"The Fantastic Distraction" a '72 V8J40 buildup thread

[Combat Chuck]

I've been surfing the Ih8mud forum for about a year now, and have been contribting only moderately to extremely useless, and mostly inaccurate junk to the discussions pretty much the entire time. Now, I'm going to show my own hack-job resto as it progresses.

Before I begin, I'd like to submit a little background, basically my reasons for getting a '40, the process I went through to find one, and my misdirected initial goals.
When I was eight, my uncle had rebuilt an old Willy's Jeep, and he took me for a ride on his property in Georgetown, CA. It was awesome, the rig (at the time) had no shocks, no top, and the roads were incredibly rough and dusty. I emerged from the outing caked in red dust, and grinning from horn to horn. From that day forward, I became obsessed with Jeeps, or at least the older ones.
Anyway, as the years progressed, I'd back-burnered all four wheel drive dreams, and into my freshman year of college I'd become complacent with a front wheel drive Oldsmobile, until I went backpacking in the Tahoe National Forest, and realized I need something with a little more clearance, and crawl. I began by ogling the new FJ Cruiser, knowing full well I'd never be able to afford one. I finally got a chance to look at the details of one, and wasn't that impressed, but this look introduced me to the FJ40, which struck a chord with my Jeep-obsessed childhood. I began to hunt one down. Anyway, six months, and several up-close looks at a number of cruisers, my very own FJ40 rolled off the back of the PO's trailer. That day, I could have held the world by the wings. I'll explain how I found this one later, I think I need to upload some pics.

 

[Combat Chuck]

I had some pictures of it the day it came home, but since then, I've lost the camera. (why'd they have to make it so small?)
These are from a few days after it came home, At this point, I was just kind of half-ass running the painless wire harness. (I later had to revise in a big way.)

 

[Combat Chuck]

I've just run out of time for now, I have to go to work, but I'll contine this later. Sorry for the delay.

 

[ghostriders]

Did you stick that sticker in the lower rear window? There is only one place that sticker comes from!! If not would you mind telling me who you bought your 40 from. Anyway look forward to your build. You have the disease

 

[nicholastheczar]

Good luck on your build. I'm in the same boat, building up my '70.

 

[Combat Chuck]

Did you stick that sticker in the lower rear window? There is only one place that sticker comes from!! If not would you mind telling me who you bought your 40 from. Anyway look forward to your build. You have the disease

The sticker actually came with my rig, if there's some meaning behind it, I'd like to know. I bought this cruiser through a friend of a previous owner who handled the sale. What I can tell, it's changed hands like four times in the past year and a half, and migrated its way down from Ukiah. Some day, I'd like to go to the DMV and find out just how many PO's are on record.

 

[Combat Chuck]

Contining here. Earlier on, I'd had some wild ideas of what to do with this rig, including a frame off resto, NV4500... a whole bunch of stuff I could never afford on my meager salary. when I realized the scope of the costs, I kind of got scared away for a few months, and left it alone. A few months, and a traffic accident later, I decided: "the hell with trying to do a total resto, let me just get the important stuff out of the way, and drive it."
Since then, I've made a much smaller list of mods I'd like tio make:
-A new(er) transmission. The stock J30's a little tired, and I'd like something built for the 350 SBC.
-Wiring. I'd like to do my own layout for the switches.
-Paint. Something to keep the rust under control.
-Power steering. I plan on using this rig on just about every drivable (and some not) surface I come across, and I'd like nice handling.
-Disc Brakes. Seems I always get stuck behind the drooling morons going 10-15 under and treating every turn like a stop sign, and I'd like to be prepared.

Anyway, this seemed alot more do-able, and since I can rattle-can the paint myself, and inexpensively redo any of my mistakes (of which I've made many) this seemed like the place to start.

These pictures are of the teardown.

 

[Combat Chuck]

The "new" transmission. An SM465, awaiting a stint in the shop, and a 10-spline output shaft. $200 on ebay isn't a bad price.
Some late-model doors I bought from BKFJ40 here on 'Mud. (Liked the look of the late-model doors better than the earlier ones, even though they're clearly not as solid.)

