75 Courier: Slow road to a fast "truck"

jimbob, I'm trying to avoid parting it out myself for now. Just dealing with the extras/non-essentials and hoping to sell the shell as mostly complete.

A buddy came over and we tried to crank it tonight. After rigging up the radiator and a couple of hoses, we threw a battery on before filling anything up with water. At first we got almost nothing, we'd have power inside but on cranking the battery would spark immediately and cut out. We jiggled some wires and looked around for a while, and then tried again and it cranked over. Didn't get it to actually catch (no fuel coming in and starting fluid wasn't cutting it) but I'm happy to know it at least isn't knocking or doing anything like that.

Oil pan is here! A little beat up but I had to have a front sump pan to clear the crossmember. Next will be ordering the oil pickup for the front sump pan; luckily rockAuto still has them.

Hoping to pour some fuel into the fuel rail and at least hear a minute of runtime next week.

Well I had decided I would be going to the junkyard this weekend to pull a fuel pump to at least have around to test with in the future, since the 4 psi one that's running the truck now will obviously not be able to keep up. While browsing the inventory at the local LKQ, I ran across an '82 Toyota pickup put on the lot the day before. I had read somewhere about some front end parts transferring over for the Courier be 5 lug so I grabbed the spindles and everything attached (40% off day). After hearing from one of the more experienced people on the facebook group, it looks like all I'll need to do is take the hubs and figure out an inner wheel bearing.

This will be especially useful if/when I run an 8.8 rear end. I do like the wheels I have now, but would love to be able to move into a staggered 16/17 setup and have more options for wheels than 6 lug allows (cheaply).

I've also been chipping away at labeling the wiring on the Merkur and getting the harness pulled. The engine has to be pulled and the shell sold by May 13th so I'm trying to work quickly (though really it should/would only take a single full day of work). ON that note, if anyone Greenville local wants to share their engine hoist for a day, I pay in beer and pizza

Doug

Great to see this getting back on track. Also, sweet setup with the five lugs/8.8. Gotta love well documented swaps.

Sweet! Nice Score.

In reply to wheelsmithy:

Hopefully I can leave this swap well documented as there's no information put there right now other than one guy who said he did it, haha. Still going to just have to hope the Toyota rotor will work with the calipers, as the diameter is a little bit bigger. Will be interesting. The 8.8" is at least well documented on cutting it down.

Chipping away one piece at a time, there's plenty to tackle and I'm doing my best to prepare for all of it but also pace myself. The budget is always the issue.

Edit: I'm also taking suggestions for 5x114.3 wheels I can start piercing together. Looking to keep a 16x8 (0 offset or close to it) front with a 17x9 (0 offset or lower) rear. I'm always looking on my own but suggestions always help diversify options

Not much to report in the last few weeks. Been driving it some but it burns some oil on startup and leaks coolant out the back of the head if I park on a hill . Popping in with some planning type questions that are a few months out from being realized.

What are my best options as far as driveshafts? What is the time/dollar range to have a custom one made, and would it be a complete waste for me to do in (the likely) case I do update the rear end later on?

The Courier has a hydraulic clutch setup and the T-5 I have is set up for cable clutch. I understand there are bellhousings to convert to Hydraulic, but not sure I'll be able to find one cheap. I do have an extra set of Courier pedals.

Does GRM suggest attempting to convert the truck to cable or try to fab a bracket to bolt on to T-5 and stay hydraulic? (I've driven cable clutch [98 mustang V6] as well and did enjoy the tighter clutch pedal)

For the Brake setup from above (where rotors bolt on to rear of hub), are there any easy or off the shelf upgrades (vented, etc)? I don't even know how to begin searching for that.

