Lifted 79 245 D24T

[Tuff240]

I joined about a year and half ago when I bought a 245 diesel and was looking into turboing it. My back failed me and unfortunately I had to sell it before I had a chance to fix it up. So here I am again about a year and a half later and doing okay. A friend said he'd sell me his wrecked 245 with a D24T in it (he's a member here) for a donor for my lifted 245. So I'm pretty stoked and looking forward to the swap.

My background is pretty deep when it comes to 240's and I'm best known for building "pretty" cars that lean mostly towards modified street and/or track cars. I've owned more 240's than most of you would ever believe, so I'll just say I've owned a lot. Currently have 8 240's in various states. But this is only my 5th diesel and the first turbo.

I'll probably drive this clunker for a couple months to get familiar with the D24T and then pull the motor and prep it for installing it into my lifted 79 245. Not sure how crazy I'm going to get with it yet, if at all, but it will at least be sanitary. I can't do it any other way unfortunately.

I picked up my 79 245 as a lowered daily driver (from the same member) that had a leaking heater core. They didn't feel like fixing the heater core/blower fan so they sold the car to me cheaply. I had been wanting another lifted 240 daily driver (I've done 2 other lifted 242t's in the past) so this seemed like the right car at the right time.

To raise it up I took 4 front strut assemblies and made a pair that are 3" longer than stock. I used a piece of DOM tubing in the bottom to raise the strut insert. I installed a pair of diesel springs and this gave me 4-5" of lift over stock. Just to get it driving, I ovaled out the ball joint holes to get it close as I could back to 0 camber. I'll eventually make wider control arms to get a little negative camber, but it's working okay so far with no abnormal tire wear. For the rear I simply welded another upper spring perch to the current upper spring perch, used some Jeep rear springs a friend had laying around ( after the stock rear springs weren't tall enough) and bought some KYB rear shocks for a 67-72 chevy truck. All that gave me another 4-5" of lift in the rear.

For tires I chose a very aggressive mud terrain tire in 235/75-15 mounted on stock 7/9 series steelies. They required some "clearancing" of the body with a 5lb sledge in key places. They will fit a little better once I make some longer rear trailing arms, but for now it gets by.

I had the brush guards still from my last lifted 242 so I installed those along with a Volov accessory roof rack to get the general look I was going for.
I've been slowly fixing and upgrading it as I drive it everyday and it's slowly getting better and better. Clean this, replace that. It's almost never ending.

I also swapped in an 81-89 dash while I was replacing the heater core/blower motor since I prefer that style of dash. I basically swapped the entire dash and heater system from a parts car another friend had.

That's about where I'm at now. Driving it for the last 6 months or so, I've grown very fond of it and it gets lots of looks and attention everywhere I go. I think I've been asked if it's 4wd about a hundred times now.

I'll post some pics to try to make up for having to read all that ^
Unfortunately I didn't take a lot of pics when I first started working on it, but I'll share what I do have.


Freshly painted wheels and new tires waiting for their new home:




Cutting the struts:




Struts welded back together:




Test fitting rear tires and installing front struts:




Front fenderwell height:




First time out of the garage:




Brush guard installed along with 82 Turbo bumpers. Roof rack and spare tire also:




Rear brush guard(?):




Jeep rear springs added and it leveled it out nicely:




Good pic of the ground clearance and IPD splash tray:




Heater assembly out (never fun ):




Moving. 11 hour drive from Portland to central CA loaded with stuff. Stopped off at Lake Shasta for a photo:




Backyard in CA foothills:




Good view of the roof rack




Donor D24T

[Tuff240]

The donor doesn't currently have A/C, an intercooler or power steering so I started prepping and gathering parts for all of that.

My friends told me the P/S bracket breaks all the time, but didn't really tell me where. It seemed thin through the center portion so I decided to box it in hoping that it would help.

Cleaned bracket and wire wheeled area to be boxed in:



Cut and formed some aluminum to fit:



Friend tig'd it on for me:



Then bead blasted entire bracket so it can be painted or powder coated:




I wasn't fond of the plastic cap on the back of the D24 manifold that I'm going to use for intercooling it, so I made a plate and friend welded that up also:

[Tuff240]

I neglected to mention that I have 4 kids and basically no job, so the "budget" is very limited for this project. Fortunately I'm pretty resourceful, have good contacts and even better friends. This helps tremendously when you have very little money to play with.

This was my last "budget" engine compartment in my daily driver I did a few years ago:



I'd like to make this that nice, but I'm a bit leary of the D24 still and scared to dis-assemble everything because I'm just not familiar with it like I am the gas redblocks. That and I don't have any spare D24 parts. I'll guess we'll just have to wait and see how carried away I get.

I say I don't have a job, but I work on other people's 240's fairly regularly.

This is a 242T I'm working on right now for someone:

[matchless]

If you were on this side of the water, I had a job for you.

[ngoma]

Not sure about the alternator bracket breaking, but the PS bracket likes to crack at the bottom ear, especially when completely tightening one bolt at a time when installing, instead of first loosely tightening the bolts while jiggling the bracket to see where it wants to sit with the least strain.

