This is a long overdue (and winded) build writeup on my 1972 FJ40 aka the Mongrel, a name it picked up during it's build.
But first, some relevant back story. And be warned, it's wordy. I’d owned my 1968 FJ40 since 1996, it had served as a fantastic learning opportunity, a reliable steed, and it undoubtedly created a trajectory for my life. However, it still sported drum brakes, manual steering and a Rancho 2.5” suspension that offered little in the way of ride quality or flex. I was 15 when I spent my paper route money buying that fairly stock but well-worn 1968 FJ40. I knew I wanted (in my mind needed) a 4x4 when I could finally drive, legitimately convinced I was going to spend my summers treasure hunting and gold prospecting in Utah’s back country. I had an old neighbor with rusty FJ40 he used for his hangliding hobby but I don’t recall falling in love with it then, rather in the spring of 1996 I was on a mountain biking trip in Moab with our neighborhood Boy Scout assemblage (Troop 1459!) when we saw a group of Land Cruisers passing us on the Poison Spider Mesa trail. I remember thinking that day “when I get my drivers license, I want to have an FJ40”. It turns out that group was an early assemblage of Rising Sun 4x4 members out scouting trails for what would become the annual Cruise Moab event kicking off just a few years later. I’ve since participated in Cruise Moab 25 times!
(Surveying the needs and making a to-do list the day we brought it home. I don't recall why I was rather dressed up, I think I'd just come home from a school event? Note the gas can and fire extinguisher, I think we were able to borrow a battery and get that old Holley sputtering that day. I ran it on that converted 2F for the first year or so but it eventually had compression issues and needed an overhaul, likely from the toilet-flush operation of a Holley carb
)
(Camping in Corner Canyon, something we did very often in high school. I'd started doing some work to the Cruiser, at least making it run and sanding priming random panels. The tires that were on it when we brought it home rotted and fell apart when inflated, so a set of cheap used tires got me moving. Note: @Dirty Koala, this spot is a few hundred? yards from your current house )
Projects were not abnormal around our house, well my projects anyway. My older brothers didn’t have a particularly great deal of interest in anything with a motor. I was different, I consistently had a random assortment of mini-bikes, go-karts, dirt bikes, etc. My parents weren’t the least bit shocked when I declared I wanted to to buy an old 4x4 to start fixing so I had wheels when I could drive. I started my shopping via our local newspaper classifieds, calling on every Land Cruisers (and admittedly Willy’s Jeep) that was in my humble price range. I knew nothing about them and remember saying “yeah, yeah, that’s cool” when a seller was telling me about the “lockers” he had recently installed. Was he talking about the locking hubs like those found on my dad’s Ford F250 pickup? I literally had no clue but it sounded awesome! My parents had owned a few Toyota’s over the years and appreciated their reliability, but an old Land Cruiser was something completely foreign to us.
Somehow an aunt of mine heard I was shopping for Land Cruiser and mentioned “I think my brother has one of those in my parents back yard in South Jordan”. It turns out her brother had just re-enlisted in in the Navy and the Cruiser had sat under a tarp for 5 years at that point, the parents were ready to see it out of their yard. It took a few months to lock down the deal, he was living on a ship located who knows where and I was making $8/hour at a small engine repair shop and needed to drum up enough $$$ to make it happen. My dad helped me haul it home after school one day and grand plans ensued. Armed with a Specter Off Road catalog, I started making plans for getting running and moving. It was relatively stock outside to a 2F and H42 that had been installed at some unknown point. My father and I rebuilt the wiring harness by hand on his garage floor, painstakingly laying out and pruning the old original harness as we grafted in new runs of wire. The goal was to have it running/driving for my 16th birthday but that came and went as we rebuilt the engine in the home garage. I ended up with a mini-Cruiser (a $450 1987 Suzuki Samurai) to drive to/from work and school while we wrenched on the Cruiser, moving past the engine overhaul into body work and paint. My dad would occasionally let me drive it around the neighborhood or drop friends off at their homes. I was in love with that Cruiser.
