PlanetIsuzoo.com (Isuzu SUV Club)

Hi guys, It´s been a long time since I posted pics of my trooper. It´s been a busy year with work and family stuff but I managed to do some minor bolt-on's/improvements to the Trooper.

Also I´ll post more ride pics in here.

Exactly one year ago I bought a set of brand new yakima/Isuzu cross bars. I bought them from a planet member whom I forgot his nickname, but his name is Joseph (thanks Joe!). He had bought them and never installed them. Then he sold his trooper. I got a heck of a deal for them, $50!! These where in their original box which included all instructions and OEM Isuzu accessories papers. I didn't take pics of the installation cause Tad´s write up on the process is perfect. The trooper comes with the 3 sets of holes. I just wish they where a bit towards the back, but oh well, I really like them.

On a camping trip at the beach, January 2010






Then I got a set of used OME 919 coils. Thanks to Daniel (Blackjack), because the 919´s where too soft for his 4dr + work tool box. He sold me them at a great price and I couldn´t be happier with them.

Here is the day they arrived, they were in great conditions.



Opening them up



Thanks Daniel!!




Installation process: Removed lower shock bolt and swaybar link, lowered axle, removed old spring, placed new one and that´s it. Way too simple







I forgot to take some before / after pictures... Here is a old one w/o the springs, and this one after the springs were installed (a weekend playing in the mud). I wasn´t looking for too much lift, my main concern was to improve the suspension ride manners over bumps and stuff. It gained about 1 inch of lift which is fine for me.






Later on I´ll post more pictures and a couple of other plans that we have been working on.

Hope you like it!

Uhm, I´m sorry for the big pics, I´m pretty sure I resized them to "medium" on photobucket but some turned out bigger than others. Hope you are ok with them..

Pics are fine. Looks like your doing some nice mods to the trooper. Looking forward to more wheeling pics.

looks awesome. good job.

Thanks for the nice comments guys.

Here are some pics. About a month ago we were invited to a "4x4 party" . It was the anniversary of the costarican Land Rover Team/Club. It was held at a dirtbike/atv motocross track. The site also has various trails for mountainbiking where we frequently go riding.

For that day we had the chance to do some laps on the motocross track which was fun. Our group consisted of jp36 with his white KB, a friend´s white tracker and a red Defender.












The blue LR3 was stuck in about 3 inches of mud. The Tracker just flew right past him



Our new friend with half isuzu on his Defender. He has a isuzu 2.8 turbodiesel in there. Turns out putting isuzu tdi engines in land rovers is a common mod in Costa Rica and other countries. There were at least 3 or 4 landrovers with these engines. Go isuzu!!!




I´ll post more stuff later

wow looks cool. I really wonder if those isuzu diesels are a direct swap to a Rover

haha i bet that guy who got stuck with the land rover said "dang! i could of spent 3 time as less for a tracker and not goten stuck"

Thanks for the comments guys. As for the zu engines on rovers, they say there has to be some fab work done to fit them to the trannies and engine bay, as well as other suff to make them work fine.

Here are other things that have been done to the trooper in the last couple of weeks.

After reviewing some posts about the Luminics bulbs I decided to give them a try and ordered them through amazon.



Luminics on the left, Osram on the right. The luminics give a white-blueish light that for dry weather looks nice. I´m happy with them but not 100% satisfied with their performance on rainy nights. I can turn on/off the headlights and not notice a difference. The Osrams are brighter and penetrate through the rain a lot more. I think I´ll go back to them for the rainy season, and put the luminics for summer. I still feel the osrams are brighter than the luminics, but the white light looks nice.




I also ordered a couple of Sun Pro boost gauges (1 for jp36´s white 4dr pickup). I don´t want to drill a big hole in my dash or in the shifter console in case later on I decide to remove the boost gauge or something... . So I´m working on fitting it inside the small box below the radio. It´s a tight fit but it can go in there. I´ll have to trim a bit and make a black enclusure to get it done. Also, I don´t want to loose the functionality of the litlle box and block it.

The gauge will be all the way to the left side of the box, leaving some room inside for regular use.

This is another proyect we had been working on. It´s a 4 light setup on the roof.

I wanted the lights to be as close to the roof as possible. So with the help of jp36 we came up with this idea.

A piece of angled stainless steel, mounted to the cross bar mounts.




