Got a super-duper important question for you guys, then I've got an update on the Slantota project, possibly to be called Hyper Hilux Hybrid.

The Question: when viewed from the front of the vehicle, which direction is your driveshaft spinning when you are moving forward? You can imagine why I ask - if it's backwards in the Toyota I'll have 4 reverse gears and 1 speed forward.

UPDATE:

CLUTCH: The hydraulic clutch is in, the hydraulic throwout bearing is bought. I got lazy and paid $159 for the Howe unit. I'm positive there's a $39 Dorman hydraulic throwout bearing that would work, but I don't have the time to sift through them and figure it out.

COOLING: solved. Bought a used radiator from a 93 V6 Explorer. It's about the same size as the stock Toyota radiator, but much thicker. It's quite a bit bigger than a stock slant six rad. The bumper/grille has been moved forward about 4 inches, the hood pins are installed, and I'm scanning around for a junkyard hood that isn't rusty to chop up and close up the gap. So far, ALL Toyota hoods are rusty.

MOUNTS: I've measured and measured, and at the junkyard I found a similar truck with the engine out, allowing me to stand in there and measure some more. Best I can tell, the stock slant motor mount brackets will mate to the Toyota frame with just some sawsall cuts. Hozanas. Then a simple 90 degree bracket will bolt/weld to the frame rail and that will bolt to the motor bracket.

There's many many little details to take care of, but the majority of it is solved. Next weekend me and a buddy will do the body lift, and if that goes well we will tackle the whole thing in one big thrash. Most of it isn't very slant six oriented, but I'll post it all here.

SIDENOTE: I have a spare grille from a 70 New Yorker that, surprisingly, fits pretty good in place of the stock Toyota grille. I thought about it, but decided to keep it stock.

ANOTHER THING: went with an electronic speedo, and of course I needed the sending unit for the 833OD. Turns out that GM, Ford, and Mopar are all generic as far as the sender goes. There's a little square pin that you put in where the speedo cable goes (the end is shaped like the end of the speedo cable) and an encoder assembly that threads on and holds it all together. I suspect that if I cast around, I could find a GM trans that had this sender and it probably costs $3 at a junkyard instead of the $60 I paid new. You can buy $80 electronic speedos, but I paid $109 for a Summit branded one that has two trip odometers, 2 (count 'em) 2 different colors of backlighting, and you can calibrate it easily for when I change tire sizes. Nice.

AND ANOTHER THING: Summit sells cans of black wrinkle coat for $8. I was skeptical, but the stuff really works well. You spray a heavy coat, wait three minutes, spray another, and 2 hours later some kind of magic happens and it wrinkles up very nicely. I'm thinking of doing the whole hood in wrinkle coat. Hell...I'm thinking of shooting the microwave oven with the stuff.

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1965 Valiant wagon Turbo slant (work in progress)
2000 Chevy 155" cargo van - The Abductor
1970 Newport convertible
1996 Buick Roadmaster Wagon
1966 CruiseAire motor home
1990 Toyota 1 ton box truck TURBO slant (scraped)

Driveshaft rotates in same direction as engine.

A slant six and a toyota engine both rotate in the same direction (I have slant six and 22RE)

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Ed
64 Valiant 225 / 904 / 42:1 manual steering / 9" drum brakes

One of these?

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一期一会
Too many people who were born on third base actually believe they've hit a triple.

How can one man, that is Dan, have so much knowledge?

I looked up the parts mentioned in Dan's link. $32 for the generic VSS. Couldn't get a price on the interceptor style one, but I bet it's similar.

What have we learned? It pays to ask Dan, that's what I learned!

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1965 Valiant wagon Turbo slant (work in progress)
2000 Chevy 155" cargo van - The Abductor
1970 Newport convertible
1996 Buick Roadmaster Wagon
1966 CruiseAire motor home
1990 Toyota 1 ton box truck TURBO slant (scraped)

i have used wrinkle black on H-D engine blocks ....added a coat of gloss black to it as a final coat....gives a bit of gloss to it and cleans way easier

Kipamore:

Fascinating slant project you have going here.

Hate to be a party-pooper, but one big reason for crappy fuel mileage with trucks configured as yours, is the amount of air it is pushing. Strap on that same box to a Feather Duster and the fuel mileage would drop, no crash into mid teens or lower.

