Builds 1960 FJ28L - Project Lara

[scoobiedubes]

No time for tears, time to get right at it. Rear looks the worst, and thus will feel the most gratifying when complete so we are going to start there.

 

[bmoonhajjar]

No time for tears, time to get right at it. Rear looks the worst, and thus will feel the most gratifying when complete so we are going to start there.

View attachment 2314649

Atta boy

 

[Tancruiser]

There you go it’s just nuts and bolts and sheet metal .

 

[scoobiedubes]

Before we go to the trouble of trying to make a patch piece for the hole in the rear floor pan from scratch, does this floor pan look like any other that we could use for a donor? I looked all over the 'net but looks like the 40 series floor pans are pretty different as well as the 25's, and the LV rear is definitely different too. The ribs are about 1.25" wide and spacing is about 3" edge to edge. Kind of looks like the pattern on the 40 wheel wells i think but i don’t have one to confirm. The problem with those patch panels is they’re too short, so we would need to cut it all up and patch it but i guess it’s one solution.

We will have to replace the existing wheel wells completely too as it looks like at some point someone just put new metal on top of the rusted stuff, but those shouldn't be too bad since they don't have any ribbed "features" like the floorpan.

Looks like we will also need to replace the bed support cross channel in the rear of the vehicle, its in pretty rough shape. I see that CCOT sells them for $200+ for part "B". Before I order one of them - in the unlikely event that anybody has one "freed up" (thats the hard part) from their body let me know. We could make one of these, but i'm sure it'd be easy to be into it for $200+ with time and materials anyway.

I think we are leaning towards eliminating the battery access hatch underneath the front passenger as well and moving the battery to the engine bay. Best as I can tell it's not original to the truck (or at least the current box is a homemade job), and the FJ28VA looks like it had the battery in the engine bay as well. The FJ28 parts manual shows that it had a frame mounted battery tray but it was on the driver side, and there's no evidence on the chassis that this one had one over there - the parts manual seems to be for more of a general FJ28 chassis but I know there were probably 4 variants of the 28 (2 door, 4 door, pickup, and the FJ43ish variety that FJ Co has right now). This also simplifies one of my bigger head-scratchers as I wasn't completely sure what to do with the front seating because of that access hatch. Would have had to have some sort of hinge mechanism and my preference was to use the LV seats that I have (thanks to @Tancruiser for helping me find them) to "Keep it Gifu". But that also means we have a big hole to patch in the front floorpan. Fortunately the front floorpan does look pretty similar to the 40 series so I can probably buy a CCOT patch for that one.

 

[xtremeVA]

As I have learned from the endless metal work in my 45LV land, just take it one piece at a time and it will slowly come back to life.

 

[scoobiedubes]

chassis is back from sandblast, no surprises that we didn't already know about here at least we have some stuff that we already had to straighten out, and some engine and body mounts to clean up but this should be the "easy part". Off to powder coat shortly so at least something will look nice and shiny!

 

[Indygbd]

Did you decide if you are going to use a clamshell heater?

 

[scoobiedubes]

Did you decide if you are going to use a clamshell heater?

I believe so! I swapped the 12v motor over from the Bosch heater which was identical and it mounted in the same holes so no modification needed. My plan for the switch is to use one of the Vader switches and make a custom 3D printed knob for it as well as the fog switch. These will be mounted on a plate under the dash like some of the other early 40 series had for the heat/vent switches. I don’t want to have too many holes in the dash but thinking this will still give it a nice OEM look without modification.

haven’t researched the Denso heaters much yet but I’m thinking I’ll make it body colored. So I’ll need to settle on a color before I restore it.

 

[scoobiedubes]

I guess my wife (and kids) is supportive of my cruiser sickness phew. Sometimes I wonder... hope you all had a great weekend!

 

[JLawson]

Always nice to have the family on board! Looks like someone got a taste of the icing before you? Wonder who?

 

[scoobiedubes]

Always nice to have the family on board! Looks like someone got a taste of the icing before you? Wonder who?

Good eye. Tiny 2 year old fingers!!

 

[JLawson]

Gotta keep the next generation of cruiser heads coming along!

 

[scoobiedubes]

Removing the rear quarter panels to clean things up inside. Looks like the weep hole tubes have been gone for many years and rusted out the bottom of the wall braces. That explains the bowing on the side panels.m. This thing is going to have a lot of new metal. We will need to remove all this surface rust of course as well before we reassemble.

 

[scoobiedubes]

Chassis is back from powdercoat! I’ll snap some photos tomorrow. Next is to send those beautiful 25 wheels off to powdercoat and start putting together a rolling chassis. As such, it’s time to start getting serious about my colors. I’m going to do a green and beige scheme I have decided and I really like this beige that FJ Co used - can anyone confirm is this Coronado beige T451?? I like how light it is and how it works with the green.

EDIT: after getting some beige, dune beige and Coronado beige spray samples they all seem a little too dark for the look I want. Might end up going with a Cygnus white to go with the green.

 

[scoobiedubes]

Had some body braces made, more than we should need but better too much than not enough.

going to just have a big sheet of the floor panel made too for any repairs needed.

 

[Tancruiser]

Wow some serious work there.

 

[scoobiedubes]

We decided to dig into the differentials ourselves this week, and found a couple of broken pieces in there. I don't see this on any of the diagrams on SOR's site, anybody know what this piece is called and does anybody happen to have a couple of them intact? It goes behind the carrier bearings. More importantly are the 40 and 25 differentials the same or are there differences? I never had to dig into any of the diffs on any of the 40 series I owned.

Going to be giving Cruiser Outfitters a call tomorrow. Posted a wanted ad for them too...

Wanted - FJ25 (and early FJ40?) Differential parts

I'm looking for this little gear that goes behind the carrier bearings. I'm not sure what they're called exactly, but we need two of them for the FJ28 restoration. EDIT: @pardion looked this up in the 1958 manual and they're called a "Nut, differential adjusting. PN RS 41312". Looks like this...

forum.ih8mud.com

 

[Rigger]

Consider this note a pat on the back. Very cool project. Keep on keepin‘ on.

 

[fwed]

Hi these are the side bearing adjuster nuts they should have thread on the outside. Early 40 could possibly be the same.

 

[scoobiedubes]

Hi these are the side bearing adjuster nuts they should have thread on the outside. Early 40 could possibly be the same.

Thanks. I’m hoping early 40 is the same, I’ll have better luck with those than 25 parts I think. Fingers crossed we find some. I did add another photo showing the threaded outside too, thanks for the heads up.