Stormy the isuzu trooper - way too much money and effort

Oh man. $800 with a gearbox? DOO EET.

Crawler gears are a game changer.

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Yeah for the manual transmissions the tcase is integrated, so id be buying his whole trans. But I’m not sure how easily I could sell mine. Isuzu stuff just doesn’t move that well, and I’m not selling everything needed for a swap, just the trans.

Big updates coming here… Im getting the trans with crawler gears (3:1 low range instead of 2:1 from the factory), getting auto air and electric to fix the AC, and going to a SPAL fan that should be a big upgrade over the cheap flexalite I have right now. Shocks on hold for now, but if I can sell the old fan, shocks, and trans, then I might get the shocks still.

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Just did the math, I’ll have a respectable 51.5 crawl ratio, up from 34.4 with the outgoing tcase. This puts my speed at idle at 1.8 mph, which is pretty good. I’m really hoping this helps my frustration with it in the rocks. Should be a lot less clutch slipping to make things work.

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Not to mention better engine speed when climbing hills. I know you’re going electric, but coolant flow matters too!

PS: I thought you had the AC sorted. What happened?

Also, I’ve been thinking about crawl ratios, too. Took a minute, but I finally found some numbers for Fezzik.

  • 2.804 first gear in the Aisin V4AW3
  • 1.900 4LO
  • 4.272 final
  • 22.760

If I re-gear to the 4.90s this winter, though…

  • 2.804
  • 1.900
  • 4.900
  • 26.105

And if I then get another set of Marks Adapters…

  • 2.804
  • 3.150
  • 4.900
  • 43.280

Not to jack yo thread, but you showed the math, it made me curious, and just look at Stormy’s advantage here. That’s pretty solid, considering I’m looking at $1500+ in parts alone to get to a 43 crawl ratio. :exploding_head:

They fixed a leak for me… But now something worse is wrong. Might be the compressor. I bought the cheapest reman compressor I could find so I probably got what I paid for. I’ll find out next week anyways.

Yeah I’m pretty excited about the crawl ratio improvement. Hopefully it’s a game changer.

That’s a lot of money your gonna drop in. Are the shorter diff gears so you can run bigger tires? Or are you unhappy with your highway rpms? I would assume the gears are the lions share of that $1500.

I know Mike will take care of you, but yeah, new compressor ain’t cheap. Hope there’s still some kind of warranty on the unit you bought.

And the crawler gears are $1200 of that price tag. I’d probably do them before anything like a roof rack or fancy tent, but I dunno. They only come into play in 4L, so they’re not something I’d use very often.

Not planning on bigger tires, either. I’m gonna go back to stock size when these 31s are spent. The half inch of additional clearance isn’t worth $500 to me at this point.

I’m not a rock crawler. I just like to explore.

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*edit because these were two discreet thoughts but didn’t read that way necessarily *

Re: crawler gears
Geez, I’d skip the crawler gears at that point… You have the automatic to make up the difference right? Or is ol’ fez a manual? I find a lot of joy in picking my way through difficult obstacles, but it sounds like you don’t necessarily.

Re: 4.9 diff gears
So what’s the point of the shorter gears if you are also planning to go down a size in tires… You are driving your highway Rpms up in doing those both…

They say 4.65s will deliver stock performance with 31s or 32s, and 4.90s will do likewise with 35s.

I’m on 31s and have to downshift into second gear and race the engine at 4,000rpm to maintain 45mph on long climbs like Gen Crook east out of Camp Verde. Just shutting off overdrive doesn’t cut it.

Most of my driving is in the city, I’m keeping the belt driven fan, and I drive considerably slower these days, so I think it’s a good trade-off.

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That makes sense then if you are having to go to second on those hills. Should let you be in third at a more reasonable rpm

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That’s the plan, anyway. Word on the street is that gears are a game changer on these trucks.

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Back from Auto Air and Electric! It was a bit of a saga, but it’s done now.

Basically it took them a few days to find a compressor at all, they usually prefer to do new but couldn’t find one. I was able to find a new one online but Holy moly it was $1300 by itself, so remanufactured it is. They installed the new compressor, and the other parts they determined needed replacing, took it for a drive, and the AC quit halfway through the drive. They pulled the compressor and found the clutch coil had gone out. So a few more days for another compressor and here we are! Working AC!

Next up, spal fan and trans swap (but only after a very important garage update)

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Nice! AC is critical!

Also supports the case for the eventual engine swap. :cowboy_hat_face:

I have 3 possible engine swap plans depending on the budget.

  1. Camaro turbo 4(also in the cadillac ats) - 4 cylinder, 100hp and 70 tq improvement over stock isuzu.
  2. Toyota 2gr-fse, is350 v6, comparable power to the camaro 4, but trading turbo for na
  3. Cummins repower.

Toyota motor is the cheapest, but I have to swap trans with it and jump through hoops to use my take-off auto tcase.

Camaro motor should fit really nicely but I also about overheating with the turbo.

Cummins repower is 3x more money than the other two, and I gotta figure out an adapter plate.

OEM isuzu diesel would be rad but for the good motors used it’s literally more than the Cummins new so…

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I’ve run turbo (diesels) for the last 15 years or so and have not had any overheat problems in the slow stuff. Intercooler helps. Water meth can also help. But good cooling, proper gears, and you’re good.

But… Spool time is definitely a factor when going slow. “Bumping it” over an obstacle is much more difficult when you need to build boost. And that was with a low Rev diesel, so I’d imagine the gasser would be even more so?

NA gasser gets the nod when it comes to slow speed stuff, compared to turbo gas.

But diesel? Yeah… Whole other game. Cummins sounds spendy though. If camaro engine isn’t too $$ that might be the way to go?

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Emissions, my constant nemesis, makes it a little harder, for both toyota and camaro options. I need the factory harness and ECU so that I can maintain obdii functionality. I probably have to buy a donor car

For both those options I can do the rest (motor mounts, adapt the isuzu auto transfer case, driveshafts) for less than $1k plus trading some favors.

For the Cummins, it’s $7500 plus figuring out how to adapt to my existing transmission which likely means designing my own adapter plate. Add in motor mounts, this one is probably also an extra $1k.

The Cummins is not THAT much more expensive, but it depends on how much money I can get back from parting out the donor car.

Packaging wise I prefer the camaro or Cummins, reliability wise I prefer the Cummins or Toyota,
Price wise… It just depends what kind of deal I can find on a wrecked car… But the price difference isn’t as big as you’d think.

What does a diesel swap do to your emissions red tape? I’m assuming you’re talking a Dodge Ram cummins, or the UPS truck Cummins, not the crate engine Cummins?

No I’m talking crate Cummins. Crate Cummins is no problem at all. Plug it in and go. Newer diesel would be fine as well. I just need the whole harness including ecu so I can have obdii functionality

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