Hope this doesn't go against the grain for too many of the members. I'm in England and my friend had a 350 engine in his shed for years and I had an old Toyota pick up with no load bed that had been sitting for 15 years. So I bought the engine from him and proceeded to shoe horn it into the pick up. Meeting some Engineering challenges on the way some of which you may be interested to see. I had already fabricated a complete new load bed and tailgate so was in to it quite deep when I came to do the first engine pre-fit, only to discover that the starter motor was going to hit the top of the front axle diff case that's on the R/H side same as the starter. Having looked at the mini starters and realising they would still not give me the clearance required, I solved the problem by using a 10" by 1/2" drive socket set extension, a 12mm socket, a BMW starter motor and 6082 aluminium plate. I machined the alloy plate to clamp the BMW starter into and to mount it to the side of the engine block. Then with the buick starter I machined off the windings just leaving the shaft with the gear on it and the throw out mechanism. Then I fabricated an end cap to fit where the motor used to bolt on to the Alloy starter casing. The shaft was then shortened and a 1/2" square machined on to the end to fit into the socket set extension bar. The other end had a 12mm socket fitted that would fit onto the BMW starter that had the alloy mounting area removed and the starter shaft shortened and a 12mm hex machined in to it to fit into the 12mm socket on the end of the extension shaft. The BMW throw in solenoid also had to be made to fit into the Buick starter casting. I have added some photos so my description will be easier to understand. Hopefully this may help others if they are doing something similar. I did read a post from NOTHINGFACE 5384 saying he was thinking of fitting a 350 in an old toyota pick up. Don't know if he got it done or not. Anyway can post some more stuff if some members are interested.
I would have never thought of such a mod. Reminds me of something I saw the guys at Bad Obsession motor works do in the Binky build.
Don't break down Napa won't have that starter on the shelf lol. Very awesome work sir. Looks amazing and it's just a starter that no one will see other than us. But no one will see another truck with Buick power like that one either
Hello I'm pleased some folks found the toyota interesting. The next job was to get the oil sump sufficient clearance between the diff housing and axle. To sort this wasn't too bad. I didn't want to lose oil capacity so the front area of the sump was cut away and welded to the back of the sump with a filler band welded between the two keeping the oil volume the same. Then a new section from 20swg was formed and welded in to clear the axle and diff case. Next was to make a new oil pick up tube as the section of the sump where it originally fitted was no longer there. The tube was formed then the original strainer and flange were removed from the old assembly and brazed on to the new .625" tube and the strainer screen was folded over and soft soldered in position. Another clearance issue occurred when the R/H exhaust manifold landed directly on top of the chassis rail. The only chance I had was to cut the outlet pipe at a pre determined angle and rotate it through 180* and cast iron weld it back together to get the clearance required. Using pre and post heating and peening the end results seem good. So we will see what the service life will be.
Does anybody remember Pat Harmon's original screen name on V8, before he was bignastyGS? It was BigNastyToyota I think. That would be a good name for your project, BigNastyToyota
Making an adapter plate to connect the engine to the transmission bell housing was a tricky problem as I couldn't find any information on the bolt and dowel pattern for the bell housing. But I did have the opportunity to borrow a Faro arm (portable CMM) so I could measure all the hole positions relative to each other and the input shaft centre. Unfortunately one of the dowel holes in the bell housing fell in the same place as the starter motor would occupy. To get around this I had the adapter plate laser cut from 5/16" plate with the dowel holes .010" under size. I then reamed out to 10mm to fit the dowels. Then I found another area of the bell housing with a thick enough area to accommodate another replacement dowel. I then bolted the adapter plate to the bell housing using the 2 original dowels for location, I then fixed my magnetic base drill to the adapter plate and drilled and reamed a new dowel hole through the adapter plate and bell housing to serve as a replacement for the one that would now have to be removed due to the starter motor location. After that was done I then cut an aperture in the adapter plate to allow the nose of the buick starter to fit through. I also welded two alloy blocks with 10mm holes in to the bell housing to fit two more bolts to be used around the area where the bell housing had to be opened up to give clearance where the starter protruded in to it.
I measured the Toyota bell housing and if the ID was cast concentric to the input shaft, the flex plate teeth should just clear. On fitting it I did have to rotary file the bell housing here and there but only had to remove about .020" of material. I didn't have a flywheel only a flexplate. Having done some reading and looking at it, it was clear it was used as a balancer. I decided to use it but to trap it behind the flywheel machined from a piece of 13" diameter en8 steel (1040) your specifications I think. With everything on the flywheel being at 120* (holes and dowels) and machined from billet, the balance should remain neutral. With the flex plate fitted there was still an 1/8" of the crank protruding through it. This was enough engagement to fit the flywheel on to, so I went ahead and drew the flywheel up and had a local engineering company make it for me. I didn't have a lathe large enough to do it myself , it came in at 21 Lbs and cost £240. The engine runs smoothly at all RPM with no vibration so I'm happy with how it turned out.
Very nice work! I have been lurking around for many years to find a Buick powered truck. Came close to buying this one with a 455 until the seller suddenly lost his mechanical aptitude whenever I pushed for more information on it overheating( “Probably just needs a radiator”?). He replaced that info with telling me what a great Christian he was. Yehhhhhhh if you have to tell me how great you are I am going to proceed very carefully. Sure would have been a sweet “sleeper” but I didn’t want to spend that much and immediately have to replace head gaskets that might turn into a full rebuild (probably be “interesting “ getting that motor out and back in. Anyhow would like to see pictures of the overall Toyota pictures. Very cool project
That's a shame you couldn't get your hands on it. I will keep putting posts on when I have a bit of time. Do you think folks will want to see non Buick Parts of it as well?
