Barney the Purple Dragon - or, my FJ62 (1 Viewer)

[olija]

Hey all, just figured I'd start sharing my Cruiser with you. I was given this very rough 1989 FJ62 with 297,500km on it in the beginning of October 2014. I had driven it a few years before and remembered that for such an old, rough-looking vehicle, it actually drove really nice. And I have always been a TLC fan since I was a young boy. With the options being: take on the Cruiser, or let it be dropped off at the scrap yard, I decided I would try to make a half-decent camping rig out of it once again. The plan: to get it looking like a normal 25 year-old vehicle again, instead of something that got pulled out of the Atlantic Ocean, running properly, and lift it enough to run some 33x10.5 BFG KM2's that I have on my other truck.

So here she is when I picked her up:

As you can see, very, very rough body, but mechanically pretty sound.

The first thing I did was swap out the tape deck and put in the factory CD player from my 2004 Tacoma.

The next obvious items were some routine maintenance. Oil change, tranny flush, diffs + t-case oils, spark plugs, wires, cap + rotor, removed a broke piece of exhaust tubing under the driver's door and installed a new piece. I also removed the rear swaybar during the process of replacing the fuel tank because it was leaking. This turned out to be a much bigger job than anticipated because I pinched one of the rigid metal lines between the body and one of the other fuel lines when I was putting it back up, causing another fuel leak. I ended up modifying the fittings on top of the fuel pump to pipe-threaded brass fittings and then using hose clamps to hold the rubber fuel line onto them.

Once these maintenance/safety items were dealt with, I could move on to more cosmetic issues. I got 4 doors and 2 front fenders from the wreckers in Prince George. They weren't in amazing shape, but alot better than what I had, and they were at a fair price.

So off with the old:

...to be continued...

 

[cruisermatt]

All the chrome trim and bumpers look really nice actually, hope you didn't toss any of that stuff.

 

[moclakens]

Wow!lol
I thought my 60 was a big project, good luck man

 

[dirtEJohnson]

Best of luck with that rust battle sir! Hope the frame has held up better than the sheet metal.

 

[Big Cruiser Guy]

Thank you for saving it from the crusher.
Good luck and keep posting!

 

[Zhenya]

Holy hell. At least the roof and A pillars look like they are solid. I'd love to see the rear wheel wells from the inside.

 

[olija]

Yeah, surprisingly, the roof gutters were in mint condition. Seems like all the damage was along the lower perimeter of the vehicle and it didn't migrate inboard too far. The factory undercoating on this thing must have been phenomenal. I did end up spending a few hours on the frame with a hammer, chipping away old undercoating and a layer of rust underneath, then I cleaned it up with an angle grinder and sprayed er black. Looks no worse than all the other 25 year old wrecks floating around the far north here. There are two holes in the cargo area by the wheel wells that I still have to patch up, but other than that it's not too "holy". Anyways, on to the pics...

On with the new:

And a few weeks later, same thing on the driver's side:

Somewhere along the way I also did a engine bay cleanup. The truck didn't have an A/C condenser so I removed the compressor and the lines under the hood to free up some space. I also followed the 3FE desmog guide and removed the smog pump, EGR system, air injection system, etc. The cats had already been removed by a previous owner so that was one less thing for me to deal with.
At this point I needed to stop working on the truck at my work, and find a different shop where I could keep it apart and not have to kick it out into the winter weather. One of my coworkers volunteered his own shop at his house which is a half-hour's drive from my place, so I ended up moving it to his shop on January 26. From there, things really started moving along.

Starting with this, a combination of original metal, spray-foam, rock guard, rust, and who knows what else...

I purchased a pair of these nice Wolf Steel 1/4 panels. I figured it was not worth my time to even try to work with what was there...easier to just cut it out and start over. This is before I primed and painted them:

So, here goes nothing:

 

[SteveH]

Impressive effort - wow!

 

[olija]

Next, the other side:

And the passenger side tail light bucket was pretty well rotted out. I ended up fiberglassing it.

