Had completely forgotten about this thread and that I had promised to post about the performance of the "converted" Jeep. Ok, here goes
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ISUZU DIESEL IN A CJ3B JEEP - REVIEW
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Well, the conversion seemed to be a real success at the outset, except for the fact that the alternator (which had come with the second hand engine) stopped working!
Thankfully this was within the 15 day "warranty" that the engine dealer (read junk dealer) had offered me, so he had it repaired and when that failed, had it replaced with another one. To give credit where credit is due - this old alternator lasted me the next three years without a hitch... as you read on, you will realise the problems were elsewhere
First out the really great thing about the conversion was that the Jeep now had a 4 speed syncromesh gearbox (the original is a 3 speed with no syncromesh gears) with and integrated High/ low 4WD transfer case. Shifting gears suddenly stopped being a chore and there was that sweet rubber burning low end torque on 1st (even when in 2WD "high" mode) - in fact under normal conditions I would usually have to take off on 2nd, so as not to wear out my tyres!
Also, the new power assist brakes were a real sweet addition... of course there was also the huge advantage of cheap fuel and a (relatively) frugal engine!
Now for the negatives - naive as I was, while the brakes now had power assist, but they still retained the old master cylinder - which
does not have diagonally split circuits (as they do in more modern vehicles - even the new Mahindra's)! So if one line/ brake drum leaks, the brakes would fail completely! This happened to me on more than one occasion, both on road and off... the worst case was when I had to drive back most of the way to Delhi from Pilani late at night (well over 100 Km)
without any functional brakes! It was 1st gear throughout, since I could only use the engine as a "brake" to stop the car...
Brakes asides, the wiring was the original Mahindra wiring, which was really poor... Blown fuses, indicator bulbs etc. was an everyday thing. One more frequent problem I had was with the "accelerator wire"... the original, or any other ready made one would not match the new configuration and I was forced to adapt a scooter clutch wire to the purpose. These are really cheap at 10 bucks or so... and are widely available, so not an entirely bad choice - BUT they would fail frequently, so I took to carrying a couple of spare sets with me at all times.
BUT BY FAR the BIGGEST problem I faced with the conversion was to do with the new engines' oil filter bracket! As mentioned earlier -
the engine oil filter and mounting was now directly above the differential and on heavy suspension travel (read BIG bumps) the differential would "knock" against the oil filter. This problem was solved by changing the oil filter bracket to a different type of design (making the filter point sideways as opposed to downwards) as well as raising the suspension by a few inches
Well this mod (as mentioned above), was far from successful, my intended and actual use of this vehicle was for fairly rough off-roading (Asif & Mack The Knife might have an idea of what this entails
). And invariably, on every second or third off road adventure I would "forget" about this little design defect and end up with the oil filter bracket cracked and engine oil being spewed all over the place - in the middle of nowhere!
While the other failings could have been corrected relatively easily, this was a hard one to get around, with available parts and more than anything else - those frequent several (kilometre treks) back to civilization led me to finally sell off the CJ3B in the spring of 2000...
But in all fairness, when it did work it was a real joy to drive
And I think I'm going to buy me another one real soon... will be smart and retain the original petrol engine though!
Cheers!
Abhijeet
P.S. - Danish is currently restoring his own low hood CJ-3B... look forward to reading his experiences with that one! Danish don't forget to post pictures buddy!
