Rambo Penguin's Gen 3 Montero Build

[Rambo Penguin]

I’ve taken the summer off from updating this build thread. I figure, why spend time on the computer when you can spend time on the trails? This was my first summer season with the montero and it was great to see all the hard work and time pay off! Here is how to Montero is currently sitting


As hinted about before, lift and tires are on. I’ve actually had them for about 5,000 miles and 2 months at this point. I went with a 285/75/16 BFG Ko2 all terrains, and I couldn’t be happier! The are aggressive enough for all the trails i end up on and they handle the highway like a true street tire. The side way is much stronger than my previous Goodyear wranglers.

It seems that not matter how many times the topic is brought up, people still want to know about how the Gen 3 will handle 33’s (myself included). The short story is: it does awesome. You definitely feel the loss of power on the hwy. My speedo runs about 5mph lower than stock and i spend less time in the higher rpms (which is where the power band is on these 3.8L engines). Around town it’s less noticeable. Acceleration feels just a touch sluggish but within a week I had completely adjusted to it. Braking time is increased and less effective, but not unbearable or unsafe. Off Road (dirt or gravel) in 2H, 4H or 4HCL it feels really sluggish. I'm pushing the accelerator nearly to the floor before it downshifts and gives the power I need to maintain normal driving speeds. 4LCL is a different story. 4LCL is still punchy, powerful and torquey. It still crawls up and down everything with ease. I’ve never been lacking for power in 4LCL. However, the different tire size does seem to confuse the transmission shift points. For example, the transmission likes to stay in 3rd gear at nearly any speed offroad in 4LCL.. Which is absurd. This puts the rpms down in the 1,500 -2,000 range which is barely above idle. I often downshift manually into 1st or 2nd off road and that fixes the problem.




What about Gas mileage? Well. If you bought a montero for the MGPs then you messed up haha. When mine was stock I saw close to window sticker numbers. Somewhere between 15 and 19 mpg with mixed driving conditions. Now that i’m on a much heavier 33” tire i’m seeing closer to 12-15 in normal driving and 10mpg offroad. It’s pretty bad. This isn’t a huge problem for me because i live in a small town and bike to work. So I only really use the Montero for trips and adventures.. And that’s the price you pay to play with an offroad rig. 


Fitment:
Rumor has it that 285/75/16s can fit on a gen 3 with stock suspension with just a little bit of trimming of the plastic bumper. I bet this is true given how big the wheel wells are. However, I opted to do a cheap spacer lift to get me through this summer. Everything i do to this truck is on a tight budget, so while i’d like to just swipe my card and build it, i have to wait and time my mods and upgrades accordingly with my budget and time constraints. I will be making a separate post with details about spacer lift options and their different outcomes. It was a mess to get this the way i wanted, but in the end I ended up with something that works really well, is safe and cost effective.



The lift I ended up with is a 1.5” spacer lift front a rear. I used some rubber pucks for the rear and aluminum discs for the front. I got the rear ones from a fellow montero owner and have no idea where they came from. They are just ok. I will be replacing them over this upcoming winter for better weight support and a little more height. I will be going with OME medium duty springs without any spacers. The fronts were home made. I cut some aluminum discs 6” in diameter and ½” thick. These slipped right on top of the stock strut mount. This safely lifted the front up 1.5 inches. The difference in spacer thickness and lift height is due to the geometry of the IFS. A little bit goes a long ways. With these spacers the CVs sit almost flat so angles were not an issue.







Wheels:
I did attempt to get a cheap set of steel wheels for the new tires. I want a 0 offset, but the brake calipers in the front make it hard to fit some kinds of cheap wheels. So i decided to hold off on wheels until i can spend the money and do it right. Hopefully that will happen soon because wow is this thing narrow and tippy offroad. At least it has amazing balance and a lower center of gravity.

With the lift on my next order of business was to handle the slider kick outs. I scored on some left over steel that was already bent to the perfect angle and size for my kick outs. This was kinda a quick and dirty job. I eyeballed the fitment, cut the ends down, tacked it, welded it and gave it a rattle can finish. Nothing pretty, but they did save my doors 2 or 3 times this summer. Before next season I will go back and put some additional supports in the middle for increased rigidity and hopefully the ability to use a Hi lift jack on them.







