Challenges:
There were a few challenges during this modification.
First it seems like there is no 7″ DOT braided steel brake hose available which would be necessary for the front top portion to make it a nice fit. We used 9″ instead. Not ideal, but works.
Second, you need to make new metal brake lines with tiny curves on the calipers. So make sure you have the right tools including tube cutter and flaring tool.
Third, it took us a while to figure out the right bracket to attach the hose to the caliper. Main challenge is you don’t want to hit the brake line neither with your bump stop, nor with your wheel.
Fourth, you need to trim the head shield to make the dual piston caliper fit.

Last but not least a huge thanks to “lazygreenfox” and “Golf Cart” for their help on this job. It is great to have such a good Delica community in Vancouver where everybody can learn from each other!

Here are the part numbers I used for this job:

Rotors:
Power Slot 126-46040SR
Power Slot 126-46040SL

Calipers:
2x ‘92+ Mitsubishi Montero front left/right caliper semi-loaded

Brake Pads:
1x Hawk LTS HB214Y.618

Brake Lines:
4x Russell 656012 (9″)
1x Russell 656062 (24″, shorter is fine if you don’t have a lift)

Brake Fittings:
8x Russell 641411
2x Russell 641431

Misc:
2x Russell 683942 (90 degree bracket)
2x 3/16 in. o.d. SAE inverted flare metric brake line with 2 pcs. M10 – 1.0 long tube nut fitting
DOT 4 Brake Fluid

One tip for new l300 owners: Check the lower bracket of the struts. If you read the “E/N” upside right you are all set. If its upside down take both struts off, swap sides and rotate the lower bracket. It will give you an extra few inches when you open the door. You head will like it :)

To know a little bit better what’s going on inside the engine I installed a pyrometer (for the exhaust gas temperature) and a boost pressure gauge. As location I decided to go right behind the steering wheel. This dead spot is perfect for two pods. I also wanted to keep the look similar to the stock dashboard, so the VDO gauges (from Summit Racing) seems to fit perfectly with their analog, black look and the green illumination.
The temperature sensor for the EGT was already installed a while ago, so I just had to wire up the gauges and hook up the vacuum line. We took the power from the radio and the ash-try light which was the closed and most easiest route. I’m quite happy with the outcome. The gauges (specially the pyro) will help to prevent any major engine failure due wrong driving.

A few tips:

• Make sure you get the right pod for your gauge, even if the diameter is the same, the length various widely.
• For the Delica a boost gauge up to 20psi is plenty. If you take a gauge with a larger scale you wont notice that much movement
• A pyro with a scale up to 1400°F is enough.
• Full mechanical boost pressure gauges tend to have a little silent whistle sound if you back off, which could get annoying if don’t mount it in a sealed pod.

p.s.: Sorry for not taking any photos from the install. I forgot the camera. Also if you want to read more about pyro and boost gauges on Delicas, check out this thread on the Canadian Forum.

It works great and the annoying sound of the pressure valve under load is gone till the pressure hits about 18psi. I usually try to stay blow 15psi, though.

Many people at the exhibition installed the IBS Dual Battery system as part of the on-board power setup. Some people used the National Luna version but had no go experience with it due the not water proof solenoid and the cheap connectors. Obviously there was also the option to build my own monitor, but there are way too many upcoming mods on my list, so I wanted to save time. In the end we went with the IBS system for around CAD300. If you are interested what this system actually does, read this page.

The system itself is pretty simple. One heavy duty relay (200A/500A) and a well built remote with a lot of wires. We usually don’t need the remote while driving, so we installed it out of the way behind the passenger seat. The wiring can be kept very short this way. The relay is just on to of the batteries.

The battery compartment is quite small on a Delica, but I still didn’t want to move one battery inside the van (every inch counts), so I decided to go with a Odyssey 35-PC1400 as a starter battery and a Haze 80Ah (size 24) AGM deep cycle battery for the accessories. It’s not really huge, but we are not planing to have a lot of accessories on while in camp mode. Also the planed solar panels should extend the power a bit.

