OEM Build, Frame Off, Cart Wheeled, Rebuilding Again (1 Viewer)

[cult45]

With enough paint you can block out the orange peel/runs and have a killer finish, even with rattle cans. Mix up a few drops of detergent in an old water bottle and rub down with 2000 grit paper. But not so much that you expose a] bare metal or b] primer.

 

[snivilous]

With enough paint you can block out the orange peel/runs and have a killer finish, even with rattle cans. Mix up a few drops of detergent in an old water bottle and rub down with 2000 grit paper. But not so much that you expose a] bare metal or b] primer.

I'll have to try that, thanks for the tip!

 

[snivilous]

Been pretty busy with minimal FJ work over the past 5 days or so. There was a forest fire a mile and a half from our house that started on Saturday, and soon after we lost power until yesterday, which then went back out after a few hours until this morning. Fire is essentially totally out, and we have power, so we went to town in the garage again.

A few days ago the Aqualu parts showed up, very stoked!

Today I cleaned the bib and applied the two coats of primer on the top, tomorrow I'll flip it and do the backside. The corner will be worked on soon and fitted before we find someplace to take it to be welded in since we don't have the capability to do aluminum welding ourselves.

My dad was on vacation for the past week and a half, and he turned his trip towards South Dakota to pickup a hood from Redgrrr which is awesome! I cannot thank him enough for helping with my project, and he even gave my dad some windshield glass that we'll either use itself or as a template to get some cut!

Again, huge thanks to Redgrrr! Someday (hopefully relatively soon) I will make my way north and meet you myself and show you what your hood/windshield glass have contributed to, I am extremely grateful and owe you many drinks!

I began sand blasting/sanding the hood, hopefully wrap that up soon and then fix a few minor dents and unto paint! Having a hood makes me feel like the truck is getting close to being finished, granted there is a ton to do but now I have all the main pieces to put it back together and don't have to worry about finding or waiting on shipping to get items.

Alongside everything I continued painting one of the fenders. I've done 4 coats of red on the outside and it's dried for a few days, so I taped that part up and began with the matte black inside coloring. What I'm thinking is 4 coats of red for the main body parts, and 3 coats for the black sections that I'm just going up.

(This picture is before I started painting the inside portion black, but just a picture of the red in better lighting)

And finally, I worked on the cage quite a bit but only have one picture. I said in a previous post I thought I had lost or didn't receive all the gusset bars, well I was measuring up the knee bar gusset that goes near the driver and passenger head and it was HUGE and anyone would easily hit their head on them getting into the truck and they looked way too big compared to the reference picture we had. So I measured it and ended up just cutting the gusset tube in half (it was 20" long to begin with), and the 10" long ones seemed to be perfect, so I'm thinking maybe the long gusset pieces I was given are inherently meant to be cut in half or were supposed to be and never happened? Either way, at least for the front gusset tubes, the single one I had cut in half turned out great.

I also added the rear halo spreaders, they have a slight kink near one end and appeared that the kink was angled up nominally, but the way I have the cage laid out I thought it'd look weird that way since the kink would be the same height or higher than the rest of the cage and angled down would obviously hang down a bit and also look kinda weird, so I rotated the spreaders 90 degrees so the kinks are in plane with the halo and kinked inwards if that makes any sense... I think it looks better, but don't have any pictures.

I'll probably work on the truck a lot this weekend to try and catch up. I still need to add the rear tube gussets, and I ordered a bunch of little 3" 3/16 gussets from 4 wheel parts to brace up a bunch of areas and I think will look cool and I also ordered some tube handles to mount to the front of the knee bar.

 

[snivilous]

Top of the cage starting today:

Then added tube gussets off the rear verticals. I think I was right in my assumption that the tube gussets were meant to be cut in half, since the rear one said "rear halo gussets" like it was two. Cutting it in half would yield two 8" long tubes, which I thought would look a little weird and short so I made another one and modified the one I had so now both tube gussets are 16". They are positioned so each rear halo spreader is in the middle of a vertical and a tube gusset. I think it looks cooler, albeit not super structural (not that the normal configuration is any better).

