1969 FJ40 build "Dr Banner" (1 Viewer)

[scratchhax]

My website will always be updated first, but I figured I would go ahead and create a thread with the current progress on my 1969 build.

I bought this FJ40 in the summer of 2022. I had been looking for one for ages and had driven hundreds of miles trying to find the perfect one before I found this green beast literally 5 miles from my house.

The most recent owner had purchased it with a plan to do a frame off in 2019 but it sat and never got any love, so I gave him a cheque and hauled it home 3 years later. It already had a 350 swap done, a front Wilwood disc brake conversion, shackle reversal, 4 inch lift and was mostly rust free. The rear brakes leaked, the carb was shot and the electrical system liked to start fires. Honestly it’s a fantastic starting point.

I gave it it’s first wash and started crawling around to see what I had to work with.

The engine seems to be from 95-2000 GM with center bolt valve covers, a split bore intake and a busted rochester carb from a 77 olds I think. It’s hard to say for sure since a lot of the casting numbers won’t be fully visible until I pull the body. . It has the factory, non synchronized 3 speed transmission and vacuum actuated transfer case but someone removed all the linkage to engage 4lo. The suspension is the stiffest rancho 4 inch I’ve ever encountered, the seats are from a 95 Saturn SL2 and the steering column came from a 90 Chevy blazer. Mickey Thompson wheels and rims all around and the typical trail repairs you see with these trucks.

There was a bit of drama with the title since the PO bought this rig right before covid started in the long long ago, so while I waited for that to get sorted, I did some inexpensive fixes. Replacing broken clips for the underseat toolbox, tearing down the doors and cleaning up the window regulators, little things like that.

 

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The first expensive fix came in the form of an Edelbrock AVS2 1916 offroad carb. The install went pretty smoothly, though my carb arrived with some damaged parts and misconfigured floats. After taking it apart and getting replacement parts sent to me from edelbrock, it fires up faster than my fuel injected 4runner.

New Old Stock (NOS) dashmounted ignition switch and a dashbox were the next easy fixes and upgrades while I waited for more interesting parts to arrive. The dashbox is good, but has some fit and finish issues, still though, totally worth it for all the extra storage it creates.


The last easy fix was getting rid of the old diamond plate. I was afraid I would find a ton of rust underneath there, but overall it’s in pretty good shape. There is a mass of bondo that I’ll have to address, but I’ve got a welder and lots of time. The original color looks to be whit and at some point a red primer was sprayed on before the wild green.

 

[scratchhax]

Now it gets expensive​

Initially, I tried to just repair the rear drum brakes but found that, by the time I got parts, I was only a hundred dollars away from going to discs. I pulled off the drums, pulled and inspected the axles and bolted on brackets from JT outfitters along with calipers from an 85 montecarlo and discs from an 88 chevy that have been machined to fit the center hub .

The 69 had single hydraulic loop manual brakes with 9mm fittings everywhere. Going to discs meant needing a dual loop which meant 10mm fittings and, while I’m there, might as well add a brake booster. I sourced a booster from a newer FJ80 as well as a non ABS master cylinder and a bunch of fittings. I also grabbed some NiCop brake line and proceeded to fit it all together. The booster required an adapter that spaced it nearly 3 inches away from the firewall, so I had to make up an M10-1.25 extension rod to the brake pedal. I’m probably going to replace that soon with a shift handle extension off a Nissan. In the end, I replaced every single brake line, hard or braided, with new 3/16 with M10 fittings.

In order to run everything the way I want, I went ahead and pulled off the frontend body panels. It will help when it comes time to paint too. That gets us to today which is late October of 2022.

 

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October 23 2022: Lug nuts and brake booster rods​

Today was a less successful day. I bought all new wheel lugs and nuts, thinking since I was doing work at the hubs I might as well replace the 50+ year old hardware . I managed to break 4 of the new ones before I gave up. These are supposed to be Toyota lugs, but they are longer, the nuts are smaller and the shoulders don’t fit very well. I couldn’t end on a L though so I went ahead and modified the Nissan Sentra shifter extension that I ordered to act as my brake booster extension. It should be plenty strong for the boosted brakes though I’m not sure I would trust it for manual ones.

