You read right, 511:1 (Five hundred and eleven to one – not five point one one to one) ratio unstoppable HiLux. The old 3RZ-FE powered 2.7-litre four-pot HiLux engine has, since it’s release, been known as a bit of a slouch. They didn’t make a huge amount of torque, power figures were respectable at 112kW, but no animal by any stretch of the imagination. One fellow over in the US however, decided to build a 3RZ powered ‘Lux to climb just about anything, and prove it’s not about how much you’ve got, but what you do with it.
The 1981 HiLux certainly doesn’t look like much, despite it’s very early retro styling and simplicity, it was however built with a very specific purpose in mind; rock crawling. “BigMike” who owns the old ‘Lux has lobbed the 3RZ into the 1981 shell, and then added no less than three transfer cases behind the gear box. The ratio’s then stack up like this: 3.95 1st gear, 4.7, 2.28 & 2.28 in the transfers, with a 5.29 diff ratio. Multiply these together, and you get your final drive ratio; 511:1.
To put this another way, at 4,800RPM the 3RZ puts out 164 lb-ft of torque, which equates to 150 HP (115kW) at the flywheel. Then it goes through the different ratio changes via the gearbox, three transfer-cases, and the diff. So you get 164 lb-ft X 511, which results in just over of 83,800 lb-ft of torque at the wheels, making it, for all intents and purposes, unstoppable.
Without anymore numbers and maths on a Friday, here’s the video of it in action.
What do you think of a five hundred to one ratio unstoppable HiLux? Never let it be said that a 4X4 cant go everywhere. ‘Big Mike’ has proven with enough transfer cases, you can do anything!
