1988 Mitsubishi Shogun 2.6 HT BBR Turbo

[TurboBlue]

Hi,

At some point last week I was quite sure that I needed to buy, sight unseen, from ebay a late 1980's long wheel base, Mitsubishi Shogun 2.6 which has a period BBR Turbocharged engine conversion. Having bid and won it for the sum of £460 unfortunately I can't remember what the reason was.



Edit (January 2013): If you wish to save yourself a few pages, here is the truck back three months later looking a great deal better. I've already done 160 miles over the weekend with no problems but this does remain a work in progress.



Anyway, back to the story.

It was trailered down at the weekend and has sat on my drive demanding some attention but all I've felt was the sense that I was eating a ball of rust. You may gather from this that the truck is less than pristine and in fact has rust pretty much everywhere. So, after a poor few nights sleep concerned about what a fool I've been I've started to spend money which always seems to calm the nerves.

Firstly, a battery as the seller kindly walked off with the one fitted, together in fact with the clips, which as I hadn't initially noticed, involved two separate trips to the autoshop.

One Yuasa Pro-battery £85, two battery lugs £8, followed by TPFT insurance through Adrian Flux at £235 and £121 of RFL; tomorrow I'm going to attempt the journey to my mechanics garage so that we can start a proper assessment.

I've already started the ebay search for old brochures and having found a period BBR press release which states the following:

BBR Shogun Turbo Phase Two + 90 bhp = 190 bhp*
Includes full Garrett (T3) turbo assembly, weber carburettor, oil cooler assembly, boost gauge, intercooler assembly, automatic advance/retard ignition, 2.25" S/S exhasut system. Cost £2,685 fitted (1988 prices)

Phase three included a re-worked head, modified suspension, wheels & tyres at £4,235 and produced performance figures (according to Performance Car) of 0 to 60mph in 7.6 seconds and a standing quarter of a mile in 15.8 seconds (about as fast as my Renault 5 Turbo then).

...perhaps I've remembered the reason why I felt so strongly that I needed to own and restore the Shogun.

• I have e.mailed BBR to see if they can give me any information on the conversion. This appears particuarly important as they offerred a menu of engine enhancements & suspension componenets; with specific power outputs ranging from 140 to 240 bhp.

PS I'll scan the BBR advert when I get a chance.

Edited by TurboBlue on Wednesday 23 January 11:30

[youngsod]

Delightfully mental.

[jamiebae]

Crazy!

I spent a good bit of time age 18 tooling around in a G reg 3.0V6 LWB Shogun(with obligatory smoke screen on start up) and it was great fun when all my mates had Fiestas and Novas. Good luck with the resto, it's a very oddball choice but still awesome all the same!

[J4CKO]

My uncle used to work for international motors who imported Subaru, Isuzu and something else, he turned up in a Isuzu Trooper once that apparently had some kind of turbo conversion, he tossed me the keys as was traditional when he had something interesting (drove tone of the first Impreza Turbos on the country and an SVX), well the Trooper was rapid but the handling was not changed, it seemed to want to swap ends, I think it was selectable 4wd, not permanent.

[Kev T360]

This is very cool indeed, good luck getting her fixed up, hope there's no hidden surprises!

[bob1179]

I like this.

How far are you planning to take the restoration?

[RobCrezz]

Retro cool!

I wonder if the engine from an evo or even a Galant VR4, or GTO would fit

[mister.t]

I used to have a 2.6 SWB in exactly the same colour (Sahara Blue I believe it was called) at the age of 14 until I was able to drive at 17 (insurance was too high, this was late 2007).

To this day, it's a car I sorely miss, the standard 2.6 wasn't actually all that bad for a car of that ilk. Very strong, took some fairly serious dunkings in water that Land Rover V8's I've had since haven't liked in the slightest. Even on All Terrains and without any locking diffs, it was very capable. If I could get the Shogun engine and main gearbox into a Defender 90 whilst using the D90's transfer box and tidy overhangs, I think it would be almost unstoppable.

The main issue with mine was chassis rot, the bodywork was perfect. I also had 2 shock absorber covers dis-integrate on me, must be another common issue.

Turbocharging one of these it just the coolest thing, I cannot wait to see what you're going to do!

[TurboBlue]

Thanks for all the replies.

The Shogun made it safely to the garage today, with the turbo whistling merrily to itself too, and has been on a ramp for an inspection. The resulting list, quoted below plus service items, is long but make the truck a go, at least to me:

"Looked at the shogun and the chassis is all good and no holes anywhere. List of things noted:

- front brakes binding
- steering box leak
- play in steering box
- rear brakes binding
- rear diff oil leak, I think from the drain plug
- front brake hoses cracked
- front anti roll bar bushes cracked
- slight leak from clutch slave cylinder
- shock absorber bushes cracked and worn
- exhaust manifold gasket blowing
- spark plugs worn
- brake and clutch fluid dirty.

