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Bobbed and caged RRC called The "JWH"


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Well this is gonna be quite a long story, but for those that bare the read, this should be worth your time.

First off a quick picture of the Rangie in mention as I got it Friday:

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Now the story behind it.

Many moons ago in Denmark the Danish Toyota club called Toyota4WD was one of the very few clubs allowing members to run cars at their events with no license plates etc.

This of course drew a vast crowd as most people back then couldn't afford more than one car, so to destroy it every weekend, when you had to use it Monday wasn't always fun. But this way you could take a rusted out 4x4 and go have some fun with a minimal budget.

Lots of cool cars were created, such as Aage's "Mokken" and a heap of other totally custom an innovative, yet budget-ish offroaders.

But there was a flipside to it as well. More and more people would show up in downright dangerous 4x4's with no or little protection, and the fear of a serious injury became very apparent.

So a safety regulation was launched that really forced people to build much safer cars, and though it would scare some people away at the beginning it has proven successful ever since.

So when these regulations were introduced, some of the people behind it decided to build a brand new race-car that would be an example as to how it could be done. The Toyota4WD club has never been purely about Toyota's, and back then RRC's, as now, provide a really competitive foundation for a race-car, so that's what they built.

And that very car is the one I now have! Having passed the inspection for the Toyota4WD club every year for over a decade, she is still going strong! Not least thanks to the owner of it for most of it's life whom has really kept it in top nick. There is very little rust to be found in the body and none in the chassis.

So by all means a great racer, well build and thought-out, and well maintained. And the nickname "JWH" simply is the initials of the owner who took such good care of it.

Now that I have my greasy hands on it, I think it deserves an update. So have started by fixing various odds and ends, and generally gone through everything and removed some of all the stuff that I didn't like or need on it. It is a race-car, so keeping the weight down is quite important.

As of now it's still running the stock axles, but have ordered Ashcroft airlocker and axles for the front end, and planning on running a welded and shaved Sal's in the rear.

Engine-wise it has a healthy SD1 engine mated to the ever faithful LT95, so power is adequate and gearbox is simple and reliable.

well enough chat for now, here are the pics of it as it sits now after my tidy-up and personalizing touches:
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And lastly a little flex-pic, just because you have to :P

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Slowly getting there:

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Sadly the shafts were send in a different parcel, and that wasn't delivered today of course :( So cannot put the whole thing back together this weekend :(

But have put in the diff, and this just means that for the first time I'll actually have the locker completely connected before I get to drive it! :D on all other occasions I have somehow managed to be a bit lazy with the wiring and routing of airtube, so I'd drive it for a little while before hooking up the locker :rolleyes:

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Went for a small testdrive on the fields of my neighbourhood today, and decided to do a little walk-around video of the thing, much easier to visualize when you have a video rather than just pictures. Might be doing this in the future with my other toys as well.

Not the most interesting of films, but if you're curious I think its worth a look:

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Well been doing different stuff the Rangie this weekend.

First I replaced the muffler with a new one as quite a big hole had developed in the one fitted! :D

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Then I decided to remove the homebrewed liftspacers that was fitted, as a quick testdrive showed that it was so 'dangly' with the high COG and softish springs, it would drive on 3 wheels when cornering hard! And I love my 4x4s to be low, as it gives soo much better handling. Only downside is that you get hung up more on the belly, but I can live with that, rather this than tipping over all the time!

These are the 90mm spacers that was fitted (yes 90mms!)

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And how she sits now:

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Might've looked a bit meaner before, but I could immediately feel the difference on the handling! So well worth it IMO

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I wish I had your energy and drive Soren, keep em coming mate. I agree with your 'keep em low and stable principal', but just for kicks and giggles, have you ever thought about fitting say 6'' stroke hydraulic rams between the spring towers and the tops of the coil springs, for overcoming those high centre situations? Granted, it does add weight, and gets away from the K.I.S.S theme.

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Couple of questions... what tyres are they, and what sort of roof has it got, I assume polycarb or something?

The tyres are Goodyear Suregrip's, as used by the Swedish military for quite some years.. Fitted to the Volvo C303, amongst others. They have a great size for stockish Land Rovers at 285/80-16". Downside is they are too had so letting air out doesn't help as much as say on BFG's The sidewalls I've cut a bit myself so they are more aggressive than standard.

Nope the roof is nothing fancier than a piece of 3mm sheetmetal, with a couple of rolled lines in the middle for strength, and then contoured to fit the cage.

I wish I had your energy and drive Soren, keep em coming mate. I agree with your 'keep em low and stable principal', but just for kicks and giggles, have you ever thought about fitting say 6'' stroke hydraulic rams between the spring towers and the tops of the coil springs, for overcoming those high centre situations? Granted, it does add weight, and gets away from the K.I.S.S theme.

Thanks Bill, well I suppose most of my drive an energy comes down to my age, at 28 years I'm a mere boy compared to some of you guys :D And hey it's always fun when you get something new to mess with ;)

Yeah stability really is key if you like long climbs, I really learned that when I had the Jeep Cherokee, by keeping it low I could hammer it onto (almost) any incline without any fuzz, but again the 100"+ wheelbase contributes a lot to this as well.

Yeah that is actually quite a good idea, and I've seen it done on numerous Scandinavian rock crawlers, also gives much more articulation. I do think it could be done reasonably in the K.I.S.S. spirit, with the failsafe just being all rams retracted so you have standard suspension. Furthermore hydraulics are known to be quite reliable.

I don't however really have good access to or sources for hydraulics so I've never gotten to built it. But someday maybe :)

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No problem mate :)

Today I fitted a winch to the front, in all honesty having a warn 8000 at each end of this car is way overkill, I don't use it that much as I'll probably never compete in this car, only play days. But anyways, there was already a Warn 8000 in the back when I got the car, and I had another one laying around, so why on earth not fit it? it doesn't do anything good when lying on the floor that's for sure!

