Builds The Rushing Turdle (3 Viewers)

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I did this so long ago with an engine rebuild, and I forgot how much work it is. Nice job.
 
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Great work Nathan!

I have an iphone video of Nathan pulling the short side axle out but Mud does not recognize a .mov file. Not sure how to convert it. It was nice just sitting back and letting Nate do the grunt work. I'm definitely looking forward to more supervision and less actual work in the years to come!

The following thread has a .mov attached? Perhaps by using the link (connected chain symbol) feature you could make it work?


FJ62 Steering wheel bouncing
 
More desmog pics. Jim C dummy pulley replaces smog pump.
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Jim C EGR plug.

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PCV/EGR tube cut off and coin welded in.

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Manifold surfaces cleaned up

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Manifolds back on

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:clap: And Just yesterday I was thinking it had been too cold for you to be wrenching in your garage.
I've got heat out there. I run it on low for Zeke in cold weather and kick it up a notch when I'm wrenching.
 
More work last night. The Turdle's radiator has a tiny pinhole leak in the top tank. I could have probably drained it down and soldered over the hole but I was not sure that this was the only leak. I decided while I had things ripped apart I might as well pull the rad and take it to be repaired. Here are some pics of last night's work.

Here you can see that I pulled the headlight bezels and grille, battery, battery box, condenser coil and top plate off the body/radiator support.
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Here the radiator is completely out.

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I decided to split the fan shroud into two pieces (top and bottom). This will allow me to be able to access belts and hoses more easily on the trail in the future.

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The shroud has been cleaned up and re-painted. More pics of that later.
 
While I was pulling the headlight bezels I kept thinking how nasty they looked. I decided to clean them up and re-paint them while they were off.

Before

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During

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After

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I used 0000 steel wool to rough up the old paint and in doing so I found that the whole piece is chrome plated plastic. The painted section was simply painted right over the chrome from the factory. Just to make my truck a little different from everybody elses I decided to remove the paint from the inner ring of the bezel next to the headlight and leave it shiny chrome. I know " chrome won't get you home" but I have to admit that it was a little exciting finding all that nice chrome hiding under the factory paint. It had been so well protected I couldn't paint over it. We'll see how it looks when it all goes back together.
 
While the radiator is out at the repair shop I plan to do some cleaning up of the engine bay. I will give it a good scrubbing and repaint items like the battery tray, fan shroud and various brackets, etc. Stay tuned...
 
Awesome! Sounds like a "while I'm in there" type project for sure :)

Yeah, Johnny it is. I'm trying to hold myself back at this point. It appears that the timing cover has been weeping for a while. The front of the engine is pretty gunked up. I'm not sure I want to deal with that just yet. I've done a ton of work on this truck since I bought it in May and still, I've only driven it less than 300 miles. I'm looking forward to getting some windshield time in this thing. If I get in it too much deeper I'm afraid I will lose hope of ever actually driving it. I'm a " hurry up and get it done" kind of guy. Long term projects with no gratification don't sit well with me. I need little rewards along the way to keep me interested. Driving this rig to the upcoming ONSC M&G will be the perfect reward for all this work. We'll see what happens....
 
Desmog is (mostly) complete! I got the radiator repaired and re-installed and put everything back together, re-plumbed all the vacuum hoses that I plan to keep and decided to take the turdle for a drive. The truck is running great! I drove it to work today to test it on the interstate at around 70mph. The timing is too advanced (shocker) because of the smog distributor. I am going to play around with the primary and secondary advance ports on the carb and dizzy to see if there is a setting that it likes. My thought is that I may cap the primary port on the dizzy and run the secondary from the dizzy to my primary carb port. That should knock my total advance down by half. We'll keep playing around with it until it is happy. I think with a valve adjust and some timing tweaks this old turd just may be roadworthy. Here is an engine pic before I got the rad hoses hooked back up and the coolant in:
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I have found an exhaust leak at the manifold gasket. I have the telltale "pfft, pfft" when under load. I used an OEM gasket and torqued per spec and in the correct order. It appears that I am not the only one who has had issues with the OEM gasket. Granted my manifold surfaces were not completely flat and I did not have them machined but they looked plenty flat enough for a decent seal. The Fel-pro gasket seems to be the gasket of choice (some like the remflex as well) so I guess I will give the Fel-pro a try and see what happens. I hate having to do a job twice, especially one this involved. Looking on the bright side, at least this time I won't have all the smog stuff hanging off the manifolds to deal with.
 
I'll speak for Stan ..... A vortec conversion would fix that ....



Just sayin'. ;)
 
Pulled the manifolds off again last night. I plan to take them to the machine shop tomorrow to get them trued up. Ugh! This truck has fought me every step of the way. One step forward, two steps back....

Sam, you're absolutely correct. An LSX swap into one of these trucks would be perfect. This truck has good solid bones so I would say that it is an excellent candidate. It's a tad beat up cosmetically but there is no rust to speak of. Overall it is extremely clean. Maybe one day I'll do a swap into it (or have Stan to) but it's not in the budget anytime soon.
 
The Vortec swap is really a game changer in the 60/62 series. The truck just wakes up. Make sure you get the brakes in good working order :)

We still drive Heather's 1FZ powered 80 around here, but my 80 is back in the que and ready for the drive line to be set. If you plan on keeping your truck a while the swap is something to think about. To quote one of my customers "I just can't wipe this stupid grin off my face"
 
I had my local machine shop to re-surface the manifolds. I re-installed with the Fel-Pro gasket and no more leaks. Once I got those manifold leaks fixed the truck was quiet enough that I was able to hear some spark knock above 2K rpm under load. When I did the de-smog, I reconnected the distributor advance ports as they were before. There was just too much advance without running the smog stuff. What I ended up doing was plugging the main port on the dizzy and running my main advance from the carb to the secondary port on the dizzy. Everything that was connected to the secondary dizzy port was plugged up and viola! Success! The real fix for the advanced timing is to have the dizzy re-curved but I'm going to have to wait a while for that.

The truck has been running well and I have enjoyed driving it around. The transmission is noisy though and I need to swap it out with my spare or rebuild it but I'm running it like it is for now just to get some seat time in.

I noticed the Turdle's heat was not what it should be. I knew exactly why...or at least I had a feeling...and I was right. The upper thermostat gasket was MIA. I went ahead and replaced the thermostat and both gaskets with fresh Toyota stuff. Heat blows nice and hot now and I won't have to wonder what thermostat the PO had put in there. It was actually a Toyota thermostat BTW. Why people go to the trouble to install these and not use the upper gasket befuddles me.

Next project is to adjust the valves and replace the weepy valve cover gasket.
 

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