Aaron’s Project

The engine cho­sen is the Toyota/Lexus quad-cam 4.0L V8. It is com­mon­ly found in Soar­ers (or SC400’s).

It is all alloy and puts out between 180kW — 200kW depend­ing on what year the engine is.

The engine fea­tures a forged steel crank, six-bolt mains, plus a webbed and cross-bolt­ed block. This is work­ing with the quad-over­head cams with 4 valves per cylinder.

The 1UZ is said to have one of the strongest bot­tem ends out of any mass pro­duced engine ever.

I decid­ed on this engine for a cou­ple of rea­sons, the main one.…it was some­thing dif­fer­ent that as far as i knew, had nev­er been done before. Already own­ing a VN Com­modore i did­n’t real­ly want ANOTHER 3.8L V6 (as good as they are!) and when it com­pares to 5.0L or 5.7L Hold­en V8 it real­ly is a much bet­ter engine…being much more refined and smooth as well as hav­ing PLENTY of potential.

After search­ing for an engine for almost two months, one was final­ly pur­chased in the form of a Toy­ota Crown half-cut.

This is basi­cal­ly a car that has been chopped in half with ever­thing under the bon­net untouched. This means it comes with a gear­box, as well as the wiring loom, as well as a whole lot­ta point­less stuff you don’t need!

The half-cut was picked up late Feb­ru­ary and has since been stripped of pret­ty much every­thing that is not part of the engine/gearbox/loom.

April 2003 ~

okay, it is almost the end of April, time for anoth­er update!

this is what the FJ looks like at the moment, been like this for a while… have got­ten a full chas­sis kit from the Rod Shop and a HR-front-end that are both wait­ing to be put in.

so yep, that is what the FJ is look­ing like, not much at all been hap­pen­ing to it, all work has been focused on the engine/trans for now.

like a said before, i’ve got­ten a heap of stuff from the Rod Shop, full chas­sis kit, engine mounts, trans­mis­sion tun­nel, got a HR front-end mod­i­fied, and got a steer­ing rack.

So once we get the engine/tranny ready we can get the FJ ready to hope­ful­ly pop the engine straight in! Still got a few things to look into

• * the actu­al steer­ing (LH Torana etc) that we’re going to use
• * what brakes we’re gonna put on front AND back
• * fuel system
• * diff

so hope­ful­ly the engine will fit in with no probs so we can move onto these!

Here’s how the half-cut is looking…it is pret­ty much just the engine/gear­box/and-a-whole-heap-of-loom left.

most of the wiring is dis­con­nect­ed from the engine/gearbox, so they are almost ready to pull out! 

the next steps are to get the engine/tranny out of the half-cut, clean them up, take off any­thing that isn’t need­ed (like pow­er steering..that’s just extra weight!), get the FJ ready by putting in every­thing i men­tioned above, and hope­ful­ly look­ing into the loom a lit­tle more. More to come.

Sep­tem­ber 2004 ~

It seems win­ter is final­ly over and work can get back into gear.

Half a year since this site was last updat­ed! Seems like it was only not long ago. Not a great deal has been done, but here’s what has.

The whole engine bay and front-end area has been paint­ed to keep the rust away for good. Only the rest of the car to go! Will wait for the wiring until we do this though.

Colour of the car is still not 100{fb6b847a1d2dbb6efef2670033708e1917341aed592e89927bbc447ddf4795ae} decid­ed, but for now is look­ing like we will keep it this orig­i­nal colour as it makes life a lit­tle eas­i­er for now.

Will also make a nice sleep­er at a set of lights!!

Since no A/C or Pow­er Steer­ing is being used, i had to look around for an alter­na­tive belt set­up. With the orin­gal belt being about 3 meters long (over-reac­tion) i want­ed some­thing nice and neat looking.

End­ed up find­ing a ribbed ten­sion­er pul­ley (nor­mal­ly flat) which allows me to run a neat set­up in a sin­gle tri­an­gluler pattern.

A new diff has been ordered and put in as well. End­ed up going with the trusty Ford 9″ with 3.50:1 centre.

Brakes are ful­ly reco’d drums at the rear, run­ning Com­modore stud pat­tern. It’s only a sin­gle spin­ner… that way i only waste one tyre at a time.

Jan­u­ary 2007 ~

Car is pret­ty much com­plete. Unfor­tu­nate­ly just missed the Nation­als in Can­ber­ra, which would of been a good test for it get­ting up there and back.

Lots of work done over the past few months. Full twin 2″ exhaust sys­tem installed with a pipe exit­ing each side.

Brakes are ful­ly work­ing, includ­ing orig­i­nal hand­brake assem­bly. Indi­ca­tors have obvi­ous­ly been added to front and back of car.

Seats and seat­belts are also in the car. End­ed up going with a nice pair of AUFal­con buckets.

As you can see, there has yet to be a respray or any re-chroming done on the car, apart from sume basic patch up work.

Wheels for the time being are just 15″ Com­modore chas­er rims, which just fit over the 290mm brake set­up. Back ones had to have the rim reversed due to the short­er axle.

Seems to dri­ve not to bad in its cur­rent state on the lim­it­ed test­ing it has had. Runs nice a smooth and seems to like reving out as bit as well.

Should be vis­it­ing the engi­neers for a final check up over the next week or two.

Once that is done and car is signed off, next on the list will be to get a cen­tre con­sole made up and then fit­ting the CD play­er and speakers.

Will try to post a video or two soon.