After some careful taping, measuring, and drilling:

I'm not an amazing welder so I decided to just use lots of seam sealer and rivets. I'd rather just live with the fact that I'm not a professional bodyman than try to hide rivets or ugly welds. Besides...there's about a million FJ40's running around with no attempt to hide their aluminum checker plate 1/4 panels, so why should I?

 

[olija]

Wolf Steel also provides the infamous "dog leg" which resides below the rear door portion of the rear fender. I would say that installing these and then sealing up the gap between the old inner liner and the new 1/4 panel and dogleg was one of the most time-consuming and frustrating parts of this project. But it's not impossible! So after some time shaping the dogleg to fit, I was able to shove it above the lip of the new rear 1/4 panel. I riveted it in there temporarily to hold it. Next, I took some scrap 14 gauge metal and cut it into 1" strips about 6" long, and it used some vice grips and an ATV luggage rack as a makeshift bender. I bent the strips to suit the angles and contours of the inside rear fender, so that the 1/4 panel and dogleg could be properly supported from the inside. The reason I needed to do this was because the inner fender liners were so badly rusted that I cut about 3 inches off the outboard edge, so I had nothing to attach to on the inside. So once I had finished this artwork, I jammed some chicken wire in the gap, and proceeded to get nasty with the fiberglass:

Once trimmed and sanded a bit, it turned out very satisfactory. Just look at my taillight for proof:

The same strategy was employed on the passenger side:

 

[olija]

I apologize for not posting more pics of the fiberglass job I did on the inside of the rear fenders to join the new pieces to the old inner liner. I basically had to wire wheel the edge of the old liner about 6 inches in, (not a pleasant job as every speck of dust and rust ends up in your face, hair, ears, etc), then lay a patch of fiberglass about 12 or 16" long in there, upside down of course so you're working against gravity. If the pieces are too big they don't stick nicely and they fall off. So the idea was to kind of wrap the fiberglass around the outside to provide a weather-tight seal and keep the elements at bay. I had previously tried to rig something up with garden edging but I couldn't figure out a way to attach it without creating more potential leaks, so I think fiberglass turned out to be the best option in this case. So while I tackled this massive fiberglass job in the back, I also kept myself busy with another major area, the rocker panels.

First step, cut the rust off. In order to do this I needed to cut higher than the bottom of the doors, so I ended up welding a 1 1/4 strip of scrap metal on there to basically "make up" what I had cut off, so that the tubing I planned to attach would not interfere with the operation of the doors. I borrowed my brother-in-law's little 110V flux-core welder to just tack these on temporarily (pictured). Once I put insurance on the rig after I painted it, I brought it to my workplace where we have real welders and finished the job properly.

I also took this opportunity to straighten out the body damage between the RF door and fender. There is still a bit of a gap by the front of the door, but it's much less of an eyesore compared to before. I think the chances of sucking a bird in there at freeway speed have been reduced by a fair margin.

And the driver's side:

I also opted to ditch the factory rear side marker lights, just because I wanted to get away from using fasteners to attach them. I'm sick of breaking rusted little screws off, or stripping out the head. I do this enough for a living, so why would I condemn myself to do it on my own junk too? So instead, I coughed up a little bit o cash for these lovely Grote Micronova LEDs. You will often see them on semi trailers above the rear doors. They simply push into a rubber grommet to install. And they are brighter than Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer on Christmas Eve, I tell ya...

 

[landcruiserjunky]

WOW

 

[olija]

I apologize for the crappy cell phone pics. Here is a marginally better one of the Micronova light:

I nabbed some 3x3/8 flat bar from work and after some research and dimension-gathering, I made these overly beefy shackles for the back, to level out the sagged rear end. I ordered some Energy Suspension bushings to replace the cracked out old ones. They are 2 1/2 inches longer than stock, so I should net 1 1/4" of lift. I am hoping against hope that this will give enough clearance to run 33x10.5 KM2's, but I haven't installed them yet so I can't confirm.

Picked up a used tailgate in the nearby town of Houston, BC for $100. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than the junk that came on my Cruiser. I ground out the rust along the bottom and bondo'd it up. Later on I rock-guarded the bottom part, and painted the whole works of course.

