Mitsubishi Mighty Max

[ChargerX3]

Update

Decided to tackle the brakes today. Wanted to swap over first the rear drums for the minteros discs. Started well but quickly found that there were a few differences that I hadn't anticipated. Some of those were the routing of the hard brake lines, brake hubs being different sizes and having the wheel bearing pressed on the axle shaft. I would just swap shafts but the monteros is longer and has 2 more splines. Wasnt meant to be, so I put it back together for now. Here is a pic of the rotor on the mm. Notice the gap?



Thinking that going the 97-01 montero sport rear will still be best route if I want to go rear discs. It's a leaf rear and is supposidly plug and play. For now the drums will work.

I then tackled the fronts. This went much smoother. They are nearly identical. Only real differences were the thickness of the rotors, larger calipers, dust shields, auto hub vs fixed. Here are some before and after pics. Had to massage the lower part of the dust shields as the orientation of the calipers is off by about 10*.

Stock MM unit.


Side by side comparison. Same diameter.


Notice the thickness and improved veins.I ended up just swapping over the montero rotor and hub as is.

Final product


I had to do a quick bleed before taking it out to dinner to meet up with some friends. I think I will need to bleed it again because the pedal travels about an inch further before braking. The good news? I can lock up the front brakes. Once down on the pedal it takes less force and effort to slow down the truck. It's actually so much better that it causes the nose to dive if you get too agressive.

Best upgrade so far.

[Jeff V.]

There's 5 or 6 Montero Sports within 20 mins of me right now. I'm trying not to go get the brakes until I've got my truck registered. I know as soon as I get the paperwork sorted out, they'll all be gone and it'll be months until I see another one.

BTW, I bought the MB990785 spanner wrench for removing the rear bearings. I'm still looking to buy or make the MB990787 tool that's also needed. Let me know if you need the wrench and I'll send it your way on loan.

I started the first part of patching my fuel tank tonight. Part two starts tomorrow.

Swap over the Montero master cylinder. That should help with your pedal travel issue.

[ChargerX3]

Just pick up the whole montero sport axle. It would be much easier to install the complete member. I just looked at what it would take to pull that bearing and for now I think it's a bit more work than I want to tackle at the moment. Need to transition to electrical and the motor. Might let you tackle the rear brakes then. Btw if you want the larger axle air locker I have 2 SR's in my local yard. Super random I know.

Master cylinder is already on the list. The MM sprung a slow leak a few months back.

Good luck with the tank!

[Jeff V.]

I need a truck in order to go get a whole rear axle

Also, the Sport rear brakes are smaller than the full size rear brakes. The mounting bracket for the calipers is the same though. It looks like the fronts are the same.

My hope is to find a full size SR that I can eventually pillage the brakes, front upper arms, wheels, and entire rear axle from.

I need to do a deep dive on ASA for the brake hardware part numbers. Then I'll have a full list of what's compatible and what's not.

In other news, I (hopefully) have a tach cluster coming from Alabama.

[ChargerX3]

Im sure even the smaller sport discs would perform quite well. You want the SR entire rear axle or just random parts? It's a bastard coil spring setup.

Interested in what ASA can tell us.

Congrats on the cluster. You will like it. I was excited about mine even though it narrowly survived a head on accident. I still think my tach is shot and my brake light stays on. Let me know if you see any others pop up.

[Jeff V.]

I have an open request for a cluster on Row52, but nobody has answered it yet.

Try Car-part.com. That's where I found mine.

[Jeff V.]

I got the cluster. It looks good. No cracks or other obvious damage. It's just dirty and the lens is slightly fogged.

I started doing the part number workup on the brake conversions. Has anyone who claimed that the rear brakes fit actually done the swap? The Sport discs all have 108mm center bores. Same as the full size disc. The Max drum is 93.5.

Swapping the whole rear axle might work, but then we're right back to the problem with gear ratios and whether or not the LSD can be carried over.

I'll come back to this later. This is making me crazy.

[ChargerX3]

Congrats on the tach. I picked up one over weekend too. It looked to be in excellent shape, but then I looked closer and noticed that the back spedo fitting had cracked and bent the internals. Otherwise a perfect tach. Need to find another donor spedo now. Grrrr!

Im not sure about the rear swap. Lots of talk but the only guys that seem to have done it are on the 4x4 forums. From them i get the impression that all of them are doing the sport rear axle complete.

The LSD out of your rear will not work. It comes down to spline count. We lack 2 extra splines. If you do go with the larger rear you can run the air locker. I think there were some LSD models too, but those would be hard to find. Wish the rear swap was easier than it is.

[Jeff V.]

Well, I did some more digging while I was waiting for a call back from one of my field techs.

The long and short of it is, you have the wrong Montero

It's tough to say for certain until I actually get parts and test everything, but so far it looks like you'd need a 3.0L Sport LSD rear axle and a lot of luck for the Max ring and pinion to swap over. The differential carrier itself is listed as interchangeable, so I'm optimistic about the ring gear. Hopefully the leaf spring perches are in the right place.

This should also enable you to move up to the bigger 3.5L full size rear brakes.

