Continued.....

No need to change the suspension or steering geometry at all makes for a perfect transplant. After pulling the EFI motor, the first job was cutting out the old engine mounts before welding a new set of fabricated towers to the chassis to take heavy-duty Chevy mounts. Linquip used the new 12-inch Toyota clutch inside a Marks Adaptors bellhousing taking the power to the original Toyota five-speed gearbox. The 78 Series uses a new-tech radiator with aluminium cores and plastic header tanks, a very efficient unit, so it was not only re-used, its position was kept the same too. The Linquip philosophy on engine swaps is minimal disruption to stock as far as possible. The Toyota fan was used, running specially made A-belt pulleys (belts are available anywhere), and the Linquip-made metal fan shroud is a work of art. Finally, the V8's air intake is plumbed up to the Toyota's air filter and snorkel, and a Japanese import 120-watt alternator with vacuum pump is fitted -nice and high too! Simple. Sort of.

Next came the tricky bits. First of all, the 78 Series has a central computer which operates all functions. In order for the tacho, speedo, idiot lights and all the rest to function properly, Doug Hardy, Linquips resident computer genius, had to work it all out to complement the big diesel and bypass the computer. Eventually the speedo was made to operate using an 80 Series drive and a HiLux LN106 adaptor with flexidrive. Better him than me any day...
But the customer had one last request. He wanted it geared up to take advantage of the immense lowdown torque. The original LandCruiser was running 4.3 diff centres, and Linquip replaced these ultimately with 3.7 centres making for a massive 16 percent gear-up overall.
It was done using earlier model housings and aftermarket crownwheel-and-pinions.

Naturally nothing at all fitted - even the axles were different! The job required massive research and development, but at least now Linquip can offer the public similar gearing for late-model Toyotas.

Phew! lt was a hell of a job, but the result is something else. The big V8 diesel looks right at home, and everything is neat and tidy. Thanks to Linquips ability to use as many stock components as possible, the whole plot could almost have come straight from the factory like this.
Except Toyota never built anything this good!
Test Drive
The Chev motor lumps into life with a turn of the key. Being hot, there's no need to use the glow plugs and it settles straight away into a growlingly smooth idle. In high-range, I select second gear and let out the clutch tentatively. The 78 moves forward without even denting its idle, and accelerates as smoothly as you'd expect with a mountain of torque under the bonnet. I change to third at 60 km/h, plop it into fourth at 80, because even though it's not revving, gut feel says it'll pull it, and then select top somewhere over 100km/h. A glance at the tacho shows its hovering around 2000rpm and accelerating with the same awesome pull.

Its no tyre-shredder - acceleration isn't what big diesels are all about - but it's definitely comparable with every stock petrol LandCruiser I've ever driven, and quicker than most. Soon we're cruising at 140km/h at around 3000rpm, and you get the feeling it'd do this all day, hauling a cotton gin in its wake if it had to. Beautiful. As a mile-eater, it'd be hard to beat the combination of torque and gearing Linquip have built into this new Toyota. Apart from that grunt and the growl of a V8 exhaust, albeit muffled, it feels every bit as civilised to drive as any other new 78 Series Toyota.
Only the performance is staggering. It'd be possible to drive around town all day in second gear and still break the speed limit. And it's not just about power delivery either. At country cruising speeds with this gearing the V8 Toyota pulls 11.91/100km (24mpg), compared to the old EFI motor's average of 20.41/100km (14mpg).
Impressed? You bet.

The Linquip-equipped and geared V8 78 Series must rate as one of the best modified purpose-built vehicles I've ever driven. For the job it was designed for, nothing I could imagine would do it better or longer.
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