[Henry James the 47th]

3 more

[Henry James the 47th]

another three. To make it easier to fit the pedal box in and out,
I made a modification to it so it would clear the reinforcement ring in a downward slide into place, around the instrument cluster 'nose'

[Henry James the 47th]

another set of three

[Henry James the 47th]

yet more.

In the third, I decide to cut a section off the old RHD dash to see about a way of fitting the factory tach to the dash. It has to go to the right of the steering wheel, due to the way it is designed. I realized that I don't need an old-fashioned stereo opening (too small anyhow for a modern DIN chassis) as an Ipod/amplifier set up seems like the ticket. Once the stereo hole was out, the possibilities opened up for arranging the dash.

[Henry James the 47th]

working on the new dash configuration is a good way to give me something to take my attention away from welding, which helps me to avoid overheating the sheet (at least most of the time )

[Henry James the 47th]

next set

[Henry James the 47th]

last set for today. The dash is hopefully going to work out, and fingers are crossed 'cause I'm not totally sure if I've made a good decision about chopping further into the sacred dash metal

[Henry James the 47th]

Today the Bandierante steering box and pedestal arrived. I obtained them on Ebay from TLC in California. the box looked pretty good, but the pedestal was not so cleanly removed from the truck as I might have hoped (nor did TLC's Ebay ad show the details of the pedestal, hmm...), but I started work right away with the glass blasting, adding in a couple of parts from the 60 column I'm trying to fit.

[Henry James the 47th]

then I welded the damaged mounting holes up

[Henry James the 47th]

then a little work with the flap wheel and they looked pretty much okay

[Henry James the 47th]

on to priming for the pedestal and column parts, followed by a couple of pictures of the steering box.

[Henry James the 47th]

The steering box is made in Brazil, and I wonder what mounting pattern the box shares with other power steering boxes - - maybe it's based on some US domestic mounting? So, I snapped some pictures with the ruler superimposed, 'cause maybe someone out there will recognize the pattern and can fill me in.

[Henry James the 47th]

Next, I bolted the column back into place and welded the lower part of the column together, ground the welds off, and put it into some primer-surfacer

[Henry James the 47th]

I managed to get the pedestal into finish paint, and then was itchin' to see how the new box and pedestal would look, so I temporarily bolted them into place. I'm curious to see how much room I have from the firewall to the flange on the box for the rag joint (coupler), AND see how the fender fits around it - hopefully it won't need any mods to do the job (the fender that is).

[Henry James the 47th]

another picture of the steering box.

tomorrow I hope to finish mods to the aprons ( a mount for the relays) and do a bunch more welding, grinding, welding, grinding...

[Henry James the 47th]

Some more time on the truck today, a bit of this a bit of that. Steps forward, steps sideways, steps back, I don't know.

First i worked on the driver's door, fixing a hole in exactly the same place as on the passenger door. Hmm, what's with that?

[Henry James the 47th]

After cleaning that one up, I moved over to the cab and repaired a little area on the back.

[Henry James the 47th]

another set. Perfection still eludes me, by far, in the welding and grinding department, but if I can keep the subsequent use of body filler to no more than 1/16"/1mm thick, then I will be satisfied.

[Henry James the 47th]

Then I turned my attention to the corner of the cab, where things are a little messy. There are supposed to be metal tubes welded in to receive the locating pins on the upper cab section, but this pipe section is missing on all three of my mounting points. Fortunately, I have a section of another cab croner, that, by chopping it apart, let me in on the secret of the way the receiving pipe is fixed in place. Note the little flange-doohickey on the end that is buried deep inside the door frame. I managed to wrestle it out of the piece i chopped apart to get a look at it, but as far as actually putting that into my cab corner, there is no way it can be pushed by the sliding bolt backing plate located a couple of inches down (the area where the door catch is installed). So...what to do? I can see that it would be good to have support for it lower down, but I'm scratching my head at the moment for finding a good way to do that.

An other fronts, I took more of a look at the Brazilian p/s pump today. It's a nice unit! The mounting bolts are a slightly odd 12 x 1.5mm thread, and th rag joint has a finer spline and a larger mounting bolt for the coupler, compared to my 40 series rag joint. I therefore bred the two together to come up with a rag joint that should work alright.

Then there are the fittings for the p/s hoses to the pump, and I realize I will have to go scrounging the wrecking yard to see if I can cobble something together. The fittings that attach to the gearbox are two different sizes.

I saw a BJ42 today and realized, while looking under the hood at the 3B, that it had the ideal sort of air cleaner for my installation, and then I managed to locate one at, where else, E4 Auto Repair. I'm trading in my very clean HJ60 unit for it. This one will need a little TLC before putting it in - at the moment I am marking out the mounting holes on the driver's inner fender apron. Once I've got that done, it can go for a glass blast, prime and paint.

[Pork-n-Bean]

You have an awesome build going - Keep the pics and details coming! Why is it so easy to get addicted to landcruisers?

