New Montero Sport Owner.

[shmabs]

After much research, reading, and this thread

http://www.expeditionportal.com/foru...ad.php?t=56840

I purchased an 2001 mitsubishi montero sport XS, with 110,000 miles on it. The vehicle is very clean, and seems to be well maintained, we purchased it from the original owners who clearly took pride in their vehicles performance and appearance. They were a pleasure to conduct buisness with and gave me much confidence in the montero after spending time with the previous owner, who was quite the accomplished mechanic and certainly had an eye towards detail.



This will be a dual purpose vehicle for my growing family, functioning as my wifes daily driver and our weekend camping, wheeling and adventure vehicle. It must remain somewhat fuel efficient, comfortable and above all else reliable. All modifications will be made with those requirements in mind.

Plans are as follows, in no particular order:

Maintenance: keep it reliable and working like it should, simple enough.

Wheels/Tires: a 265/75/16 all terrain variety tire seems like it would work well for us. I am also considering finding some 15 inch rims and fitting some 31 or 32 inch tires, and keeping the stock setup for daily driver/road only trip duties. The LTX michelins that its currently clad with would be well suited to the long road trips, but not much else.

Armor: I haven't yet made the determination whether or not the stock skid plating will be adequate for us. Time and some hands on experience will tell. The running boards will be removed in favor of some sturdy welded on rocker guards, even on milder trails i have found these to be a necessity. Bumpers will present a challenge for me, as i do not yet have a proper tube bender. Plans call for a rear bumper with removable tire carrier, recovery points, and maybe some better lighting. The front bumper would be much the same; protection, recovery, and tie in for a front skid. Bumpers are a long way off.

Drivetrain: intial investigations revealed what seemed to be a beefy drivetrain. I was quite please to see a large drop out third member rear axle, disc breaks all the way around, and a sizeable transmission. Current axle gears are factory 4.9:1, with open differentials. Plans call for a rear locker, its looking as though my options are an ARB, or fit a factory mitsu locker. I have found one locally but its from a 94 SR, which from my research should have 4.6:1 gears. Other than the locker, my plans are maintenance and repairs as required.

Suspension: I understand that the torsion bar front end isn't exactly known for having gobs of travel, im willing to deal with that. I would like to investigate some sort of sway bar disconnects to help extract what little travel is there. Currently all suspension is stock, with somewhat fresh bilstein shocks. The previous owner gave me some gabriel air adjuster shocks that he had installed when his scooter was on a hitch mounted carrier, i have no plans of installing them unless i really need them. Ideally some high rate torsion bars, OME medium duty coils, along with some quality shocks would find their way underneath the rig.

Interior: time will really dictate what we need, right off the bat i know we will need some sort of a mat for the cargo area to keep the carpet in decent shape. Proper floor mats, rubber and able to hold some mud/dirt/liquids are a must. The previous owners used seat covers since day one, i plan to re-install them. I was a little dissapointed to see that with the rear seats folded, the cargo area isn't perfectly flat. I had the idea to create a sort of false floor, to make a nice flat area, and gain storage at the same time. I have to measure to see just how much of a ridge i have, to see if the gain would be worth the time and effort.

Exterior: Lighting upgrades are in the works, no confirmed details yet. I am contemplating removing the factory fender flares and mud flaps. Both are very rigid, i fear i will rip off the factory mud flaps in time. It would be nice to have some rubber mud flaps that would protect the body but be able to be pushed out of the way by the offending obstacle. The factory flares and flaps are molded together and certainly look quite attractive but might not suit our uses. The montero has two factory roof rails, but no cross bars yet. A few cross bars and a simple platform thats easily removable would be quite handy.


Questions:
-Will a 94 SR third member bolt into my 01 Sport? I looked briefly and they seemed to be the same. i would obviously have to do something about the gears.

-Do 15 inch rims, with the proper backspacing, fit my montero? I know the pattern is 6 on 5.5, but i dont know the backspacing.

-For a roof rack, what feet have others used to fit a thule, yakima or similar roof bars to the factory rack rails?


Thats what i have thought of so far, but i have owned the montero for less than 36 hours, so i expect plans to change with time and experience with the vehicle. All modifications will be done on a pretty tight budget, being a fabricator prior to the coast guard helps immensely with that. I usually prefer to build rather than buy. I hope to learn about mitsu's (this is my first) and if i really like the thing it just might hang around for a while. I have a tendancy to buy and sell vehicles pretty frequently....


Stay tuned, i'll update as often as i can.

Mike

[off-roader]

Very nice. I'm looking for one at a pick and pull so I can get the gears out of it for my SR.

1) That said, yes the SR axle should fit. Swap your 4.9 ring gear into the SR axle and put the axle under it.

2) They should. I don't believe the brakes in a sport aren't any bigger than the full sized montero so there's no reason they wouldn't since they come with 15's.

3) the thule/yakima feet directly on the roof would be best for strength (2x stronger?) versus the stock rack which is very weak by comparison.

[shmabs]

Off-roader,

I dont yet have to tools or know-how to set up gears, so im thinking i would have to purchase the locking third (4.63 gears) and pay a shop to swap my 4.90 gears onto it. It would be nice if the ring gear was the only difference, and the pinion had the same tooth count 4.63 vs 4.90, but i doubt that very much. Whats a complete locking rear axle from a 94 SR worth?

Thanks for the heads up on the 15's, i will look into the backspacing of the stock wheels.