Speaking of structural I had some extra tube laying around so made some tube gussets/diagonals connecting the main hoop and the lower cage. The lower cage (which the seats bolt to) is nominally only tied into the main cage via a single joint with the main hoop, which is relatively speaking super weak in the event the cage separates from the vehicle or something. These two diagonals will drastically improve the connection of the lower cage to the main cage, as well as increase front/back stiffness in the cage. They are 16" long and angled at 45deg, and the front sits about flush with the door jam so they don't get in the way when getting in/out of the truck.

That tube laying behind the main hoop is some of the metal I have for my harness bar, I mentioned before I was thinking of having it have two bends to push it backwards from the harness bar for more seat clearance. I would like the seats to be able to recline to some extent, obviously not all the way backwards but even a few degrees would be noticeable and just welding a bar to the main hoop wouldn't allow any reclining past the normal driving position. Thinking about it, and carrying on with the idea of structural improvements to the cage, I will put a diagonal brace from the rear vertical at the bottom to the top of the main hoop (so inside that rectangle in the back on the side) which will further increase front/back stiffness of the cage (which was completely lacking with the exception of the diagonals I added to the main hoop); with the addition of these rear diagonals, I will mount the harness bar to them so the harness bar will moved backwards 4" or so from the seat without having to put any bends or tricks into anything. Besides that, I will still put two diagonals which will go from the bottom of the main hoop in towards the middle of the truck and connect with the harness bar which will drastically increase lateral stiffness (again, which is totally lacking). So the harness bar serves two main functions: obviously mounting for the shoulder harnesses, and then being the primary load reaction element in the event the cage gets hit from the side--which happened in the wreck so I'm all for stiffening the cage up more.

Moving on, the passenger side fender is essentially done. At some point I'll bedline the bottom of it, but that can be done at any time and is fairly low priority and not mandatory, it is the first large size piece to be done with paint and I've very excited with how it turned out and that there were no issues with the red paint!

And finally I spent some more time sanding on the hood before I ran out of orbital disks.

I also ordered a tire carrier kit from EMS Offroad this morning. It consists of (what I think is) a pretty schnazzy little dual angular contact bearing setup for the base, a little rubber pad, a locking mechanism, and a wheel mounting plate. We were debating trying to find another stock swing out or just build one, I liked the idea of having a dual swing out kinda like the newer LCs have, but have a tire on one side and fuel and water and stuff on the other and it would match the ambulance doors we have, but for now I'll just focus on making a single sided swing out for at least a tire. Nothing fancy for now, I would build an entire rear bumper to replace the weird tube one we have, but I don't think I'll have time for that since I need to be heading back to school in Utah in about a month. The one nice thing about building a tire carrier instead of using a stock one is now I can put a full size 35 on the back and not have it hang way past the side.

 

[Redgrrr]

Cage looks good! You have some great parents picking up your cruiser parts for ya! It was a pleasure to meet them.

I gave them directions to a few of my Favorite Black hills campgrounds. What did they think of the Black Hills and The Badlands?

 

[snivilous]

Cage looks good! You have some great parents picking up your cruiser parts for ya! It was a pleasure to meet them.

I gave them directions to a few of my Favorite Black hills campgrounds. What did they think of the Black Hills and The Badlands?

They had a good time up there and said I should go exploring up there too when I get a chance! They told me how they went to at least one campground you recommended the night they met up with you, and ended up spending two nights at the campground they liked it so much, I'm not sure where it was or where they went after that but they definitely had a much better trip from the sounds of it from the advice you gave. Hopefully next summer or maybe during a vacation from school I'll be able to make it up your way with the 40 and meet you myself!

 

[snivilous]

The past few days I've just been doing a bunch of cage work, though my dad finished fiberglassing the windshield frame and he also did some fiberglassing on the driver's fender which needed some touching up where a previous owner had improperly repaired it. The windshield frame and fender are now in the paint prep stages of being primed/bondo'd/sanded. I didn't get any pictures of them though, and sadly just have some photos I took with my phone since I was too lazy to grab the DSLR while working on the cage.