 

[Combat Chuck]

At this point, I've disassembled the entire front end, and repainted the fenders, apron, cowl (up to the hinges). Rebuilt the cowl vent and heavily coated with spray-in bedliner (all high-wear areas got two extra coats of paint and a coat of liner) aprons, The grill (forgot the actual name, my bad) Got that all cleaned up and rebuilt, and started cleaning up the floor pan for sandblasting.

 

[Combat Chuck]

On top of the tarp there is the diaphragm for the brake master cylinder. I accidentally killed it trying to remove the clutch cylinder.

 

[Combat Chuck]

After sandblasting, sanding, scrubbing, painting, and a little body filler, I was ready to paint the main body. Three coats of primer, four coats of Rust-Oleum Dark Hunter Green. Except on the lip where the hard top will mount up, where it was: one coat of POR-15 (I ran out after that, I was using the sampler kit) seven coats primer, five coats green. I'm pretty happy with the results.

My future plansa re to really clean up the bed and floor pan, and just flood it with epoxy primer, and not do the spray paint for this. Then do many, many coats of Durabak.

 

[Combat Chuck]

And here are the doors I'd posted earlier, painted, washed, waxed, and ready to reassemble. Pic #3 is of the back of the door, I was trying to show the bedliner spray inside, but the glare from the sun is pretty bad.

 

[Combat Chuck]

My final pic of the day is of a late-model windshield frame I'd acquired in January. I opted for a frame off an '80 because it seems wiper motors and parts are more available for the 75-84 style, and cheaper to source. this frame was pretty rusted in one major spot, so I had to strip the paint down to bare metal, epoxy the back of the rust spot, lay on some POR-15, once that set, bondo over the hole, POR the whole frame, and then I did like... ten...coats of primer, and three of green before reassembly, and bedliner on the inside. It's my earlier work, and I'm nowhere near as happy with it as I am the fenders, or doors, but It'll hold, and should carry over until I'm done with school, and hapilly Ranger-ing it up at a park somewhere well away from CA.

 

[subzali]

I don't know much about the details, but you might make sure those later doors fit your earlier tub. Also it seems like the later windshield frames are "thinner" so your hardtop might fit different or not at all. You might want to search around for threads talking about those items before getting too far along! Great work so far, on a lean budget and learning as you go - that's what I've been doing since 2005 with mine when I got it while in the middle of college!

 

[cruiser enthuiser]

Right on Chuck!

Here's to budget builds!

Reminds me of my project. If you're like me, you're probably planning to keep this rig a really long time, if not forever. There will be good days ahead when cash is more plentiful and dropping a bunch of coin on a new 5 speed transmission or slick suspension upgrades won't be a problem. In the meantime remember that Land Cruisers are meant to be driven and enjoyed. Have fun with the resto. It's looking good - keep us posted.

-Ed

 

[subzali]

I like what another guy said - life is too short - drive your Land Cruiser every day!

 

[Combat Chuck]

I don't know much about the details, but you might make sure those later doors fit your earlier tub. Also it seems like the later windshield frames are "thinner" so your hardtop might fit different or not at all. You might want to search around for threads talking about those items before getting too far along! Great work so far, on a lean budget and learning as you go - that's what I've been doing since 2005 with mine when I got it while in the middle of college!

Thanks for brining that up. That was a huge concern for me initially, but there are like... elevendy billion threads on 'Mud about the doors. The doors fit fine, I tested them out earlier, the hard top, though, is news to me. I'm not too bothered by this either way, a PO rolled this rig on its side some time ago, and the fiberglass top is mostly... fiber... I've got plans for a new top down the road, but that's waaay back-burnered for now. While I'm talking, what's Colorado like? I've been thinking about heading up that way after the Academy, and thumbing my nose at CA the entire drive up. Is it as awesome a state as Five Iron Frenzy made it out to be?