Jay, also installed a battery disconnector to prevent the batteries from draining while sitting for a longer time unused (e.g. when we want to ship the car in a container etc.)

Check out the photo album. Hopefully you can find some interesting modification for your camper as well.

At the beginning I thought two lights would be enough, but once I saw how nice three lights would actually fit, there was no way back. Unfortunately Lightforce just sells them in a set, so I bought a box for myself and shared one with a good friend.
Unlike normal lights you have quite a bit of electrical stuff (igniter and ballast) to hide with three lights. At the beginning we thought to hide everything inside the van, but apparently you are not allowed to cut the cables, so everything had to be mounted outside. I went to the Metal Supermarkets and found a nice piece of perforated aluminum, cut it in the right shape and built two little covers to hide the cables on each side. It also worked great to secure everything with tie straps on it. After screwing it to the light mount, the ballasts were hidden behind the left indicator light. The lights are secured with special lock-nuts which hopefully protects them against thieves.

I’m very happy with the outcome of the whole bull bar. Everything looks how I had it in my mind. I haven’t got time to try the lights properly, but I already can tell you one thing. They are fricking bright.

Thanks again to my friend Jay for the support on this project!

Another problem was the rust. I already knew from our old van, that the side step can rust quite fast due the rock-chips from the front wheel (even with mud flaps). Therefore I cleaned and sanded it properly and used a few coats of black rocker guard as protection. The hardware is now also stainless steel. We will see how good it holds up.

The first step was to take the plastic cover off which I was not planing to use anymore afterwards. Unfortunately after the cover came off quite a few big metal brackets were welded to the bull bar. So I spent a whole night grinding everything unnecessary off. After cleaning up I had to figure out a mounting system for the planned fog lights in the middle of the bumper. In the end a metal plate was welded to the middle tube with three brackets attached to it. Also the main mount for the bull bar got a few additional welding spots to make it stronger.

Next step was cleaning, sanding and priming. As the first coat I used rocker guard to prevent any chipping. The second and third coat is white Tremclad.

The two main brackets which hold the bumper to the van were quite rusty as well as all the bolts. I used rust primer and again Tremclad, but I had to find new bolts. Not as easy as I thought. It turned out just one place in Vancouver sells fine-thread metric high-grad bolts: West Coast Fasteners Ltd.
The original bolts are grad 7, which is not very high specially when you use just ONE bolt to tow the whole vehicle. Therefore I bought grade 10.9 to give it more strength and used stainless-steel washers.

Next step: Mounting the fog lights…

With the 32″ tires (235/85R16) you notice quite a bit of a difference (roughly 10% slower speedometer) between your actual speed and the shown speed on you dashboard. I found that quite inconvenient and confusing specially when you try to measure certain distances with your odometer on logging roads.
To solve this problem you need to change the gear where the speedometer cable meets the transfer case. I knew the standard gear has 27 teeth. To get the correct amount of teeth for your tires you need to measure with an GPS the difference from your actual speed and the speedometer speed. Take this number as percentage and you know the correct speedo gear.

For example:
Speedometer reads 100km/h, but my actual speed is 113km/h ≈ 13%
Speedometer reads 50km/h, but my actual speed is 55km/h ≈ 10%
11.5% of 27 teeth ≈ 3
27 – 3 = 24 teeth

In my case 24 teeth is just fine. The speedometer goes 2-5km/h ahead which is perfect to not get a speeding ticket :)
Finding the right part number was not easy, because none of the importers could guarantee the correct fit. I was lucky and everything went smooth and the installation was easy. Here are the numbers I found out:

23 = MD 705463
24 = MD 705464
25 = MD 705465
26 = MD 705466
27 = MD 705467

One problem with the performance of this little Diesel engine in a l300 is the stock exhaust. It is long and just 2″ crushed bent piping with a standard muffler. Obviously the back pressure is high and it does not really support the breathing of the engine. Therefore using larger diameter, better bent piping and a free-flow muffler should improve the situation.
The manifold and the down pipe should be changed too, to have no bottleneck in the exhaust system. Unfortunately the muffler shop could not find the right parts. That’s why our exhaust starts actually with the stock down pipe where the new larger stainless steel pipe is welded to. No ideal, but better than nothing.
Summitracing.com had a pretty good deal on a small, round Magnaflow muffler for around $60 (p/n 10416) which I took to a local muffler shop to get the proper stainless steel piping and hangers.
To save space for future modifications (hot water tank, additional Diesel tank) as well as keeping the exhaust as short as possible we went with an side exit right in front of the driver side rear wheel.

