1980 Beater Build!! (1 Viewer)

[4x4 Station Wagon]

I have a fj40 build going on ih8mud for quite a while now but it is my baby (mall crawler) and along the way I have been developing an itch!!! I am not new to this I started my yota life with a 1980, 81, 83, etc. etc. bobbed off yota that I had built for wheeling. I oakie rebuilt the motor and eventually threw a cam, a pinto carb, brutal port and polished 20r head, header, etc. at it. It was a very fun vehicle and was my life for several years until I bought a house and changed my focus. Since then things have calmed down other than my almost 3 year old son and he absolutely loves "mud trucks". That is all the excuse I need to throw down....... but honey its for him... I have had so much help along the way with my fj40 by having a build thread and sharing that I thought hey what the heck lets do it again. PLEASE dont hesitate to drop some constructive help!! If you are a purist I understand but i should warn you now you HATE ME.

As of right now the direction is:

I have purchased a 4.3 vortec V6 98ish so it doesnt have the balancer shaft and it has the 2 barrel intake.

I have purchased a R150F v6 tranny and plan to run the chain case for now keeping my gear drive as a spare.

I do want to double case it and I admit I do not fully understand my options such as gear only or can i mix the chain drive in there and ya ya chain drive I understand and dont care the yota ones so far have proven to be fairly strong (not trying to be a jerk just trying to get that out there upfront)

Today I pickup up some 96 chevy half ton springs that are 3 leaf plus overload measuring 63"s. My yota is a long bed at the moment and I plan to hang my front hanger about 17" forward resulting in moving the back hanger approx. 2" forward and the axle 8".

Then that will free up my rear springs to swap up front pushing my front end 2" forward which I hope to redrill the perches to steal another inch forward

I have already picked up an IFS box and a homemade copy of SKY's box mounting kit along with an ALLPRO highsteer kit with a SKY's flat pitman arm.

I also have a Marlin top truss here that I will be slapping on along with knuckle ball gussets that someday might show up in the mail along with my inner seals..... But I am still exploring the E-locker options for the front end.

Here is some terrible pics of my old yota along with my current beater....

And last but not least what is a "mud truck" as he calls it without a co-pilot??

 

[4x4 Station Wagon]

I am pulling my overload spring and am just going to run the three leafs but my center pin isnt going to work so off to the parts house tomorrow. I also had some good tires and wheels stored away for when I found a newer tacoma to purchase but I changed gears and am going to go with a fullsize diesel to tow my junk when needed and more room in general so that freed the tires and wheels up to be my drivers..... they obviosly will not be the weekend tires

 

[4x4 Station Wagon]

I also had a chance to copy someone that I googled last night today and whip up some rockslider type front hangers for the chevy rear springs. Incase anyone is going to wonder I am thinking I am going to just run a single shackle and skip the dual shackle idea because I am actually going to try and keep this on the edge of street legal and drive the living heck out of it (esecially hunting season) to save on my other vehicles.

I also got them all welded up tonight as well. They need a bit more work along with obviosly a bolt hole for the spring pin but they are going to land right on a crossmember so I am going to do some notching. they were constructed with 3.5 x 3.5 x 12" 1/4" box tubing each. They were then cappd with 12" piece of 3/16s 3.5" strap that was bent right around the 9" mark. There is no question they are over built but we do have a local rock crawl competition that happens once a year locally and i think they will help me not hang up as bad...







Also total cost of metal including a couple small pieces of used scrap was around 27.00 so if you do not have tools just order the trail gear kit for ??120.00?? and be done.... (just a thought) I still have to whip a couple up for the rear of the springs because I have cut them off before to reuse and it took too much time and effort to do it nicely (for me)

 

[EVILSPOTTER]

Get'r done. Have you run 63" springs before?

 

[4x4 Station Wagon]

Nope i ran yota lift springs the first go around but I have been around them a little. I was impressed with the ride and flex but thought they looked terrible and could be rock catchers...... My hopeful fix for that is to make the front hangers in a slider fashion as I have and second run 40" rubber. Any thoughts are appreciated!!! I am a bit nervous about the cons out weighing the pros. I was originally going to go elliptical but got lazy along the way

 

[4x4 Station Wagon]

I had a little bit of time to work on it tonight so I managed to get the rear hangers built. I am not sure what tubing I used because i picked it up used but its thick wall and 1 3/8" id so it should fit a standard size bushing. I also found a piece of tubing that was perfect size to slide inside of the mounts so that I can ensure I get them as square to each other as possible. I am all over the place trying to figure out if I should do the double shackle or a single and if I was going with a single I should have made my mounts opposite and maybe just used the stock chevy shackle other than its only approx. 4.5" long which is longer than a stock toyota