(Rebuilding the harness on the garage floor in the Fall of 1996. We made repair after repair to the original harness but it was finally time to pull it out and build a new one. We re-used some of the connector housings where possible. My dad, a contractor, had amazing patience and grace helping me with that project)
(Suzuki Samurai, the original SXS. While working on the 1968 FJ40, I needed 'reliable' wheels to get to work and school. This Samurai belonged to a friends older sister. It was burning oil reaaaaally bad but the price was right, $450 and I could drive it home. While the 40 was getting paint/body work, I drove the Samurai, a bottle of motor honey would get me by in between fuel fills. We late rebuild the Samurai motor when the Cruiser was running)
My first purchase from Cruiser Outfitters (established in the early 90’s) was a factory roll-bar. My dad insisted I have a roll-bar if I took the top off the Cruiser in the summer months. Sound logic it turns out, as sometime in 1997/98 I flopped it on to its side pulling a rockford maneuver on 13th east in Draper near the popular high school hang-out, Taco Bell. Onlookers were quick to call 911 when they saw a vehicle on its side, surrounded by teenagers. I’m sure they were assuming it was a mass casualty event. We had just finished rolling it back on its wheels as a fire truck and ambulance arrived from one direction and a SL County Sheriff deputy arrived from the other. I was firing it up just as the deputy arrived at my side asking me “What in the hell do you think you are doing”. I was quick to answer “driving this thing home”. He did some due diligence, verified there were no other involved auto’s nor injured persons and then let us leave, quipping ”leave this minute before I change my mind”. In hindsight I wish I would have had that presence of mind to collect his name, that little act of grace had lasting impact. That Cruiser took me all over the mountains of the Wasatch back, particularly all over Corner Canyon, our local 4x4 trails, camping and bonfire area that is now full of California expat McMansions. I took it to Moab, the West Desert, enough places to learn that it had it’s limitations but I was hooked on Cruisers.
(The aftermath of that failed rockford manuever. I went right home and started fixing it before even telling my parents what had happened. The only real damage was the windshield frame and roll-bar. That same summer, a gentleman stopped me at a gas station and told me he'd sold his Cruiser years back and invited me over to his house to collect all the spare parts he had collected, boxes of old lights, an F head, a J30 3spd transmission... and a clean windshield frame. We had it fixed a few weeks later as I recall)
(My two older brothers helping me re-install the engine after we rebuilt it in my parents garage. It has a Holley we rebuilt with some goodies from Speed Shops, who remembers those? We didn't know any better and it actually ran pretty damn well all things considered. I'll never know why I chose to paint it blue, I suspect that is the can of high-temp engine paint my dad had on his shelf)
If you’ve ever sat though one of my Land Cruiser Heritage Museum tours, you’ve likely heard me talk about the ‘generational hate’ that Cruiserheads have for newer models. While my frame of mine has most definitely shifted since that time, I was as guilty as anyone as a dweeby 16-year old rolling to the local Toyota dealership (Karl Malone Toyota where we still do daily business all these years later) and seeing brand new FZJ80’s sitting on the lot and low mile FJ62’s and FJ80’s in their used car area. I remember bagging on those ‘bloated wagons’ saying how they didn’t deserve to be called a ‘Land Cruiser’ yada, yada, yada. Broken record that I’ve since heard about the 100, the 200 and naturally the 250 and 300. A few years later I would join our local TLCA chapter, the Wasatch Cruisers (where I am the longest tenured member) and I distinctly recall the 60 Series owners bagging on the few folks that had new 80’s that started showing up on the light duty trail rides. My oh my have the times changed but I digress.