 

[scratchhax]

December 14 2022: Brakes are finished​

The 40 now has 4 wheel disc brakes. I had to get a flex line made in order to be DOT compliant (while you can make your own, if they aren’t DOT they aren’t supposed to pass inspection) and that took a few tries to get the correct one shipped, but there it is!

The hard lines I built as single runs, so there is no place for them to leak with the exception of the junction/splitter to go to each wheel. It was a massive pain in the rear, but is going to be so much easier to keep air tight

I also managed to score a synchronized 4 speed transmission from a 75, which is SUPER exciting because it will bolt right up to my transfer case and then I won’t have to double clutch anymore. I’ve started to rebuild it, but it’s in pretty great condition with just a little bit of surface rust. I’m swapping out bearings and all of the gaskets of course just in case, but it’s otherwise ready to go.

Next up is the electrical system.

 

[scratchhax]

January 2 2023 : Electrical and then some​

There isn’t a single wire on this entire rig that isn’t burnt or missing insulation, so I decided to just rip it out and start fresh. These are very easy trucks to work on and electrical is where I’m strongest, but there wasn’t much that could be saved here. There are two amp meters wired in and both interrupted the main charging circuit. Both also where burned out.

I ran some 00 gauge main wire, upgraded the battery terminals and took the opportunity to sand and prime a small section of the firewall while I was in there.

It seemed like a good time to take off the transmission cover too, so off that went. The steering column was removed at the same time as an ididit one is on the way. A 16 fuse box is going to go into the glove box so all the electrical is high up and safe from water.

 

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January 18 2023: Steering column​

I’d like to say that this didn’t take as much effort as it did. I’ve never done a steering column before, or even a steering wheel, so figuring out how to take the darn thing off, what kind of coupling I needed, the wiring, the mounting, etc was all new. Thankfully, Ididit has a column that is practically a drop in (yes I know it’s upside down in this picture) and I was able to order the right adapters for the grant steering wheel I already have. I’m still waiting on the floor mount to arrive and then I’ll need to weld that all in, but it’s good enough for now.

The coupling was a nightmare to get installed until I realized I needed to sand off the surface rust from the dd shaft, it slid right on after that (doh). I’ll drill the set screws once I’ve welded the floor mounts in place.

Wiring it is not difficult, but again is new. So I decided to mount all of the components that will go into the truck onto a board , RattyMuscleCar style.

I’m going to end up with 10 relays in total for all of the electrics but the overall power draw is very low. With the headlights, brights, DRLs, blinkers and brake lights all on I’m only drawing around 50w which is mind blowing to me. LEDs are kinda amazing. I don’t have to use relays at all with this kind of power draw, but if it’s worth doing it’s worth over doing.

After you add in the ignition coil , radiator fan, HVAC and horn I’m calculating a worse case power draw of 45 amps (starter not included) so I have a 50amp circuit breaker sitting at the head of the fuse panel.

 

[scratchhax]

January 22 2023: Prep work​

I had a friend come over today, so instead of doing electrical we spent some time working on the stuff that takes two people. First was taking apart the hard top. It’s too big for me to store in one piece, but taking it apart I’m able to stash it all over the garage out of the way. Then we took out the seats and got the interior basically stripped. I think I’m going to need a new back tub but we’ll see when the grinder comes out. While he was here we also dropped the rear driveshaft and took apart the parking brake so I could replace the transfer case output shaft with a new one that is double sealed. I found the speedometer short cable is broken and the parking brake cable is frozen, so I’ll need to replace those.

