Percy - 2003 GX Love

[OldGreyGuy Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close OldGreyGuy]

Re: Percy - 2003 GX Love

Doing really well mcgonical, I'm enjoying your build-up thread. It is definately giving me ideas about how to go about mounting the Mic for my UHF, plus some more hints for the drawers I've just started building.

Cheers
OldGreyGuy

[joey Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close joey]

Re: Percy - 2003 GX Love

great build up thread Mcgonical!

coming on real nice.....

Samo that was a good day on Stocko!! 8)

cheers Joey

[samo Addicted PP Member Find all posts View Profile Close samo]

Re: Percy - 2003 GX Love

Samo that was a good day on Stocko!!

that was indeed a top day joey, they r down here in gods country. cheers samo

[mcgonical Member Find all posts View Profile Close mcgonical]

Re: Percy - 2003 GX Love

Suspension upgrade - platinum package from Darren Mcrae.

Pushing the do-it-yourself theme I was pretty worried about doing the suspension myself, didn't want important parts falling off my car because because I didn't know how tight to tighten the nuts properly. Still, lots to be learnt and from all accounts knowing how the suspension and other linkages work can come in pretty handy when your travelling remotely.

After reading, reading and reading I selected the bilsteins, ridepros and polyairs (platinum package). Darren at Autocraft was good to do business with.

The next weekend we were planning on heading up to Newcastle / Maitland to visit family and this seemed like the perfect time to do the upgrade - my late father-in-law had air tools and jacks and there were willing baby-sitter nannies on-hand. So we threw the gear in the car and headed north. Day 2, installation day. My lovely assistant and I moved the car into the garage to start work. Half the workshop lights were not working so my wife flicked the circuit breaker - sparks and black smoke had me retrieving the car fire extinguisher and running around madly making sure nothing was on fire. Looks like we were doing the upgrade with mood lighting. Next problem was that the little plastic inspection dome on the airline was cracked, the airtools couldn't turn a nut Rather than hang around for the third problem to befall us Nadine gave her cousin a call; David runs the local auto recyclers and he had a car hoist free for the day

30 minutes later we had left Lily with Nanny and shot through, the car was up on a hoist and David had left us with all the tools we needed to get the job done. No instructions, no laptop... I had to work to memory which is not a good situation for me. Mostly we recalled or figured things out, Nadine looked one part up on her iPhone - apart from that it went pretty well and David was around the place somewhere.



There's plenty of excellent guides here on pradopoint so won't rehash it all here. Truth be told I was having so much fun and at the same time so stressed about getting it right that I didn't take a photo. Luckily Nadine took a couple.

I figured the rear looked like an easier job but once you add in the Polyair fitting it takes about the same time. It took us amateurs all day to get it all done with every workshop tool on-hand. We had the front springs compressed at a local suspension place for $120 - a bit steep but we were just happy that someone would do it straight away. The car had to be ready to drive home the next day.



We routed the polyairs to the rear bumper as others here have done. I find this a bit fiddly to access and have considered moving them to a plate next to the rear anderson plug. We'll see how it goes, it's not like I'm constantly adjusting the pressures and they are well clear of potential damage in this spot. We were very careful to not pinch the airline and covered the lot in split tube to protect the airlines.



Biggest problems I had was getting the steering connectors to separate. Turns out I was tapping them too gently, David had us moving again quickly. It was funny because Nadine and I discussed how hard I should hit this bit and we agreed that since I was making more noise than anyone else in the workshop I was hitting them hard enough - apparently this is not how to gauge the effectiveness of hammering.

Getting the front struts out of the lower mounts was pretty tough too as I kept expecting them to explosively expand when they were free of the mounts. After gingerly fluffing around with these for 30 minutes we found that pulling down on the disc while someone reefed on the lower strut frees it pretty easily.

Nadine had asked me a number of times during the day how much higher the car would be when we finished. I did a good poker face when I saw how high Percy sat after the lift but it didn't help when David walked past and exclaimed loudly about the huge lift. There was some eye rolling from Nadine from that point on. I figure that Percy had had a pretty tough living before we came along with bar and winch at National Parks and then we added the draws and recovery gear. The old suspension was probably pretty saggy.

