[weeboo]

Old Blue
November 2008 Pig Of The Month

I'm no car nut, but I have always loved 4x4s. When I was young my dad has a 1940-something Willy's-Overland pickup that was awesome.... but he was always working on it, which was not awesome Fast-forward to fall or 2007. My wife, (a Craigslist addict, God bless her heart) said "Hey, come look at this!" And I was blown away. I have never before seen an FJ55 and it was love at first sight.

Old Blue was an old '76 FJ55 farm truck from Arizona. Before ending up in my driveway, the previous owner had purchased her from a lady in Arizona and brought her home to Indianapolis. The photo above is one of the ones in the original Craigslist post... She was in pretty good shape. The previous owner has stripped a few minor parts off for his other FJ55, and put on a new hood:

Which was how she looked when I first laid my loving eyes upon her sturdy frame.

EDIT
I forgot to add: I would not have bought this if it were not mechanically sound. It ran well (still does) and is a Toyota! I am no mechanic and don't do anything more than dabble. This truck has been great though- I have driven it all summer with no real problems. This truck is all-original. 1976 2F, 4 spd tranny, add-on AC (no belt or smog-pump tensioner though.)

More details and my plans to come!

[RHINO]

az farm truck, does that mean low miles and little rust? a little different paint scheme, looks like a great piggy.

[weeboo]

I wanted to use this as a DD. I work at home and don't drive a whole lot, so I am a great candidate for a less-than-economical drive-around truck. I probably only drive 20 miles per week.

AZ was very kind to this truck in terms of rust. There was bondo in all of the usual places, and a hole and some rust in the passenger floorboard due to AC water drippage - but overall a good candidate for a restoration. When I got it, it had a coat of Maaco on it, colors weren't stock and the dividing line between blue and white was in the wrong spot. The drip rails were perfect though, and even had the piece of chrome!

I took much of the paint down and re-bondoed the usual bondo spots, then I sent it to Maaco. They added $100 for the two tone.

This is what a fresh coat of Maaco paint looks like. Other than a few tape marks and masking problems, they did a pretty good job with almost no orange peel. Not bad for what I had in mind.

[weeboo]

So basically I am a rank amateur with a truck that is in good enough shape to restore

I have a friend who restores cars that are worth 30k in boxes though, so I know that a full resto would pretty much be a waste of money. So, my goal with this truck was to make a nice drivable, head-turning 4x4 as time and finances allow.

Paint job was first. I spent $600 on the mid-range Maaco paint job, if anyone was wondering.

Next, rubber! all of the rubber was understandably gone. Completely dry-rotted. A trip to SOR and JC Whitney (thanks to the weatherstrip thread) and approx $600 later I had everything I need to re-weatherstrip this puppy. I bought the rear tailgate window WS from Cade Toyota in California. I got lucky there because I had previously tried to buy it from the guy who sold it before, but it never happened and paypal gave me my money back.

I was able to pick some generic weatherstripping for the tailgate bottom and some self-adhesive stuff for the tailgate sides- it works great.

I don't know what other people have experienced, but even after I put in new window felt, my windows aren't tight enough to keep water from flowing down.

[weeboo]

Interior

The interior of this truck was pretty much toast.



The cargo side panels were shredded, headliner half gone, some floor rust with one small hole, etc. I patched the floor hole with JB-Weld and sheets of tin, and painted all of the surface rust with Eastwood rust converter followed by their rust encapsulator.

One of the worst rust spots on the whole truck was on the passenger-side floor:



I built new cargo side panels using the sheet wood from a "scratch-and-dent" door that was $5 at Menards. I also bought the charcoal-gray pleather from a fabric store at an extreme discount. I think they turned out pretty nice. Eventually I'll do the front doors as well, and then if I have time, I may replace the passenger doors too just to make them match. (That's pretty low on my priority list though.)

[Ming89FJ62]

Nice Pig and write up. Could you post some photos of the A/C?