Update:
I was not very happy with the crappy work from Quite Muffler on Kingsway. They are neither very friendly nor have they done a good job. Stay away from them!
So I sold the exhaust again and was back to the drawing board. After a few more calls with the local Hot Rod community I found Muffler Tech in Port Coquitlam. They had all the parts in stock and had no problem fabricating the tubes. Also it turned out it is the only place in Western Canada which actually does mandrel bending. Great!
After a day I picked up the van with an very well designed exhaust how I had it in mind.

p.s. They even could fix the problem with the left lower control arm and did a 4-wheel laser alignment.

This modification took quite a bit of time. Back in February I received a package from Taiwan with all the parts, but it took till last week to finish it. Mainly because I was not happy how the snorkel suppose to be connected to the air intake. First the pipe on the snorkel had a too small diameter for my taste and second the intake on the air canister was facing in the wrong direction. Either you would need to use a long hose (as it came with the set) or you need to weld a new pipe on the canister. I decided to do latter.

The air canister has now a straight 3″ stainless steel pipe on it as well as the snorkel a modified 3″ PVC adaptor from HomeDepot. Also the bottom of the snorkel is now filled with expandable construction glue which should avoid any air turbulence. The connection between snorkel and air canister is a 3″ blower rubber hose from Green Line. The brackets on the body are out of stainless steel. The van has now also an K & N long life air-filter (p/n 4810) instead of the paper filter to have extra good airflow.

So far I’m really impressed with the difference, the vehicle feels for sure more powerful and the engine temperature dropped down quite a bit too. Specially at highway speed the cold air gets really forced into the intake. One disadvantage (for now) is the regularly releasing pressure gate due the increased boost/power. Not really a problem if you just back off a bit. I’m going to fix that in the next few weeks though.

Thanks to my friends David & Jay for helping me out on this mod.

This week I removed the EGR (exhaust gas recirculation) and fabricated two blocking plates. Apparently it should increase the fuel economy, reduces the wear in the engine and eliminates one possible reason of any black smoke issues (knock on wood, we don’t have them yet)
Wikipedia has also something interesting to say about this modification:

EGR deletion in diesel engines is considered justifiable by a wide range of people, including the environmentally conscious. Although deleting the EGR system results in increased NOx level hydrocarbon emissions, Particulates, Carbon monoxide and Carbon dioxide are drastically reduced. Furthermore, EGR deletion results in an increase in fuel economy as high as 25%. Exhaust gas recirculated back into the cylinders adds wear-inducing contaminants and causes an increase engine oil acidity, which can result in an inefficient, poorly running engine. The increased level of soot also creates the need for diesel particulate filters to prevent environmental contamination.

A nice side effect is to have more space in the engine for future projects as well as the best spot (pre turbo) to mount a sensor for the Pyrometer gauge. The top blocking plate is out of 1/4 inch aluminum and the bottom plate is 1/4 inch solid steel, because it’s mounted on the hot engine block.
I also cleaned all disconnected pipes and fittings from 16 years exhaust soot.

Small modification but huge driving improvement. We had already a smaller after market steering wheel on DINO and as we got DINO^EVO the original, large steering wheel reminded me how much I liked a smaller one. So, I finally got around to change it today and installed a Grant “Formula GT” (P/N 773) with adaptor (P/N 3390). Taking the old steering wheel off was not a problem, even without a puller. Installing the new one needed a little bit more time and a few test runs to get it aligned with the wheels.

It feels much better now and sideways parking does not end up being an exercise anymore. Also the driver side feels already more roomier as well.