Mike

[off-roader]

If you haven't set up gears before, it's probably best left to someone who has. The good news is Mitsubishi uses a 3rd member design where the shop can simply remove the entire assembly and perform the process on the bench. I've heard this is much easier than other typical setups.

The bad news is, some will try and take advantage of the fact that mitsubishi's are not as common as other brands and will note how difficult it was to do potentially padding their pocket with extra labor dollars.

Whatever you do, just be sure the shop who does the work has a good reputation. If you were down in the San Jose area, I'd know who to suggest (rear end specialties).

Cost of the entire rear end depends on where you're buying it but I'd check car-part.com to see what's available. It will give a good indicator of the pricing. I've never had to purchase one but IIRC, folks were getting the entire rear end (including trailing arms) for ~$450 or so (not including shipping).

Also get the switch & panel cutout as well as the low pressure compressor for it from the same vehicle.

HTH.

[shmabs]

Funny you should mention car-part.com! After my last post i began browsing around on their site and after looking around a little bit i found a locking 3rd member with factory 4.90 gears for 350 shipped, with a 6 month warranty. Its from a 2000 Sport, which i believe should be the same rear axle, with the exception of it having leaf springs. I didn't want to pay to ship a complete rear end, so this was the best deal for me. Most dismantlers weren't too interested in selling just the third member, but the yard i found up in washington was happy to.
Now i just have to figure out how i will actuate it. I remember reading somewhere that they only require 15-20 PSI, i already have a small quickair compressor from another project that might fit the bill. I would like to look into making it cable actuated if its reasonable, but once i have my hands on it i should know for sure. I guess i could always head to the yard that has the 94 SR locally and grab that compressor, switch, relay setup. When i went there today to check the ration i acuated the switch but couldn't get the locker to turn on, im not sure that i was all the way in low range, as i couldn't move the vehicle. time will tell


Mike

[off-roader]

Funny you should mention car-part.com! After my last post i began browsing around on their site and after looking around a little bit i found a locking 3rd member with factory 4.90 gears for 350 shipped, with a 6 month warranty. Its from a 2000 Sport, which i believe should be the same rear axle, with the exception of it having leaf springs. I didn't want to pay to ship a complete rear end, so this was the best deal for me. Most dismantlers weren't too interested in selling just the third member, but the yard i found up in washington was happy to.
Now i just have to figure out how i will actuate it. I remember reading somewhere that they only require 15-20 PSI, i already have a small quickair compressor from another project that might fit the bill. I would like to look into making it cable actuated if its reasonable, but once i have my hands on it i should know for sure. I guess i could always head to the yard that has the 94 SR locally and grab that compressor, switch, relay setup. When i went there today to check the ration i acuated the switch but couldn't get the locker to turn on, im not sure that i was all the way in low range, as i couldn't move the vehicle. time will tell


Mike

IIRC, you can do it the same way ARB actuate's their lockers except the solenoid needs to be a lower pressure rating. If you get a big enough compressor, you can also use it with a manifold so that some air goes to the locker and some air is available for airing up tires after a 4x4 trail.

[Justice R]

A couple things here.

I'm assuming the 2001 sport has coils in the rear, and not leaves like the late 90's models, but even so, the sport utilized stamped steel trailing arms, and from looking at them, they dont look like they would interchange with the Montero SR axle. Also another thing to look at is the drive shaft and the size of the flange. We had interchange issues with these while swapping them into gen 1 Montero's. SR's came with two different flange sizes depending on the year and build date.

You need to go to the yard and do some measuring before you star ordering stuff off the internet.

Now, if you plan to swap just the 3rd member, on the locking diff assembly, one axleshaft is longer than the other. So you'll need to insure you get the longer shaft from the donor since the open diffs have equal lenghth shafts.

Also I recommend going with the factory pump and not trying to do guesswork on the pressure. If you overpressurize the diff you will blow out the diaphagm. The factory pump is a two wire hook up ( a + and Gnd), has a built in regulator, built in shutoff switch and a built in lettooff valve..so you will make your wiring way easier with a factory pump.

[off-roader]

Nice insight on the swap details Justice!

[shmabs]

Justice,

The plan was never to swap entire axle housing assemblies, i should have clarified that in my original post, sorry. I simply wanted the locking third member, so thats what i ended up ordering.

I figured that there would be difference in shaft length as well, do you know which shaft is longer and by how much?

I read a good bit about the issue with the factory TRD locking differential in toyotas. It seemed as though the guys really romping on their rigs would run into breakage at the spline mesh point, due to lessened spline engagement that came from using the stock shafts.

I plan to research how much pressure is created by the stock pump, and if i couldn't source a stock pump i would regulate the pressure from my compressor to the required PSI. I'm well aware of how sensitive a now at least 10 year old air pump is going to be, been there, ruined other air pumps before. Realistically the stock pump is going to work best, and i will always have my C02 tank for airing up tires.


Thanks for the input guys

Mike

[Justice R]

Mike no worries. Its the flexible Diaphragm inside the differential that you need to make sure you don't over pressurize not the pump. If you blow it, sourcing a new one could be difficult. Regulating the air down to pressure would not be all that hard, but you have to also wire in a release solenoid to let the air out of the circuit in order to turn it off. The factory pump takes care of all that and makes it easy. Plus if your running a typical on board air source your looking at a pump capable of over 100 Psi. If your regulator fails, the locker diaphragm will get blown out. Factory pump is somewhere around 5 PSI if I remember right.

I cant remember which axle shaft is longer. You might be able to source that info searching the outerlimits (aussie) board or 4x4wire.