1983 Patrol in the USA *lots of pictures*

Hello all.....Jorge Miguel Valadares invited me to come on over here and share my Patrol build up with you all.

I do not speak a single word of Portuguese so I will keep the chat to a minimum! I had some trouble registering to this forum because I don't speak your language, my user name even got messed up! Oh well here goes....


The 160 series Patrol was never sold in the USA. In fact we only got Patrols here in the USA between 1962-1969. Nissan has not sold a Patrol here since 1969! My Patrol was imported to the USA from Germany in about 1987 by the original German owner when he moved to the States. I found my Patrol for sale on the internet in about 2003, it was sitting in Southern California. The seller was the second owner and had purchased the truck from the original owner. It had been sitting for awhile in a field. The seller didn't know much about diesels and he thought the engine was finished. It smoked (white) badly and was very difficult to start. It also was loud! Since the seller was telling me the engine was bad I offered him half of his asking price for the truck. I slapped down $1500 and took the Patrol away! Everything was good on the truck besides the engine...it even had nearly no rust!

Specs:

1983 MQ (160) SWB Nissan Patrol
SD33 N/A diesel
stock 4spd
C200 diffs front and rear with 4.11 ratio
24 volt electricals

Here is what the Patrol looked like when I purchased it....



The Patrol was stock and had never been touched much in terms of modifications After awhile I worked on the truck and got it running better. The problems with the engine were mostly due to leaky fuel lines, dirty fuel filter, old bad diesel in the tank, bad glow plugs and the injectors needed to be rebuilt. I did all this work and got the Patrol running pretty good! At this point I put some new tires and rims on the truck and started using it more....

I then wanted to start making the Patrol better! So I purchased an ARB locker for the front diff. I also purchased original Nissan PTO winches out of New Zealand. I purchased a 5spd transmission out of New Zealand too. While I was rounding up parts we began to work on the truck....









we wanted the PTO winch to sit as far back as possible. This meant we had to change the steering in paticular get rid of the relay set up in the steering.

I used the Patrol like this for about a year. It was better but not even close to what I wanted. So I bought an H233 rear diff in Australia and had it converted to disc brakes. We also fitted 4.6 gears in both diffs. And fit the ARB lockers both front and rear.




At this point I decided time to fit the 5spd transmission and time to get serious about the suspension! So the leaf spring suspension was cut off the truck. We went with a set of 12" Fox air shocks. The front end was 3-linked with a panhard, the rear we did a triangulated 4-link on. The wheelbase was stretched from the stock 93" to 106". We fitted some 35" Maxxis Creepies and did some other things....

To do this obviously required a lot of cutting, welding and fabrication work.






We fitted a Excedy Safari Tuff clutch from a 1999 TD42 Y61 Patrol, believe it or not this clutch fitsd the SD33T flywheel, all you need to do is redrill the flywheel to suit t!



A new fuel cell was built and fitted to the bed in order to make room for the new 4-linked rear suspension



I broke the stock rubber sandwich tranny mounts pretty fast, a weak design. So we fabbed up some new bomber tranny mounts....



A skid was also fitted to the front diff to protect it....

The Patrol was getting better....






but it was still not the truck I wanted. So after about another year of using it like this we started in on the next round of mods....

I wanted to replace the SD33 N/A with a better engine but I also wanted to keep it diesel and Nissan. After looking into options like a TD42 I decided to simply stay witht he SD33 but to get a factory turbo block and build that up. So I purchased a rusty beach truck in Asutralia that had the factory SD33T engine....




I hired a friend in Australia, Yuri4x4, to do the engine build up for me....











The engine is still being built but here is what we have gone for with it....

Large front mount intercooler
Custom aluminum radiator
Garret custom built turbo
external lubercation system with a shaved sump
custom grind on the camshaft
polished and ported the head
Super Charger pre-turbo!
3" dump
and much more!

The engine was torn down and all new parts fitted. Everything is new from the bottom end to the top end. The injection pump was completely rebuilt and calibrated. Injectors have been set to a higher pop pressure. No expense has been spared! The engine is due to arrive sometime later this year....

At the same time we started on the engine we went back into the shop witht he Patrol. I decided to go up to a 16" Balistic coilover shock. I wanted to also extend the wheelbase more, it has gone from 106" to 113". Tires we went up to a 40" Maxxis Creepy. All links are made from a 7075 solid aluminum rod.

With the stock transmission and transfer case and the 4.6 in the diffs my crawl ratio was only at about 42:1 which is really bad in my opinion. So I upgraded diffs and went with a custom build set of Portal-Teks. These diffs are based on a Ford 9" center. They use a SpiderTrax housing and run a high pinion. The portal drop boxes are built by Portal-Tek. At the same time we went with full hydro steering.

We upgraded seats to a Mastercraft 3G in front and a Mastercraft bench in the rear. Rims are Walker Evans beadlocks, 17". We set it up with cutting brakes in the rear also. Brakes all around are Willwoods. We have Fox air bump stops all around. A new tire carrier was made with jerry can holders.


















Now the Patrol was starting to shape up into the truck I want!!

The Patrol is not finished.....

The new Portal diffs run a 3.0 ratio with a 2x reduction in the portal box. This gives me 6.0 in the diffs which in turn reduces my crawl ratio to about 55:1. I am still running the stock Nissan 5spd and transfer case. This is simply not low enough gearing for rock crawling. So we will be fitting a Chevy Nv4500 5spd transmission (5.65 1st gear) and an Atlas 4spd transfer case. This will give me much more gearing options and will put the final crawl ratio around 200:1. The Atlas transfer case will allow me to do a rear disconect and that means I will be able to use the cutting brakes to the max! Turning on a dime will be no problem!

So to finish off the truck we have more work to do. Fit the engine, tranny and t-case. Plus I plan to do a custom dash with all custom gauges. We still need to build a full exo-cage for the truck. I also want to have a little body work done and fresh paint.

In the meantime though here are pictures of the truck off-road!

Welcome to this forum, thanks for accpeting my invite.

It's an awesome build-up and rig.

Please kep the thread up-to-date with the buid-up. i'm very impressed with it, and some of our member will be too.

By the way i'm Jorge Miguel Valadares, and this is my "username".

wellcome,
congratulations,your patrol is fantastic,nice work

what amazing machine!!!!

Congratulation!!!

You really live in a diferent world!

..I have no words to comment about your Patrol!...great machine and good work!!

Impressive.

you don´t have a snorkell???... ...

Hi, when is the new motor going to jump in?!!!

And this new season are you trailing???