in the middle of the bumper. In the end a metal plate was welded to the middle tube with three brackets attached to it. Also the main mount for the bull bar got a few additional welding spots to make it stronger.

Next step was cleaning, sanding and priming. As the first coat I used rocker guard to prevent any chipping. The second and third coat is white Tremclad.

The two main brackets which hold the bumper to the van were quite rusty as well as all the bolts. I used rust primer and again Tremclad, but I had to find new bolts. Not as easy as I thought. It turned out just one place in Vancouver sells fine-thread metric high-grad bolts: West Coast Fasteners Ltd.
The original bolts are grad 7, which is not very high specially when you use just ONE bolt to tow the whole vehicle. Therefore I bought grade 10.9 to give it more strength and used stainless-steel washers.

Next step: Mounting the fog lights…