mudfish
02-01-2015, 01:44 PM
Guys, for those of you that are interested I have almost completed a fairly extensive magna based conversion.*
About 2 years ago I bought a very tidy TH Advance for my daughter after she got her P's. *It was an original 2 owner vehicle with 108 k's and a full service history. She happily drove it around for nearly 18 months until she was tagged in the left side front corner by an old goat in a falcon that was unable to understand what "Give Way" means. The impact pushed the left side rail across nearly 3 inches and effectively wrote the car off.*
I managed to buy the car back from the insurance company for not a lot of money and had it towed home.*
As the car only had 118 k's on it at this time and was mechanically perfect I started looking for a decent TH or TJ Advance with issues to transplant the engine into.*
I ended up buying a 2000 TJ Exec with *a 3L, driver's airbag and very little else.
In the last 2 months I stripped both cars to absolute bare shells and transplanted the engine and trans, entire dash including dual air bags, cruise control, ABS, electric windows, full interior, complete rear subframe with brakes and suspension, rear bar, bootlid and tail lights, fuel tank and all the brake lines, front hubs with ABS sensors and wiring and front CV shafts with the ABS tone rings.*
I also fitted the entire TH wiring loom, front to back
The only parts of the TJ I retained were the front struts and lower wish bones as the left side ones from the TH were bent. The air con condenser, radiator and lower engine bracket.*
Last thing I have to do is respray the front bar and fit it, then it's ready for a blue slip and rego.*
Unbelievably when I first fired it up I got no engine fault codes at all. No ABS or SRS faults either and it drives beautifully with no rattles or weird noises.
It was a massive job and I probably wouldn't do it again, but I did thoroughly enjoy it. The only real mods I had to make was cutting*a hole though the firewall to accommodate the new ABS wiring loom and welding the appropriate brackets to the dash support bar for the passenger airbag.*
I also now have a stack of TJ bits and bobs that I plan to list in the for sale section in the near future.*
If anybody else has completely lost their sanity and is contemplating a job like this please don't hesitate to PM me for any advice or tips.*
Cheers, Mudfish.*
About 2 years ago I bought a very tidy TH Advance for my daughter after she got her P's. *It was an original 2 owner vehicle with 108 k's and a full service history. She happily drove it around for nearly 18 months until she was tagged in the left side front corner by an old goat in a falcon that was unable to understand what "Give Way" means. The impact pushed the left side rail across nearly 3 inches and effectively wrote the car off.*
I managed to buy the car back from the insurance company for not a lot of money and had it towed home.*
As the car only had 118 k's on it at this time and was mechanically perfect I started looking for a decent TH or TJ Advance with issues to transplant the engine into.*
I ended up buying a 2000 TJ Exec with *a 3L, driver's airbag and very little else.
In the last 2 months I stripped both cars to absolute bare shells and transplanted the engine and trans, entire dash including dual air bags, cruise control, ABS, electric windows, full interior, complete rear subframe with brakes and suspension, rear bar, bootlid and tail lights, fuel tank and all the brake lines, front hubs with ABS sensors and wiring and front CV shafts with the ABS tone rings.*
I also fitted the entire TH wiring loom, front to back
The only parts of the TJ I retained were the front struts and lower wish bones as the left side ones from the TH were bent. The air con condenser, radiator and lower engine bracket.*
Last thing I have to do is respray the front bar and fit it, then it's ready for a blue slip and rego.*
Unbelievably when I first fired it up I got no engine fault codes at all. No ABS or SRS faults either and it drives beautifully with no rattles or weird noises.
It was a massive job and I probably wouldn't do it again, but I did thoroughly enjoy it. The only real mods I had to make was cutting*a hole though the firewall to accommodate the new ABS wiring loom and welding the appropriate brackets to the dash support bar for the passenger airbag.*
I also now have a stack of TJ bits and bobs that I plan to list in the for sale section in the near future.*
If anybody else has completely lost their sanity and is contemplating a job like this please don't hesitate to PM me for any advice or tips.*
Cheers, Mudfish.*