A Hybrid Among Hybrids

Originally Published: May 2014 Words: Paul Looe Pictures: Harry Hamm

Talk about a hybrid off-roader, and normally you’ll picture a set of one vehicle’s body panels bolted on to another vehicle’s chassis in the classic coil-sprung 88” Land Rover style. The interesting thing about the Hi-Lander’s chassis is that it’s a hybrid in itself, with a standard HJ60 Land Cruiser frame extending from the front of the vehicle to just behind the gearbox crossmember. From here, it’s grafted to the rear section from an old 405-Series Unimog. Overall, the chassis is shortened by about 800mm (that’s about 31.5” in old money), with the overhang at the back brought down flush to the very end of the carriers for the rear leaf springs

The cab is fitted on fixed mounts bolted directly to the chassis. Its sills have been replaced using 100mm x 50mm steel box, braced with cross pieces to strengthen the whole floor area, and this acts as a mount for parts of the cage structure as well as a pair of no-nonsense nerf bars

The cage is made from 48mm OD x 4.2mm wall extruded seamless steel pipe. Sean imported the material from China; he says it exceeds the highest requirements of the FIA and MSA in the UK for its diameter. Designed to blend the rear tray into a strong, useable safety structure, the cage bolts together and mounts to the chassis using stainless steel fixings

Give this picture a second look, because it tells a remarkable story. The chassis is part Land Cruiser and part Unimog, but the body is part Hi-Lux, part Land Cruiser and all hard work. It started as the cab from a 1980 Hi-Lux and was completely rebuilt with the tranny tunnel from the HJ60 stitched into the floor. Seriously. In went the Land Cruiser’s dash and steering column, too, along with its rear heater (and stand-alone fan and heater unit), while the pedal box was altered to suit

‘When we fitted the cab,’ says Sean, ‘the Hi-Lux wings were all wrong and mounted too far back for the wheels. I then decided to graft the original Land Cruiser wings on to the Hi-Lux cab. This meant altering the wing mounting strips, door shuts and so on to ensure a professional looking finish. The Land Cruiser bonnet was then altered to suit by reducing its width by some 150mm and re-welding it. The grille and front panel were also reduced in width by 150mm.’ Hands up those of us who can honestly say they’d have had the appetite for such a job when an ugly lash-up would have been easier?

The original 4.0-litre HJ60 2H straight-six diesel stayed in the vehicle throughout the build. ‘It had been ultra-reliable during its time in the original Land Cruiser,’ says Sean, ‘when we used and abused it at many off-road days at Kirton and Bawtry.’ Still in standard form, it’s good for about 110bhp and has enough torque to move a mountain

The average 24-volt system will be supplied by a pair of 12-volt batteries, and that is indeed how this one started. But after they had ended up under water, they needed replaciung – which Sean did using a bank of four 6v cells from a forklift. These deliver more than 1000 amps to a system using standard Land Cruiser looms with all the unused spurs isolated

If you thought the chassis and cabin were interesting hybrids (and you should have), get this little lot. The radiator mounted at the back of the cab is from a 6.7-litre General Motors V8 diesel, and it supplies the engine via a pair of reinforced flexible rubber pipes running back to front. There are 2 bleeding points, with a header tank from a Fiesta. ‘The engine stays cool until severely provoked,’ says Sean, ‘when it’s assisted by switchable Range Rover air-con fans’

Mounted above the rad, the air intake feeds into a double-cyclone filter and housing from an original Class 150 train. A train, we just said. The Class 150 had a 14-litre Perkins diesel – ought to be just about enough air flow, then. The air is ducted to the engine using 4” industrial vacuum flexible pipe

Both axles are standard HJ60 Land Cruiser units, slung under the springs with mounts fabricated to rotate the nose of the diffs upwards to suit the angle of the props. Completely rebuilt with new bearings, seals and CV joints, the axles are seen here with a set of 37x12.50R17 Hankook Dynapro Muds on GZ alloys which started life on a Hummer limo; since our pics were taken, Sean has gone back to the 37x12.50R15 Goodyear Wrangler MTs he originally used