After spending a whole summer on the spacer lift i learned a lot about the handling and suspension upgrade needs. The weakest link is saggy springs and bouncy shocks in the rear (but I ended up doing all 4). On the highway it swayed a lot and likes to wonder after bumps. I already want to replace the springs, but figured i would start with shocks first for better performance sooner. I polled the montero community and decided on Bilstein 4600s. Fronts are Bilstein 24-062718 and rears are 24-062725.

I should have done this upgrade much sooner but didn’t know how bad it really was. I have no record of the struts or shocks being changed in the history of the truck. Upon removing the rear shocks i discovered that they offered almost no dampening at all. I was able to compress one of them with one finger and it would not bounce back. This means I spent the summer wheeling around and road tripping with basically no shocks and just stock springs in the rear. Epic fail. Since the rears were so bad I bit the bullet and did the front ones too. They weren’t as bad but definitely had seen some wear.

Rears





Front




So now I have new struts in the front and shocks in the rear…. And it rides like a dream! All the vagueness and body roll I was used to disappear and instead the truck is planted, smooth and stable. The highway is no longer a death trap and offroad it just eats up the bumps and rocks. This might be my favorite upgrade after the 33” KO2s

An interesting point on the rear Bilsteins. When I installed the new shocks I noticed that they were slightly (½”) shorter than the stock ones I was removing. I was nervous about having the shock be the limiting factor for my droop. I called Bilstein and they confirmed that I had the right part, and that it was the correct measurement from the factory. So I put my fears to rest since I figured they would know what they are doing and that they would know if it had resulted in major problems. Plus they are covered by Bilsteins lifetime warranty.

[Sir_Monty]

Very cool build. Reading this makes me excited to get a gen3. My gen2.5 is a little rough and is taking to much time and money to make it a good daily/overland truck.

[Rambo Penguin]

I scored an inexpensive (but good quality) light bar recently so i decided to put it on. It’s a 24” Blazer spot/flood combo. Nothing special, but a good step above the cheap chinese stuff. Used some scrap aluminum that i had to make a bracket for it and cut the grill to match. I wired it to come on when I hit the high beams for simplicity. It is surprisingly bright with really good spread. Not exactly a pencil beam but it is great for trail work and night driving on dark back roads.

[Rambo Penguin]

And if you were being observant in the last post you might have noticed… That I scored cheap wheels!! Finally, i’ve been hunting for a wider stance since the second i bought this. I found some Eagle Alloy wheels (set of 5) for cheap and jumped on it. 4 came painted in bedliner and i sprayed the spare to match. The details: -11 offset, 8” x 16” Aluminum with a 108mm center bore. I was really hoping for 0 offset for fitment but another ½” isn't too much and the price was right. Here’s a few things i’ve learned about wide wheels on a Gen 3. They look amazing, fix that tippy feeling that makes you crap your pants and they absolutely require hub centric rings. A hub centric ring is used to center the wheel on the hub. Simple conical lugnuts is not enough for the sensitive Gen 3 front end. I got some plastic 67.1mm to 108mm rings and they eliminated any front end shake or vibration. These barely clear the front calipers (problem with the steel wheels from earlier) but they do in fact clear.




Hub centric rings




So how do the wheels compare? Track width was my primary goal here. Sure, they look mean, but I was far more worried about performance. The new wheels are 2.75? Wider per side than the stock wheels with the 33” tires. So i’ve gained 5.5” of total track width which feels and looks massive! The back wheels are just about flush with the guards and the front wheels stick out about ½”.




A few issues. The first is that wide wheels will rub on front and rear of the fenders in the front. I had already trimmed the front bumpers so i didn’t need to do any more work there. I did however need to trim about 2” of the rear front fenders. There wasn’t any science to this, I just cut until they fit. It wasn’t much cutting, but now i need to figure out how to remount the fender guards to keep mud and dirt out of my body panels.






The other big issue is suspension travel. At slow flex the tires will not hit the fenders. However, add a little bit of speed and everything changes. I found this out when I took a dive into a muddle that was much deeper than expected. Smashed my front driver fender and passenger rear. Luckily it wasn’t anything crazy.. But it did make me realize that i was going to have to fix the issue. Before considering more serious modifications i decided to extend the bump stops. After messing with some spacers and flexing the rig out a bit i decided to run ½ spacers in the rear and 1” in the front. I extended the bolts on the stock bump stops by cutting the original bolt, cutting up a different bot and welding them together. Seems to work well and allows for me to run spacers. If this becomes a more permanent fix i will order custom bump stops to replace these.