Now I know the mounting I've made is somewhat unorthodox, BUT I really really love the look of the front grille etc on the old rangies so didn't feel like molesting it. Therefore the winch was mounted upside down, tucked in under the bumper:

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Because the wire now has to run from the topside of the drum, a reinforcement was needed towards the topside of the winch housings, this was then made integrated with the mount for the fairlead:

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Ideally I will fit a sliding cast-iron type fairlead so it doesn't stick out as far, but for now this is good (it's what I had :D)

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Ohh and a little extra treat! :) Just bought the Lumia 925 and asked my brother if he would be so kind as to thrash my Rangie while I filmed it, he weirdly agreed to take the job, wonder why :D So here's a little vid for you, notice in the last part that with a bit of finesse he manages to get the stuck in a way that he was able to use the front locker, not that easy when the rear diff is welded. And lastly sorry for the wind noise, it is quite windy today:

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Got her loaded up today, ready for the weekend! Gonna be busy all the way till Friday where we leave, so had to do it today.

Going to be my first time out in it with proper offroading, so looking forward! Have actually been copiloting it a couple of years ago, but not the same as driving it clearly! :D

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  • 3 weeks later...

Finally it was time today, to get this a bit more attention. Not going to be using it before week 42, so was in no rush. It is however nice to be able to check things of the list :)

First job was to remove the battery that was fitted in the bed. This battery had no connection to the one in the engine bay, and so was not charged by the vehicle. It was only there to power the rear winch, but having to rely on it being fully charged all the time is a real pity, and frankly it was just unnecessary weight sitting there. So removed it and ran a 35# cable from the battery disconnect at the battery, all the way back to the winch.

Next was a bit of TLC, the 90mm spacer blocks that were used previously to raise the suspension, had been accompanied by welding on new mounting tabs for the rear shocks, this proved to be quite a problem when going back to a 2" lift. The shocks would simply bottom out only a couple of inches below rideheight. Providing a really harsh ride. So fitted some shorter shocks today. Then I changed all the brake pads because the old ones were glazed and rusty. And finally I fitted some 30mm spacers that I'd just acquired, allowing me to run my Krawlers on the wheels which they are currently fitted. Meaning I can swap them between the 80" and this without too much hassle.

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  • 3 weeks later...

A bit of an update on this.

As the next event I'm going to, is going to be a week of offroading in the Rangie, I've fitted the Krawlers to it and trimmed the arches to clear them.

So basically it's ready.

But just got hold of a set of cut-down RRC doors that I would like to fit, as I don't particularly like having a great big hole in the body line where I get hung up on roots, trees etc.

But fitting doors to it is not that straight forward as the guys who build it have made some quite tall sills to strengthen the body, which I think is a great idea, but then there is no room for the doors. They've also deleted the mounting holes for the hinges on the pillar. So what to do?.. Well I cut down the door until it fitted and jammed it in there, just to find that it is actually quite easy to crawl/slide over, so am probably just going to weld it in there! No point in making such a small door open, hard to make the door strong, and when welded to the body it will strengthen both the door and body as they become one unit. So what do you guys think?

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I used to envy the deep sills on Jeeps, LandCruisers etc for keeping the body rigid ,and loose stuff on the floor from rolling out on the ground when I open the doors. Then I did a similar mod on my old 80'' back in the day. Well, maybe I'm just clumsy that way, but more often than not when offroad, I seemed to almost always park over hollows in the ground, which makes getting in and out of the truck a very physically strenuous proposition.

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A bit of Redneck -tech coming your way.

As I decided to weld in the doors, being able to remove the steering-wheel will immensely increase the comfort of getting in and out. But being to cheap to buy one of those quick-release adapters I did it only using a grinder and a welder:

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Simply ground down the taper a bit on the column and removed some of the thread for the nut, and made it a fly-nut easy as pie!

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  • 5 weeks later...

Time for a little update.

Have always enjoyed being able to take off the windshield for offroading when the weather is playing nice, makes the whole experience much more intense, plus you can better hear what is going on around you. So decided to make it removable on this Rangie as well. Not the prettiest of jobs, but it works and it sure din't take long to do!

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And with the windshield, two wing-nuts and a strap and the sky is open!

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Furthermore I decided to make the brake lights work, it really isn't nice to drive behind someone without them! Even though it's just a toy.

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The previous owner had lowered the shockturrets quite a lot because of the raised suspension. This meant that the shocks were continuously bottoming out if you went a bit fast. So this were replaced with factory ones:

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And another small, but extremely nice addition, was a cable to pull back the cut-off switch to its 'on' position. Whenever I had turned it off via the cable on the inside of the cabin, when storing it, to avoid potential fire or whatever, I had to open the bonnet to turn it back on. Problem easily solved with an old Choke cable:

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That's it for now!

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A bit of an update. The ignition switch has been 'twitchy' all the time I've owned this thing, and it has become worse and worse. Resulting in annoying stalls every now and again. So today it was swapped for a much simpler design with a Rocker switch and a Push button for starting:

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About 7£ worth in the local 'Biltema' :D

Then it was time to remove the rear axle completely to allow room for a Salisbury which is on its way to me. Should prove much stronger and more reliable. Further I had destroyed the taper for the A-arm ball joint completely, so we ended up welding the nut on so I could keep wheeling. Therefore a new one was fitted too:

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And don't worry I wasn't under the car when it sat like that. Had loosened everything and removed the prop, shocks, and brake line before driving it out of the garage. Then it was just a five minute job to take off the axle.

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