 

[4x4 Station Wagon]

Well I decided against the double shackle because i want to ensure predictability. I also can not see how the shocks would not be my limiting factor even with a new raised crossmember and angling the shocks etc. The interesting thing is that I moved my new front hangers 17.25" forward to place it back at a shortbed wheelbase plus a smidge to make my shortbed driveline spline up just a touch more due to the lift. If i dual case it ofcourse I am gonna have to chop the driveline but for now plus the length seems to be decent once I push the front as far forward as I can (trying for 3"). So now I am playing with the fact that putting my fronts 17.25" forward seems to make my rears perfect for a single 6" shackle. but it may be a smidge off either way. I would say with no bed just the truck weight on it my shackles are straight up and down but actually a bit laid back so I think with weight it will be good???? I will try to get pics tonight

Edit
Nope not going to work in their stock location we put about 240lbs on the back of the frame and they sit angled back ok but not far off vertical. They would haul a large load at that rate but not flex as well. For an fyi it is a guess but I would say if you moved your front hanger 16.75" forward your rear mount would be nearly perfect for a single 6" center to center shackle. we also decided i am going to drill the perches and pads to move the rearend back about 1.5" to help with departure angle due to those monster springs. they are crazy soft though!!

 

[4x4 Station Wagon]

I started on the front suspension and decided to use the top three leafs of my rear lift springs. A friend had a pair of 3" trail gear front springs that had the normal toyota kink going on. I stole a couple leafs out of them which i was able to avoid the majority of the kinks and only had to chop a few inches off of each side of one of them to land 4" shorter than the previous leaf. I originally wanted 3" forward so I whipped up some simple relocating pads. I used 3/8" for the passenger side and 1/2" for the driver to help with the offset perch height thing. The nut is only plug welded on there to help with initial location. After that it would have gotten welded to the perch. However I did not like how far the axle was forward on the spring themselves so i ditched the relocators.





Here is a pic of the final scenario. 2" forward

 

[4x4 Station Wagon]

I also threw the allpro highsteer kit on there and have the ifs box about 99% mounted. It appears as though sky's mounting kit that we copied is not correct for their flat pitman arm but would surely be sweet with a drop arm. I also was able to use a big hammer and move my box forward to the firewall and it appears to be just right with 2"

EDIT - I redrilled my rear perches to move the rearend back 1.25" to help improve the chevy springs departure angle. When its all said and done my current wheelbase should be 2.75" shorter than its original wheelbase but alot of the weight should be more centrally located..... I like it so far but time will tell.

 

[Lost]

keep at it. lets see more pics

 

[4x4 Station Wagon]

Well.... I had a little set back. I purchased a 2002 powerstroke and on the way home my left front tire blew and lets just say my truck looks like the tire... But my sons ok so the truck.



ok back too it:

I purchased steel to make front shackles but after looking at it I really need the boomerangs for clearance reasons. I also need the longer shackles to make the longer front springs work so i broke down and ordered the shackles from Sky. I also ordered ubolts from them to do a ubolt flip. i plan to make the pads myself but looking back I should have just bought them since they were 10.00 a piece.





No laughing at my temp cross member!!! Once I get the 4.3 and r151 tranny in there I will do it right. The rear shackles will also get beefed up with some 1.25" pipe that I will cut down the center once I am 100% certain the length is right.

 

[4x4 Station Wagon]

Couple things on the above pics. If you could see the front stock shackles you would see they are hittnig the frame. So the new shackles will lift the front a bit. Also the rear shackle angle sucks as I mentioned before I plan to have to move the rear hanger about 3/4" or so forward maybe a little more once I am completely done and the weight is on it. Like I said before I moved the front hanger 17.25" forward and now I wish I would have gone 18" or so but I planned to do a double shackle originally!!

I cut some pads out of 3/8" plate. They are nothing fancy but should be solid. I plan to drill them out tonight except for one of the fronts because I believe one of the fronts spacing is different due to the front end.

 

[4x4 Station Wagon]

The sky shackles really made the rear springs function nicely on the front! The boomerangs for once in my life I can say make sense in this application to clear the body mount.