 

[scratchhax]

January 29 2023: Small boring stuff​

Lots of little work today, but nothing super exciting. I’ve taken apart the front bib and I’m giving it a really solid renew. It’s such an iconic piece of the FJ40, it’s important that this is right. The first thing I’m going after are the headlight buckets. The previous owner had installed rock guards over the headlights and then painted everything in place, so the screws and bezels were all very stuck. None of the screws survived, but that’s fine. I spent today just working on the buckets themselves, stripping all of the paint (none of it had a good mechanical attachment to the metal, so I couldn’t just scuff it and paint over) and getting them primed and then painted black. I thought about powder coating but these have the plastic adjustment bits still in tact and I would have to ruin them to go the powder route.

 

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February 5th 2022: Messing with the bib​

I’m experimenting with electrical in the background and decided to use the lovely surprise weather to do some more body work. The bib is in fantastic shape, but it’s a real pain to sand and it’s too expensive to media blast. So after a solid two days of hand sanding, I decided to try out a Toyota magnetic gray paint color. I think I like it, but we’ll see after a few days. I can’t decide if I want to paint the surround white (traditional) or keep it black, but fortunately that’s a really easy thing to change and will go off to the powder coater.

 

[scratchhax]

March 25 2023: More wiring​

Super boring I know, but all of the parts have arrived and wiring is actually happening! I purchased some Deutsch HDP20 connectors (Thanks to Ran When Parked for the idea!) and then spent like 2 weeks trying to figure out where I wanted to place them. I ended up going above the HVAC blower so I can plumb everything directly into the glovebox. I have a 2 pin 4 gauge connector to bring power into the fuse box and a 31 pin 12 gauge connector to go to all the things. I have a hydraulic crimping tool, so I was able to make solid connectors and then it’s just a matter of pinning out every single one of the wires. I ran into a snag of course and found that the rear bumper doesn’t fit the factory lights but that’s just an excuse to buy a plasma cutter.

 

[scratchhax]

May 30th 2023: First fire on the new electric system and body work​

And here we go! After a lot of indecision, I finally committed and got the new electrical system installed enough to start and run the engine.

I ended up running 1 wire through the bulkhead and outside of the connector to the starter relay that I mounted to the tub. The starter motor solenoid ended up drawing WAY more current than the internet said it should (35 amps instead of 8) so I decided to wire it up like a ford starter and mounted a dedicated solenoid so I could keep with my goal of having only low current wiring inside the cab.

And with that, I was able to fire it up! I think the starter motor solenoid may be bad though and I’m going to take it back for an exchange. It sounds like it’s dragging.

I got a chance to do some preliminary body work over the last month too. I sanded the transmission tunnel by hand (what did the previous owner do to this poor thing?) and decided that was a lot of work, so I took the hood and fenders to a media blaster. They did a great job, but took 5 times longer than expected, costs twice as much as they quoted and didn’t communicate with me a single time during the process. So we’ll be hand sanding.

I also mounted up the battery temporarily. I need to weld together the battery tray, but I also need to relocate a brake line as it seems to be in the way. That’ll happen before I move the truck alongside the electric cooling fan and replacing all the belts and hoses. I was able to find a radiator shroud for cheap on amazon and a probably inadequate fan, but we’ll start there.

 

[scratchhax]

August 8th 2023: Grab bag of stuff​

This month was slow going as it was family vacation time, but I was able to get a few things done starting with the electric fan. The mechanical fan was several inches away from the shroud and I didn’t really want to build a gigantic shroud or move the engine forward, so I switched to an electric puller fan. The alternator was making all sorts of horrible noises from the bearings so I replaced it with a 140w 1 wire unit which should be plenty of power for the fan and lights and stuff and then I removed the mechanical fan.

With that bit sorted I did a little more sanding and sealing of the body parts. I coated everything bare metal with POR15 to keep the rust managed and then remounted the fenders so I could work on the lights. I’m using a GM style light switch and getting rid of the floor mounted brights. My DRLs will always be on, so I have this setup to be normal lights at half pull and brights on full pull.