Geeks out there, correct me if I wrong, but I thought resistance from “Americanâ€￾ air is; speed in mph squared? So if one was puttering around town @ 35 mph all day fuel mileage would depend more on weight & gearing verses on the interstate where wind load would be a huge factor.

R @ 35 mph = 1225, and double the speed R @ 70 mph = 4900… whatever the units would be… too early & too little coffee, or that movie was too long I started at 2:00am this morning…and than that forensics show… Yawn…

Perhaps as part of your reengineering of an inferior off shore vehicle, some type of air flow or streamlining could be accomplished which most likely would grab a few more mpg out of thin air, particularly where you are running 98% at interstate highway speed.

You are correct that diesel fuel now costs more per gallon than gasoline, but a diesel engine, because of its high compression, and one third more carbon content in its fuel, is able to produce a lot more torque than a similar sized displacement gasoline engine. So if one is paying less than 1/3 more over gasoline for diesel, diesel is still a better buy.

Yes a carbureted engine is a simple inexpensive solution, however EFI more precisely meters fuel and air producing better fuel economy which is why every manufacturer has been using it for years to meet those CAFÉ rules.

Speaking of Café, time for another cup…

Good luck.

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67' Dart GT Convertible; the old Chrysler Corp.
82' LeBaron Convertible; the new Chrysler Corp
07' 300 C AWD; Now by Fiat, the old new Chrysler LLC

Power needed to overcome air resistance is a cubed function.

Double the speed, and you need 8 times the power.

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Ed
64 Valiant 225 / 904 / 42:1 manual steering / 9" drum brakes

Ed,

Thanks for your pithy and useful post. I admit had never even thought of power needed being proportional to v^3. I always think of force equations, where force needed is proportional to v^2.

There is a nice Wikipedia site on this:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_(physics)

Cheers,

Lou

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Home of Slant6-powered fun machines since 1988

Fellas,
Best I can tell, this truck is roughly comparable to a full sized van in terms of frontal area. It may actually have an edge over a van because it's lower to the ground, better skirted, and has the protruding hood that a van doesn't. It's a little taller than the average 1 ton van at 7'9". But it weighs substantially less than 6000lb loaded, and a 1 ton van probably weighs that dry. The 14' box rental box trucks you see all the time are usually GVW 8000 up to 11000.

There are many aerodynamic mods in the truck's future, but we gotta solve the reliability problems first, which is what the slant swap is all about.

DIESEL: it just isn't worth it anymore. Last week I saw diesel prices at 21% more than gas, and I think it's worse this week. That means your diesel Golf which gets 42mpg is effectively 33.18 in terms of cost, and that's less than my dippy Focus gets (a car which costs over $10000 less new and is arguably bigger). Furthermore, the ultralow sulfer diesel which made the price jump so much gets slightly less mpg, and going to an older diesel engine doesn't solve this problem. Additionally, the smallest diesel that you can get is generally the Cummins BT4, which probably weighs 1000lbs when fully dressed, and when it's injection pump wears out you are looking at $1000-1200 rebuilds.

As you can tell from my signature below, I've tried to solve this problem in the past by building a diesel hauler that ran on lard/fryer grease. It worked well, but I lost thousands of dollars in the end because for what I do you have to find, process, and CARRY hundreds of gallons of the stuff. In the bus I would carry 120gallons of lard, and when it ran out I was back to 8mpg @ $4.15/gallon.

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1965 Valiant wagon Turbo slant (work in progress)
2000 Chevy 155" cargo van - The Abductor
1970 Newport convertible
1996 Buick Roadmaster Wagon
1966 CruiseAire motor home
1990 Toyota 1 ton box truck TURBO slant (scraped)

Emsvitil:
[quote]Power needed to overcome air resistance is a cubed function.[/quote]

Oooops!

You are correct, that wind load becomes enormous as the old speedo creeps up., and is why all the big rigs are looking more like a stinking Prius’ on steroids these days

One of my rules is never trust the dome, and I generally look up these sorts of things just to make sure I’m not clawing around in an addled haze…

The old am “Alpha Waveâ€￾ was flat, not much better now, but the movie was good though. Can’t remember what I was thinking of by squaring the velocity….

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67' Dart GT Convertible; the old Chrysler Corp.
82' LeBaron Convertible; the new Chrysler Corp
07' 300 C AWD; Now by Fiat, the old new Chrysler LLC

I like the idea behind your project kipamore, but how long do you think it will take you to get your truck back on the road once you pull the motor? I've also wondered what it'd be like to swap a slant powertrain and put it in another car, but you have a really commonly modified truck chassis so in my opinions you have alot more options.