Before lift.



After lift



Just the rear



Next morning I headed out early and was first cab of the rank with a wheel alignment. We headed back to Canberra and I found a quiet moment to measure and re-measure the lift. PM'd Darren who asked me to check the polyair pressures as it was sitting at about 850mm at the rear. Releasing a little air from the polyairs and jumping up and down on the rear bumper settled it to 840mm at the rear and 790mm at the front. I also wondered if the flareless measurements might be slightly inflated because there's less plastic under the guard. Letting the polyairs down a little made the ride more comfortable in the car. I just checked these figures again and it looks like 850mm to me, probably the absence of plastic flares.

The rattle gun got many of the nuts tight. I used a spanner on the shock top nuts and over-tightened them - David had me back them off a bit so that the rubber bushes weren't deformed. Darren mentioned a couple of times that I should do the tightening up of the lower strut bolts when they were under load (at normal travel) so as to minimise stress on them; makes sense to me. I plan to check it all again this week with a spanner and maybe add a little lock tight here and there.

Now it's all done I feel like I own the suspension system on the car and can poke my head under there and expect to see things the way I left them or notice if they're not.

Interesting thing, and I'm a bit embarrassed to say it, our heavy duty bash plate has been taken at a service or wheel alignment some time in the past 12 months. I remember the heavy duty after market unit when I purchased the car because I thought to myself "what the hell are they hiding under that new plate?". When I started on these mods recently I noticed that the plate has been replaced with a stock Toyota part. Probably an honest mix-up but since I wasn't paying attention the opportunity is gone to rectify it. This coupled with the comments I've read about people checking that service items have been completed properly means I'll be more vigilant after services and other work in the future...

[samo Addicted PP Member Find all posts View Profile Close samo]

Re: Percy - 2003 GX Love

those measurements r on par, i got , 805 front and 830 rear when i did mine, thats on ironman constant load springs and shocks, 2 years later its a 790 in the front and 830 rear and no polyairs, thats with winch and bar and dual batt in the front. cheers samo

[mcgonical Member Find all posts View Profile Close mcgonical]

Re: Percy - 2003 GX Love

Thanks Samo. Percy is half packed now for a trip to Victoria and the suspension has settled to 840mm so I don't think the polyairs are influencing the height much at their current low pressure. It's still a pretty new lift too. Makes the before photo look like I had the car lowered.

I've noticed on a recent trip that the car rides much more smoothly over bumps - the OE suspension passed through the impact sensation into the car a lot more. I'm very happy

[samo Addicted PP Member Find all posts View Profile Close samo]

Re: Percy - 2003 GX Love

give it a month or so and it will setttle in, mine ride a little firmer but handle 100% better. cheers samo

[mcgonical Member Find all posts View Profile Close mcgonical]

Re: Percy - 2003 GX Love

Dual Battery install. Once again there are excellent instructions on this site for doing the dual battery install yourself. I knew absolutely nothing before I started the job and read volumes of material here and on other sites linked from pp articles. I hope my take on the work from the perspective of what my father would call an ignoramus is useful.

Why did I do it myself, well ARB wanted $900 to install a dual battery and that was with no additional outlets. I probably spent more money doing it myself but I now know a lot more about how it all fits together, I used good quality gear, the job is neat and I can service everything I installed (plus I have a few extra tools in the shed).