As far as the cage is concerned, I got the rest of the major pieces in which just the harness bar was remaining. This is how far the seat can recline when scooted all the way back. It might not look like much, but it's enough to stretch out and as much of a relaxed position as I wanted to have (in the event of waiting on the female in the parking lot for instance).

With the addition of the harness bar are the diagonals I had mentioned I would add in the rear. They go from the rear body mounting plate to roughly where the main hoop gusset terminates so it kinda looks like the two tubes would nominally connect and continue through.

I obviously had some leeway in positioning of the harness bar on the diagonals because of the tolerance for mounting of the shoulder harnesses. What I chose was to have the harnesses mount to the bottom of the harness bar, this way the harness bar would be as high and forward as possible. I wanted room to recline the seat a bit, but mounting the harness bar on the diagonals really moved it back, and I didn't want to jeopardize cargo room as much as possible too. I think it worked out really good though, the bar doesn't look weird and super far from the seat, and doesn't really intrude on the cargo area much.

After the harness bar was set I built the diagonal braces coming off of it. They tie into the main hoop's mounting feet and terminate on the harness bar roughly where the edge of the seat would be projected.

I am VERY stoked with how it turned out and it should be much stiffer than the old cage in every aspect now, I also think all the bracing in the back looks pretty sexy and since everything is out of plane a little I think it makes it a lot more unique and cool than a normal cage with a harness bar.

With all the main components of the cage finished, I drilled the holes for the passenger seat and test fit to make sure everything was fine and then did a test fit of the harnesses which worked out fine. The lap belts will bolt right into the "stock" locations, and then the shoulder mounting eyelet I will just weld to the bottom of the harness bar to keep a clean look, and due to clearance with the gas tank for the two anti-submarine mounts on each side, I will be welding those eyelets facing forward onto the mounts the seats bolt to.

I have a few pieces of scrap tubing laying around too, which I'm debating to turn into some mini tube gussets. I already made one that's like 6" long and connects the knee bar to the windshield cross tube and I think looks cool (it's also the only joint that normally isn't gusseted at all) so need to make one more of those. I was thinking of running more little gussets between the rear diagonals, or maybe inside of the halos and the spreaders, I don't know. I don't want to get too carried away, especially when the front and all the mounts will be further reinforced with the 3/16" plate gussets I have in the mail.

Anyways, moving forward it was time to pull the cage to begin fully welding it. I dropped my parents off at a trail today and they're hiking over the divide, so it was all on me to figure out how to pull the cage off. My dad had already put two hooks in the ceiling for preparation of this, but it was still a pain in the ass and I had to have my sister come help a few times.

This is when it'd be nice to have a tall ceiling. Even if I had moved the truck forward where our chain fall is, it wouldn't of gained enough to be worth it I don't think. Initially I tried using two come alongs but they were too big for the amount of room I had, let alone how high I needed to move the cage.

During all of this, the cage was getting pulled to the right since I was using a ratchet strap on the right to try and stabilize it and I guess it was pulling more to the side than I realized and then to add to that the driver's knee bar wasn't tacked on the bottom and I didn't know it, so it broke one tack further back and twisted the base plate and the knee bar off the side which was annoying. Long story short, with my sisters help we moved the truck forward and out from under the cage and used some ratchet straps to hold it up. Probably one of the sketchiest things I've ever...

I don't know how much the cage actually weighs, I think with 4 dudes it'd be pretty easy to move it around but like I said, it was just my sister and I. It took me awhile to figure out how to get the stupid thing down from the ceiling without killing myself. Obviously most of the weight is in the middle/back, so the front ratchet strap wasn't holding a ton of weight. Luckily the cage was near the garage door enough I could pull the tractor in far enough to get the bucket under the back of the cage (which luckily is just narrow enough to fit both rear mounting feet inside the buckeT), so with my sister guiding me we lifted the back of the cage up and then lowered it down, and then we could lower the front of the cage by hand and then tighten the ratchet in the front and move the back end down, etc.

Finally down:

I measured the bolt holes in the truck and was able to ratchet the leg back into position, it seemed to mainly just have rotated to the left so was pretty easy and then I tacked it (a lot).