Thanks,

Harry

[weeboo]

Originally Posted by Ming89FJ62

Nice Pig and write up. Could you post some photos of the A/C?

Thanks,

Harry

Sure- here's the AC pump:

[weeboo]

More Interior:
I had the seats covered by a local upholsterer. It's not original, but the cost difference was so great that I could not go that route.I had them done in black vinyl, with the sticking in the same location as the old ones. I bought the SOR carpet kit (It's very nice) and dropped that in over the original rubber floor covering (which was in awesome shape.)

Headliner: I had my local upholster guy install my SOR headliner- There is a thread on here where I talk about it more - but basically, I had to deviate from the norm a bit.

What it looked like when I got it:



In order to replace the headliner you need to take out three windows - the front, and the two rear cargo ones. This means replacing the weatherstripping. This truck has a new front windshield put in before I got it, so the weatherstripping up there was new and soft enough for the upholsterer to be able to tuck the edge in with contact cement.

The auto glass company warned me - they said that there was a 30-40% chance that they would break the side cargo windows. Rather than take that risk, (and to save the price of the cargo WS in the process,) I thought of a way to attach the rear of the headliner around the windows without removing them.

There is a metal lip that runs around the rear windows, and I figured you could screw in a small "seam strip" of sorts over top of the headliner edge. The upholsterer took it a step farther and did a pretty nice job, here are close-ups of the tricky area:



The photo above right shows the stock ivory-colored plastic strip that I thought would work along the edges of the window - that was what I was hoping for and would have been happy enough with.

[weeboo]

The dash on this old thing was 100% torn up, along with the steering wheel - just flat-out baked by the Arizona sun. The heater and blower works, and the original AM radio works. I haven't decided what to do with it though... install speakers and go with it? put in something new?

[weeboo]

The rear under-seat heater was in place and looked like it might work- but the motor was fried and the circular radiator has a leak in it. I tried to find a radiator shop in town who would work on it, but in this throw-away day and age, no one would touch it. I took the motor apart thinking I could salvage it, but the end bell housing that holds the brushes in place was brittle and shattered. I still have the heater core and housing and will probably just throw it away or sell it. I'll post pics later.

[cruiser_guy]

Cap the dash. SOR sells a dash cap and you can look on my POTM thread to see my install a year or so ago. Works good so long as there are not pieces missing. Cracks are OK.

Don't toss any piggy parts! What is trash to you is gold to the next piggy owner! I have a couple of '55 parts bins here full of stuff I have little or no use for. Every once in a while someone posts looking for something and I am able to pull it out of the bin and send it off. Hopefully it's good for the 'Cruiser karma!!

[weeboo]

OK, there is more to this story.... just been busy for a few days. I promise the piggy porn, after all, that's why I look at these threads

[weeboo]

Now for some "after" photos. Here's one of the dash cap from SOR- it looks great. After getting it on, I didn't even bother to glue it down:



Also notice the switch I put into the dash to replace the old dome light switch that was broken off:

[weeboo]

Here are some shots of the seats I had recovered, doing them in one single material saved me some money.

[weeboo]

My wonderful wife re-covered my sin visors with vinyl, it's like a bag with a strip of velcro along one end to hold it closed:

[weeboo]

When I got Old Blue, there was one emblem - in the glove box. I really liked the older style fender emblems better, so after painting, I found two of them and put them on. One of them came from a super nice person here on these forums - given to me for free. I can't tell you what a great group of people these piggy owners are.

This emblem, being angular and looking classic '70's, really fits the look of the truck much better that the '76 script emblem that was originally there. Yeah, I know, it's not stock... but also not hard to replace if someone ever wants to go back to stock.

Also, note the new antenna from Autozone.

[weeboo]

Here's some neat shots from the back with the seats and carpet pulled out. Look at how nice the floor is back there.

[weeboo]

For the next POTM "installment," I have an interesting story to tell about the rear heater and how I replaced it- once I get more photos taken.