Recent content by VA Mountain FJ40

Here is the gasketed tunnel after the adhesive cured and the gem clips were removed. The next morning the clip imprints in the foam rubber had pushed back up flush. Next step is to renovate the rear heater hoses that run along the passenger side of the tunnel cover, and then install the...

Some grinding and paint on the shifter cover. The shifter cover finish convinced me to take the tunnel cover all the way back to metal and repaint, as seen in the previous photos. It was time to put the new shifter cover on the repainted transmission tunnel cover: If the hole looks off...

Transmission Hump Cover Jolene’s interior floor had been covered in spray bed liner. I chose to go back to the original paint. It took a whole lot of grinding and wet sanding to take the hump back to metal. It needed to look uniformly good with the repainted blue floor pan up front. Usual paint...

4. Connect the coolant hoses from the heater box to the firewall hose inlets. I used the old hardened coolant hoses that I removed from the old heater box and duplicated them with fresh new flexible hoses. I found it a good idea to do a mock up of the connection first to ensure I was placing...

Mount the heater box with loose screws, leaving wobble room Slide the big square gasket from the heater box onto the blower duct body. You can see things are starting to get crowded. Use a socket with a long extension to tighten the left 2 heater box bolts. A ratcheting box wrench is...

Install Restored Heater Box Earlier I documented my adventures in restoring the original heater box. It was a rusty mess, full of mouse nests, but now it is restored and ready for installation. I rejuvenated the blower duct connector seen attached to the heater box. The old rubber was...

Having introduced Jolene and the general need to pull and replace the engine and transmission and address other issues I want to document my most recent work now, and backfill the the older work as time allows. So sequence might be an issue … hence the Star Wars reference. I’ll try to...

I decided to organize my ongoing project progress as a Build instead of scattering threads randomly across the tech section. I’m going to have to pull a Star Wars … and start a bit after the middle. This is the story of Jolene, a 1968 FJ40 I acquired in 2021. She was well used and well loved...

Time to add back the end cap and button the box up. It took a little bit of squeezing to get the cap to fit back with fresh gaskets. That is good, because the core will not move around. I strongly recommend using a JIS screwdriver whenever removing or reinstalling screws to the heater box...

I got the heater box back together today. This is the cleaned, flushed, correct size heater core. I even sat down for a while with a tiny screwdriver and straightened out a bunch of bent cooling fins. I removed the old saggy fiber gaskets that held the heater core in place and put in new...

Got my replacement core from SOR today, which SOR stored in inventory as an early FJ 55 heater core. It is absolutely, without question, the correct heater core for whatever version of heater box I have. It is 3 inches thick at the end caps, the inlet and outlet tube centers are spaced 3 1/4...

I definitely have the defrost knob and slot in front, but I know the truck was converted by one of the previous owners from column shift to floor shift. Ergonomically, I don’t have interference issues between the defrost knob and the floor shifter in my set up. So I’ve got that going for me...

The last two pictures look like the heater box in my truck… from a 72, you say?

This Denso sticker was on the driver side end cover of my FJ heater box. Can it help identify which heater box?

Im looking at the fiche pictures and none of them look like my heater box. My truck is titled as a 1968, so pre-69. My heater box has a single air discharge outlet on each side. When opened, each of the heater box ends contains a well that brackets and holds in place a heater core that is 3...