- Edited
Gday all,
Thought i'd put a post up of the volvo we've just built over the last few weekends in the shed!
The car started off when I bought it super cheap with rego from some herb farm out in the sticks with a "blown auto trans" with plans to straight away do an engine conversion. I was thinking 2JZ at the time as I have one in my R32 and it is brilliant but when my mate offered me this 1UZ super cheap I couldn't say no and after watching vids of LOLVO thought it was a great idea..
The blown auto turned out to be a split tranny cooler pipe so we dodged it up, cut the springs and drove it around for 6 months as a bit of a pub bus with the seven seater haha. After wards it got a hydro handbrake and a heap of rear tyre pressure for some sliding around my mates land and it was great fun, these things have got heaps of lock stock!
Anyway a few weekends ago we pulled the ol' faithful B230F out and installed a 1UZFE and 4 speed auto from a Lexus LS400 Celsior.
Wish I'd have taken more photos of our build to post up now!
Build details as I have pretty much no photos:
We used the stock front sump from the celsior and decided to sit the engine a little further forward to save drastic modifications, as a result of this the engine mounts were not going to work off the cross member and would probably be a little flimsy anyway. We left the cross member alone and my mate Ben that doubles as a damn good fabricator welded some big duty box mounts straight to the chassis rails, despite this probably being enough we then strengthened them by welding plates into the strut towers and running some solid bar from the mounts to strut towers. Rubbers were V8 landrover mounts as they are super simple and we have used them before in conversions with good success.
This got the motor sitting in place and we installed some block hugger manifolds that fit OK although the exit pipe on the drivers side was hard up against the rubber part of the steering column, we removed the column and cut the bulky section out and replaced it with straight tube of the same size.
Ben then modified the stock auto gearbox cross member by cutting out the middle pointed section and welding back in some flat bar steel that came forward about 150mm, we then drilled out the flat bar to accept the 4 studs from the factory lexus auto rubber mount.
Once the box was mounted we cut the volvo tailshaft just forward of the centre bearing and welded the lexus front half on accordingly and bolted on to the box and back to the diff.
Biggest issue with using the lexus auto was the shifter linkage was on the drivers side rather than the volvos passenger side links - we removed the stock shifter and modified it to point out the drivers side (a lot harder than it sounds) cut up the lexus linkage from shifter to box and welded it to the right length/angle. A custom array of bolt and nuts was used to fix it all together and allow pivoting. It works well for now but for whatever reason it wont click into low gear which we will suss out later.
The wiring was surprisingly easy, the Toyota/Lexus loom only requires power to a few points to power the loom and sensors. Once it cranked and fired I wired the alternator up and connected to the volvo charge light, then connected the oil sensor to the volvo light and the water temp gauge as well - it works OK just reads high at operating temp - eventually ill go aftermarket or weld the factory volvo in a pipe between the top rad hose or something!
The exhaust was 2 and a quarter from the manifolds back running right back through the gear box cross member (it has cutout U sections like it was meant to be) then 2 into 1 connecting back to the last two volvo mufflers at the diff. We spent a while getting it tucked right up as the wagon sits on mudflaps because ben cut out too many coils... but with a small pipe diameter and the factory mufflers at the back its super quiet and will be good for surprising falcodores :p
We then moved the factory radiator back about 75mm by bolting in some alloy U brackets with some rubber insulation to the lower support and cutting out a part of the top rad support tray thing, as this sat the radiator higher we had to modify the factory volvo top supports as well. To finish off cooling we got some new rad hoses and stretched them onto the 1UZ (the outlets are slightly bigger) and installed a 15" thermo on the engine side of the rad. Heater hoses hooked up very easily as well (1uz is straight off the back of the heads) We used the volvo header tank with some fresh hoses.
We had our hydraulics guy come by and wack together a line from PS pump on the 1UZ to feed fitting on the volvo rack - as the 1U pump sits just above the rack it was only short, the factory return or low pressure line squeezed straight onto the 1U reservoir!
Intake pipe is a simple 90 to 3" pipe with IACV fitting then AFM and pod sitting down behind the DS headlight.
I'm sure there is more that i will add later and feel free to ask any questions!
We welded the diff for some strength and better skids and road tested it a few days ago - we've done a good 5 or 600 ks and it drives factory - very happy with it! nice and fast!
Will put pics up ASAP.
