Heep goes OZmogler (Soon)

[Wooders]

Originally Posted by sir_camel

If your stretching it why dont you comp cut the rear and have the rear diff/tyre right at the back for a killer departure angle. Will give you more wheelbase too.

Three little words need to be carefully considered....
Backseat, Fuel & Tank

Originally Posted by Ben

If you're worried about height I assume you plan to keep this legal? How is that possible? Are you providing sexual favours to your engineer?

Yes I very much intend to keep it legal - otherwise I'd just try building a buggy... I have already given the engineer sexual favours...ops I mean a brief on the plan - But at the end of the day I want to keep it road legal and I'm trying to consider as many issues as possible & look for solutions/work arounds......a looong way to go yet.

Originally Posted by wendle

Do you have your axles yet?
your wheelbase will end up quite long, bearing in mind the pinions are about 480mm long from the axle centre to the conversion flange.
you will most definitely want to lift the spring mounts up on the chassis, make sure you tie all your cagework into the chassis as well, otherwise all that unsprung weight will fatigue the framerails real quick.
i made my own wheels, was the only way to get the track reasonably narrow without using the stock mog 20"s.
are you narrowing the axles or leaving them? disc brakes?

Yes I already have the axles - infact they've been waiting for me to make time for about 4 months now
Ideally I'd like the wheelbase just over 100" - but I'm not putting too much focus on that yet as I will probably not finalise that decision untill I can play with the axles under it.
The plan is to remove the stock cage & rebuild it - and yes tie it to the chassis.
Inline with keeping it road legal - the plan is to keep the mog drum brakes front & rear with standard mog rims. This was the engineers preference as it does not change the offset or track of the diffs. The other thought with the drums was, if drums stop a 5ton unimog they should bearly notice my little TJ Although I will need to be aware of portal box heat etc.....

Oh yeah the other thing I'm toying with (in my mind) is chopping the windscreen to also lower the roof height ....

[Jimmyb]

Hmm if only you could do pinion brake conversion instead. The major prob with the drums is the weight. You would prob also need to look at raising the front guards. Your talking 4" on the air bags, what about the lift you are gaininf from the mog diffs?

Why not just bastardise the vehicle as a pure offroad vehicle, but keep rego but not drive on the road llike many of the other people are doing?

[TJ]

IIRC the mog rover only as 2" lift... and i don't see new laws being retrospective anyway.
anywho great project wooders, i wish you all the best and i will follow closely!!

[maddog]

100" is roughly the wheelbase of my rig, with the 38.5's on it seems to be a reasonable wheelbase. What size will your final tyre size be, on a 20" rim? 40" tyres?

If you're going to stretch the wheelbase to 100", what are you going to do with the fuel tank? Complete new system, or relocation of existing system? If you're putting a new tank in, be aware that the factory units use a pressure regulated pump (read: no return line), so your new system will need to include a return line off the fuel rail.

Are you running the tie rod at the factory location (rear I think on mogs)? Or are you going to convert it around to the front to allow you to run straight lower long arms? The problem with a rear running tie rod is that it gets in the way of your lower arms.

I'm assuming you plan to run the tyres completely outside the body of the vehicle, which will save you some of the body chopping at the back end that I experienced. You'll need to consider your front and rear bars (and flares) to achieve enough clearance under flex.

Given you're running the vehicle so low, do you have any plans to raise any of the undercarriage, or build some sort of smooth surface so your entire underbody can slide over obstacles?

How are you dealing with the front drive shaft given that the front diff centre appears to be centred? Will you be relocating the diff centre at all?

Just dumping out all the ideas that come to the top of my head thinking back on my project. I'll keep dumping as I think of more.

Should be a great project though

[Ben]

Mmmm Moggler...

[Wooders]

The targeted size of tyres is a 40x13.5….which in reality will be bugger all bigger than your 38.5’s Ben.
Fuel tank – undecided. The plan I have in my mind is to chop off the rear upper shock mounts and locate them out board of the chassis. this will give me a bit more room to work with. Then planning to cut & lift the rear floor by about 2-3” (the less the better). Then either squeeze in the stocker – or get a custom tank made. But another goal is to retain the rear seat – just to make things easy for me huh
But yes I am aware that fuel lines will be an “issue”.

Steering – at this stage the front will remain full manual – although later in the rear I do plan to go hydro, and may fit an assist in the front. I am considering putting the tie rod in front of the diff BUT this would mean moving the diff a fair way forward due to the steering box (not a huge issue if I’m rebuilding the chassis mounts for the springs & shockies).

With the mog diffs at full width, the WMS will be about 4½” wider on either side. Running standard mog rims should pull the width in a bit….but yes it will be w-i-d-e. so the current flares will come off and I’ll be going tube fenders front & rear. Aesthetically, I’d like to have standard looking lines to the tube bends – but time will tell how successful that is.

I have no problem cutting body work – in fact I am expecting to do a quite a lot of body work:
Think fuel tank relocation,
Removal of the BL, but lifting engine/tcase will mean a bit of transmission tunnel work,
Wheel-well openings for the tyres,
Possibly the bonnet to clear the raised engine,
Tube fender cutting,
etc……….

As for the undercarriage – initially I’m going to try and retain the RE cross-member – but will ditch it if it won’t work. If it comes out, then yes I definitely would like a nice big flat skid fitted up – maybe with some of that cutting board stuff garnishing it
The mog diffs are not centred, but not as wide as the current centre. This is part of the reason I’ll be looking at a 2” MML. I do not want to modify the diffs.

As for the overall height well I haven’t finalised my calculations yet but ROUGHLY:

Standard soft-top TJ is 1782mm Plus the allowed 150mm = 1932mm target.
The mog diffs along will give 152mm lift.
I currently have a 2” BL – which will be removed (ie will not be factored in).
My airbags are design to operate comfortably at 3.5” lift (min) or 90mm.
If I relocate the mounts I hope to negate the airbag lift height.

So measuring from a hardtop clearance (ie using a Bikini) we start with 1748mm
Add the diffs & we get 1900mm
Cheat & lower the bags from road height and we’ve dropped upto another 60mm.
In theory that means I could “cheat” and get to 37” tyres and have the roof at only 1926mm
Chop the windscreen and we get further under that “limit”.
or just fit a set of nice low profiles

Sounding doable?

[sir_camel]

I reckon it sounds awesome Dave, but i reckon your TJ is going to be off the road for the whole year.