25/02/2024
As a few people already know, and have for a while, and the rest of you will have seen at the 4x4 Expo show today, we have been up to no good again. Prepare yourself for a long read if you’re interested. It’s a big project.! ☕️
After we broke our gearbox at the The Welsh one50 last year, what could be done to upgrade it and make it better? Now that we are driving the truck harder it feels like it is at its limit. The seed was planted that we should put an 8hp in it. The benefits, usability and smoothness of it is very appealing. But after some initial research and speaking to a few people it seemed out of reach. Very expensive and not really proven in the racing that we do. Only 2-3 people running it behind a td5, in road cars. The truck has been doing well as it was so we left it. But the idea never went away. 🤔
A few months later it’s October and constantly thinking how good it could be and seeing other people having problems with their 4hp-22, we really got some motivation for it. Someone had to bit the bullet and make it happen. Always interested in making cool stuff, trying new ideas I wasn’t going to be happy until I had done it. With Marcus Williams and José Amorim onboard and all for it we made a plan. 📈✏️
The biggest problem with this setup that put us off straight away when first looking into the possibility, was length. With the existing adapters using the BMWs gearbox it is much longer than an r380 setup or 300tdi auto. And even worst for us as we have a v8 gearbox with is 50mm shorter than an r380. So we needed to lose nearly 100mm to get it in. This was critical because the props are both the same length and the front prop on full droop is close to the belly. There was no way we were cutting the belly/ frame about and no way were we going to run a centre bearing. So we had to make it the same.
It’s been a long few months, so many headaches and problems that had to be solved but we did it. Lots of designing, machining and fabrication to make our own front and rear adapters, rear output shaft, gearbox mounts and other custom parts to make it work. However still using many standard parts, so spares are easy to source and keeps a lot of it the same. We are using discovery 4 8hp-70 which has made it all doable. The bell housing is much bigger with a bigger torque converter than the BMWs gearboxes and as it was designed for a transfer box originally, there are much better mounting options at the rear than the 2 wheel drive BMWs ones. We feel this is the best option to go for to retain the standard lt230 and make it a viable solution to just bolt straight in, without the additional cost and implications of changing transfer boxes or anything else. We have managed to make it the same length as an r380 by maximising everything we could. It not possible to make it any shorter and have grabbed every millimetre we can. It has still ended up longer than we wanted it in our case, but with a longer front output fl**ge it all works and fits as we wanted. After a very quick first drive before the show, already the shifter is so much nicer to use. Mission complete. ✅
Massive thanks to Mwmachines 4x4 who we have worked closely with from the start. Without him this definitely wouldn’t have happened. The support and help to get the standalone HTG system wired up, running and working. We will now continue to develop the setup with him, along side Td5 Inside / Performance Inside to see what it can do. 🙏🏻👨🏼💻
Massive thanks to Blackbird Industries James Ayre and Michael Brownie Brown obviously for the continued support as always. Your time, use of the workshop for whatever idea I come up with next. Help designing the front adapter and putting up with my endless annoying requests to make it how I want it. 👍🏼
We cannot wait to get out now very soon for some testing and see if it’s all worth it. 🐌💨
8hp the world….. 🌎😎