Longer term solutions involve getting a real lift, running different wheels, or cutting. I’ve decided to go with a true lift spring and run OME medium duty springs instead of my spacer lift. This should help dramatically since the stock suspension is soft and worn out. I will see if that fixes the issues before doing anything else.

[Rambo Penguin]

The final drawback of the wide wheels was that my sliders also had to be cut down to accommodate the wider turning radius. I needed to take abou 1.5” off of them so while i had them off the car I decided to beef them up a bit. These siders did save my doors once this summer when i slipped off an obstacle and almost smashed my door. I wanted to re-enforce them so that they would hold up for more hits, and I also wanted to add some support so I could use them as a hi-lift point.

I used a hole saw to notch some tubing, cut it to size, smashed it in and welded it up. Very pleased with how they turned out! Now i will have a little more confidence using a hi-lift on them if i need to and they will take a beating without losing shape.









Lastly, I really wanted rock lights.. But the kind that all the posers have that just light up there suspension set ups in their wheel wells, I wanted to be able to see under the rig for night wheeling. I had saved the factory side step plugs and reused them to add some lights attached to the sliders. They are bright enough to light up the entire underside of the montero and they also come on when i unlock the car and open the doors, which is a cool touch. Later on I will install a switch so i can run them all time.

[Rambo Penguin]

Another thing i did was shorten my hitch. That stupid thing would drag on everything. I cut 2” out of it, rewelded it and used the removed sections as scab plating. Should be just as strong as before and now it will spend less time dragging all over the trail

[Rambo Penguin]

The next few mods are big ones! Lift kit, awning and 4.9 gears!!

As mentioned before, I basically outgrew my spacer lift. It worked really well for the time and activities i used it for up until now, but with the capability and capacity of the rig both going up it was time for something more substantial. I could tell that the stock suspension was not up to the task of carrying all our gear or even just 4 people. The rear springs would sag like crazy causing the Montero to have a prerunner lean. So out with the old, in with the new! Went with ARB Old Man Emu lift springs front and rear. Medium duty in the front and Heavy Duty in the rear to support the extra weight. Install was the exact same as the spacers and struts so i’ll skip that part. The lift stayed about the same in the front but I gained about 1.5” and it handles the weight much better.

For what it’s worth, the bilstein struts have an adjustable base plate that allows you to alter the high of the vehicle. Bottom is lower, top is taller. I opted to go with the lower setting for now. If I add a bumper it is possible that i will adjust the height to compensate for sagging.

Here are some pics of it after the lift as well as some measurements on the size difference between OME and stock.




Rear springs


Stock

OME


Front springs


Stock


OME

[Rambo Penguin]

While the struts were removed in the front I took time to disconnect the sway bar and confirm that front bump stops were tall enough to protect the fenders at full compression. Turns out I just needed a ½ inch of additional spacing in the front. So I ordered some extended bump stops from Procomp and threw them in. I’m curious to see how the new suspencial, wheel, tire and bump stop set up works offroad. As I mentioned before, I’m not even close to hitting the stops at full flex during slow articulation (since the front end geometry doesn’t like to move at all) but at higher speed whoops and bumps I will hit them. If they are too limiting I might have to reevaluate my wheel choice and go narrower, but in the meantime i’ll just wheel it!










My generous wife and family got me an ARB 2000 Awning for Christmas this year! I love our current camping set up with the sleeping platform in the back of the Montero. If offers great protection from the elements at night, but it present a problem for normal “outdoor living”. We do not carry a tent with us when we camp, and standalone shelters are usually bulky. So when it rained, we would just hide out in the front seats of the car. Not exactly what we are hoping for in our adventures. So an awning became an high priority for our overlanding needs. The 2000 series fits nicely with the size of the Gen 3 Montero roof line.