Lifting the vehicle by about 9”, the spring packs are heavy-duty jobs from Milner Off-Road. They started with 7 leaves each, but this has been taken down to 4 as the vehicle isn’t as heavy as a standard HJ60. Extended heavy-duty shackles were fabricated to retain the correct axle orientation even on full twist

With so much lift and articulation to deal with, the drag link has been heavily reworked. You could build in a whole lot of weakness by doing this, but as much attention has been paid to strengthening the bends. The pitman arm remains standard, so there’s no stupid loads trying to lever the box off its mounts on the chassis

The front prop is a shortened Toyota Hi-Lux unit, with a double UJ on the gearbox to allow for the angle of drop to the diff. The joint is hidden here by the crossmember – note the cut-out Sean had to make to let it clear. The rear prop is shortened too, though in this case it’s an otherwise standard HJ60 job

Being a chartered engineer by trade gave Sean Robb a head start when it came to restoring his well worn 60-Series Land Cruiser. But that only begins to tell the story of a truck whose chassis and body are both hybrids in their own right. It’s got bits from a Ford Fiesta… and others from a Class 150 diesel train. It’s built to the highest standard imaginable. And it took him all of six weeks…

The vehicles we feature on these pages tend to fall into three broad categories. There’s the modified ones, which are basically standard trucks that have had some extras added. There’s the hybrids, where people have typically used one as a base and put bits from another on top. And then there’s the one-offs, built completely from scratch.

Sean Robb’s Hi-Lander is neither, or maybe all, of these. It’s a modified Toyota Land Cruiser. It’s a hybrid with a Hi-Lux body on a Land Cruiser chassis. And it’s a one-off whose body and chassis alike have been hand-built by Sean himself, from what less enterprising owners would have looked at and seen only scrap.

It wasn’t always like that. ‘She was the second Land Cruiser I had bought from the same guy,’ recalls Sean. ‘The first one, I rebuilt and sold to the Lake District – where she’s still going strong. I bought this one after she stopped being used – she’d had a tacho fitted. She was used and abused for about four years as a playday truck, where she coped admirably but suffered from the tin worm.’

Nothing especially abnormal there, and many owners would have responded by, for example, turning the Land Cruiser into a trayback. Which is kind of what happened, but not the way they normally take shape. Sean’s not your average off-roader, you see.

‘I grew up on a farm and have been surrounded by 4x4s all my days,’ he explains. ‘I then started my own business when I was 19, rebuilding Japanese pick-ups for local farmers. When I was 21, I went to university to study Mechanical Engineering, and when I left I had an honours degree and chose a career in the rail industry. I became a chartered engineer in 1997 and started running my own business again after leaving the railways in 2007.

‘I’ve had all sorts of 4x4 from Suzuki SJs and Vitaras to Jeeps, Toyotas, Land Rovers, Range Rovers, Unimogs, Bedfords and a wide range of Nissans. My daily driver is an altered Nissan Y61 Patrol fitted with 37” tyres and a 4.2 diesel.’

So there’s a number of things you can assume. One is that Sean knows a bit about this stuff. Another is that he wasn’t going to be satisfied with doing a below-standard job. And a third is that this is a project which was planned from the start, not made up on the hoof.

You don’t end up with a chassis that’s a hybrid in itself without having a good idea of where you’re headed, for example. The Land Cruiser was rotting out at the back but sound up front, so he hit on a solution we’re pretty sure hasn’t been done by anyone else, cutting it off just behind the gearbox crossmember and grafting on the back end of a Unimog chassis.

The result is a reduction of about 31” in the truck’s wheelbase, and its rear overhang has also been brought down as far as possible. It’s still leaf-sprung at both ends, so the latter is governed by the position of the rear spring mounts, but with 37” tyres underneath it, not to
mention an overall lift of around 9”, catching on drop-offs is largely a problem other people have.

Maybe surprisingly, the original steering copes with all this thanks to no greater a mod than a cranked drag link to cover the adde droop.