Wish me luck. Hoping to get the Engine out of the Merkur next week as I've got a few busy nights here this week and out of town this weekend. Any Greenville area guys with an engine hoist? Lol

classicJackets wrote: The Courier has a hydraulic clutch setup and the T-5 I have is set up for cable clutch. I understand there are bellhousings to convert to Hydraulic, but not sure I'll be able to find one cheap. I do have an extra set of Courier pedals.

there are plenty of DIY hydraulic T-5 conversions that people do, the e30/e36 guys who swap to 5.0's do it a lot and there is a toyota slave cylinder (i think from the pre-tacoma trucks) that can easily be made to work. just search the googlez

You will probably be able to buy the bellhousing you need for cheaper than piecing together a hydraulic conversion. You need the bellhousing from an '87 or '88 Thunderbird Turbo Coupe. Those were the factory hydraulic ones. A quick search shows this for $100 on Flee Bay right now:

Link to auction

Made some progress on the Merkur! Didn't take any pictures because progress isn't always that exciting. But I did get the exhaust off, drain the oil, and broke loose all the bolts mounted to the transmission. The radiator was never really attached, and the upper manifold is now removed as well. My hope is to be able to bolt twice on the exhaust side and intake side and leave both the exhaust manifold and lower intake on. We will see if that proves possible or not!

FYI: it's easier to drop the motor and trans out the bottom of the car.

![https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfa1/v/l/t1.0-9/12687787_562846923877656_3125365738095217713_n.jpg?oh=7ecd306f817067df824ed8170dd0ea99&oe=57A046F9] (https://scontent-lax3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xfa1/v/l/t1.0-9/12687787_562846923877656_3125365738095217713_n.jpg?oh=7ecd306f817067df824ed8170dd0ea99&oe=57A046F9)

In reply to GPz11:

Picture isn't working for me on my phone. I would love to try that but I don't have the resources in my apartment parking lot to make that happen, I don't think. Going to try and make do with what I've got!

Picture isn't working for me either. Shows up in the preview though.

Well, got the wiring harness pulled, the alternator and bracket off, and oil filter off tonight. Then it got too dark to see what was going on so I came in. "Should" be as easy as hooking it up and pulling it out tomorrow or Thursday after work.

Doug

The engine is out! It went surprisingly well today, and it probably only took about 15 minutes from the time the hoist was hooked up to having the engine free and clear!

Using the Yellow rope on the exhaust side freaked me out a little bit, but it's all I had and it worked out extremely well overall. The engine and the hoist are now comfortably sitting in the bed of the Courier awaiting the return trip to GA sometime in the next few weekends. Whoo!

Exciting day around here! My new (used) intercooler came in. Functional size of 21" wide X 5.5" tall and 2.5". It should tuck nicely behind the grille and leave enough room for the 90*'s back into the engine bay.

Secondarily, I ordered a cleanly done rotated and gutted upper intake from someone else. I will have to find a way to mount the alternator out of the way of the intake, but that shouldn't be too terrible. After that I'll be in business. I still need to jerry-rig a way to adapt the current throttle linkage to work with the cable receiver on the throttle body as well. Slow (pricey) steps forward.

(I did double check to confirm that it was the table that's warped and not the intake before springing for it)

Running power steering or AC? Folks have modified the AC bracket for an alternator on XR's. That'd move it down in front of the exhaust manifold

Not running power steering, and unforunately none of the engines I have included an AC bracket. I might end up doing the Ranger alternator bracket swap as that's supposed to make it easy.

OK, I'm sure we could dig up a bracket easily enough if you decide to go that way

Which kind of bracket? The AC bracket looks like an easy swap over if it's what googlefu brought up here:

You need the stock Merkur AC bracket.

Well, got the bench seat stripped out this morning and set a bucket seat in to see if it'll work out. It looks like it'll fit in there no problem, and it's a far enough forward seating position I might just mount the seat in place instead of putting it on a slider.

Astute observers will notice that the underdash A/C unit is gone, as is the heater core (that was bypassed anyway). It really opened up some space!

Anyway, it really opened up the floor to see what's going on with the rust.

Passenger floor

Driver's side:

Driver's from underneath:

I will have to try and start forming some patch panels for all this. I'm waiting to get my engine hoist back from a buddy so I can go ahead and pull the engine/trans, but remarkably I found a buyer in the Midwest who has family just a few miles from here, so I won't have to scrap everything. I'm in the process of trying to layout/diagram all the body wiring I'll need to keep as well. Having no interior makes that easier.

The stand alone engine harness from the XR4TI is the way to go.

I'm really liking this, I love that 2.3 turbo, i think its an underutilized engine.

But just for your info, those corrado seats are NOT Recaros. They're just the standard VW-produced steel-pan bucket seats. This isn't to say they aren't comfortable, but they are definitely not recaros.

Keep up the build, though.

and a lot of people put the head from a Ranger on too. Has a roller top end that can handle the RPMs a little better.