Figuring out a way to mount the awning was a fun challenge. I made quick disconnect brackets that bolt onto the roof rack rails and allow me to quickly pull off the awning if I decide to go without it. The bolt on brackets mean the whole system can be transferred to a different set up easily as well. I am looking into a way to make additional brackets for the rear of the basket so that i can set up the awning over the rear tailgate when we are set up at camp. More to come on tha idea. In the mean time here’s the set up. Excuse the surface rust, I wanted to test the setup out before committing to paint. Very pleased with how this all turned out and i’m excited get out and enjoy the shoulder season more with some shelter.

A side note: My roof rack lights hang below the awning so that at night i can use them to light up everything under the shelter.

[Rambo Penguin]

With the awning mounted it was time to optimize my roof rack storage space. Nothing fancy here. I moved the shovel inside of the basket and kept the highlift where it was. Next i made space for some X bull recovery boards which will live there permanently as a primary form of snow recovery and bolted a Ridgid tool box on top for lockable storage. I will mostly use that for tools and extra gear for longer trips. I left enough room for a 5 gallon jerry can and called it good.

[tperkins]

Very cool! I like the awning.

[Hooots]

Such great stuff happening with this thing. I love it......all of it. In fact......any interest in making another awning setup....I'll obviously pay for your troubles/time/labor? That quick detach sytem you drummed up is awesome.

[Rambo Penguin]

It’s time for a regear! Let me first off say that when I first got into this build I NEVER thought that I would be in as deep as doing a regear. Then I found out how simple, cheap and beneficial it is and it became a very attainable modification. There is lots of info about 4.9 diff swaps out there, but I will cover some of the basics here so everyone can get caught up to speed if you are unfamiliar. I might post later on about how to actually get the diffs out of the car, but it’s pretty simple and there are some good youtube videos out there (like this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_TqLLKeR7w) I drove 7 hours round trip to pull these diffs, took me 2 hours to pull them in the yard, cost $160 out the door for both. Considering this is usually a $2k- $3k job in a normal vehicle i’d say that’s pretty good!

1st! What monteros have what gears? Gen 3’s (2001-2006 in the USA) have two different gear ratios: 4.3 and 4.9. Almost all of them have 4.3. Only the 01-02 XLS models have 4.9. The 01-02 XLS with a sunroof (not the limited) have 4.9 and an LSD.. which is pretty sweet but i didn’t get one of those . They directly bolt on and are already set up from the factory so you just swap the diff assembly (sometimes called the carrier or 3rd member) and don’t have to open the diff at all!




So why did I go with a regear? Three reasons stand out. 1) As I mentioned before, it was cheap and simple to do. 2) The 33” tires did take away some of the punchiness and power to the ground that I had when I was on stock tires and 3) My rig weighs 3 Tons.. Not a joke.. It’s 6,000 lbs fully loaded without passengers. So the 3.8 V6 and nicer tranny that they put in the 03-06 models was good, but I really needed all the advantage I could get.

Let me explain #2 for a sec. As long as lift and tires are a thing, people will ask the question: What fits? How does it affect the torque? MPG? Yada yada yada. After a year on 33”s I have some feedback on how they ran on my rig. I immediately noticed the negative effects of bigger tires on the performance of the montero. The most noticeable was actually on dirt roads. When I hit the dirt I would get into 4H (AWD) and the montero would get really slow. It was constantly downshifting to keep accelerating and felt sluggish. I would often find myself shiting all the way into 4LLC just to get the low range gear advantage to save the stress on my transmission. In 4LLC they ran great. I also felt this sluggishness on the street, especially if I was moving more than 2 people or loaded up for a trip. I know the Montero is not a race car so I wasn’t expecting much, but for the sake of longevity I wanted to help the transmission and motor out as much as I could. The reason the montero felt so sluggish is because these motors make almost no power below 2,500 rpm.. At least it doesn’t feel like it. With stock 4.3 gears and 33”s my effective gear ratio was 4.01. This meant that it spent a lot more time at lower RPM than it did when stock. Combine that with weight and it was a slow, fat pig.





Now that i’ve done the swap here are some highlights!

The best way to describe the power coming back to the Montero is that it went from feeling lethargic and lazy to fit and healthy. It is still not a race car. But it has some of the punch back, it spends more time in the “powerband” and it doesn’t feel overworked anymore! 4H has become a usable drive option and 4LLC feels amazing! Tons of torque and slower crawling speeds. If feels like it’s aggressively geared for trail work and climbs with ease. It’s also nice to have the extra low gearing for hill descent.