Some of the key things I learned from reading the forums here and doing the install - well the things that are still on my mind after it's all done:

• Carrying voltage to the end of a cable costs voltage (lost in transit), the larger the cable diameter the lower the resistance and the less loss. I used bigger cables partly because I knew that some people had made this point on efficiency /loss and partly because there are so many bloody standards for cable dimensions that I was completely bamboozled at the store and went with what I could get. Also, purchased pos and neg, negative to run all the way back to the battery and between the batteries - I was aiming for most efficient installation and the recommendation to run neg all the way back to the battery (presumably there is less resistance through the cables). [/*:m:1x7v1bsm]
• Thicker cable costs more, a lot more![/*:m:1x7v1bsm]
• Thicker cable might not fit into your 50AMP anderson plug connectors, split tube, side sills, etc.[/*:m:1x7v1bsm]
• Cable should be protected in split tube to prevent damage from movement and vibration causing wear. I used three diameters of split tube for the job, something like 7mm, 10mm and 25mm and brought it in 10 metre lengths from Supercheap. Have since bought new 7 and 10mm x 10m lengths to fix up cabling jobs done by others, trailer controller, UHF, etc.[/*:m:1x7v1bsm]
• Fuses are recommended near to the source of power to prevent shorts further along the cable leading to serious damage.[/*:m:1x7v1bsm]
• Fuses between the battery leads is a matter of conjecture as these fuses would need to be very large and so are very expensive. Also, if not large enough the fuses can blow if you join the batteries together and draw large current, for instance, starting using the Aux to assist the primary battery. I have a 100A fuse integrated into a terminal connector, it's not the best fit but I hope to install it sometime. [/*:m:1x7v1bsm]
• Battery tray quality is commonly thought to be very important to ensuring that damage to the guard is avoided.[/*:m:1x7v1bsm]
• You can crimp cable using a vice and half-nuts (read below) but using the proper crimping tool will see you do the crimping faster and more reliably, especially when crimping difficult to access cables in the engine bay. Buy or borrow one. I started using a vice and thankfully my wife borrowed a decent crimper from work (look like a set of bolt cutters). [/*:m:1x7v1bsm]
• Adding in the fuses at the end of the job means that you do not have power running through the gear while you are still working on the job, probably a sensible approach.[/*:m:1x7v1bsm]
• Finding a good online store for gear will save you money and painful shopping at Jaycar. I used sidewinder and they were excellent, due to poor planning I ordered from them about 4 or 5 times and each time the gear was here within a day or two.[/*:m:1x7v1bsm]
• Get a decent cable cutter (Jaycar sell a good one). See the photo of mine below, it cut the thicker cable without any problem. Spent the money on decent cutters after other options butchered my expensive cable - they're worth the money.[/*:m:1x7v1bsm]
• You will need a lot of cable ties in different sizes. I used lots to reduce the amount of movement in the cables - you collect lots of cables.[/*:m:1x7v1bsm]
• John R Turk seemed to have a lot of the gear we needed but in the end we went to Ashdowns in Fyshwick, they were specialists in car electrical and were great for lugs, fuses, etc and also some advice. Jaycar have some bits but a lot of their gear seemed under-sized for the job (I got the cable at jaycar though). Most of the bits came from sidewinder online but when we needed it the same day or wanted to ask a dumb question Ashdowns were great.[/*:m:1x7v1bsm]

As I said, I'm learning as I go so am happy to be corrected on any of the above.

Wiring diagram:



One thing that would have saved me a heap of time would have been to think about all the lugs required based-on the diagram and buy them all at once. You need lugs for all the different sized cables and connector types. As it was I made many, many trips to buy different sized lugs as I went along. Another big help would have been to have a good range of high tensile and stainless bolts in different lengths and diameters, these were another reason for lots of delays and trips to the shops to get what was needed.



I have an anderson plug left free inside the rear of the car that will probably be used for an inverter down the track or maybe if I fix the compressor in the rear when I build the new drawers.

Tools and bits used.



Recommended tools are a decent crimping tool for heavy cable, crimper for smaller lugs (red, blue, yellow), cable cutter, and my engine bay friend - an adjustable arm magnet reacher (see next pic). I had to remove the battery and battery tray completely once because I couldn't get at the nut I had dropped, would have been more than once if not for this gizmo.



Cables... $250 for the cables I used + $50 for split tube to protect them.



Split tube and lots of it.



Nadine was always there helping during the dual battery install and this morning work progressed under the watchful gaze of the site foreman (Lily).