And after that I began welding everything! Eventually I'll flip the cage upside down so I don't have to do any overhead welds. I'm far from an expert welder or fabricator, but I would like to think some of my welds are turning out nicely.

They might not be the prettiest welds ever, but I trust them! And that's where I stopped today after welding most of the joints I could easily reach.

 

[Scott68FJ40]

Just came across your rebuild thread and let me start by saying that I am happy to hear that you weren't hurt. Then let me say that I am glad you are putting her back together to get her back on the road.

Have a link for the seats that you bought? Might just what I have been looking for.

 

[ginmtb]

Looking good. Nice work - that cage is crazy! I have to admit going through the thread this sentence confused me:

"Today my dad and my girlfriend's boyfriend (who came out early with us to play with the truck) started fiberglassing the windshield."

Your girlfriend's boyfriend? Hey if you're into that that's cool. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it lol.

 

[snivilous]

Just came across your rebuild thread and let me start by saying that I am happy to hear that you weren't hurt. Then let me say that I am glad you are putting her back together to get her back on the road.

Have a link for the seats that you bought? Might just what I have been looking for.

These are the seats: https://www.amazon.com/Reclinable-T...8&qid=1469024105&sr=1-43&keywords=racing+seat

Looking good. Nice work - that cage is crazy! I have to admit going through the thread this sentence confused me:

"Today my dad and my girlfriend's boyfriend (who came out early with us to play with the truck) started fiberglassing the windshield."

Your girlfriend's boyfriend? Hey if you're into that that's cool. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it lol.

Oh! Good catch, fixed that, was supposed to be my "sister's boyfriend" haha, thank you for pointing that out.

 

[Scott68FJ40]

These are the seats: Amazon.com: Pair of Full Reclinable Black and Red Cloth Type-7 Racing Seat+Adjustable Sliders: Automotive

Thanks. They are safely stored away on an Amazon wish list.

 

[Dianna]

Awesome project with your dad! I'm glad you edited the post that said, "my girlfriend's boyfriend," I was wondering why you would be letting him work on your rig, lol.

 

[snivilous]

Not a lot of updates, did a bunch of welding on the cage over the weekend and it's almost ready to get painted. I had ordered some weld on grab handles from 4wp but apparently they're on backorder from synergy and still haven't shown up, so I'll probably just paint the cage and if they ever show up before I go back to school I'll debate putting them in.... I'm not great at overhead welding so would want to pull the cage again to weld them in at that point, which isn't really worth it so we'll see what happens.

Otherwise I did some priming and sanding over the weekend, and this morning spent a few hours prepping and beginning paint on some pieces.

I was gonna begin painting the doors, but there were two spots where the old paint was pretty jacked up or maybe even the sheet metal was torn, so after debating for awhile what to do I said screw it and bondo'd them. I kinda wish I didn't care as much about the new paint, but I want it to look decent. Kinda sucks though since I'm doing as good a job as I know how but I'm strapped for time so can't go through all the little issues on the body and since this is the first thing I've ever really painted I don't have much time to learn. I can always redo it in the future and I'm sure the paint will get plenty of scratches from wheeling which makes me sad to think about even though it's a rattle can job... who would've thought I would ever care about paint on one of my wheeling trucks.

There's also like a 2in^2 patch of rust under the paint under the driver's handle, which will be even more annoying. I thought the doors would be pretty fast since they looked fine I thought, but upon closer inspection there's a few nuisances.

Cage should be done with welding any time, then onto paint. I need a new upper radiator hose, but the engine runs fine but I haven't driven it. Body parts being painted it the main priority now, and I got a few numbers for people who do aluminum welding who I need to contact and prep the crunched corner to get that done (which will rely on the cage being installed). Tire carrier needs to be built. Rear bump stops need to be dropped down and I will be trimming the rear wheel well backwards probably 2" to retain up travel with the 35s. Roof needs some cosmetic work on the fiberglass.

That's about it, and as of this week I can say I will be heading back to school in Utah the week after next, so have under 3 weeks to finish this beast.