I spent most of last night reading on how to bend tube properly. Although it took me three tries to bend a 90 so I could measure the length of bend so I had something to work with I got lucky and nailed the first try at the roll bar. Luckily some friends showed up and they were able to help tweak the bar to make the last final adjustments.




I also finished the rear u bolt flip pads and got them mounted today.

 

[4x4 Station Wagon]

Long day of bending!!

I crossed the cab hoop and then decided to try and make it a bit different than others that I have seen (not that it hasnt been done) so i added a small hoop coming off the top of the cab hoop. I then bent some bar for the fenders and then tied the little hoop to the fender bars







I ran out of tube but I just need to add a bar across the back like a tailgate and then trim out the frame a bit more and build a bumper.

 

[liljlandon]

Like the look of the tube! And the mounts in the back ground...

 

[4x4 Station Wagon]

Thanks. I wish all the mounts were mine! One side is my friends familys and the other side are mine. Looking at the pics it looks like I havent taken any of my side.

 

[4x4 Station Wagon]

Well I had orered some stuff a while back and now I am ready to start throwing some of it on. I have a Marlin top truss and outer ball gusset kit. I am going to weld the front diff for now due to my funds are going towards my little powerstroke incident! Hopefully down the road when I recover I can pick up an e-locker! In the meantime I had some slop in my wheel bearings so I have been holding off till I had it apart to determine if I needed wheel bearings along with my knuckle kit. Come to find out the previous owner didnt utilize the nut lock on the spindle and the nuts had backed off a bit!! The bearngs appear fine and the hardfacing is in tact therfore I am going to go for it! I can always throw bearings at it when I pick up an elocker. The trunnions were in terrible shape even though they didnt have much play and I didnt look at the inner seals but I would be shocked if it has any There is almost no sign of grease and the 90 weight has mixed nicely which left the upper trunnions high and dry!





I have been planning this whole time to break down and support trail gear on their trunnion eliminator kit however as mentioned before my funds are not as comfortable as they normally are so any ideas on an affordable knuckle kit that doesn't have junk trunnions?? The last one I purchased was off of ebay and if I remember right it had china trunnions.... Plus I almost think not going with the trunnion eliminator kit is a good idea because this is actually going to see a TON of pavement time including hunting season and it sounds like you need to grease the trunnions regularly if used on road - One more thought is that I hate to admit it but I really want TG's thicker felt rings....... Out of the last three stock ones I have taken apart I have had to beat them all straight again.

Thanks

 

[liljlandon]

i think these would be an awesome upgrade
TOYOTA KNUCKLE LIFETIME WIPER SEALS - Longfield Super Axles

 

[4x4 Station Wagon]

I totally agree 100%! Unfortunately if I understand correctly they do not come in a kit though so I figure I will throw some on there the same time I put an elocker in it in the future! Good call!! I went ahead and ordered a TG front knuckle kit that I got on ebay new but a guy had bought it and opened it so I saved a few bucks to get me going and I have the marlin inner seals to upgrade that portion. After some modifications to the fitment I welded the marlin top truss on along with the steering stop reinforments and the gusset brackets. Right or wrong I trimmed the face of the top gussets to eliminate any chance of the knuckle interfering! I also welded the front diff as a temporary measure. I also didnt take pics but I have the rear bumper partly mocked up along with the last tube added to the bed section almost in a tailgate format minus I bent it back a bit too add a little more to the bed allowing me to get my spare tire back a little more! I have been here before and I want as much rear end weight as possible! I actually am making the back bumper out of 1/4" box to help with that goal...

 

[4x4 Station Wagon]

I was able to spend a little time on it today. A friend of mine was nice enough to cut the the lower pad off of the passenger side for me since I had forgot and my torches are bone dry... I degreased the housing and third and got it married back up along with the marlin inner seals installed and ready for a bit of rattle can black along with the back bumper fabbed up other than D rings and tow reciever. It looks wide in this pic but it only sticks out maybe 5 inches wider than the frame and narrower than the tube bed sides and they are slightly dovetailed. I wanted the bumper to redirect a tree or ? when backing rather than the tubes to take the entire hit... but then I was worried about hanging a tree in it if it stuck out at all so my friend had an idea to use some of my tube scraps to create a bit of a skid plate effect. I liked the idea and it doesnt look to bad either and should disperce a bit of the load from pulling







I kind of wished I would have done another angle on the bumper outers that curved back a bit but heck with it I am starting to get some time wrapped up in this quicky project

I also got the tube split along with the little pieces to beef the shackles up with I just didnt get it done.