As per other posts on here I ran the cable through from the engine bay and under the side sills which are easy remove. The 8 AWG cables to the rear interior run across the firewall and down the passenger side to the rear. Removing the rear interior facia is a little bit of a pain but you can pull it clear to work if you persist - it all goes back together OK too.

The rear anderson plug connector uses the 4 AWG cable and this runs through the firewall on the drivers side and all the way to the back internally. I found two grommets in series either side of a box section in the rear drivers side. I went through these with the cable and just ran it across the rear to the anderson plug mount I had made. I used the heavier cable because I want the camper trailer battery charged as well as possible.



Pulling the cable through to the rear.



Problems with my approach:

• Maybe I didn't need split tube for the interior cable runs but there are plenty of close quarters for the cable so I erred on the side of caution.[/*:m:1x7v1bsm]
• Exiting through the grommets on the drivers side is a little weak for the heavy cable and I will need to glue or silicone the plugs in place to prevent the cable from dislodging them.[/*:m:1x7v1bsm]
• 4 AWG is a _very_ tight fit into a 50A anderson plug - Nadine tells me this is a sign I have over-engineered the cables. [/*:m:1x7v1bsm]
• Some of the clips in the side sills were bulging with all the new cables and split tube so I cable tied them where necessary so that the clips would stay closed.[/*:m:1x7v1bsm]

Cable ties on cables running under side step facia.



Not running the negative cable all the way back to the battery would save on space, effort and costs considerably but I don't know the discipline well enough to know if it really is a big deal. Running both cables for efficiency made sense to me and I didn't want to do this job again or fix it if I found the camper battery was not charging well. I also didn't want to risk cable damage so I split tube everything.

Using one of my first bits of gal plate from bunnings (fairly heavy gauge) I made an extension to the existing trailer controller to accommodate the anderson plug. I purchase a rubber plug cover which required clearance all around the end of the anderson opening, since I didn't want to over-hang the plug to allow this clearance I raised the anderson plug using plastic strips (cut from an old P plate). Stainless nuts and bolts hold it all together. Hopefully dragging the rear of the car with this set-up will avoid damaged to the plugs and cables and not lead to the trailer connector being dislodged.







Feeding the cables through the firewall and other places I taped a piece of coat hanger / fencing wire to the cable and used this to persuade it through. I started from the rear one side and the middle the other, got the length right and then fed it through to the firewall.



Ran the cables through the side sills.



Running the cable through up under the dash was pretty easy though at some point an installer decided to leave 5 feet of excess cable looped up in one of mine.



More bunnings plate for the redarc mount - I think was gal but after all the bashing about I gave it a coating of Tectyl to be sure - looked nice and ugly then.



Mounted the redarc using the existing bolt holes. Since these bolt holes were not even I used an oversized nut to get the spacing more even.



Whilst working I removed the primary battery and noticed that a.) it was a think piece of plastic, b.) the paint had worn through under the primary battery tray. So I cleaned up the dirt and applied Tectyl liberally.





Aux battery tray install was easy using excellent instructions from pradopoint members. I applied lock-tight to stop things loosening up down the track.





I drilled the two holes using masking tape to stop slip and more to collect the debris, then applied more tectyl. When it came time to bolt the plate on to these holes I found the process pretty frustrating because the bolts were too short to catch. I had a longer bolt in the same diameter so I put this through one of the holes and tightened the nut down to pull everything together - this was enough to get the second one started on correct bolt, tightened. I then removed the long bolt and replaced with correct unit and with the other bolt holding the bits together was able to get the nut started and tighten this one up too.





I installed a distribution block in the rear to break-out the two pairs of 8 AWG cables I had run. This distribution box was about $45 online. I originally tried to get a name brand (Sea Systems) but they were $30 more and the purchasing process was a bit weird. This unit is Alzone from eBay or sidewinder (http://sidewinder.com.au/).



I ran three 12V plugs into the rear facia. They don't line up because I drilled the first hole before I realised that there's bits behind the facia that the plugs need to miss, such as the seat belt retractor...