Which means I officially have working signals now. There’s something odd going on with the ground on the drivers side fender that I need to figure out, but I think it’s just the POR15 blocking ground points.

Next up is the wiper assembly. It seems to be in OK shape, but the grease is ancient, the wiring is opaque and the motor is pulling a LOT of current. I’ve got it disassembled currently and I’ll be cleaning it and rebuilding the motor shortly.

 

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October 4th 2023: Suspension and steering and stuff​

The wiper motor ended up being pretty easy to rebuild. The wiring all needed to be replaced, the grease was basically glue but all the pieces worked once given some love and it cleaned up really well.

I’ve been procrastinating the next step because it terrified me, but it’s time to try to get the tub off. Spoiler, it was not successful. I kept reading on the internet that the tub is only around 270lbs but I think that is the replacement aluminum tub or the 3/4 tub because mine for sure was closer to 500lbs and stressed the hell out of my lift points. After breaking a 3/8 eye bolt I put that project to the side for a bit while I ordered some beefier hardware and steel plate to fabricate better lift points.

Instead we used the time to cobble together a pretty slick steering column mount using parts from 3 other mounts that doesn’t require welding and we replaced the shocks, springs, bushings and steering stabilizer.

The gas tank has been drained and everything has been dismounted from the firewall. The new 4 speed has been cleaned up and the transition gears have been acquired as well as bearings etc. Once I get a few hands here to help again I’ll get the tub pulled off and the transmission swapped.

 

[scratchhax]

November 5th 2023: The body comes off​

It was spooky to do, but I finally got the time and the guts to pull the body off the frame. The frame is in really great shape, just some dirt and surface rust to deal with. The transfer case is filthy, so I’m spending some time scrubbing it clean before I break it from the transmission and risk getting junk into the new trans. I’m also doing some opportunistic POR15 and high temp engine paint on the firewall. This isn’t the finished…finish, it’s just me putting a few coats on to see what it looks like. I’ll clean

 

[scratchhax]

November 12th 2023: Transmission work​

After I pulled the transmission and transfer case from the frame, I set to work trying to attach the 3 speed transfer case to the 4 speed transmission I purchased. I was really hoping that the 3 speed could be saved and I could give it to someone doing a restore, but no luck there. It looks like it was about to explode at any minute. Lots of the teeth had chunks missing and some bearings were just laying in the bottom. The bearing, seal and gear all slid right into place but I realized I am missing the spacers I need to space the shafts properly.

 

[scratchhax]

December 2nd 2023: Transmission work is done​

I cannot describe how heavy the transfer case and transmission unit are. Sincerely. This has to be almost 400lbs of stuff when it’s all said and done. It took me 3 days to figure out how to get these darn things to mate together. Turns out, I had the wrong bolts. Got the correct stuff, new gaskets and seals, the double sealed output shaft and I was able to install the transfer case saver. I still need to clean up the outside of the transfer case but I’ll wait until everything is sealed up before I hit it with the pressure washer.

 

[South Texas 97]

Nice, like reading from a firehose!!! Seriously nice work on the electrical.

 

[scratchhax]

Nice, like reading from a firehose!!! Seriously nice work on the electrical.

lol thanks! It's total overkill but hey, why not.

 

[scratchhax]

December 18th 2023: Clutch work​

I'm almost ready to mount up the transmission. It turns out , the PO had mounted the flywheel with flexplate bolts instead of flywheel bolts, so when I went to torque them down to 60 ft/lbs, I stripped out all of the crankshaft bolts. This is bad. I was very concerned at first but it turns out the flywheel bolts are nearly twice as long. I ran a tap through the holes and was able to rescue the threads and get things back to where I could torque it correctly. I now have the flywheel mounted, new clutch, clutch disc and pilot bearing installed and I was able to mount up the bell housing and throwout bearing/arm to the transmission. It was only around 20F outside today so I wasn't able to finish sealing up the frame, but hopefully tomorrow I can and then I can mount the transmission. I also went ahead and replaced the rear main seal while I was there.