 

[emac]

Great thread and impressive rebuild and welding talent!

 

[snivilous]

Most of these pictures are from around 1am last night. I put some more red coats on the fender, windshield frame, and bib, and then prepped the doors.

Doors sanded with 320 grit:

Bondo filled holes:

Both of them I sanded down more after this to get as much filler off as I could and get them as flat as possible, the above one you can barely feel because the sheet metal was pushed up slightly, the first one is totally flush.

Sorry for the terrible pictures, these are all from my phone and not the good camera obviously.

After much debate I decided to pull the handles. No idea how normal people do it, but I popped all the tabs out for the inner panel, and I couldn't find a simple way to remove the window handle so I just rotate the inner panel around the window handle, and then reached inside and undid the 2 nuts and 1 bolt to pull the handle out. Hopefully it's not too terrible to line everything back up for installation.

Drivers side was nasty with rust and I sanded it down as much as possible, passenger side I had hope for but you can tell there's some rust under the paint.

Sanded it down as much as I could and until I didn't reach any rust.

Sanded the doors again to make sure I got everything and cleaned them up.

Taped everything off

I then sprayed rust converter on any spots that had worn down through the paint or been dinged and sprayed filler primer over the bondo'd area. In the morning I primed most of the doors, not everything since the doors had been sanded already, but sprayed the areas that had been sprayed with rust converter and areas that were thin on paint and all the edges.

Let that dry for a few hours, and then just now I put the first coat of red paint on the doors (earlier I also sprayed the final coat of red on the previous parts listed above).

I didn't realize it until yesterday but I'm running low on paint and going through it fast. I had bought 2 boxes of cans (so 12 total), and I hadn't been going through them too fast I thought, but these big pieces use a ton of paint. One coat on each door probably uses 2/3 or 3/4 of a can, and I have 2.5 left now. I've ordered another 2 boxes of paint (hopefully don't need more than that, maybe I'll order another pair of boxes...) but they're not supposed to show up until next Wednesday... Still lots to do, like paint sections of the bib/windshield frame/fender black, and paint the cage, etc. but it's getting down to crunch time and not being able to essentially spray the entire truck and then let it dry at once and then spray again, but do sections staggered, is gonna slow me down.

And the other pieces being worked on right now, there's a nice red dust layer all over the shop.

Now that the other three front pieces are done, once they dry I can move them out of the garage and finish the cage. I'll probably block off the half the shop where the doors are right now so they're fairly quarantined from the dust that'll be put off from wire wheeling the cage and eventually painting that black.

 

[snivilous]

Well the truck drives! I had already fired it up before and knew the engine was fine, but today I backed it out and drove it around the driveway. Somehow I got my steering one revolution off, fixed that; then the fan would occasionally hit the shroud (the shroud got twisted and bent when the hood caved in, though my dad mostly got it fixed) so with some quick work I got the edge that was contacted flared out a little to clear the fan.

I'm not surprised the truck runs fine, after all I had fired it up after the roll to drive it forward and to a safe spot on the road versus the spot where the ass was pseudo-falling into a creek. Though nice to know that the tranny and transfercase and engine all seemed to be lined up fine (no reason they shouldn't be, everything looks fine). I moved the truck out of the garage since it was taking up space and really no need to leave it in there. With it moved I hung a tarp from the ceiling and sectioned off the part of the shop where I'm painting the doors, this way I can continue doing fabrication work without worrying about the paint, and likewise not have red dust over the entire shop.

I finished welding the cage up and test fit one of the seats again to make sure the anti-submarine belt mounts were in a decent location, this was the first time the harnesses had been fully mounted and they seem to work fine. My girlfriend isn't a big fan of them, but I think they're pretty cool and like them!

My parents are on another road trip exploring southern Colorado, when they get back I'll see if my mom (who's a big time quilter) can figure out someway to cut up the seat so the anti-sub belt can be routed straight down instead of forward which would be more ideal. If there's not enough time to do that it's no biggy, I don't plan on running the anti-sub belt very often anyways, and in the current spot it will work, though is just angled forward more than desirable.