Did you have to do anything to the driveshaft/u-joints/carrier etc.?

[Tuff240]

Originally Posted by ngoma

Not sure about the alternator bracket breaking, but the PS bracket likes to crack at the bottom ear, especially when completely tightening one bolt at a time when installing, instead of first loosely tightening the bolts while jiggling the bracket to see where it wants to sit with the least strain.

Did you have to do anything to the driveshaft/u-joints/carrier etc.?

Oops, I meant to say power steering bracket, not alternator bracket.

No, the driveline is still all stock. It shudders pretty bad if you try to do a drag strip style launch. I don't think it likes to trying to turn these big tires when they have traction. It doesn't do it when you spin the tires in the dirt. I'll check the pinion angle once I build some longer rear trailing arms. For now it's fine for just cruising around.

I did have to remove the brake line bracket from the rear axle to give the rear brake lines more slack for the increased travel.

[v8volvo]

Looks nice, should be a fun swap. Certainly won't be many others around like it...

What are you planning to run for rear gears? I assume that B21 car probably has a 3.54 or 3.73 in it? Turning those big swampers may be interesting if it's got a tall gear in it, stock TD/M46 is 3.54 in a 7 series, and it's short enough that 1st gear is pretty limited but with those shoes I would not want it any taller than that.

Since you live in a hot part of the world, what are your plans for cooling? Common challenge for these, especially for mountain driving on hot days -- you probably will want as much radiator as you can get in it.

Will be fun to watch it come together, if it turns out like some of the others you showed above, should be very impressive!

[v8volvo]

BTW, nice work on the PS bracket -- their main failure point is the skinny lower ear and even that only really fails due to mechanic error, but boxing it like that certainly can't hurt it anyway.

One thing to note, that's a 740 bracket which is slightly different than the 240 design, the 240 moves the pump down on the bracket about an inch further to make room for the upper rad hose to wrap around it. Not a problem if you're going to run 700 style hoses and rad like your donor car has, but if you want to use the original 200 series setup you'll need a different bracket or will have to get creative with the hose.

The 700 design is less prone to breakage of that lower ear so wouldn't be bad to use it if it works, especially now that you've improved it further -- but worth keeping in mind as you plan the cooling system.

[Tuff240]

Originally Posted by v8volvo

What are you planning to run for rear gears? I assume that B21 car probably has a 3.54 or 3.73 in it? Turning those big swampers may be interesting if it's got a tall gear in it, stock TD/M46 is 3.54 in a 7 series, and it's short enough that 1st gear is pretty limited but with those shoes I would not want it any taller than that.

Since you live in a hot part of the world, what are your plans for cooling? Common challenge for these, especially for mountain driving on hot days -- you probably will want as much radiator as you can get in it.

Will be fun to watch it come together, if it turns out like some of the others you showed above, should be very impressive!

Currently my lifted 245 has a 3.91 R&P and the donor car has a 3.73 in it. I'll try the current 3.91 first (no work) and see how it goes. It should be really close to where I THINK I want it. 2500rpm at 70mph with the 28.9" tall tires. I mostly want something I can cruise comfortably at 70mph and still get good fuel mileage so I'm probably going to have to experiment a bit with these big tires and the D24T I'm not super familiar with. Just crossing my fingers the d24t torque will maintain that speed easily at that rpm and still get close to the 38+mpg I'm getting spoiled with.

As far as cooling, it hasn't been an issue yet with the current set-up in the donor, so I'll transfer all that over. It has an Auto-Meter water temp gauge and EGT gauge so I monitor the temps all the time. 180* at 0-3psi, 195* at 5psi (sustained highway cruising) and 210* at 10psi sustained (long uphill mountain). I'm not opposed to a larger aluminum aftermarket radiator if I start having problems.

Originally Posted by v8volvo

BTW, nice work on the PS bracket -- their main failure point is the skinny lower ear and even that only really fails due to mechanic error, but boxing it like that certainly can't hurt it anyway.

One thing to note, that's a 740 bracket which is slightly different than the 240 design, the 240 moves the pump down on the bracket about an inch further to make room for the upper rad hose to wrap around it. Not a problem if you're going to run 700 style hoses and rad like your donor car has, but if you want to use the original 200 series setup you'll need a different bracket or will have to get creative with the hose.

The 700 design is less prone to breakage of that lower ear so wouldn't be bad to use it if it works, especially now that you've improved it further -- but worth keeping in mind as you plan the cooling system.

I just picked up a 240 power steering bracket at PNP. So I'll try to run that unless I run into problems.

I'm getting really anxious to start this swap as I'm tired of the boring stock looking 245 donor. Unfortunately I'm out of town for a few weeks and have a few other projects so my plate is pretty full at the moment. The "pretty" swap might get post-poned until later as I'd really like to get this swapped into my lifted wagon asap. Spending 3-6 months on making it all perfect isn't very realistic for me right now.

I do love the D24T so far though. I like the way it cruises, billowing black smoke at the whim of my right foot and of course the fuel mileage is amazing. I'm up over 39mpg on this trip with mostly flat highway.

[matchless]

You writs that you used jeep springs in the rear, from what model if I may ask?