It has an LSD fitted to the rear axle.

Stripped a few part of the carb but this needs to be removed, stripped and cleaned because the jets are blocked, hence it won’t run on part throttle and its all very dirty in there.

Greased up the front suspension as this was dry and the prop shafts, re-mounted the exhaust so this is not touching the body now, fitted the battery terminals correctly (see I can't even manage that, my italics about me).

It requires a good steam clean to get all the mud and oil from underneath and then we can see what needs painting."

Bear in mind that I bought this with an MoT, valid until February 2013.

So, here's a picture or two of it in the sun; keep this in mind because we have a cunning plan;




and here's one from a period BBR brochure, this is what I'm aiming for (without DLT naturally).



The LSD was a pleasant surprise and must have been fitted by BBR or later and just adds to the reasons why I'm keen to keep this on the road.

To answer a couple of the questions; apparantly BBR did a conversion for the Trooper too but I've not seen one, ever. It's going to be a rolling restoration, with the aim of getting a period look with perhaps a modern twist. I'm reliably informed that the 2.6L engine is the same as used in the Mitsubishi Starion - here's a wiki link for you. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starion

Thanks again for the encouragement, I'll keep updating the blog as we progress.

Edited by TurboBlue on Tuesday 20th November 23:50

[Bv8]

Good luck with this one Simon. Still love the battle cruisers. Spend on the mechanicals and electrics so she goes. Paint can wait! You are already ahead of me by getting the services of a profesional to do the important stuff straight away. Also nice to pull away from a 50k Chealsea tractor for less than a months depreciation. Great stuff. Good luck mate looking forward to seeing it on the road. Ps do you have the address for the MOT station.......! Jk

Edited by Bv8 on Friday 19th October 17:37

[TurboBlue]

Bv8 said:

Good luck with this one Simon.

Hi Jeremy, good to hear from you - looking forward to seeing the MGB GT V8 on the road, the summer perhaps? As mentioned above I failed to correctly install the battery so anything electro-mechanical has to be dealt with by the professionals & the gifted. I have however spent this morning with a steam pressure cleaner getting down and dirty with the chassis, unbelievably the chassis appears perfectly sound, so as you say we are concentrating on the mechanics & electrics.

Scott from SG Motorsport has stripped the carburettor that was part of the BBR upgrade - it is a Weber 32/34 DMTT - and the jets are blocked from all the rubbish caused by the breaking down of the old intercooler & associated hoses. A re-build kit should be with Scott next week.

Edited by TurboBlue on Tuesday 20th November 23:51

[Bv8]

Had a go in one when new..... Do you recognise the driver. Back then they came with a phone.



Hope you like. Will be good when the B gets to the top of the priority list.

Edited by Bv8 on Friday 19th October 18:06

[Bv8]

[TurboBlue]

Awesome photo's, I'd quite forgotten Richard looked that young. Back in the 1980's Action Plant Hire days.

Edited by TurboBlue on Saturday 20th October 21:26

[MrMoonyMan]

Good Morning.

And congratulations on a positively fantastic purchase.

That things gonna be hilarious when you get it up and running properly.

Good luck.

[TVR Sagaris]

'bursts of power acceleration I found quite startling'

Great stuff - big fan of old Shoguns and never knew this conversion existed.

[TurboBlue]

MrMoonyMan said:

That things gonna be hilarious when you get it up and running properly.

I certainly hope so.

TVR Sagaris said:

- big fan of old Shoguns and never knew this conversion existed.

Here's the back of the BBR advert; lots of lovely information about specifications and options, unfortunately BBR have been unable to confirm any details of the conversion so we will have to pick our way through. The engine is either the 190bhp or the 240bhp conversion as it has an air-to-air intercooler mounted so it's probably a phase two but we'll have to wait and see what else lies in store. Note, that the crossings out were not done by me!

Edited by TurboBlue on Tuesday 20th November 23:53

[TurboBlue]

Do you remember this:

Kev T360 said:

This is very cool indeed, good luck getting her fixed up, hope there's no hidden surprises!

Today I had a go with Scott's spanners with a view to getting the intercooler off to see what condition it was in and to get the pipework cleaned up & new hoses ordered. Not unexpectedly we've run into a few 'local difficulties'; they are perhaps best explained with the help of some photographs (deep breath now):

Intercooler, is it supposed to be almost round


Later Scott removed the Turbocharger, I have nothing to add;


and the exhasut manifold; note, it's bespoke & been welded up before;


it looks worse in this picture;


I am disappointed with how this all looks but the truck is 25 years old and clearly it has not been loved for a very long time; we will plough on.

Edited by TurboBlue on Tuesday 20th November 23:57

[DanDC5]

Just keep going. This will be worth all the time and effort when it's done.

[jbi]

didn't even know these existed... fantastic

Good on you for bringing something so rare back