Otherwise I'm continuing painting and am now prepping the cage for paint and going through all the joints with a little grinding cone thing and a wire brush to clean them up before priming.

 

[snivilous]

Spent most of yesterday prepping the cage for paint. I wire wheeled all the joints, then went through with a chisel and hit off any slag that had fallen anywhere and made sure everything was nice and smooth, then washed the joints with windex and then with alcohol, after all that I sprayed rust converter over everything. I also finished drilling the passenger seat mounts, I had to drill one of the holes out slightly and tack a nut into it since there's not enough gap nominally between the gas tank and seat mounting bars for a nut to slide between them.

This morning my awesome girlfriend helped me mount the cage in the truck for a final test fit. We tried picking the cage up with our tractor, but the front end loader wouldn't go high enough to make it worth while, so then we attempted to use a come along connected to our weather vane on top of the garage to lift the cage. This worked drastically better than when I tried to remove the cage, but still a bit of a pain since we couldn't lift the cage high enough to drop it straight down and instead had to massage it around and jack the front up and then lower that and then jack the rear up and lower it in to clear the rear corner.

Obviously I ended up installing both seats too. This was the first time both seats had been mounted at the same time and everything worked great! Looks like one passenger mounting hole might be an inch off, but otherwise everything lined up fine and so did both harness

es.

The cage at first seemed to be pretty jacked lining up, but once I pulled all the bolt locations into place it seemed good. Obviously there was some warpage during the welding, but nothing more than a 1/4" or so out of wack and easy to line up with a punch. However, the driver's rear corner is a 1/2" out of wack in both directions.

Those purple lines show where the mounting plate SHOULD be (ignore those holes, they are a combination of stress relief holes from the corner folding in and old cage mounting holes). There's no way to force the leg over, well any easy way, so I'll just redrill the holes and fill in the previous ones I drilled. Kinda sucks, but I'm happy this is the only mounting leg that needs any attention.

 

[snivilous]

With the seats and harnesses in and a bolt torqued at each mounting location, I decided to take the FJ for a quick cruise down the road to make sure everything was working well and let the engine run a bit and get through all the gears. VERY excited that the truck is running great! No issues whatsoever! Technically the 40 is now operational, and the majority of remaining things to do are purely cosmetic. It's good to know that the truck can drive me back to school by my deadline in 2.5 weeks, even if some of the paint is mismatched. Here are a few pictures I took and to wrap up today's update.

 

[snivilous]

Update over the last few days. Finished hood prep and have it primed now.

Lots of little dents, I fixed some of them but it's not practical to fix everything and not practical to bondo it, so I'm just gonna paint it and call it good. I kinda like the dents since there's a long story pertaining to the hood and the history of the FJ in general, and if someone notices dents in the hood then that means I probably did a good job on the rest of the truck.

My dad got back from his vacation and started working on fixing up the roof.

Got the grab handles in from 4WP/Synergy and tacked in.

I need to buy some 1/4" plate and will make some little arms that will bolt to the cage and hold the dash, once those are tacked in place I'll pull the cage for the final time and do the last few welds and then paint it.

I taped off half of the body yesterday and prepped it and did the first coat of paint.

I've also cut the corner that got crunched more and is a pretty good fit. We were going to take it to a dude, but that was gonna be a pain in the ass. We found a brazing kit that claims to have nearly the same strength as the aluminum itself, so we're gonna try to use that. Worst case scenario I'll throw some cardboard back there and my buddy who works at a fab shop where I go to school can weld the corner in.

I also opened up both wheel wells, I moved the rear curve back 2". The passenger side is done, still need to do some sanding on the driver's side. I was hesitant to call it good where I was sanding the fillet, but I think someone who doesn't know FJs really well would have a hard time knowing that it's not stock which is good enough for me.

I leave for school in 13 days, and have a business trip for 3 days, so have effectively 9 days before I leave for school to finish the truck. I think I can pull it off, worst case I finish the truck at school, but I'm optimistic it'll be done.

 

[MOTOV8R]

If you skipped all the painting you could definitely be done. With that cardboard sheet screwed to the wall it feels like an episode of monster garage.