(Hells Revenge during Easter Jeep Safari, 1998)
(Poison Spider in the late 90's. Note: the infamous upside down bezel. I don't think I knew either way when I was young. This was pre-Mud and Pirate existing and our local Land Cruiser club, the Wasatch Cruisers, didn't exist either. I suppose all I knew was that it came to me with the wide trim down, and I put it back on that way. However, along the way I see I switched it. If you look at the 'flop' photo, it's the correct way. Later photo's show it upside down again. Who knows what 17 year-old me was thinking )
Fast forward to late 1999/ early 2000, I’m ready for a different FJ40. I loved the current 1968 but it was complete, running well and for the most part my daily driver. Why tear it back apart when I could keep driving it and start building a new one in the meantime. My goal with a new FJ40 build was the “best of” available from Toyota parts. I was a part-time college student, working construction, part-time at an auto parts and hanging out at Cruiser Outfitters in any spare time I had. The owner Darrell was kind enough to answer a litany of dumb questions and let me help him with projects. Soon I was working there and had my own set of keys to the shop, allowing me to duck in after my other jobs and sneak some work in.
A year or so beforehand I had stumbled across a reasonably clean FJ40 tub/frame/axles in a field a few miles from home. It was stored in the backyard of a home adjacent to a large field we frequented with our dirt bikes. After a few visits to the field, I decided to knock on the door and see if they would be interested in selling and we were able to strike up a deal. I drug it home behind the 1968 FJ40 with a help of a few pals, much to the dismay of my parents were where not thrilled with the growing collection of Land Cruiser parts in their garage and on the side of their house. I'd already brought home a few other rusty/crusty $500 40's that I had parted-out, getting parts for the 1968 and building my parts hoard. True story, there is a crawl space under their home of 45 years that is still full of Land Cruisers used parts, I moved out decade ago. I tell them I’ll work on it every time they remind me about the parts. Some good stuff too!.
(Hauling home the 1972 FJ40 with the 1968 FJ40. I don't recall my parents being particularly excited when they came home from work and found another new Cruiser on the side of their house.)
The next installment is actually about the 1972 FJ40. If you made it this far, I commend and thank you
But first, some relevant back story. And be warned, it's wordy. I’d owned my 1968 FJ40 since 1996, it had served as a fantastic learning opportunity, a reliable steed, and it undoubtedly created a trajectory for my life. However, it still sported drum brakes, manual steering and a Rancho 2.5” suspension that offered little in the way of ride quality or flex. I was 15 when I spent my paper route money buying that fairly stock but well-worn 1968 FJ40. I knew I wanted (in my mind needed) a 4x4 when I could finally drive, legitimately convinced I was going to spend my summers treasure hunting and gold prospecting in Utah’s back country. I had an old neighbor with rusty FJ40 he used for his hangliding hobby but I don’t recall falling in love with it then, rather in the spring of 1996 I was on a mountain biking trip in Moab with our neighborhood Boy Scout assemblage (Troop 1459!) when we saw a group of Land Cruisers passing us on the Poison Spider Mesa trail. I remember thinking that day “when I get my drivers license, I want to have an FJ40”. It turns out that group was an early assemblage of Rising Sun 4x4 members out scouting trails for what would become the annual Cruise Moab event kicking off just a few years later. I’ve since participated in Cruise Moab 25 times!