Speaking of painting, I did some colour testing in the driveway at home:

The result: PASS! So, on to the next step then. Sanding.

 

[olija]

So, just for some perspective...October 6, 2014, I picked it up looking like this:

Mid-April 2015, it went into the spray booth looking like this:

Even I just left it like that, it seems already like a totally different vehicle. But no, let's keep going...

To this, April 22, 2015:

Insured it and drove it home from my coworker's place. Filled the open back ends rear quarter panels and bottoms of the taillight buckets with plastic bags and spray foam. Once the spray foam hardened, I trimmed it with a keyhole saw, then laid fiberglass over it. Now it is sealed off back there and no longer sucking noxious exhaust fumes in. Pics of this later. Meanwhile, I had planned to put rock guard over the bottom 1/4 of the vehicle to protect the paint from chips, and also to hide my less-than-perfect body work. So my friend Riley and I spent a few hours and a few bottles of Czechvar beer masking, sanding, rock-guarding, and spray-bombing. I also got another coworker to practice his window tinting skills on the rear windows. Looks a LOT less cheap with tinted windows.

 

[olija]

Some action pics taken between driving it home and mine and Riley's quarter-painting party. Tried driving it up the town bluff, but the combination of lame tires, no ground clearance, and the long rear end made it seem alot more difficult than just idling up in my Tacoma. I will have to try again once I'm running some decent tires and lift.

 

[olija]

And finally some pics of that hot new tailgate. It didn't come with the chrome TOYOTA license plate light holder so I had to come up with my own solution. I hit up the trailer lighting aisle at Canadian Tire and found this cute little "utility lamp" which is perfect. Plus it's chrome, so it matches the rest of the trim. I plugged the factory bolt holes with some plastic snap-in interior trim panel fasteners. Also reinstalled the rear bumper with some nice 1/2" carriage bolts from Home Hardware. I'm pretty impressed with the build quality of this vehicle. The fact that the front bumper is held on with no less than EIGHT half-inch bolts is ridiculous. You could just about pull a locomotive out of the ditch with this thing!

As promised, a pic of the fiberglass on the rear corners. Yeah, I know, I should have gone a little thicker with the rock guard to hide it better...

And I modified an FJ60 bumper cap to fit on my FJ62. No, they are not compatible, but it's pretty difficult finding any Land Cruiser parts anywhere around here, let alone 62-specific parts. The average person would never know the difference, but if you look at both sides carefully, you can spot it. But it's impossible to see both sides at the same time from the same angle, so I'm not gonna worry about it. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention I sprayed my grille flat black, but left the logo chrome.

 

[rrv333]

Excellent work and great save!

 

[dirtEJohnson]

Holy smokes brother, you have more energy than I do. Good ingenuity and thrift. Nice save!
On the shackles do yourself a favor, ( or is it favour up that way? Ha) and hit those bushings with a little heat and things will come apart much easier.
What's a trip to PG take from your town? Can it even be done in a day?
Hope to have my 60 up that way next summer to visit my pops in the Hoof.

 

[olija]

Haha, there won't be any love lost between rusty old shackle bolts and me.
PG is 375 km or 4 hours one way from here. It is possible to go there and back in one day, but it's a long, boring drive compared to west of here. I haven't done it in the Cruiser yet, but after filling up my first full tank, I'm not sure if I want to tackle any long hauls that aren't to anywhere totally amazing. 13 mpg is pretty brutal compared to my V6 Taco which will do about 500km on the highway. I'm almost embarrassed to say I wouldn't even make it to PG on one tank! I guess that's why there's lots of diesel Cruisers in Canada.

Here is a slightly better photo of the recently installed tailgate and bumper, and the $55 tailpipe to fix the exhaust pouring out in front of the axle housing. Only problem is I wrecked the outlet of the factory muffler trying to remove what was left of the old tailpipe, so now I will be adding a Thrush to my to-do list.

 

[cruiserpilot]

I am impressed, I got rid of truck not half that bad! keep up the work, and look around, I wouldn't be
surprised if you couldn't find a HJ60 with a 2H diesel sitting in a barn somewhere up there that would
improve your fuel economy by twice!