Less Is More

Originally Published: May 2013 Words: Paul Looe Pictures: Harry Hamm

As far as Ashley’s aware (and he hangs with people who knows these things), this is the first time someone in the UK has put a straight-six Nissan engine into a Hi-Lux. It was ‘a squeeze,’ he says, but despite its length the 2.8 TD unit made it in without any extraordinary measures. A black cab radiator turned out to be the perfect size and had all its piping in the right place, and as you can see here it didn’t need to be moved to leave space for the engine. Ashley does intend to put it in the back eventually, simply because when it gets full of mud (and it does), it’s a pain to get out for cleaning. On the Patrol the engine came from, the intercooler would have been positioned on top of the engine, but here Ashley found a handy space for it just behind the washer bottle. Hence the exceedingly cool set of louvres on the front left of the bonnet, which might only be there to draw air through it but don’t half give the truck a hot-rod vibe

It’s not just the engine that came out of a Patrol – the gearbox and transfer case are the same ones that were bolted to it when it left the Nissan factory all those years ago. The transmission tunnel had to be cut out and remade to fit around the box, but that apart it all went in fine. Patrol meets Hi-Lux via the propshafts, which Ashley made himself with Nissan fittings at the tranny end and Toyota flanges for the diffs. He also fabbed the tranny skid plate seen here from 6mm steel plate

Front bumper is a copy of a Trail Gear Rock Defense unit made to order by Sunderland 4x4. Its winch mount is home to a 12,000lb Champion unit running Plasma rope – this is tucked in nicely beneath the grille, which is just as well as there was no way the rad was moving any further back with that six-pot behind it…

If you know your Hi-Luxes, you’ll get that this isn’t the standard back prop. Originally, the truck had a two-piece unit with a centre bearing that kept breaking. So when Ashley put his own together after doing the engine swap, it made complete sense to replace it with a one-piece design

Both axles are original to the vehicle but contain 4.88:1 diffs from a 70-Series Land Cruiser and, up front, a Detroit Truetrac. Like the rest of the engine ancillaries, the PAS pump is a Nissan part, but the box it pushes is Toyota. When this pic was taken, Ashley was part-way through fitting a Trail-Gear high-steer system which will use a Hi-Lux Surf PAS box; even though it’s based in America, TG does a version of this kit for RHD. After his old Patrol’s huge lift almost saw him rolling it into a ball of scrap, Ashley wanted to keep the Hi-Lux as low as possible. It was already rolling on +2” Old Man Emu springs when he bought it, and up front these now work with 15” travel Pro-Comps fitted on lifted turrets

Here’s the rear end’s secret weapon – a pair of buggy links. Seen here at rest and starting to open, these allow the rear shackle to drop out as the axle articulates, adding several inches to the vehicle’s rear wheel travel. Ashley fabricated them from a pair of suspension top links from, needless to say, a Nissan Patrol; you can also see the guides he made up for relocating them beneath the chassis and keeping them from slopping around and trashing the bush on the chassis mount when they’re closed up

The cage is made up using 2” steam pipe tubing with a 4mm wall thickness. The less critical runs down the side of the back tub are made from a thinner material to keep weight down. The truck was a trayback when Ashley bought it: replacing the tray with a more traditional rear tub might come across as a bit of a backward step on an off-road toy, but he actually wanted to use it as a pick-up, too

When you buy an engine and a 3” stainless steel snorkel comes with it, buying another snorkel isn’t likely to be on your to-do list. Ashley adjusted it to fit then taped up the leading edge of the air filter topping it off – surely he wasn’t expecting it to be hit by any roof-high sprays of muddy water from balls-out assaults on mud runs, was he…?

Three words you’re unlikely to think of, when considering a Hi-Lux on 35s with 3” of lift and an exo cage made from steam pipe, are ‘light’, ‘low’ and ‘fast.’ But when Ashley Stimpson compares his Mk3 to the giant Patrol he used to run, he’s entitled to think that yes, it’s all those things. And it’s an even better off-roader for it, too.

It’s just over three years since Ashley Stimpson first appeared in Total Off Road. He’d become possibly the first person in Britain to bobtail a Nissan Patrol, which he also lifted to the point where it was rolling on 37” Mudzillas.

This brute of a truck was his daily drive as well as being a hardcore off-road toy, but with the thick end of 3 tonnes tottering around like Zebedee on weed he came to find it lacking in both power and stability. So he put it up for sale, and someone drove a lorry all the way from Romania to take it away.

What do you do when your previous vehicle was heavy, slow and unstable? You buy a nice Mondeo Estate. Or, if you’re not quite ready to admit defeat yet, you find a moderator on a Hi-Lux forum who’s willing to sell you a Mark 3 trayback on 33s.