[Henry James the 47th]

Uh, yeah, i think I'm a good candidate for therapy. Thanks for the positive words!

Had a scary day at work today, when a wall fell over. Fortunately, no one was hurt and the damage was minimal, and I'm still a little worked up about it. It was a result of hurrying just a tad too much and focusing on small things without the occasional glance at the big picture.

Got some more work on Henry the 47th today. Took the plunge and chopped out the corner of the cab at the door. Then I noticed that there was no internal remnant of the tube supports, and that the way the door frame section was assembled from formed sheet was different between the patch piece and the original. One of those differences in the '79~'84 trucks from the earlier versions I guess.

So, I chopped the flange-mount on the end of the receiver tube off, then took the small section of door frame top that i had just chopped off and slid it over top to compare them.

[Henry James the 47th]

As you can see there is about 4mm size difference in one axis between the pieces. That means i have to do some additional sectioning of the patch. That I will do after fitting the whole unit into position, so I can keep the top side captive nut portion in the correct position. The first fit was a little gappy on the vertical sheet abutment.

[Henry James the 47th]

A bit of grinding a refitting helped that problem largely go away. Then I partially sectioned the patch, as it was easier to make that cut while the piece was out.

[Henry James the 47th]

I was okay with the fit to this stage. I needed more of the tube for the pin receivers, and thought I would be a good idea to go and look at a couple of 40 series wrecks to see if there were any tubes that I could raid. However, both 40's i looked at were just like my cab, having no receiver tubes at all. So, now I'm left wondering if mine ever had tubes or should have tubes. I think they must easily rust out or crack and fall out, I'm just speculating though. Anyone have any idea?

After I put that job to one side, I picked up some 12x1.5 mm threaded bolts for mounting the p/s gearbox, but they turned out to be the wrong size - I think I need 1.25 mm thread pitch. Another trip to the store for two lousy bolts

I turned my attention then to the captive welded nuts that need to be put in for the air cleaner to mount, made some marks and then changed my mind and decided to wait until the engine is back in, and the brake booster, so that the air cleaner can be put into position with more confidence as to getting the right placement.

[MoCoNative]

I think that your replacement cab never had the tubes. My 73 FJ-40 does not have a tube, it is just a hole, with a setscrew down below that holds the pins/tubes from the top down in the cab. And truely, the tubes are not that good of an idea. If it rusts down in there, the top is welded in that tube from rust. Try sticking two pieces of pipe together, one inside the other, then hide them from site and let some water run down in there, or just humidity, bad combo.

Also noticed on your thread, that you had a hole ripped through the door on both doors. I think, that is where the door limiter mounted. Check into that, but I bet they were opened too far, too many times and that part of the door cracked and ripped off. Check a newer 40, I bet you will see it. You will need them, although you can open the door almost 90 degress or more, if you go further the mirrors will strike things, or the door could hit the fender.

Edit, looked back through some more photos of your doors, I see that the limiters are intact, son't know why you have holes on each door now.

Great looking build though, you're picking up the welding very nicely, that's how I learned too, just going for it.

[Henry James the 47th]

Hey MoCoNative, thanks for the excellent feedback and information.

I note your point about the possibility of rust inside those tubes, and that it is a place that rust could freeze up, making removal of the rear cab section difficult.

However, I was faced with either going with a tube on just one side, or both, or somehow chopping the tube out from the patch piece, which I feared would be easy to make a mess of, so I decided to get a piece of stainless tube for the passenger side and leave the middle pin without a tube. So, the top section will locate with the two outer pins locating snugly in tubes, and the one in the middle will be left alone. I also will coat the pins with anti-seize thoroughly before putting the cab rear section on, and I hope that will be sufficient to stave off rust problems.

I've seen this sort of problem frequently with bicycle seat posts getting stuck into a steel frame from corrosion, a situation easily avoided by putting adequate grease on the post in the first place before fitting it.

I'll post picture a little later this evening of the tube refit.

[Henry James the 47th]

Some pictures from tonight's round of welding and grinding on the truck. I was feeling pretty fatigued today, and the seemingly endless welding and grinding is starting to get me down a bit. Still, I must forge onwards...

Here's some pictures of welding a piece of stainless tubing into position on the passenger side.

[Henry James the 47th]

more work on that tube. I wasn't sure about welding stainless with the Mig set up I'm using, but it seemed to go just fine. After the tube was in, I temporarily mounted the rear cab section to make sure all was well - it was.

[Henry James the 47th]

Then onto the troublesome driver's side section, where I set about repairing the seat belt mounting point. I used 14g. metal, quite a bit thicker than what was in there, and reinforced the mounting point for the belt.

[Henry James the 47th]

3 more. I reused the welded nut from the old piece as it has a different thread pitch and I didn't have the patience to drive down to the auto parts store to buy just one nut. I sprayed the piece with weldable zinc primer before tacking it in