FYI, Mitsu does have a part number for an air locker for the 3.0 SUVs, but good luck finding one.

If you want to go to the bigger 3.5L hardware and the air locker, you'd need to look into a front axle swap to keep the ratios correct. I've got no idea what that entails. Full size air locker diff, 3.5L Sport rear axle tube, and who knows what up front.

With all the unknowns, in addition to the parking and service brake plumbing, I'm really starting to wonder if drums are all that bad

[ChargerX3]

I have the right montero! Just the wrong one for the rear axle. The LSD i picked up came out of either a 92 or 93 Montero LS. Im certain its a direct swap for my MM. According to my research the 94+ Monteros run the larger diff with supposedly the same dimension ring and pinion, but with different sized bearings. Ours would be the smaller bearing. There are also 2 extra splines on the axle shafts of the later models. One guy compared it to the for 9" as the dimensions are identical. Apparently Ford makes a small bearing and large bearing variant that Mitsu copied.

If that is the case the problem is going to be matching up to whatever front ratios we are limited to. Im trying to find out if the 3.54 5 speed rear diff in our Vr4's will fit in our front axle. Mostly because I would like to have awesome highway gears. If it does then I already know Ford makes a 3.55 ring and pinion. Problem solved...maybe?

Im going to keep my eye out for a sport rear axle, but not too worried at the moment. I was hoping for a quick fix, but sadly its not.

[Jeff V.]

Here's where this shit gets confusing. This is based on the VIN from my truck.

MB664686 - Open rear diff. Fits Max 4WD, Sport 3.0 2WD & 4WD, Gen 1 full size 3.0 and Gen 2 full size 3.0.

MB393915 - LSD. Fits Max 4WD, Gen 1 full size 3.0.

The 3.0 Sport and 3.0 Gen 2 full size have a different part number for the mechanical LSD. MB886595. The 3.5L version of those trucks has two more part numbers. One for the locker and one for a viscous hybrid LSD.

So how can the open diff be universal (bearing sizes, spline counts, etc) but the LSD has different part numbers? I can't find enough correlations between option codes on the rear axle pieces to say for sure. There's multiple axle shafts for each of the SUVs though.

I think the key to unlock all of this might be ABS. I can't say for certain, but I don't think you can get ABS and LSD independently of one another on the truck or SUV. It looks like they came as a package.

The SUV uses speed sensors in each wheel, and so they have unique axles if they have ABS. This might also explain the difference in the LSD (length, spline count, diameter, whatever). The pickup truck is a little wonky because it uses common axles, LSD or not. The reason is because the truck only has one ABS speed sensor, mounted in the diff carrier.

So....the only way to know for sure is to actually start matching up parts. ASA can get us close, but not 100%.

I have 2 VR4 rear differentials torn down on my bench right now. Let me know if you want any dimensions from the guts, or if you want to send me your spare LSD for comparison.

[Jeff V.]

One other thing I found. Some of the 2WD trucks had a 3.545 rear diff in them. It's not much to go on, but they had 10 bolts just like the VR4 rear and 4x4 front diff.

[ChargerX3]

That makes sense. From my reading the 3.0L trucks/SUV got the smaller 9" rear. The 3.5L SUV's got the 9" large rear. All the 4 cyl got the 8" rear diff which should be very similar if not the same as our 3s rear. The ABS options make sense too. My SR has it and the sensors are on all 4 corners requiring the spindles and hubs to accommodate them.

Yea the 2wd trucks rear axle should be very similar to our 4x4 front axle, Starquest, and 3s rear. Ive already test fitted the cover and it bolts right on. I really need to pull my SR center section and dive into it some more.

[ChargerX3]

Came across a couple bits over the weekend. Went to a Cali pick and pull up in the mountains and got lucky and found a bunch of nice stuff in a primered white 2wd MM. Picked up a Momo steering wheel, dash clock, another sport cluster (tach). Fiberglass fender flares that extend even further than the 4x4 ones, bucket seat rails, clean Ram 50 grill, and a bunch of other OEM parts that he kept in the bed.

Pics of fender flairs


My updated cockpit.

[Jeff V.]

Damn, that looks nice. I like the Momo wheel.

I really, really want a set of flares like that.

[Duck Vader]

I have nothing to contribute to this thread, but I just wanted to say, Momo is my cat's nickname.

That is all.

[Jeff V.]

Find someone to pull a mold on the flares. I have money.

[Chris GTO TT]

[quote=""ChargerX3""]Came across a couple bits over the weekend. Went to a Cali pick and pull up in the mountains and got lucky and found a bunch of nice stuff in a primered white 2wd MM. Picked up a Momo steering wheel, dash clock, another sport cluster (tach). Fiberglass fender flares that extend even further than the 4x4 ones, bucket seat rails, clean Ram 50 grill, and a bunch of other OEM parts that he kept in the bed.

Pics of fender flairs


My updated cockpit.

[/quote]
You came to CA and didn't say "hi?"

[DCIV]

are you going to keep that console cover? Looks like a women from the 80's!


Coop

[BATMAN]

Wow.