This had been shortened by about 18” at the back, though its wheelbase remained standard so it still had plenty of space to be a usable truck. Just what Ashley wanted, because like the Patrol this was destined to be his everyday car. It’s a camping wagon, too, and supports a generally active outdoors lifestyle, so he decided to fetch off the tray and replace it with a more traditional pick-up tub.

There’s traditional and there’s traditional, of course. This one’s traditional in the sense that its contents include the rear portion of a six-point roll cage, which also extends to surround it with waist-level tree sliders. So, not very traditional at all, then.

The main part of the cage is made from 2” o/d steam pipe tubing with a 4mm wall thickness, which doesn’t sound like a recipe for the ultimate in weight saving. He wasn’t just chucking heavy metal at it without a care, though – his aim at the start of the project was to bring it home at under 2 tonnes, and on its most recent visit to a weighbridge the Hi-Lux tipped the scales at a pretty reasonable 1940kg, so job done.

Another radical difference from his old Patrol is that instead of just lifting it and lifting it and lifting it, this time he’s tried to keep the centre of gravity as low as possible. The Patrol went over a couple of times, one of them a but-for-the-grace-of-God moment that could just as easily have ended up in a multiple barrel roll – it was just after this that he decided to sell it, funnily enough, and he was determined not to make the same mistakes while building the Hi-Lux.

That’s why, in addition to the 2” lift springs it was already on when he bought it, the truck has gained nothing more dramatic than a 1” body lift. Of course, you don’t fit 35” tyres underneath many vehicles on numbers like that, so you won’t be surprised to hear that instead of going up, his strategy was to be much more savage with the tin snips when it came to removing metal from the truck’s wheelarches.

The springs don’t create lots of height, but Ashley reckons they do flex well – and with shocks providing 15” of travel up front and 9” at the back, they get every chance to do just that. The rears are aided by a set of buggy links – the leaf-sprung equivalent of dislocation cones, you might say – which Ashley made himself from a set of suspension top links from, you guessed it, a Nissan Patrol.

Not that that’s the only Patrol part you’ll find on this Hi-Lux. Far from it, in fact. Try the engine, gearbox and transfer case for size. Actually, that’s exactly what Ashley had to do, because the straight-six 2.8 diesel is a very tight fit between the radiator and the bulkhead, and much of the transmission tunnel had to be cut away and remade to accommodate it. The props, meanwhile, were home-made with Nissan fittings at one end and Toyota at the other.

After all that effort, you might be surprised to hear that he’s happy to stick with the leaf-sprung set-up – especially as many people might see it as a step backwards from the Patrol’s coils. But Ashley doesn’t see it that way. ‘With the leaf springs, there’s only eight bushes throughout the truck. The Nissan had three times that. That’s three times the effort, and three times the expense.’

So, no plans to ditch the cart springs, then. He does, however, intend to fit rear leaves at the front, which increases the vehicle’s wheelbase by 2-3”, lifts it a little and, more importantly, makes it ride more comfortably. There’s a hi-steer set-up going on, too, and the truck’s blunt end will at some stage by treated to disc brakes and a winch.

The most intriguing plan in his list, however, involves the engine. Having heard that the 2.8 TD runs the same block as the early Skyline, he’s looking at fitting that vehicle’s much bigger turbo – which should push an extra 100bhp or so out of it.

As it is, Ashley reports that the Hi-Lux is no slouch, and with the engine and drivetrain from what was nearly a 4-tonne truck shifting something half that weight, that’s as it should be. We won’t repeat the details, but suffice to say that where some 4x4 owners simply go flat out all the time just to keep up with the traffic, if he tries that he’ll soon be clearing the traffic out from in front of him.

It all makes for a daily driver that might be a bit unusual but certainly is very well sorted. Ashley’s not interested in competing (he already does that on mountain bikes), but by the same token he’s not interested in shying away from the gnarly bits at playday sites, and this is a truck that’ll take ‘em on with guts and glory but still come back for more – while getting him to work every day in between.

Best of all, unlike his old Patrol it’s every bit as much fun on the road as it is on the rocks. And of course, it’s cool as all hell wherever you see it. It’s going to be a long, long time, you feel, before Ashley Stimpson gives up his 4x4s for that Mondeo Estate.

We photographed Ashley’s Hi-Lux at Cowm Leisure’s brilliant moortop quarry site near Whitworth. It’s open for 4x4 playdays on the last Sunday of the month, and the combination it offers of rocks, hills and boggy mud has to be seen to be believed. Brilliant place. Check out www.cowmleisure.com, or give main man John Whittle a call on 07970 101879.

HI-LUX, NISSAN PATROL ENGINE, CHAMPION WINCH, DETROIT TRUETRAC, TRAIL-GEAR HI-STEER, OLD MAN EMU SPRINGS, PRO-COMP SHOCKS, BUGGY LINKS