We had to cut and grind a couple of edges to make it fit



We made a small cut right in the middle to bend it so it would clear the roof. We thought it was going to compromise its strength and we were planning on filling the cut with a weld or a tab, but later found out that it is still very strong and it was not compromised at all.



We then measured everything and started drilling the 4 holes for the lights and mounted them up.



I´m going to put a strip of soft rubber glued to the stainless steel piece to prevent it from scratching the roof, although it does not touch the roof by a couple of millimeters. Also, I still have to take everything down to paint it black.





That day we ran out of time and did the wiring a couple of days ago at night. We ran the wiring through a small hole we drilled on the passenger´s side pillar (similar to gizmo´s and ramairz´s setup). I still have to take pics of the wiring setup..

Here is the switch that we used, jp36 did a great job searching in local parts stores and found them. They fit perfectly and look great. One of the switches is for the four lights and the other one will be used for a couple of lights facing backwards. I plan on having some sort of roof basket/rack someday, so I´ll mount two small lights facing the rear. The switch on the left is for the electric antenna




I haven´t been to a dark road lately, so haven´t had the chance to take night pics of how they really light up the road. As soon as I have the chance I´ll post some comparison pics between the headlights, fogs and roof lights.




Hope you like them

On Saturday I went to buy new tires . I got 4 265.75.16 Nankang Mudstars. They are a copy of the Maxxis Buckshots at a lower price..


Trooper getting ready while jp36 checks how the OME919´s are holding up.









I like them a lot and I thought the road noise was going to be worse. I never had mt´s until now and I was expecting a lot more noise from them. I consider them very quiet and they ride nice and smooth on the streets.

Close up pic after going through a dirt road.



With jp36´s truck

Hi guys, just wanted to share some pics with you. Last weekend we went at a trail near a friends house. There was some sticky and slippery mud, and after goofing around we got ourselves stuck..


























He got stuck trying to pull me out..








After several attempts the white Tracker got me out, and then I pulled the white truck out.


After getting unstuck I had to come to work for a while...







I hope you enjoyed the pics

Awesome trooper!!

I want a turbo diesel

Thanks!

Is your 2002 trooper a 3.1 stock or did you swap the 3.0 to 3.1?

It came stock with the 3.1 tdi

Nice pics Beto!
I'm kinda jealous, that's a really nice looking Trooper!

95Rodeo4x4 wrote:wow looks cool. I really wonder if those isuzu diesels are a direct swap to a Rover

most of the people who go for that swap down here, come up with different mods and sometimes waste a lot of time and money; some just do it the easy way and order the swap kit from the UK and it's made specifically to fit the 4JB1-T in the Defender, and you can do it yourself on a weekend, it's just plug and go.
One of my buddies from Team Land Rover Costa Rica (www.teamlandrovercr.com/foros) just did it and he's happier than ever with his Isuzu-powered LR 90.

Hi guys, thanks for the comments.

Here is a video, hope you like it. We had a lot of fun that day

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xeyBCCiRs0

do you not have a locker in your trooper?

... it shows? .... ...

Yeah.. any of us has one... wish I had, kind of expensive to get a locker at this time tho...

i know how you feel. $$$

Still, that was pretty insane good traction for not having a locker!

Hi guys, this is just a small update. I haven´t done much to the Trooper lately, I got a new centerlink and idler arm a while ago. The old ones were really worn out. When I bought them the store had them available for the Isuzu KB/pup, which uses the same as the trooper. The difference is that they come with the mounting points for a steering damper. I figured aahh what the h_ll, might as well put a damper down there", so some time later I installed a oem one. Anyways the Inspection tests require having the damper installed if there are mounting points for it.

Pics:





It rides nice with the damper on, I like it how it feels on rough/bumpy roads. Also it felt way better by just changing the worn out parts obviously.



I also went on a couple of trips. One was to the northern beaches of the country with my gf and the other was with a 4x4 club.


Some pics of the Trooper posing at some of the beaches







It was fun driving through sand, visiting various beaches and we had an awesome time.


Some weekends ago we went on a small ride with a 4x4 club. It was for mostly stock 4x4´s and there wasn´t really tough sections. We didn´t get almost any pics tho...






And a small vid:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wNFbTpdvzA

Sorry for the low quality cellphone pics/vid.

Anyways I hope you like them

looks fun!

Incredible pictures. Makes me want to really visit your country some day!