FX4 taxi! advise if poss.............

[Rocket88]

Just bought a tatty, but v.low mileage [138k] miles 98 FX4. Any advise on fitting new back axle / diff, to get the gearing up a bit? I understand that it's got a 2.7 n/a dizzler [Nissan?] lump, which seems in remarkably rude health, can these be tweaked a bit to give a bit more go?

Thanks, as always, for any advise.

[gricer]

Probably OK - but there will be loads of these on the market as the taxi age limit has just dropped from 20 to 15 years.

[scooters]

Drop Sam Glover an email, he was tootling about in one of these for a few weeks last autumn..he also drove one to Mongolia a few years back...he'll know what to suggest

[scooters]

Oh...that'll be £8.76 please guvnor...

[Rocket88]

Thanks, Mr Scoots..........do you have any of his contact details you could pm me?

[Negative Creep]

If it helps, they can be run on veg oil as well

[scooters]

[email protected] o.uk

 

It's in the public domain

[warren t claim]

Push the tops of the front wings to see how crunchy they are, The FX4 can rot like a Lancia on Beachy Head. Electrical problems are very common too. Comedy steering box that likes to leak and occasionally detach itself from the chassis with no prior warning as well.

[Rocket88]

Had a good poke round it today, managed to weld up one snapped bonnet hinge, and straighten the other one. Wipers / washers don't work [suspect column switch] and the bonnet catch has snapped, but it's openable from the catch under the grille. Boot catch is also bollocksed, but she's solid enough where it matters, and engine, box, steering and brakes all seem fine, and all the electric windows work.

Going to give it a good service, then see about sorting the bodywork, although there might be a plan afoot to chop it into a pick up.

[Des]

I did some time in an East London taxi arch in the early nineties, well it was about 10 great big arches in a row, had its own carwash, an outdoor 4 poster attended by a miserable bastard in a raincoat and a pit with a grease monkey, he had an air powered grease gun fed by a 45 gallon drum. It was a culture shock for me, cabs would come in for a rebuild prior to PCO test, I was in the bay doing the running gear, certain parts were replaced as a matter of course, brake linings, wheel cylinder rubbers popped in in situ, kingpin bushes, but had to ream them only about halfway as the original kingpin would be going back, cutting little discs from coke cans to shim up play in UJs, play in steering column bushes 'adjusted' with an air chisel, splits / cracks in engine / box mounts filled with a smear of Dum Dum, and best of all, rear bearing housings attacked with a chisel to remove the play, this often had the comedy result of a cabs return, dangled backwards off a truck with one of the rear wheels and halfshaft hanging a foot or so outside a mangled wheelarch.

Within 20 or so miles of a rebuild the things would be fucked again, mushers cars were treated slightly better, with a few more new parts. I had never seen such a level of dodgy cowboyesque life threatening bodgery, I loved it but couldn't take the fetid nature of the place, dirty stinking diesel filth. Still,,, skilled and sympathetic maintenance compared to minicabs.

 

Apparently adding a small lpg tank to a diesel to give it a little whiff of gas leads to more complete combustion, more mpg and powah, a shite version of nitrous.