Mrs El_Freddo’s daily NP DiD

[El_Freddo]

G’day all,

Instead of posting this in my older intro thread, I thought I’d drop these pics of our (my better half’s) Pajero and our adventures today:

Cobaw State Forest near my old’s place:



Sanitarium Lake area, Mt Macedon. Awesome time has up here playing around in the snow. It was great to be driving in the snow again, first time for us in the Pajero - an old local to this area. It behaved much like my old L series offroad, just a bit heavier and gruntier with the diesel.



^ it was awesome to see most ppl behaving themselves and looking out/being courteous to others. There were a few muppets ruining it - driving too fast, doing wheelies in the snow, all while digging up the ground under the snow. Others 4wdn on closed tracks - even though the gates were open the sign clearly stated that this period of time is the closed season!

Either way an awesome day had. We were disappointed to find the cafe “Top of the Range” closed! It wouldve been packed if they were open. We purposely headed to the cross to support this business. I grabbed some snaps of the cross with the snow all around it and we headed off.

We saw a number of Gen3 and Gen4 Pajeros, and the GQ Patrols we’re out in force too. These two models were the two that seemed to be most noticeable in numbers I reckon.

Love this weather, loving the Pajero. The subaru isn’t quite retired from offroad work yet, but the Pajero will slot in very well if/when that day comes.

Here’s a pic shortly after we took ownership of the Pajero, which we don’t really have a name for other than “The Pajero”... (edit: the kids call it "Jero").



^ first roadtrip from Bendigo (home) to our near Cohuna at my sister’s old place.

This Pajero was formerly in the Pajero Club and still sports the sticker on the rear tailgate. We bought it from the original owners

Cheers

Bennie

[El_Freddo]

Going back a while, this was our upper timing chain guide when we got our NP:



New unit:



Sept/Oct 2019 was our first big trip in Jero - stationed in Bright for the week we visited Hotham and caught up with some old mates and some of the familiar sights that we love!



^ Mt Feathertop, from "the pond" at the top of the heavenly chair lift, Mt Hotham.

Up at Mt Buffalo:



Hanging with a mate's NM exceed:




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[El_Freddo]

Recent mod: the addition of the 81L drop tank/auxiliary tank. About 18 months ago I purchased an LRA tank second hand from gumtree - not realising it was missing a body mount, the corresponding tank mount was broken with a poor fix. I got the front body mount and rear left body mount with it.

From there I had a steep learning curve in my research for parts etc to fit this to our NP. I ended up sourcing a Gen 2 dual filler neck. I was confident that would fit - the pics on LRA's website for the NP had the same unit. They DON'T FIT! I had to modify the direction of the pipes and the captive nuts that hold the filler neck to the body. The Gen 2 must have four mounting nuts, Gen 3 has 3. Then the pipes are orientated differently as the Gen 2 is LHS filler, the Gen 3 RHS.

So I had the orientation of one of the pipes changed. I should have done both as a straight pipe, but it works.

This is the mount I fixed and the mount I had to make - I don't have a pic of the mount I created but I reckon it's stronger than the unit that originally came with the tank. I need to scrub up on my MIG welding skills - and learn about the unit I now have.



Here's the tank minus the rear body mounts:



Dummy fitted (there was lots of this!):



Mrs El_Freddo didn't like the hammer tone grey they come in. So I resprayed the tank in parts was the work was done...

A motorcycle jack is very useful for this sort of work - it's also good for lowering gearboxes!



This took quite some time to sort out! I used two petrol filler pipes so we could retain our factory diesel pipe if we ever decide to reverse the mod. One pipe does most of the work for the main tank while the second one provides one of it's sections for the pipe to the sub tank, and another section for the mod to the dual filler neck:



^ It's a real jumble but it works well!

The pump is a SCA faucet unit that runs at 2L per minute. It's wired per the instructions, but since we don't have a switch/gauge combo unit yet, it pumps once plugged into the cig lighter socket. The pump is mounted to the captive nuts where the diff lock compressor would live.

Once all that was done, the last thing to do was paint the underside of the tank - cardboard helped with capturing any overspray so everything stayed the colour it should! This was the end result with a cheeky MCM sticker added that Mrs El_Freddo didn't notice for a good week - even though I sent her this pic to say it was done!



With that done we were basically set for our trip to Qld to pick up our Road and Trak camper - more on that later though Had we not needed to head to Qld, I dare say the tank would still be leaning against the wall in the shed, on the "to do" list behind a pile of other projects!

Awesome addition to the Pajero - like the feedback I've read elsewhere on the forum. It's quite a weird experience watching your fuel gauge go up while you drive! I also like not visiting servos as often as we used to with just the main tank.

Would I do it DIY again? Yes. Even though I was pretty over it by about day 5 - fixing bits as you go is not good way to do it, but I was on holidays so my time was my own. Overall we still came out between half to two thirds better off than buying new.

We do need to do a four wheel alignment since adding this, will do it with both tanks full.

Cheers

Bennie