 

[Combat Chuck]

Right on Chuck!

Here's to budget builds!

Reminds me of my project. If you're like me, you're probably planning to keep this rig a really long time, if not forever. There will be good days ahead when cash is more plentiful and dropping a bunch of coin on a new 5 speed transmission or slick suspension upgrades won't be a problem. In the meantime remember that Land Cruisers are meant to be driven and enjoyed. Have fun with the resto. It's looking good - keep us posted.

-Ed

I do indeed plan on keeping this rig a long time. What I love the most is how it's totally just a blank canvas for me to do what I want; i'm a backpacker, and I grew up in the BSA, so I want to make this the ultimate scouting/backpacking field vehicle, and I have no problem waiting in order to buy myself the hardware I need,
Thanks for the kind words. I'm taking more than a page from your own postings here. (My TBI conversion will be my next-ish topic).

 

[subzali]

Okay, glad you tested the doors before going to too much work. I never had to deal with the doors myself, but just knew that some years fit while others don't. Glad you got one that worked.

I moved to CO with my family when I was about 3 and grew up here and went to college here in the Denver metro area (called the Front Range). My soon-to-be wife and I plan on living here, the mountains have a huge draw on us and Denver is a good industrial town, so my career, engineering, works well. If I could make a living deeper into the mountains, like in Winter Park, Gunnison or Durango, I would probably prefer to live further away from the "big town" - the main roads into the mountains are always crowded on the weekends. But that's because everybody, including me, loves the mountains. A LOT of great backpacking in them there hills. Neverending source of enjoyment for me.

It's also a close enough drive to Utah to get good backpacking in the desert, which I have come to love since being in college. Very neat country in southwest Colorado and most of the east side of Utah.

But just be forewarned Californians and Texans may receive some flak for moving here - a huge influx of those folks over the past few years and all the sudden there are a lot of people around who don't know how to drive (especially when it snows) - some may call it coincidence but others draw a correlation.

Anyway, back to building! I think my '77 with a 2F will have to stay, but some of the V8 builds around have me thinking if I get another Cruiser I might be interested to see what it's like to have a SBC under the hood!

 

[Combat Chuck]

Okay, glad you tested the doors before going to too much work. I never had to deal with the doors myself, but just knew that some years fit while others don't. Glad you got one that worked.

I moved to CO with my family when I was about 3 and grew up here and went to college here in the Denver metro area (called the Front Range). My soon-to-be wife and I plan on living here, the mountains have a huge draw on us and Denver is a good industrial town, so my career, engineering, works well. If I could make a living deeper into the mountains, like in Winter Park, Gunnison or Durango, I would probably prefer to live further away from the "big town" - the main roads into the mountains are always crowded on the weekends. But that's because everybody, including me, loves the mountains. A LOT of great backpacking in them there hills. Neverending source of enjoyment for me.

It's also a close enough drive to Utah to get good backpacking in the desert, which I have come to love since being in college. Very neat country in southwest Colorado and most of the east side of Utah.

But just be forewarned Californians and Texans may receive some flak for moving here - a huge influx of those folks over the past few years and all the sudden there are a lot of people around who don't know how to drive (especially when it snows) - some may call it coincidence but others draw a correlation.

Anyway, back to building! I think my '77 with a 2F will have to stay, but some of the V8 builds around have me thinking if I get another Cruiser I might be interested to see what it's like to have a SBC under the hood!

SBC's are nice, but the magic of the '40 is the low-end grunt of an F-series engine married to the stock transmission, that's why I bought the 465, because that little j30's just not made for the added torque. Otherwise, I've spent the first ninteen years of my life around Chevy trucks, and love the engine in my cruiser (especially the sound, Chevy engines just have that... unique note when they run.)

Fact: Californians are hated in all remaining 49 states in the union. (shoot, even the north half hates 'em.
Fact: 90% of Californians can't drive. The other 10% are willing to admit they can't.
I see the coorelation.
Thanks for the info.
Be Blessed.