To make the holes I used the bits from the plug to mark a circle and then drilled the hole, i worked the drill around until the hole matched the marks and tidied up with a stanely knife. The result was a little wonky but the plug covers the edges and makes the job look neat.



Having the crimpers (from sidewinder) made it simple to crimp the connectors for the rear distribution.



Crimping in the vice. Not so nice.



Crimp comes up strong and neat enough using the vice but I much prefer the proper crimpers now I have them.



I added shrink tube to cover the lugs as well as I could. In the end it gets a bit crowded with all the cables and fuses running to the Aux battery. I tried to reduce the cable bends as much as possible but it was a bit of a pain to locate the cables once the fuses went in - I stuffed them down the back of the aux battery as you can see. I recommend factoring the fuse placement earlier on in your planning.



I screwed a circuit breaker for the rear anderson into the side wall. Not too happy with the extra holes but I was feeling pressured to fit everything in and the job was running on. I couldn't find an inline fuse that matched the cable diameter - a manual reset circuit breaker might of been a better option and I may change it over later.

After crimping the anderson plug and shrink tubing it I found it a bit of a squeeze to get the connectors into the anderson housing - I need to do some testing now to make sure the connection is good.



From the rear distribution box to the interior plug sockets I grabbed some new cable (12 AWG) that would connect to yellow lugs. Finally some cheap cables! Once we cut them to length Nadine used the new crimpers to crimp the yellow lugs on, blades for the socket connection and round lugs to screw into the distribution box.



At one point during the install I was stumped because I was missing a socket size. Nadine said the last time we used it was to install some screening near the vege patch so I went back and sure enough it was still at work as a spacer in the screen.



Lucky to have her :wink:

[mcgonical Member Find all posts View Profile Close mcgonical]

Re: Percy - 2003 GX Love

Just finished the Digi Options + headrests install and will post some info about it here soon. My next project is the replacement drawers, now we have a fridge the original 2 drawer system + suspension lift made it a pain to see into the fridge. New design is to bring the fridge slide to floor level. Hopefully by the end of the weekend the new drawers will be well along - I plan to cheat and see if I can get the cuts done somewhere, maybe bunnings.

I downloaded RealCADD for the Mac and had a crack at getting the dimensions entered properly, hopefully all the mistakes are made on paper which would be a bit of a change to my usual make-it-up-as-I-go-along approach.



[UPDATE] Made a few refinements to the image, had a couple of errors in the dimensions list and had not left enough clearance for drawers + carpet. Fixed now.

[UPDATE 2] have completed the cuts and had to make some minor adjustments to the drawer heights so have modified the diagram to show the new measurements.

I've laid out another drawing in a cut list against a few 1200 x 2400 sheets of ply to figure out the most efficient (simplest) method to get all the pieces out.

Thinking of fixing the air compressor into the rear, looking for inspiration to:
http://www.pradopoint.com/viewtopic....ar+draw#p40996 and
http://www.4wdaction.com.au/forum/sh...ad.php?t=55703

Air hose is cheap on eBay and my compressor can come out of the draw space and into some of the under utilised area beside the drawer unit. Including a retracting hose would be cool but a.) it costs more than just coiling the hose, and b.) I suspect the unit would rattle too much.

[mcgonical Member Find all posts View Profile Close mcgonical]

Re: Percy - 2003 GX Love

Drawers are starting to come together, they're presently in the back of the car to verify fit, the fridge and slide is sitting in there without screws and the drawer facias are propped up on spacers - everything is looking good.

I completed the remainder of the cuts first (most were done by bunnings which made things much easier).



I had to cut-out a section in the top so that the fridge roof would open without sliding the fridge (a requirement from Nadine).



I usually stink at installing drawer runners and my theory is that crawling inside small spaces and getting the measurements correct is asking for trouble so this time I installed the drawer runners before assembling the rest of the pieces.



As it turns out I put the drawer runners on the wrong side of the uprights ops: I removed them all, re-measured and installed using the same method on the correct side. All went together well from that point.