The finished chassis carries a cage combining safety cell, front wing protectors and rear tray in one structure. Once again, Sean masterminded all the work himself – though the list of helpers he thanks for building the vehicle with him is long, including ‘Jonny, Matt, Richard, Mark and my late Dad.’

With the heavy metal complete and the axles in place, on all new mounts and holding it up on Milner leaf springs, it was time for the really clever stuff. Well, it’s already been really clever thus far, but it’s about to get cleverer still.

Let’s do something off-roaders rarely bother with, and talk bodywork. As we mentioned earlier, after all, one of the things you can assume about Sean is that doing a sub-standard job isn’t something he’s very keen on.

As you’ll have spotted, the truck still looks like a 60-Series Land Cruiser from the front. Yet it’s a pick-up, and Toyota didn’t do a 60 like that. But they did do a little thing called the Hi-Lux, and a 1980 example with a rotten chassis gave its life, and its cab, to the cause.

Easy? No. The truck still has a Land Cruiser gearbox and transfer case, and these needed more space under the floor. What would most of us do; hoik the body upwards on ally spacers, maybe? Sean opened up the Hi-Lux floor, took out its tranny tunnel and stitched in the one from the HJ60, creating a hybrid cab to go with the hybrid chassis.

It doesn’t end there, either. When Sean tried the Hi-Lux wings for fit, he found that the wheelarches were too far back for the wheels. Definitely a problem. Some would have gone at them with a jigsaw and created an ugly beast in the process, but only a professional looking job would do.

You’ll agree, we’re sure, that that’s what Sean achieved. He did it by mating the original Land Cruiser wings to the Hi-Lux cab, which meant altering the mounting strips and even the door shuts to make it work. The bonnet, too, had to be reduced in width by some 150mm, as did the grille and front panel.

You’re probably getting tired just reading about it, and picturing years and years of soul-destroying graft in your garage. Sean’s a pro at this, of course, but he says the whole project took him six weeks from beginning to end.

That includes ancillary jobs like rebuilding the axles and renewing the brakes all round, as well as sub-projects such as rear-mounted cooling and air intake systems using bits from the Range Rover and Ford Fiesta, ducting from industrial applications and components built to work with engines like the General Motors 6.7 V8 diesel and, get this, the 14-litre Perkins from a Class 150 train. Admit it, you love this guy’s style.

And style is something the vehicle has in abundance. Being 100% unique isn’t always a good thing, as anyone who’s ever cringed their way through Britain’s Got Talent will agree, but whatever your taste in trucks this is one you can’t help but appreciate. It bears scrutiny up close, where the standard of workmanship is exceptional, and once it starts moving it covers the ground with a lightness of touch you struggle to associate with something that looks so much like a full-sized Land Cruiser.

Sean reckons the suspension has been his biggest success (‘for leaf springs, it’s amazing’), and comments that more effective windscreen washers are about the only improvement he needs to make (well, that and a locker in the back axle), but it works just like it was built to and that’s the proof of the pudding. A steady diet of trials with the East Midland Off Road Club has even been enough to stop him from getting round to fitting the winches he bought for it, which we take to mean that he’s not been doing much in the way of getting stuck.

That’s in spite of being on sensibly modest tyres with an everyday mud-terrain pattern. Which goes to show that size matters more than pattern, maybe, especially if you like to let the torque do the talking rather than ripping up the ground with your right foot. It’s a shame about those winches, though, because a 17,000lb 24-volt job up front and 20,000lb hydraulic effort on the back would have been worth seeing in action.

It’s not all about size, this vehicle. It’s big where it matters, for sure, but far more importantly it’s very, very clever – and its execution and finish match the standard of planning that went into it. A hybrid, a one-off and a modded vehicle all rolled into one?

Check. It’s the sum of a lot of parts – and even then it’s still more besides.

HYBRID, LAND CRUISER, DIY ROLL CAGE, HANKOOK DYNAPRO MTS, MILNER SPRINGS