(Surveying the needs and making a to-do list the day we brought it home. I don't recall why I was rather dressed up, I think I'd just come home from a school event? Note the gas can and fire extinguisher, I think we were able to borrow a battery and get that old Holley sputtering that day. I ran it on that converted 2F for the first year or so but it eventually had compression issues and needed an overhaul, likely from the toilet-flush operation of a Holley carb
)(Camping in Corner Canyon, something we did very often in high school. I'd started doing some work to the Cruiser, at least making it run and sanding priming random panels. The tires that were on it when we brought it home rotted and fell apart when inflated, so a set of cheap used tires got me moving. Note: @Dirty Koala, this spot is a few hundred? yards from your current house
)Projects were not abnormal around our house, well my projects anyway. My older brothers didn’t have a particularly great deal of interest in anything with a motor. I was different, I consistently had a random assortment of mini-bikes, go-karts, dirt bikes, etc. My parents weren’t the least bit shocked when I declared I wanted to to buy an old 4x4 to start fixing so I had wheels when I could drive. I started my shopping via our local newspaper classifieds, calling on every Land Cruisers (and admittedly Willy’s Jeep) that was in my humble price range. I knew nothing about them and remember saying “yeah, yeah, that’s cool” when a seller was telling me about the “lockers” he had recently installed. Was he talking about the locking hubs like those found on my dad’s Ford F250 pickup? I literally had no clue but it sounded awesome! My parents had owned a few Toyota’s over the years and appreciated their reliability, but an old Land Cruiser was something completely foreign to us.
Somehow an aunt of mine heard I was shopping for Land Cruiser and mentioned “I think my brother has one of those in my parents back yard in South Jordan”. It turns out her brother had just re-enlisted in in the Navy and the Cruiser had sat under a tarp for 5 years at that point, the parents were ready to see it out of their yard. It took a few months to lock down the deal, he was living on a ship located who knows where and I was making $8/hour at a small engine repair shop and needed to drum up enough $$$ to make it happen. My dad helped me haul it home after school one day and grand plans ensued. Armed with a Specter Off Road catalog, I started making plans for getting running and moving. It was relatively stock outside to a 2F and H42 that had been installed at some unknown point. My father and I rebuilt the wiring harness by hand on his garage floor, painstakingly laying out and pruning the old original harness as we grafted in new runs of wire. The goal was to have it running/driving for my 16th birthday but that came and went as we rebuilt the engine in the home garage. I ended up with a mini-Cruiser (a $450 1987 Suzuki Samurai) to drive to/from work and school while we wrenched on the Cruiser, moving past the engine overhaul into body work and paint. My dad would occasionally let me drive it around the neighborhood or drop friends off at their homes. I was in love with that Cruiser.
(Rebuilding the harness on the garage floor in the Fall of 1996. We made repair after repair to the original harness but it was finally time to pull it out and build a new one. We re-used some of the connector housings where possible. My dad, a contractor, had amazing patience and grace helping me with that project)
(Suzuki Samurai, the original SXS. While working on the 1968 FJ40, I needed 'reliable' wheels to get to work and school. This Samurai belonged to a friends older sister. It was burning oil reaaaaally bad but the price was right, $450 and I could drive it home. While the 40 was getting paint/body work, I drove the Samurai, a bottle of motor honey would get me by in between fuel fills. We late rebuild the Samurai motor when the Cruiser was running)
My first purchase from Cruiser Outfitters (established in the early 90’s) was a factory roll-bar. My dad insisted I have a roll-bar if I took the top off the Cruiser in the summer months. Sound logic it turns out, as sometime in 1997/98 I flopped it on to its side pulling a rockford maneuver on 13th east in Draper near the popular high school hang-out, Taco Bell. Onlookers were quick to call 911 when they saw a vehicle on its side, surrounded by teenagers. I’m sure they were assuming it was a mass casualty event. We had just finished rolling it back on its wheels as a fire truck and ambulance arrived from one direction and a SL County Sheriff deputy arrived from the other. I was firing it up just as the deputy arrived at my side asking me “What in the hell do you think you are doing”. I was quick to answer “driving this thing home”. He did some due diligence, verified there were no other involved auto’s nor injured persons and then let us leave, quipping ”leave this minute before I change my mind”. In hindsight I wish I would have had that presence of mind to collect his name, that little act of grace had lasting impact. That Cruiser took me all over the mountains of the Wasatch back, particularly all over Corner Canyon, our local 4x4 trails, camping and bonfire area that is now full of California expat McMansions. I took it to Moab, the West Desert, enough places to learn that it had it’s limitations but I was hooked on Cruisers.