You could try a 4x4 toyota fourm and probably get advise on how to modify the suspension/frame/body relationship to accomidate the engine and transmission (assuming your using a slantsix tranny). You will need a custom adaptor depending on the rear-end you use, and definatley driveshaft lengthening/shorting plus balancing.

If you had access to a hoist it would also make things alot easier

Carpdar,
I have poked around the Toyota truck forums a bit, and in fact that's where the genesis of the slant swap comes from. There was a guy on there that put a modern Buick V6 in his Toyota 4x4 and documented the whole thing very well. He went from 21mpg to 36mpg, had double the power, and had something really unique for his trouble.

The truck itself, like almost all real trucks, is dirt simple. There's a frame, there's torsion bars, there's nothing rocket science about it. The budget for the whole thing was $500, but I'm going to overshoot that because I had to buy some tools, notably a cherry picker which I found for $50. So even if the swap fails, I'll still have the cherry picker. Because the truck is so simple, there's a bunch of stuff I can do before I pull the Toyota motor. Even though I drive 1000 miles a week, I do it all in one day so I should have six solid days to make the whole thing happen. And I have a couple of buddies to help. The only things I have to farm out are the driveshaft and the exhaust, and hopefully I can get those done during the six day period.

Once it's in and sorted, then the fun part begins of using this forum to help design a rocket science hypermiling slant six. That will be interesting.

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1965 Valiant wagon Turbo slant (work in progress)
2000 Chevy 155" cargo van - The Abductor
1970 Newport convertible
1996 Buick Roadmaster Wagon
1966 CruiseAire motor home
1990 Toyota 1 ton box truck TURBO slant (scraped)

One of the sticking points of my swap is oil pan clearance. The slant I'm using came with the 8 quart mega deep rear sump pan. It's pictured in the oil pans FAQ in the upper right I believe. Anyway, I do have another mid sump pan from a 65 Valiant that I can use if I want to. The oil pan FAQ tells me that I'll need to swap the pickup if I swap the pan.

I may be able to do some banging on the truck pan to make it fit, and I feel the 8 qt pan is a feature because:

a. I go a long time between changes. 6-8k usually.
b. I use a quick lube place because they provide a document of my mileage which I submit to the IRS. My place has does not charge extra for high capacity engines, which to my mind is like getting 4 qts for free. That adds up.

Roughly speaking, where does the oil pan pickup fall inside the sump? How high off the bottom of the pan is it usually. Is it generally in the center of the pan? Is the pickup tube press-fit or does it need adhered and if so what's the best goop to use? My engine is under 100k, need I bother to replace the oil pump while I have the pan off? If so, anything special I need to know?

Thanks

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1965 Valiant wagon Turbo slant (work in progress)
2000 Chevy 155" cargo van - The Abductor
1970 Newport convertible
1996 Buick Roadmaster Wagon
1966 CruiseAire motor home
1990 Toyota 1 ton box truck TURBO slant (scraped)

Ummm,you mean 5qt truck pan? maybe 6qts using the 1515 or 51515 filter.Cann't help with just where pickup sets or how far from bottom as it's been awhile since mines been apart and I only remember doing the required measurements to get it 'clocked' right.And tube is threaded into block,I used some Permatex thread sealer on mine.

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83 B-150 slant 6,4 speed. 79 B-300 360 pathfinder 4x4. 74 W-300 318 4x4 git-r-done 80 B-100 sl6,4speed

6-8k is fine if the oil isn't getting dirty. Your technique of putting on lots of highway miles in a short time is useful, there.

Does your quickie lube place take the extra step of filling the oil filter before installing it? Yes, it's a bit messy on a slant since the mouth of the filter gets flipped down as you screw it on, but with some practice you can keep most of the oil in the filter. Even just having the filter element saturated is better than dry. Every millisecond you can lessen the "dry start" time (while the pump is busy filling the filter, before the oil light extinguishes) will add up to a much happier engine longevity.
The slant six pump mounts externally, so the pan not need be off. 100k ought to be just fine, if it's still building good pressure. In fact, there's some argument for leaving well enough alone... the original pump and drive gear are probably better quality than any replacement you could find today.

- Erik

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Lots of early Valiants and Barracudas have crossed my path.
Also a handful of other toys for variety now and then.