80 series landcruiser chassis extension

I suggest you get your approvals engineer involved before you cut steel.

Cheers,
Peter
OKA196 Motorhome.

TryTHIS Mob

Have you figured how long an extension your looking at I bought a GQ over 3 yrs ago with an 850mm ext with a 2.1 mtr tray on 33" tyres to do up for touring it's my every day driver as well. It's my ninth 4WD I done lots of hard stuff over the yrs so I have a fair idea of it's limitations it also has a very big turning circle. I have a 50mm lift kit but will be going to 100mm later on and 35" tyres I reckon a max of 450mm ext would be a good length depending on where your planning to go. I have a winch on the front and will be putting one on the rear later because I expect I will need it every now and then. The benefit of the twin cab is being able to easily fit long range fuel tank, water tank, air tank and tool boxes underneath . Great around town for picking up furniture ,going to the tip without needing a trailer. The only real downside besides mine being a bit to long for harder tracks I've checked with the motor registry and the GVM can't be upgraded on GQ's so the extension plus all the extra gear you can fit will bring your gvm up a fair bit so it's worth checking if your gvm can be upgraded.

Ken,

A company I used to work for had a number of 100 series wagons converted to dual cabs.

The one we got had either 300 or 500mm extension in chassis, and a tray about 2M x 2.1M. Was done by Creative Conversions in Brisbane. Tray by Steelware in Mt Isa.

Was an excellent vehicle for what we needed, carry 6 staff legally, 3 motorbikes and gear plus even a drum of Avgas. Conversion and cut and shut of chassis was excellent, but we had some fiddly things that cost us a few grand to put right.

Rear wiring was like a can of spaghetti, with much of the loom not required, and constant dramas with rear lights not working. $1,100 to have an auto sparky tidy it all up.

Filling rear tank was near impossible.......took nearly a day to get all the inlet pipes working properly.

With extra, short tail shaft, it had a centre bearing and don't know whether it was our road conditions, but renewing the centre bearing become an annual event. (Toyota Dyna centre brg - CB-10, FYI)

Rear springs weren't heavy enough at first, and we later changed to EXTRA heavy duty coils from TJM(made by King Springs) Due to weaker springs and bottoming out regularly(ever seen unsupervised teenagers driving on station roads???) we had the rear of chassis, a broken cross-member, repaired by local welder. Airbags were a failure!!!!!





If I were setting one of these up, would definitely exchange the rear tank for a 160L a/m tank. Also would fit the lightest tray available, so you weren't too close to GVM. That tray in pics is heavy but very strong, and the aforementioned teens couldn't kill it.

A turbo would also be a "must" for touring, as the 1HZ, on overtaking duties, is near suicidal. But back to these teens again, we went to town one day, teens in the above vehicle and myself in turbo ute. they were only a few minutes behind us.

And finally, the conversions without the chassis extension, were just people movers. There was bugger-all room in the tray by time you put a 200L drum and ONE motorbike in there.

Bob.