Guys,
After a long week the Hilux is finally complete and crawling :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted:
The last day of the install saw us receive the parts we were waiting for from the US which was the correct adaptor plates for the Crawl Box, the quick shift base mount, and the longer lower selector pin that we welded onto the shifter handle.
Below is a comparison pic from left to right of Marlin Crawler quick shift base, factory toyota quick shift base, standard toyota shifter base and the plate cover on the transfer case.
Next is a pic of Wyatt grinding down the head of two of the lower bolts. This is required as it grinding down the a portion of the factory transmission adaptor plate so that it clears the marlin adaptor plate when everything is bolted up.
Here you can see Wyatt bashing the hell out of the coupler to install it onto the transmission out put shaft.
And below is the "one of a kind" factory transfercase attached to the Marlin Crawler Box waiting to be installed into the Hilux.
And a very proud Marlin Czajkowski holding his baby before we put it in :lol: (im surprised his shoulder didnt give way with the weight)
The unit being fitted up...yes, all on the floor of the garage, no hoists here.....we did this thing "old skool" :shock:
Wyatt gave us the idea of using the Marlin rubber shifter boot ontop of the console as an "outer boot" rather than an inner boot as it was meant to be and the finish was fantastic....very factory looking.
Last picture of the interior setup before the modified center console went back in.....so all in all, we cut off a tab off the handbrake bracket and welded a new one to the outer side and slightly raise the handbrake itself on a couple of washer before tightening it up so as to clear the new inner shifter boot. We trimmed the inner portion of the auto shifter rod bracket for boot clearance aswell. The transmission tunnel sheet metal is 3 ply thick in places....inbetween them all we used a heavy duty waterproofing silicon sealant I had and Marlin filled in the gaps between the different layers of metal around the 3" hole we had cut with this silicon to eliminate any potential ability of water to get in and sit there. Then Wyatt mounted the inner boot with silicon under it and self tapper screws....
The final product...... :mrgreen: :twisted:
The shifter itself went in extremely tightly....and needed some adjustments by Marlin via filing down the edges.....the end product is a stiff but smooth very short throw shifter at the rear that gets selected by only a couple flicks of the wrist.
After all was done we went to test drive it and couldnt start the hilux!
We removed the console again and found one plug off the auto shifter we forgot to attach and also the auto shifter cable wasn't connected to the shifter. Once that was done she started and I crawled in compound low at 11.30pm at night for the very first time. Like a baby taking its first steps. :lol:
No video footage yet, will try and get that done this afternoon.....promised to take Wyatt and Marlin to the markets to get some souvenirs for their wives as supposedly their wives told them they wont let them come home without a fluffy koala bear or kangaroo!
