Builds 1965 FJ40 FST - Seth’s Frame-off Restoration (3 Viewers)

[middlecalf]

@ClemsonCruiser so the front-back battery tray crosses models. What’s the year differentiator? I bought the current OEM side-side tray and it doesn’t fit the mount holes on my ‘63 45. After searching there’s a bunch of stuff in the 25 forum on this (let's talk early 40 battery trays)
, but no sign of a front-back tray. @seth what is the bolt spacing?

On edit: @seth i see you posted on the link I posted. Hopefully some parts book owners can add clarity.

 

[seth]

@ClemsonCruiser so the front-back battery tray crosses models. What’s the year differentiator? I bought the current OEM side-side tray and it doesn’t fit the mount holes on my ‘63 45. After searching there’s a bunch of stuff in the 25 forum on this, but no sign of a front-back tray. @seth what is the bolt spacing?

Front to rear is 21cm center to center and side to side is just over 9cm center to center.

 

[ClemsonCruiser]

@ClemsonCruiser so the front-back battery tray crosses models. What’s the year differentiator? I bought the current OEM side-side tray and it doesn’t fit the mount holes on my ‘63 45. After searching there’s a bunch of stuff in the 25 forum on this (let's talk early 40 battery trays)
, but no sign of a front-back tray. @seth what is the bolt spacing?

On edit: @seth i see you posted on the link I posted. Hopefully some parts book owners can add clarity.

Paul looking through my literature my ‘67 stuff shows the later style tray so I’m guessing it transitioned in ‘66 sometime.

 

[seth]

Oh, and if anyone is curious about paint in the engine compartment, it looks as if mine was a semi-gloss black from the factory!

 

[seth]

Okay Land Cruiser pros, I'm working on figuring out the paint color on my FJ40, and decided to do a little image matching with color swatches that people have posted on Mud. First of all, here is a white balanced swatch. Different computer monitors will show the colors slightly differently, but white balancing against what is supposed to be white in the image helps a lot.

1964-1967 Paint Chips and Color Codes

My Truck, with Paint Chips overlaid:
Note: You'll see 2 different chips for each color. That's because I took those from 2 different photos I found and wanted to see how different they looked once they had been white balanced. They look really close. If anyone else has paint book pages scanned, can you drop them here so that I can cross-reference?

 

[seth]

Update: I went and got some PPG mixed up that we eyeball-matched to a bit of factory paint on the tailgate. The paint chip looked really close (although the picture looks more off than the chip did in person)... but I'm going to test the paint on a piece of metal before I commit to it. I think it might need to be a little bit warmer to be Volcanic Beige, but what do you guys think?

 

[oregon fj]

Yes, I'd warm it up a bit if it were me.

 

[seth]

No luckily mine was still present and in good shape. I believe I have another on one of my cruisers so if you need better pictures and dimensions to make your own let me know.

Mind sending me the dimensions of the tray bracket and some photos? Thanks!

 

[seth]

Sorry I've made you wait too long without an update. The body is finally off of the frame!

 

[seth]

Also, I've discovered a few interesting things in the process that will define how accurately I repaint the truck to factory specs. I would appreciate the Mud community's feedback...

My firewall (and underside of the body) seems to have been painted gloss black, from the factory. Of course, this has faded to a rough flat black over the years, but the original finish was revealed under a couple of spots.

See this photo from where I removed the factory heater blower:

Also, on closer inspection, and removal of some body mounts, it looks as if the frame once had the same exact black glossy finish.
Here are a few photos:

Here's a small piece of the paint that was chipping off the photo above, after a little spit... looks very glossy to me.

 

[seth]

Does anyone have first-hand knowledge of whether Toyota used a gloss or a semi-gloss black paint on the firewall and frame? I prefer a nice satin black, but it's really looking like this is a gloss. I need someone who remembers, from the dealer, whether they used a semi-gloss or a gloss in late-64.

Thank you!

 

[seth]

Wow, what a blast from the past with this thread — but it’s time for a revival!

2 other projects have come and gone, and I’m now back to working on my “forever FJ40”.

After a lot of deliberation, I have decided to undergo all of the metal work myself — learning as I go. I picked up an Everlast MTS 225 multi-process welder, and fortunately have a decent workshop space. I invite your commentary and criticism, but largely hope to find your help as I work through some of the impending challenges.

The reason I even started this project was to address some of the small areas of rusty metal beginning to show through in the paint. I figured that I might as well address everything at once, or else I’ll be chasing emergent rust for the next 20 years. The biggest area of concern was the rear sill and the rear wheel skins. Here’s what it looked like behind the sill cover:

And here’s an example of some of the various additional holes that had been drilled into the rear wheel skins (all the green tape originally indicated where I was going to fill holes):

Admittedly I knew that I, essentially a welding newbie, would have a hard time filling all of the holes without potentially creating a chain of additional problems. After a lot of back and forth, I decided that the best course of action was to find a good source for replacement steel.

I ended up getting replacement quarters, wheel skins, and the rear sill kit from CCOT.

I built a pretty basic cart to roll the body around on in the shop, as well as a jig to stabilize the dimensions before I start cutting panels off. I created posterboard templates of all of the factory hole positions that I’ll need to reproduce in both quarters and both wheel skins:

This week I’ve pulled the rear sill and removed the paint on both quarters so I can get a better eye on all of the welds I’ll need to drill out. To my surprise, both rear quarters had some filler. I’m going to assume that the re-spray job that took place at some point in the past 60 years may have been preceded by a fender bender that was careful hammered out. I’ll post some closeup pics in my next post of both quarters.

Here’s the body after I finished today. More to come all week!

-Seth

Oh, and if anyone is in the Los Angeles area and wants to come help at all, let me know.