(The aftermath of that failed rockford manuever. I went right home and started fixing it before even telling my parents what had happened. The only real damage was the windshield frame and roll-bar. That same summer, a gentleman stopped me at a gas station and told me he'd sold his Cruiser years back and invited me over to his house to collect all the spare parts he had collected, boxes of old lights, an F head, a J30 3spd transmission... and a clean windshield frame. We had it fixed a few weeks later as I recall)
(My two older brothers helping me re-install the engine after we rebuilt it in my parents garage. It has a Holley we rebuilt with some goodies from Speed Shops, who remembers those? We didn't know any better and it actually ran pretty damn well all things considered. I'll never know why I chose to paint it blue, I suspect that is the can of high-temp engine paint my dad had on his shelf)
If you’ve ever sat though one of my Land Cruiser Heritage Museum tours, you’ve likely heard me talk about the ‘generational hate’ that Cruiserheads have for newer models. While my frame of mine has most definitely shifted since that time, I was as guilty as anyone as a dweeby 16-year old rolling to the local Toyota dealership (Karl Malone Toyota where we still do daily business all these years later) and seeing brand new FZJ80’s sitting on the lot and low mile FJ62’s and FJ80’s in their used car area. I remember bagging on those ‘bloated wagons’ saying how they didn’t deserve to be called a ‘Land Cruiser’ yada, yada, yada. Broken record that I’ve since heard about the 100, the 200 and naturally the 250 and 300. A few years later I would join our local TLCA chapter, the Wasatch Cruisers (where I am the longest tenured member) and I distinctly recall the 60 Series owners bagging on the few folks that had new 80’s that started showing up on the light duty trail rides. My oh my have the times changed but I digress.
(Hells Revenge during Easter Jeep Safari, 1998)
(Poison Spider in the late 90's. Note: the infamous upside down bezel. I don't think I knew either way when I was young. This was pre-Mud and Pirate existing and our local Land Cruiser club, the Wasatch Cruisers, didn't exist either. I suppose all I knew was that it came to me with the wide trim down, and I put it back on that way. However, along the way I see I switched it. If you look at the 'flop' photo, it's the correct way. Later photo's show it upside down again. Who knows what 17 year-old me was thinking
)Fast forward to late 1999/ early 2000, I’m ready for a different FJ40. I loved the current 1968 but it was complete, running well and for the most part my daily driver. Why tear it back apart when I could keep driving it and start building a new one in the meantime. My goal with a new FJ40 build was the “best of” available from Toyota parts. I was a part-time college student, working construction, part-time at an auto parts and hanging out at Cruiser Outfitters in any spare time I had. The owner Darrell was kind enough to answer a litany of dumb questions and let me help him with projects. Soon I was working there and had my own set of keys to the shop, allowing me to duck in after my other jobs and sneak some work in.
A year or so beforehand I had stumbled across a reasonably clean FJ40 tub/frame/axles in a field a few miles from home. It was stored in the backyard of a home adjacent to a large field we frequented with our dirt bikes. After a few visits to the field, I decided to knock on the door and see if they would be interested in selling and we were able to strike up a deal. I drug it home behind the 1968 FJ40 with a help of a few pals, much to the dismay of my parents were where not thrilled with the growing collection of Land Cruiser parts in their garage and on the side of their house. I'd already brought home a few other rusty/crusty $500 40's that I had parted-out, getting parts for the 1968 and building my parts hoard. True story, there is a crawl space under their home of 45 years that is still full of Land Cruisers used parts, I moved out decade ago. I tell them I’ll work on it every time they remind me about the parts. Some good stuff too!
.(Hauling home the 1972 FJ40 with the 1968 FJ40. I don't recall my parents being particularly excited when they came home from work and found another new Cruiser on the side of their house.)
The next installment is actually about the 1972 FJ40. If you made it this far, I commend and thank you
mostly because they were rusting out so much faster than our early ones with Heavy Metal (body and music!)
