Well seeing as though I have crapped on about it before and a few of you have seen it I thought I would put up a few pics and a bit of a run down on my real love. My Ford Maverick.
Always wanted one when I was a kid , but you know how things go.
Man meets woman. Man finds a great interest in 4x4ing. Man marries woman. Woman turns out to be total b**ch and stuffs man around with life. Man never gets his Maverick he wants.
Man wakes up to himself and gets rid of evil woman. Man meets truely excellent woman who supports him in his hobbies and enjoys them herself. Man buys s**t Maverick and Woman says "Go for it and do what you want"

So back in May 2007 I bought this dunger.




Ford Maverick which as everyone knows is a rebadged Nissan Patrol.
My Mav had been rebadged as a Maverick by Ford but had be converted back to a Nissan by some previous owner.
When I got it it had the following.
4.2 litre Petrol Boat anchor with dodgy LPG conversion
5 speed manual
4.11 Diffs with Drum Brake rear end
Front bench seat , full vinyl interior.
265/80 16 All terrains on 16x 7 Sunraisers
Very very sagged factory suspension.
Vast amounts of rust and 100mph race tape holding the roof together.
For $2000 but well if it all turned to poo and I scrapped it what would I have to loose.

Im off for a shower. More to come.

Last edited by Matt_jew on Mon Nov 25, 2013 10:33 pm, edited 27 times in total.

Talk about De Ja Vu....describes my previous life.....better keep the said woman.....

How come no motor shots......i'm disappointed......

Look forward to more details !!!

Cheers

Daz

Cant go wrong with a maverick.

Also waiting for some engine bay pics.

Well first thing that went in was an Old Man Emu 3" suspension lift. After a couple of years of abuse I have had to put 40mm spacers in the back to get it to sit level. One of those things on the drawing board is a new suspension set up.
Then it needed some new boots as the old ones were just well.......gay.
A set of 35x 12.5" Mickey Thompson Baja Claws sorted that out.


They required a bit of guard chopping at the front to get clearance at full lock but all good. The flares are made from 4" plastic garden edging from Bunnings. $50 a roll which is enough to do 2 vehicles. A few self tappers and washers and a bit of work with the heat gun and they come out fine.
Best bit about them is at $6.25 a flare you really dont cry much when you tear one off in the bush.
It was about this time that a 2" body lift on Poly blocks with steel crush tubes went in.
The rust was terrible in it, but that is a whole different and continuing story. Wil get to that later. At this time but I did some quick rust repairs that have served me well considering but the time is drawing near to revisit it and do it for once and for all.

One day while heading to my mates a P plater decided to do a U Turn into the side of the Mav. He hit me that hard that he managed to turn the Mav 90 degrees. Tell you what a 90 degree spin and slide in a 2 tonne lifted truck is a somewhat sphincter tightening experience. His Daewoo definately come off second best.
Damage to the Mav was a bent diff housing , bent lower control arms , panahrd rod that looked like a Bannana , smashed side window and a bent rear dog leg. It was looking like the Mav had seen its final days at this stage.
Well the quote came in a $4000 to fix it. I sent a letter of demand to his insurance company with the quote and after 6 weeks of fighting with them settled for a $2500 cash payout.
I went shopping! New custom made lower control arms , new adjustable heavy duty panhards , and another diff froma disc brake patrol and a new master cylinder. We fixed it all up at home and got the old girl back on the road with some suspension improvements and a rear disc brake conversion.

We will get to the engine bay pics.

Well while I was ripping the diff out of the wreck I noticed it was a ST patrol and the trim was in perfect condition but needed a good clean. $170 later I walked away with new door trims , front bucket seats , centre console , rear seat and interior plastics.
It went from this



To this



Yeah just a bit of an improvement.

Not long after this I fitted a new exhaust and a pertronix ignitor system to the old boat anchor to try and get the pile of crap to do something. It failed miserably.
Playing around with the tune getting the truck ready for a snow trip I took it out for a good thrash one afternoon to see if there was any improvement.
The result was........................ BANG POP RATTLE. It was running like s**t , missing , wouldnt idle and bubbles in the coolant.
Yeah it cracked the head.
After getting a few quote for a reco head of around the $2K mark with no guarantee that it wouldnt crack again as they are notorious for it , it was time for drastic action.
Now I need to sort out some phots here and stuff cause it will most likely be long winded.
This is where it starts to get interesting........................................

Please get them, i wouldn't mind a sticky beak

Hey,

Never knew about the nissan heads being so dodgy......Sooooo glad i have a Ford 6 instead, as humble as mine may be.

Interior made a massive difference over the original stuff. I was thinking about doing something like that, but i doubt it would match new colour scheme, so i am gonna go with a re-trim.

Hurry up already with the engine pix!!!!....lol

Cheers

Daz

Ok well due to popular demand I will jump forward a few steps.
Here is how it was the day before it went off for engineering. It was engineered the 20th December 2007 and blue slipped and RTA certified on Christmas eve.
Lets just say that was a busy few days!




Since these pics were taken I have added a Gilmer drive , sunk it in a few bogs , done numerous mud runs and river crossings and have drowned it once. I also was unlucky enough to have a LPG backfire when the computer decided to play games on the way back from the North coast in February which blew the airbox apart. So unfortunately it doesnt look as pretty as it does here at the moment. I guess I have a bit of work to do before the AFD hey!
Its nothing special to look at under the bonnet. It just looks like a e series V8 to be honest. There is just a lot of one off work behind the scenes to make things work and fit the way we wanted them too.
More to come.

Actually the side on pic was taken a few months after it was up and running.

looks awesome mate!

how much did that conversion cost ya all up? i intend to do this to my Patrol when the motor gives up the ghost.

looks really good.

Was LPG done for engineering, or has it been done for better economy? though it would've been better than the old boat anchor.......

Cheers

Daz

About 5 or 6 grand out of pocket mate by the time it was all in , running sorted and engineered.
I saved a lot of cash by doing all the wiring and spanner work myself and by having a father that is an extremelly talented fitter, machinest , engineer and welder on side for the one off fab work and brainstorming.
I also wasted a lot of money by buying parts that we did not or could not use as things changed. There were a lot of changes as it all happened as a lot of it was pioneering work. At the time I did this one there were no others known of around that I could copy off and get ideas from , and as the old saying goes "You do one modification , you need to do another 3 for the first mod to work to its full potential".
The conversion kit cost $1300. As I will show as the thread progresses basically we only needed the bellhousing which was $495 on its own as a lot of the gear either simply didnt fit , was of a poorer standard then we were after or just was never going to work in the real world as the kit was put together in a workshop with no real testing. It was pretty much a first for the company that supplied the kit as well.
A lot was learned from it as we went along. I reckon I could do another one a lot cheaper and a lot quicker now knowing what we now know.

Thanks mate.