Thought i'd put a post up of the volvo we've just built over the last few weekends in the shed!
The car started off when I bought it super cheap with rego from some herb farm out in the sticks with a "blown auto trans" with plans to straight away do an engine conversion. I was thinking 2JZ at the time as I have one in my R32 and it is brilliant but when my mate offered me this 1UZ super cheap I couldn't say no and after watching vids of LOLVO thought it was a great idea..
The blown auto turned out to be a split tranny cooler pipe so we dodged it up, cut the springs and drove it around for 6 months as a bit of a pub bus with the seven seater haha. After wards it got a hydro handbrake and a heap of rear tyre pressure for some sliding around my mates land and it was great fun, these things have got heaps of lock stock!
Anyway a few weekends ago we pulled the ol' faithful B230F out and installed a 1UZFE and 4 speed auto from a Lexus LS400 Celsior.
Wish I'd have taken more photos of our build to post up now!
Build details as I have pretty much no photos:
We used the stock front sump from the celsior and decided to sit the engine a little further forward to save drastic modifications, as a result of this the engine mounts were not going to work off the cross member and would probably be a little flimsy anyway. We left the cross member alone and my mate Ben that doubles as a damn good fabricator welded some big duty box mounts straight to the chassis rails, despite this probably being enough we then strengthened them by welding plates into the strut towers and running some solid bar from the mounts to strut towers. Rubbers were V8 landrover mounts as they are super simple and we have used them before in conversions with good success.
This got the motor sitting in place and we installed some block hugger manifolds that fit OK although the exit pipe on the drivers side was hard up against the rubber part of the steering column, we removed the column and cut the bulky section out and replaced it with straight tube of the same size.
Ben then modified the stock auto gearbox cross member by cutting out the middle pointed section and welding back in some flat bar steel that came forward about 150mm, we then drilled out the flat bar to accept the 4 studs from the factory lexus auto rubber mount.
Once the box was mounted we cut the volvo tailshaft just forward of the centre bearing and welded the lexus front half on accordingly and bolted on to the box and back to the diff.
Biggest issue with using the lexus auto was the shifter linkage was on the drivers side rather than the volvos passenger side links - we removed the stock shifter and modified it to point out the drivers side (a lot harder than it sounds) cut up the lexus linkage from shifter to box and welded it to the right length/angle. A custom array of bolt and nuts was used to fix it all together and allow pivoting. It works well for now but for whatever reason it wont click into low gear which we will suss out later.
The wiring was surprisingly easy, the Toyota/Lexus loom only requires power to a few points to power the loom and sensors. Once it cranked and fired I wired the alternator up and connected to the volvo charge light, then connected the oil sensor to the volvo light and the water temp gauge as well - it works OK just reads high at operating temp - eventually ill go aftermarket or weld the factory volvo in a pipe between the top rad hose or something!
The exhaust was 2 and a quarter from the manifolds back running right back through the gear box cross member (it has cutout U sections like it was meant to be) then 2 into 1 connecting back to the last two volvo mufflers at the diff. We spent a while getting it tucked right up as the wagon sits on mudflaps because ben cut out too many coils... but with a small pipe diameter and the factory mufflers at the back its super quiet and will be good for surprising falcodores :p
We then moved the factory radiator back about 75mm by bolting in some alloy U brackets with some rubber insulation to the lower support and cutting out a part of the top rad support tray thing, as this sat the radiator higher we had to modify the factory volvo top supports as well. To finish off cooling we got some new rad hoses and stretched them onto the 1UZ (the outlets are slightly bigger) and installed a 15" thermo on the engine side of the rad. Heater hoses hooked up very easily as well (1uz is straight off the back of the heads) We used the volvo header tank with some fresh hoses.
We had our hydraulics guy come by and wack together a line from PS pump on the 1UZ to feed fitting on the volvo rack - as the 1U pump sits just above the rack it was only short, the factory return or low pressure line squeezed straight onto the 1U reservoir!
Intake pipe is a simple 90 to 3" pipe with IACV fitting then AFM and pod sitting down behind the DS headlight.
I'm sure there is more that i will add later and feel free to ask any questions!
We welded the diff for some strength and better skids and road tested it a few days ago - we've done a good 5 or 600 ks and it drives factory - very happy with it! nice and fast!
Will put pics up ASAP.