 

[seth]

Here are some closeups of the rear quarters before and after stripping the paint and filler.

You’ll notice little bare spots where I welded up holes. Someone had attached those rubber fender flares. Luckily, they did not actually cut out the lips. Anyone want the flares?

 

[seth]

Here’s the first snafu I’ll need to address this coming week — the Cool Cruisers rear sill kit doesn’t have the threaded tailgate latch holes in the right place. I assume this kit anticipated that everyone has the swing out rear doors, and not the tailgate style. After a little measuring, it appears that they needed to shift the lower latch down to accommodate the lower-mounted hinges. Here’s my old one next to the CCOT one. They’ve done a great job with this piece, and I knew I was going to have to drill some of my own holes. but I was surprised to find this with no mention on their site. Anyone else had this issue?

The solution is going to be to cut out their welded nuts, fill the holes, re-drill and weld new captive nuts — in the right position.

 

[seth]

A ton of progress on preparing the rear sill today!

As I mentioned before, I got this sill kit from Cool Cruisers of Texas, and in general I’m pretty happy with it.

As with many things in early FJ40s, these aftermarket components aren’t generally plug and play for the whole range of years they may indicate.

I have a factory soft top model, with a drop-down tailgate, in a transitional year. I already knew I was going to have to drill some holes to make the sill kit work for me, but didn’t realize that the drop-down tailgate changed the vertical position of the lower tire carrier latch — by something like 10mm.

If kept those holes in the same place, the latch would interfere with my tailgate hinges. So, step one was to drill out the threaded bits they pre-installed in the sill.

Next, I had to determine if there were any other holes that need to be filled, so I started making a template off of my previous sill cover. I quickly realized that a few of my holes were elongated and giving me funky measurements. To do this right I would need to determine what the factory positions actually were. I vaguely recalled seeing a diagram somewhere on Mud years ago, but felt like I had enough information to get myself going.

Here’s my first draft.

My second draft went a lot better once I realized the vertical distance apart each set of holes was supposed to be (20mm on center) and the distance from the bottom edge to the bottom hole (14mm on center).

The middle hinge is my reference mark for the whole sill, and the center of your other hinge measurements should be exactly 42.5cm out to each side from this center point. Then, there is the hole for the license plate lamp. That sits 16.5cm in from the outside hinge, and up 30mm (on center). Its radius appears to be 10.5mm.

At this point I clamped things up to see how it was all looking and started to figure out where the tire carrier latch needed to sit.

From what I could tell on my old parts, the latch sits about 36mm in from the hinge to its right. The vertical hole configuration is the same as the hinges.

Okay! So, my template was done and I placed it over the new sill cover and marked which holes would need to be filled. 6 on the sill cover, and 4 on the sill itself.

Then, I fired up the welder and got to work. Fill, air gun to cool it down, grinder to cut down most of the weld, and then finished with the small air grinder to smooth it out. It’s not perfect, but I think it will work well.

Lastly, I placed my template over the sill cover, aligned my center hinge line to my center mark, and used an automatic center punch to strike each spot where I’ll be drilling. For now I only drilled small holes in each position on the sill cover but not the sill itself. For that, I’m going to wait until it’s tacked up in the truck.

Until the next update…

-Seth

 

[seth]

Quick little update from the past few days. After really assessing the remaining edge of the bed, I decided to splice in new steel to get the edge back to where I assume it should be. Of course, most of that edge will be covered by the rear sill cover, but it still felt like the right thing to do.

It was a heck of a lot of MIG tacking, air cooling, grinding and hammering. There are a few spots that I’m going to come back to with the welder, but overall I think it turned out pretty good!

Making a template that allows me to avoid the factory shapes while still maximizing the amount of new steel I can get in there.

Cutting out the 16 gauge steel.

Lining it up.

I started with only a couple key tack welds that I quickly cooled. Once I felt pretty comfortable with it, I did a lot more, and allowed them to penetrate a little deeper. I only burned through a couple of times.

I’m a novice welder, and it definitely shows here — but I’m a pro grinder and hammerer. Haha — so managed to get everything smoothed out pretty well.

Maybe halfway through all the tacks.

And now with the sill mocked up.

 

[clrussell]

Watching. Great documentation here

 

[seth]

Today was the day I conquered removing the passenger side wheel skin!

Took a wire wheel to the surfaces so I could see the spot welds, and then gradually drilled those suckers out.

I didn’t take a lot of pics of this process, but I did make a video which I’ll share below.

A few things I learned:

• After marking your spot welds with a center punch or a small drill bit, just use a 3/8ths inch bit with a broad taper tip to drill the center of the spot weld. I figured this out when I had already used a spot weld cutter for an hour.
• When you remove quarter panels and wheel skins, you are removing some of the structural integrity of the bed. Most of its weight is cantilevered beyond the rear body mounts, so be sure to measure and support the rear before taking too much metal out. I’ll be doing this tomorrow before I cut out any more of my quarter panels.

Here’s a status photo sans passenger wheel skin:

And here’s the video. It’s sort of long, but hope it helps you see what I’m dealing with here.

 

[seth]

A little glamour shot from today — no work progress on the truck, but did a garage and tool cleanup.

 

[seth]

Oh, and if anyone is curious about paint in the engine compartment, it looks as if mine was a semi-gloss black from the factory!
View attachment 1800537 View attachment 1800538

Ok, so it’s also time to revive this inquiry. Has anyone with an early FJ40 (pre-1965) seen semigloss black paint on firewall and underside of body?

Even more evidence of this black when I lifted the wheel skin off the other day. It’s a bit hard to tell in the photo, but there are no layers of body color paint under there…