One draw sitting in the runner to check clearances, starting to get anxious.



I made a note of where the drawer runner screws went before screwing in the bottom of the drawer so that the screws didn't overlap. I chamfered the long edges of the drawers with a plane so that the runners fit flush.



I also had to cut down all the drawer sides to remove 10mm because inserting the drawer was prevented by the drawer above. Taking of the 10mm was easy on the table saw I just removed the runners and cut down the drawer (updated the diagram above to reflect the final measurements).

Will add all the final screws tomorrow and begin work to cover them in carpet. Looks like I might be able to fit water jerry's beside the drawers and behind the fridge slide. Am aiming to install the air compressor down one side. I'll post some more photos as work progresses. The old drawers went up on ebay today, hopefully will get enough from them to cover the costs of this new set.

[samo Addicted PP Member Find all posts View Profile Close samo]

Re: Percy - 2003 GX Love

looks like some has been keeping the local bunnings in business, look foward to seeing the finished product, all this extra weight you will need a lift kit in soon. :wink: cheers samo

[mcgonical Member Find all posts View Profile Close mcgonical]

Re: Percy - 2003 GX Love

Work on the drawers is moving forward.

Test fitting in the car.



Clearance to the barrier is tight. I ended up cutting a section out of the end of the top drawer.



Plan for the bottom drawer is to make a cutting board to fit across it - utensils and chopping drawer.



Carpet gluing under way.



Dog encroaching onto working space.



Carpet in the drawers as well. Helps keep things quiet.



Getting near the end of the carpeting. Some of the angles in this drawer design meant we had to get creative in the carpet cutting and as you can see we used masking tape to hold it in place while the glue set.



Since the drawers are so tall I figured reinforcing the corners to 90 would help keep things in place. I thought about sheeting across the back of the drawers for rigidity but this would interfere with the drawers and inhibit use of the space behind the fridge (I plan to carry a jerry can of water there).

[mcgonical Member Find all posts View Profile Close mcgonical]

Re: Percy - 2003 GX Love

Drawers fitted into car now. We'll remove that feature staple once the glue is set



I think they're looking pretty good. A bit of fine tuning to the runners eliminated some of the play and now they're fairly quiet over speed bumps - being full of gear helps too. Will also be adding a complete set of locks, mostly to stop the drawers from running out when the car is parked on a hill.

[mcgonical Member Find all posts View Profile Close mcgonical]

Re: Percy - 2003 GX Love

Next big development in the build-up is water storage. I haven't been able to find really clear instructions on how this should all fit together. There's a pretty good LCOOL article but everything is installed so it's hard to see the detail. Here's a shot of the test bed so far:



I figure it's best to get the entire set-up working outside the car to make sure there's no leaks. The pump is from eBay ($50) and automatically activates when there's a pressure drop (pulling the trigger on the hose). I hooked it up to the car battery and it works pretty well. The next step is to remove the cargo barrier and install the jerry cans around the drawer unit and do some more testing.

The jerries have little breathers to prevent vacuum problems and I've used irrigation pieces to link the tanks - not sure if this will lead to plastic taste in the system. I'll need another hose connector for filling the tanks from the top on one. I plan to use a simple syphon system to completely empty the jerries after a trip.

The pretty orange clamps are going to go as well, they provide too much leverage when in the car to cause problems and they don't tighten-up as well as a simpler screw-driver style clamp.

[mcgonical Member Find all posts View Profile Close mcgonical]

Re: Percy - 2003 GX Love

The new baby has arrived, our Ultimate camper trailer. We took it down to Nelligen on the weekend to give it a try, so far so good.



We took it for a drive down to Depot beach and then the back tracks on return to Nelligen.



Camping for the night was comfortable - we found out we're kitchen outside people but it's nice to have an inside kitchen if it's needed (especially down here in Canberra). The ARB fluro lights make life easier, I brought one before we picked up the camper and the Ultimate mob through another one in with the purchase.