As far as MPG goes, I didn't see anything crazy. I would say i went from around 11-13 mpg combined to 13-15mpg. On the Hwy doing 80 i’m still down in the 11-12mpg range just because this thing has the aerodynamics of a cinder block. But on slower 65mph roads with mild grades i’m all the way up at 18-19! So it definitely helped, but wasn’t crazy.

So in summary, regearing is awesome and i’m excited that I did it. It very well might be the best performance mod and preventative maintenance mod i’ve done to date. Here are a few pictures of the swap.

[Rambo Penguin]

I want to take just a minute to comment on the weight thing I mentioned earlier. Yes, according to my local scale, my montero fully loaded is about 6,000lbs. This is with all the armor, camping gear for 4-5 days, probably 27 gallons of gas (including the jerry can) and 10 gallons of water total. It’s really heavy. Part of that is that the Gen 3 weighs 4,800 stock, so it can get up there fast. Up until this point weight savings wasn’t a huge deal, but now that it’s really climbing up there it has become a major factor (this is the story of every overland build haha). I took some time to really evaluated what i’m carrying as well as what’s on the rig. Aftering some thought and planning I came to a few conclusions. The first is that less liquids will really help keep the weight down. I don’t do any trails were I need more than a few gallons of fuel so jerry isn’t needed, I also don’t need as much drinking water as I usually pack. Instead, i will fill the can only to what i think i need and bring a water filter if for some reason i run out on the trail. The other is that added a winch and heavy front and rear bumper would only make things worse. I can easily justify the need for both, however at this point the cost is too high. With that, let's talk about 2 things that the weight really effected, lift and that front bumper idea..


First is lift. Man this has been a pain. I think i’ve taken the front end of my truck apart 10 times by now. But i’m at a point that i’m really happy with. My OME and Bilstein setup was working really well, however, it just wasn’t that tall. After everything had settled and was aligned i realized i was only ½” over stock! That’s almost nothing. So once again, i was on the hunt for more lift to get the ground clearance i needed for simple trails. Fortunately, the bilstein front struts have some adjustment. There is a circlip located under the bottom spring seat. It moves the seat up 10mm (functionally producing 20mm of lift because of the preload) So that got my about 1” extra lift. Relatively simple to do, and free! I have HD springs in the rear already. They are rated for about 400lbs over stock which is right about where i’m sitting with everything loaded up. They ride fantastic even when weighed down, i just needed a little more boost. A fellow montero owner tipped me off that XJ jeep spring spacers work with our rear springs, so I picked up a set of those that are 1” thick and they did the trick! I think i still sag just a touch in the rear but it doesn’t matter as much anymore because everything is up higher. At this point i have almost 13” of ground clearance under the front skid and rear diff. Bring on the rocks!

The ride is notably stiffer, however after just a few days of driving I've gotten used to it and couldn’t tell you the difference. Off Road it’s amazing. I’m still getting flex out of both front and rear and it feels planted and stable. Here’s to hoping that’s the last change!

[Rambo Penguin]

Remember how those wide wheels were running into my fenders? Yeah that’s still a thing. My bump stops helped a lot in the rear, but the front was still smashing into my guards, linders and bending stuff. This was very apparent when i went to the sand dunes and treated my montero like a dune buggy. I had the suspension at full compression multiple times at high speeds, and everything got crunched. Here are some pics that better explain what time talking about





This was before the stiffer/taller lift in the front, so that will help slow things down for sure, but i still needed to remove stuff. I’ve ripped out 3 sets of fender liners already, so those were already removed. Next was to cut the fender and flares back. I’ll be honestly, there wasn’t exactly a science to this. I cut the metal fender back so that it was nearly even with the height of the frame so that i wouldn’t smash it. Next I drilled out the rivets on the plastic flares and cut them back as well. This gave me nearly an inch of extra width and should be enough to clear the wheels at full tuck. It’s hard to explain exactly what this looks like so just check out the pics. I finished it off by covering the exposed fender sheet metal with paint and then some door trim rubber for a cleaner look and also so that I didn’t have sharp edges in my wells. Then i painted everything to prevent rust and called it a day. I suspect with will be enough to solve my rubbing issues, but i won’t completely know until i push it to the limit again.. I’ll report back when i do

[Rambo Penguin]

Some shots of the painted wells